6. DOGE: A Smarter Government or a Dangerous Power Grab?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Tim & April Show - Episode 6: DOGE: A Smarter Government or a Dangerous Power Grab?

Release Date: March 11, 2025
Host/Author: The New Evangelicals
Description: Where we unravel faith, politics, and culture.

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Introduction

In Episode 6 of The Tim & April Show, hosts Tim and April delve deep into the controversial creation and operations of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The episode examines whether DOGE represents a move towards a more efficient government or if it constitutes a dangerous power grab, questioning the implications of its formation under former President Donald Trump and the involvement of billionaire Elon Musk.

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Background on DOGE

Shortly after winning the election, Donald Trump announced the creation of DOGE, with an initial plan to have it run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. [16:24] April explains:

"Shortly after Trump won the election, he announced that he was going to create the Department of Government Efficiency, also called DOGE, and at the time, it was going to be run by two people, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy."

However, upon inauguration, Ramaswamy resigned, leaving Elon Musk and his predominantly young team to steer the agency. [16:24] April further adds:

"Vivek Ramaswamy resigned or left DOGE, and he said it was to pursue becoming the governor... So it's just Elon Musk and his team."

Legal Authority and Congressional Oversight

A critical point of contention discussed by the hosts is the legality of DOGE's establishment. [16:24] April notes:

"When Trump was inaugurated, he did an executive order to create DOGE... in order for new government departments to be created, it has to be approved and established by Congress. The President does not have control or the power to create brand new government departments."

Tim underscores the checks and balances inherent in the U.S. government system:

"Just because Trump says, 'I declare this via executive order,' does not automatically make it so."

Transparency and the "Wall of Receipts"

One of DOGE's purported initiatives is the "Wall of Receipts", a website meant to showcase the savings achieved through government cuts. However, both hosts highlight significant transparency issues:

• Minimal Explanations: [21:00] April states, "The explanations and the details are very minimal... there's not a clear explanation."

• Factual Inaccuracies: [24:42] April highlights multiple errors, such as DOGE falsely claiming $8 billion cuts to Immigration and Customs, which was actually $8 million.

• Deleted Information: [26:10] April points out that DOGE has deleted significant portions of their reported savings after errors were identified, further undermining their credibility.

"They even claimed they saved $8 billion, but that was actually $8 million... They dirty deleted about a week or so ago because it was filled with errors."

Impact of DOGE's Budget Cuts

DOGE's aggressive budget cuts have significantly affected multiple federal agencies, leading to job losses and reduced services:

• Federal Employees: [43:57] Tim cites AP Magazine, stating DOGE has facilitated the resignation of 75,000 federal employees and cut jobs across various departments, including Veterans Affairs, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, CDC, Homeland Security, IRS, National Park Service, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

• Specific Cuts:

  • Education: [51:55] Tim lists $900 million in cuts to the Institute of Education Services.
  • Social Security Administration: [26:10] April notes a miscounted $232 million that was actually much less.
  • CDC and DHS: Significant staff reductions have impaired public health and cybersecurity efforts.

Criticism from Conservative Sources

Even within conservative circles, DOGE faces skepticism and criticism. [29:18] Tim references an NPR article featuring the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, criticizing DOGE's savings as inconsequential compared to the government's overall budget:

"Think of Congress and its budget as the debt-ridden dad on the way to buy a $250,000 Ferrari on the credit card. And DOGE is the $2 off gas card he used along the way."

Tax Implications and GOP Budget Plans

DOGE's cuts are part of broader GOP budget strategies, which include significant tax cuts favoring the wealthy. April breaks down the allocation:

• Top 1% Tax Cuts: [64:15] April explains that the top 1% will receive a 3.2% boost in after-tax income, averaging around $70,000 annually.

• Middle-Class Tax Cuts: Middle-income households will see a 1.3% increase, approximately $1,000 in tax savings.

Tim emphasizes the disproportionate benefits:

"Elon Musk spent 0.05% of his $440 billion on supporting Trump, whereas an average American spends 3,560% of their wealth on daily expenses like coffee."

Conflicts of Interest and Regulatory Battles

Elon Musk's business interests are conflicting with DOGE's operations:

• SpaceX Investigations: [55:26] Tim refers to conflicts involving SpaceX with the Department of Transportation and the Department of the Interior.

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: [56:58] April notes ongoing regulatory battles with Tesla, despite DOGE's agenda to dismantle the bureau.

This regulatory push ensures that while DOGE attempts to cut government inefficiencies, Musk's own companies benefit from reduced oversight, raising concerns about institutional conflicts of interest.

Public and Political Opposition

DOGE's actions have sparked widespread dissatisfaction, even among some Republicans:

• Local Pushback: [70:29] April mentions that farmers and local town hall attendees are opposing DOGE's budget cuts.

• Internal Conflicts: [71:19] Tim highlights feuds between Elon Musk and Republican figures like Marco Rubio, underscoring discord within the administration.

Conclusion: Smarter Government or Dangerous Power Grab?

The episode concludes with Tim and April weighing DOGE's impact. They argue that DOGE, under Elon Musk's leadership, is derailing governmental integrity rather than enhancing efficiency. The lack of transparency, coupled with mismanaged budget cuts and conflicting interests, paints DOGE as a dangerous power grab that undermines the government's foundational principles.

"This is the danger so many people warned about with the Trump presidency... we're watching a billionaire class sell a bunch of propaganda to average people who don't know how the government works."

Ultimately, Tim and April caution listeners about DOGE's long-term implications for American governance, emphasizing the need for accountability and oversight to prevent further erosion of public trust and governmental functionality.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• On the legality of DOGE's creation:

  "[16:24] April: When Trump was inaugurated, he did an executive order to create DOGE... in order for new government departments to be created, it has to be approved and established by Congress."

• On DOGE's transparency issues:

  "[21:00] April: The explanations and the details are very minimal... there's not a clear explanation."

• On the ineffectiveness of DOGE's savings:

  "[29:18] Tim: The cuts are inconsequential... what DOGE is doing is the $2 off gas card compared to a $250,000 Ferrari."

• On tax cut disparities:

  "[64:43] Tim: So, the wealth inequality here with this new budget and these tax cuts... the top 1% who make about a million dollars or more a year would get a 3.2% boost in after-tax income, about $70,000 annually."

• On the conflict of interest:

  "[55:26] Tim: Here's how they conflict... SpaceX is being investigated while DOGE aims to dismantle consumer protection bureaus."

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Final Thoughts

The Tim & April Show presents a critical examination of DOGE, highlighting significant concerns about its formation, transparency, and the broader implications for American governance. By integrating statistical analysis, expert opinions, and real-world examples, Tim and April offer listeners a comprehensive understanding of why DOGE may be more of a perilous overreach than a step towards a smarter government.

Transcript

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[April]

You're listening to a new evangelicals production, the Tim and April show, where we unravel faith, politics and culture.

[Tim]

Oh, Happy Monday, everyone.

[April]

Happy Monday. I don't know about you, but I'm moving slower today because of daylight savings.

[Tim]

That's a bipartisan thing. Right. We should all shake.

[April]

We should all be against that.

[Tim]

Like, Charlie, Kirk and I on Twitter should retweet each other's post discouraging this practice in America and saying, you know what? We can get this done. Right? Like. Like we can have unanimous agreement that this thing needs to go.

[April]

Agreed. And I think there's, like, I think, is it Indiana? There's like a few states that don't even participate in daylight savings.

[Tim]

Good for.

[April]

Which makes the whole thing very confusing when you're dealing with time zones and traveling. Like, there was one week. I don't remember where I was, but I remember I was traveling to a different time zone. I think I was going to Nashville, which is central time. And I am in Eastern time.

[Tim]

Yep.

[April]

And trying to figure out what time it actually was with the time zone change plus daylight savings at the same time. Driving back, I think my brain broke, if I'm being honest. I like, my brain cannot. They're like, wait, okay, so it's actually eight, but really it's nine. But I. I hate it every twice a year. Let's just get rid of it.

[Tim]

Well, on that note, friends, welcome to the Tim April Show. I am Tim. That is April. Welcome in. Glad that you're here. I can see all of you commenting during this live that's currently happening. We go live on Mondays and Thursdays on YouTube and of course, we post these amazing conversations. Right. April. To our podcast the day after. So if you're listening on podcast, welcome in. Thanks so much. Make sure to give the show a rating and a review. We try and cover what's going on in politics, culture, and just the general news. But from that, you know, sweet, sweet Christian worldview only most people who hold that view wouldn't like us because we're not conservative enough for them.

[April]

So they would say we have a satanic worldview. Actually, I got called Satan this week.

[Tim]

This week.

[April]

Not. Yeah. Not just like tool of Satan or daughter of Satan, but just Satan.

[Tim]

Wow.

[April]

In general, which I feel like is progressive considering that's giving a lot of power to a woman. So.

[Tim]

That's true.

[April]

Happy, happy National Woman's Month.

[Tim]

We are going to be covering some. Amazing is the word amazing. I'm not sure we're going to be covering some big topics on this one. We're going to be doing a deep dive on Doge. What's going on with Doge? What? What? What? What? What the heck is this thing? We're also going to be covering this pastor who is celebrating the fact that his Christian school is the least vaccinated in the state of Texas. So we have a lot to get into, as always. So, again, friends, thanks for being here, but yeah, April, I'm with you. Daylight savings time, that, that can go away. I'm sorry that you got called a Satan, but that or the Satan. I mean, that's really. It is impressive, though. I mean, before it was only men. Now it's women.

[April]

Yeah.

[Tim]

Wow. Look at us women as well.

[April]

Look at us go. Glass ceilings.

[Tim]

Yeah, you really are.

[April]

My weekend was good. I mean, I don't remember what I did.

[Tim]

Well, probably because of daylight savings time.

[April]

Probably. Yeah. Actually, we did watch the. The R Frankie docu series on Hulu. I don't know if you've seen that or been familiar with her story.

[Tim]

The woman who. They were doing some YouTube blogging or vlogging and she got real famous and it turns out she was, like, abusing her children, like, really bad. Is that the one where there's a video that came out and this is tragic of like, a little girl in a closet and the police had to, like, feed her food because she hadn't been. She hadn't. She hadn't eaten in, like, days. Is that the same person?

[April]

I'm not sure how long it had been since the kid had been fed, but yes, two of her kids were very mal. Like malnutritious when the police found them. It's actually a really tragic story. But yeah, it was a family vlogger from Utah. I think they were Mormon, but lots of Christian beliefs. And basically she believed that her two youngest children were possessed by demons. And there's like other outside influence by this other Christian therapist lady who also was kind of convincing her, yes, your two kids have demons and the only way to get them out is through pain. So they like duct taped and tied up their. Her youngest son, who I think was like 12ish at the time. I mean, very tragic. But it was really, it was kind of triggering for Beecher and I to watch it. I mean, for a lot of reasons, anything with child abuse is really hard. As a parent, I just cannot imagine, like, doing that to your children, especially. Yeah. Anyway.

[Tim]

Well, can I just say briefly that before kids, on our end, I could watch that kind of stuff and be like, fine. And now that I have kids, I, I will never watch that documentary. Like when it comes to children, especially now that I have kids, I, I don't do it. I don't do, I don't do the movies where kids are harmed. I don't do the, I don't do the documentaries where kids are abused. Cannot do it hard Stop.

[April]

Yeah. Which is weird to me because they're so, this family was Mormon and then the therapist they brought in was also Mormon, which, when I, growing up evangelical, we were taught that Mormonisms were cult despite them, you know, still being Christian in their own way.

[Tim]

Right.

[April]

But yeah, like, I didn't realize that they believed in demon possession, but it was very, I mean, growing up Pentecostal, obviously we believed in demon possession and, and how, like when Beecher and I got together, we thought Beecher had demons because they had gender dysphoria. And we didn't know what that was because we had no help in the church. And if, like we were in such a vulnerable place of, of trying to be fixed and, and starving for this answer that we could have easily had been manipulated by someone that was, you know, trying to be hurtful and painful and all. Anyway, it's just like the whole like, oh, no, your children have demons or this is a demon. Like the, the demon happy sect of Christianity is so harmful. So harmful.

[Tim]

They've gotten a lot of power. Right. We, we've been tracking extensively in particular the new episodic reformation which comes out of the charismatic world, which has this language of we're in a war against Satan. We have, we have to take over the satanic strongholds of culture, demon possession. You know, the demon Kratz. Like, this language has very much permeated into the general, like, white evangelical Christian psyche, even though it stems out of this Pentecostal theology. And yeah, yeah, I mean, look, just straight up with you, when it comes to kids and abuse, I just can't do it. Like, I cannot. The thought of, like, you know, I have, we all have like these different values, right. One of mine is of course, non violence and like seeing the image of God in everyone. And I can tell you straight up, if someone harmed one of my kids, I, I, I don't know if I could hold to those values before that person. Like, I'm just being transparent with you in the audience. Like, there's just a line I have where, especially because, you know, when you have kids, you realize like, that idea of childhood innocence is really a thing like the world is just wondrous to them. Right. They haven't. They have an in inherent trust of you, the parent, or the people that they're around who are adults. To break that trust or to abuse them in some way or to put them in a closet and not feed them because you think that they're demon possessed, man. Like, that's what I'm like, no, throw the book at him. Throw the book. I don't want. I don't want, you know, I want punitive justice. I'm not saying that fixes the problem. That's just how I feel about it.

[April]

Well, I mean, both Ruby and Jody the therapist are in prison spending at least 30 years. I would have only surprised if they end up getting out. I mean, yeah, I was bad and they both pled guilty. So justice, I mean, that even doesn't feel like enough justice, honestly, the way that those kids are going to be traumatized for the rest of their lives.

[Tim]

Do you want to maybe just mention one or two shows that we like that are more positive before we move on to a different segment? I can give one that I really enjoy that is more positive.

[April]

You watch tv?

[Tim]

Sometimes I do.

[April]

Go ahead.

[Tim]

One of the shows I'm really into, I've been watching it since the beginning, is on Netflix. It's the Formula one docu series Drive to Survive. It follows the Formula one racers round. I've never been into racing or, or any of that kind of stuff, but I will say that it's a great document docu series. It follows like. Like the. The previous year's, you know, season way into it. It's a whole different world of. Of existence. And so I enjoy that show. I feel good about watching that one. How's it going?

[April]

Okay. Well, good. Just to clarify, someone corrected me that in Utah they're spending between four to 30 years, so they'll be periodically evaluated so they could potentially get out earlier and didn't mean to go back to bad news, but that's really messed up if that's the case, they need a rotten prison.

[Tim]

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, well, do you want to check on the price of eggs?

[April]

Yeah, let's do that.

[Tim]

We're going to bring prices way down. Sorry, I was playing the little thing.

[April]

No, you're fine. How much more golf Trump's played? I think the last time we checked on Thursday, Trump had played 12 times.

[Tim]

Let's take a look what we got. I'll pull it up for the audience. I have to get better at. At the comedic timing of that, of that Little. We're going to bring prices way down. Yeah, I'm working out of people. Okay. All right.

[April]

I just didn't know I cut you off my bed.

[Tim]

Well, that's all right. I mean, we're, we're only working remotely. You know, you're in Kentucky, I'm in New Jersey. We're doing the best that we can.

[April]

Can.

[Tim]

Right.

[April]

We do it.

[Tim]

So here's the update. Price of eggs. Now, listen, we are, we want to be committed to the truth. They have tanked over the past few days. As of March 7, they are down to an average of $6.85 a dozen. Now, to be clear, a year ago on this day, they were at $2 and like 12 cents a dozen. But, you know, considering that on March 5, they were at $8.12, at almost a dollar and 50 cents drop is pretty nice. And, you know, I guess we can say now we're so back. America is back. You know, the average price of eggs has dropped. Now it's only $6.85 a dozen. However, on a more disconcerting front, Trump's golf days are going up. I think last time. How many days was it last time we tracked?

[April]

Was it like 12 days last time? I don't recall. I don't remember the percentage, though.

[Tim]

Yeah, I think it was like 24%. And now we see an uptick. Trump has officially spent, out of the 49 days in office, 14 days of those of them golfing. And, and that gives you a percentage of 28%. So almost we're encroaching on the third marker. Almost a third of the time Trump has been golfing for the American people, by the way. At the taxpayer's expense. Right. Like taxpayers pay for the security and the details, which, by the way, they should. I'm not saying that we should not protect residents. We should do that. But it definitely is. We could argue, you know, it's a, it's, it's a, it's a burden on the taxpayer to use their language.

[April]

One would think that Elon Musk and Doge might find this a bit wasteful.

[Tim]

Yeah. Maybe worthy of cutting, one might think. Which brings us to our main story, doesn't it?

[April]

It sure does. Look at that.

[Tim]

It sure does. Doge, what that is, Doge, where did it come from and what is going on in April? I don't, I don't know if you said this publicly, but you have a master's degree in journalism.

[April]

I do.

[Tim]

Right.

[April]

Yes, I do. Not finally putting it to you.

[Tim]

I am the Big dummy on this show. Not April. She has her master's degree in journal in journalism. So I. We were talking about this, and we're like, you know, why don't we do just kind of a appropriately deeper dive on what is doge, where to come from is actually saving money and just kind of go through it with you guys for a little bit. Because this thing has kind of taken over the headlines. Elon Musk is the person overseeing this. This thing, which now the Trump administration is disputing. So, I mean, April, do you want to kind of kick us off? And I am kind of curious, like, where does actually came from and what it's supposed to be doing. And also my question is, do they actually have the legal authority to do what they're doing? Because my understanding is that, like, if you want to take away funding from agencies or parts of the budget that has to go through Congress, like, that's how our government's set up. And it seems like Elon and, you know, his team of young people, I think some of them are as young as 19. One of them goes by the handle Big Balls online. They're just kind of, you know, whacking things down, like, whack a mole with no thought. So what's the take here? Talk to me.

[April]

Okay, so let's just go back to the beginning. Shortly after Trump won the election. So before he was inaugurated, he announced that he was going to create the Department of Government Efficiency, also called doge, and at the time, it was going to be run by two people, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

[Tim]

Right.

[April]

And he and Trump at the time said that it was going to basically cut government waste and kind of act more as a, like an advisor to advise the government, but not actually have government power, because it was going to be an agency that worked from outside the government. So it was supposed to be a non government agency. So when Trump was inaugurated, he did an executive order to create doge. Also, that same day, Vivek Ramaswamy resigned or left Doge, and he said it was to pursue becoming the governor. Do a government governor run in Ohio? I don't know. I don't really know the full story there of why he. He backed out, but he is gone. So it's just Elon Musk and his team. But. But it changed since Trump's initial announcement. It is now part of the government. Ish. And I remember when he first announced that it was going to be outside the government, I even made the comment of, like, what's the point of this job, because in order for new government departments to be created, it has to be approved and established by Congress. The President does not have control or the power to create brand new government departments.

[Tim]

Okay, can we just pause right there? So, just to be very clear, because there's always these. There's always these kinds of questions, right? Like on. On when. When Trump got inaugurated, like on day one, he did this huge pomp and circumstance ceremony in front of people just signing executive orders, right? As if, like, all of them had the full weight of the law behind them. I mean, one of them was, I'm removing birthright citizenship from the. The Constitution. And a judge was like, you can't do that. Like, you're. Although the president is incredibly powerful, our system does have, at least on paper, checks and balances to make sure that no one branch can overtake the other and rule from the top down. Right? So it kind of has inside of it different levers that you can pull to keep people in check. So. So just because Trump says, I declare this via executive order does not automatically make it so. Correct?

[April]

Correct. Yeah. No. And we see that there's been lots of legal challenges to a lot of these executive orders, but court cases take time, so a lot of damage can be done while you're waiting on a court ruling or a court order. But one thing that Trump did that was unexpected in the DOGE announcement was also on his first day, he created another executive order that renamed a current government agency called the United States Digital Service.

[Tim]

Okay.

[April]

And he renamed it to the United States DOGE Service. So he basically rolled DOGE into an existing government agency. The digital service was created under Barack Obama in 2014, and that goal was more to modernize the government's technology. So basically, like, makes sense because when. When obamacare first released their. The. The. The service crashed. And so this. This organization was basically made in order to make websites run well and to. To make technology run smoothly for the American people that were trying to access government websites and government stuff. So, so now that's been rolled into DOGE and basically the purpose in Trump's executive order about doge, the purpose was to modernize federal technology and software to maximize government efficiency and productivity. Musk has. Has said periodically that it's to weed out fraud, cut back regulations and employees that they deem wasteful, and to ultimately save money for the American government and ultimately the American people and their tax dollars and what their taxes are going to. The problem, though, is Elon Musk is an unelected Official who had been giving a lot of power and a lot of access to systems that he has no training in, who, who may not understand the line items that they're reading. You know, he's got 19 year olds on his team.

[Tim]

Right, right.

[April]

And we've seen that because they, they also created this website. So the doge.gov it has an official government website now and there's. They've, they're calling it their quote, Wall of Receipts. And so everything that they cut, they are claiming they're putting on this website to show this the savings that they are making by all of these cuts. And I will say I've gone through it and I've looked through it somewhat. The explanations and the details are very minimal. It'll say like, Department of Energy and some random number, but you can't see what exactly did they cut from it. And if it does, it says like a few words and there's no way to understand what exactly that is. And it's very, it's just, it's. There's not. No clear explanation.

[Tim]

Yeah.

[April]

On this website.

[Tim]

So we're on the site now. If you go to the homepage, right, it's it. The homepage is Doge's X account and in its tweets, essentially. So again, like it's just whatever they're saying. And if you go to savings, it has just random stuff. Estimated savings, estimated 105 billion. Which by the way, is not even a quarter of Elon Musk's entire net worth. But I, I digress. Amount saved per taxpayer, $652. Now, even if this was true, it'd be great to get that money back, by the way, to me, but people say it's not true. And then when you go through the wall of receipts, like if you just tap on this one, right, it says Bureau of Land Management, there's an uploaded to 1325. The value you tap on it, it gives you a screenshot of what looks like some kind of template for something. You don't really know what's really going on here. And then if you go to the link, it brings you to just the extended expanded version of this. This is what you have. Now, we have to keep in mind a couple of things here because for some reason there's a baked in sense of, oh, well, if Elon says something or if this is on a website, it must be true. We cannot forget that Elon Musk himself, along with Trump, have lied consistently since they've been doing all of this. I mean, Elon Musk and Trump have promoted the lie that we sent something like $50 million worth of condoms to Hamas in Gaza. Trump re re espoused that lie a few days later by saying it was $100 million. That was not true. Elon has said we're going to get things wrong. There's no real actual sense of integrity behind this website. And to be clear, for example, on the USAID website, before it got completely gutted, you could look through the entire budget and see where all the money went. You could look through all of its grants and its spending. They got rid of that. You can no longer find that. So you have to go through the Elon Musk wall and just believe at face value that what they're telling you is, is accurate. And it's not like people have fact checked this. It's not accurate. Right.

[April]

And in many ways there was more transparency before this Doge website, like you said, because anyone, any citizen could go to the USAID website and see how money was being spent in different contracts that were being made. Like that's, it was open to the public. So. Yeah, but, and as you've said, there have been lots of errors in this. Like they, they've, they've dirty deleted several things once people fact checked them. Like the, the biggest probably mistake was they claimed they had $8 billion that they cut out of Immigration and Customs informant.

[Tim]

Yep.

[April]

But that actual contract was 8 billion million. So that would have heavily swayed their total savings. That's, that is an $8 billion mistake that they quietly just deleted and never commented on why it was there, who made the mistake. But it was just gone. Another thing that they so their five biggest spending cuts they dirty deleted about a week or so ago because it was filled with errors. Another one was they claimed that $655 million had been going towards the US Agency for International Development, but it turns out they had counted the number three times. They also misunderstood who those contracts were actually going to. So their actual savings for those three cancellations was actually 18 million, not 655 million. Also a very big difference. They also claimed that they cut $232 million from Social Security Administration, but they actually only canceled 560,000. Another error was they claimed that they can't that they saved $1.9 billion at a Treasury Department contract that they canceled, but that was actually canceled under Joe Biden. So not only are they fabricating numbers, they're also taking credit for things that have happened before, like things that they had no hand in canceling or Undoing.

[Tim]

That's right.

[April]

So they also recently deleted over a thousand contracts where they listed more than 40% of all those contracts as savings. Like there were 40% of all their contracts that they said they were saving. They deleted a thousand of them. Just. Just gone. Because they realized there were mistakes.

[Tim]

It really is the opposite of what they say it is. Right. They claim to be here for transparency. They claim to be here to save money, which by, by the way, one of the great false. Is that the government should be run like a business. That. That's not why the government operates. The government. That's not why a government exists or why it functions. It operates inherently differently because its motivations for existing are different. Right. A business ultimately is designed to turn a profit, to give the business, business owner, maybe the employees, hopefully, enough money to make a living. Right. I make a good. I sell it to you. I. I hopefully make a profit. Sold to you. The government's existence is designed to protect the people that lives inside the nation. It's not supposed to be turning a profit. It's not designed to run like a business. It's not designed to screw over the people who it's overseeing. It's designed to protect them against all kinds of threats. They could be, you know, threats abroad. They could be domestic threats, maybe from larger companies that are trying to exploit workers for unfair wages. So the whole idea of, oh, Trump's a good businessman, which, by the way, fact check, he's not a good businessman, and also, Elon Musk is so brilliant, let's put them in charge of our government actually undermines the very thing that government's designed to do. I mean, this is why Trump fired so many of the inspector generals. The government had independent people who oversaw parts of the government to look out for fraud and waste and abuse, et cetera. They're called inspector generals. And Trump just decreed that most of them should be fired without going through the proper process. So he actually cut out the very thing that they're claiming they're trying to do. And this is part of the whole charade that we're. That we're. That we're watching. We're watching a billionaire class sell a bunch of propaganda to average people who don't know how the government works, by the way, including myself. I'm not a government. A government expert. So all you hear are these pieces of propaganda from different news outlets, and you get this idea that this huge, massive thing called the government is bigger than ever. It's bloated than ever. They're just Wasting our money. There's no checks and balances. And you know, as they would say, daddy, Trump is home and Elon Musk are here to take care of it, when in reality they're not doing any of that.

[April]

That is true. And if we had a Congress and elected officials that had any sort of backbone that actually cared about law and order like they claim, you would have a Congress and a Senate pushing back on this and saying, no, you cannot go into these businesses and these agencies and these organizations and just fire people without cause.

[Tim]

100 per.

[April]

But we don't have that. We have a GOP that will just bend over and take whatever Trump says.

[Tim]

Yeah. Can I share, I want to share this from the, from NPR here. So according to npr, there's, there's an article that came out they actually talked to, they called a center right Institute called, called the Manhattan Institute. In my opinion, they're a conservative think tank. Okay. Even people at the conservative think tank, the Manhattan Institute, this is according to Jessica Riedel said, said this about Doge. This is how, this is how, oh my gosh, here's what she had to say about the savings Doge is giving the American people. She said, quote, think of Congress and its budget as the debt ridden dad on the way to buy a $250,000 Ferrari on the credit card. And Doge is the $2 off gas card he used along the way. It's great that he saved $2 on gas, but I think his wife may be more concerned about the $250,000 car. This is what's going on. Their cuts are inconsequential to them or even to government, quote, unquote waste, which is actually not wasted, but it is affecting a lot of people. Right? And that's, that's the problem is that like when you got usaid, which by the way, is a, is a fraction of the federal government, the federal, federal budget, you're taking in some cases food out of the mouths of people that Congress already said we're going to feed. That's what makes this whole thing so illegal. Congress is the one who sets the budget. Congress approves the budgets. Congress is the one that sets aside money for certain programs. You might not like where some of the money is going at the usaid, for example. But that, that does not mean that Trump has a legal right to send Elon in there just to clean house arbitrarily because Congress has already decided that money has been set aside. And according to the right, a right wing think tank, these savings, it's like a $2 off gas card compared to buying a $250,000 Ferrari. That's. That's the discrepancy we're talking about here. It's absolutely insane.

[April]

Oh, yeah. And then when you see, too, how much these cuts will compare to the new budget that the GOP is rolling out, which we'll get to later. It's. It's just a drop in the bucket. Like the, The. The bucket is ginormous. When you're talking about trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, you're not cutting a few billion. Is. Is nothing. Is nothing.

[Tim]

Nothing.

[April]

Right. And Doge does say that their goal is to cut $1 trillion by the end of this fiscal year. So in, like, September, that is. Their goal is to get rid of a trillion dollars, which sounds like savings. But the problem is, is you have the world's wealthiest man coming in and controlling and making cuts for things that don't affect him but will negatively impact your most vulnerable people, not only in the world when you're looking at humanitarian aid, but here in America, you're looking at Medicare and Medicaid, school lunches, 100% even just like the Department of Education, which they're talking about totally getting rid of, because they want to enforce school choice. And all of this stuff, like school choice will very specifically harm, like, disabled children who need special education and special ed teachers, like public schools are required to provide teachers for kids that need special education, whereas private schools are not required to do that. And the more funding you take out of these schools, the more those kids are going to be harmed. That's just one example out of. Gosh, I don't even know how many. So many. A couple funny things have happened in the process of Doge, because they came in and just started walking away and doing things so quickly. The press wanted answers. Who is in charge of this? Who's the administrator who's overseeing this? Because Elon Musk is not an elected official. He's not a government employee. In fact, they. They called him. What was it like, a special employee, I think is the official term they've given to Elon Musk, which.

[Tim]

Yeah. Special government employee, right?

[April]

Yeah. The White House says that Musk is an unpaid special government employee. And so that is officially defined as someone who is working for the government for 130 days or less in a year. So I guess the silver lining is there's a time limit on that. But, I mean, I don't expect them to follow any rules whatsoever. 0 But one thing that was funny. So Carolyn Levitt, who is the press secretary.

[Tim]

Yeah.

[April]

Which we haven't really talked about her. I know very much. She is a.

[Tim]

It's wacky trip. Yeah, the trip.

[April]

Yeah. So. So someone was asking, Is this the first one? So was asking her, who's the Doge administrator?

[Tim]

Right.

[April]

This was. This was a few weeks ago when people wanted. They wanted someone who they could blame for all of these mistakes. And so. So play this clip.

[Tim]

Okay. Check this out. Here we go. Great.

[April]

Thanks, Caroline. I wanted to ask about a federal judge yesterday was saying that they didn't know who the Doge administrator was and was asking the. The lawyer for the administration who it was. And the lawyer responded, I don't know the answer to that. Can you tell us who the administrator of Doge is? Again, I've been asked and answered this question. Elon Musk is overseeing Doge. There are career.

[Tim]

There are no. Elon Musk is a special government employee.

[April]

Which I've also been asked and have answered that question as well. There are career officials at Doge. There are political appointees at Doge. I'm not going to reveal the name.

[Tim]

Of that individual from this podium.

[April]

I'm happy to follow up and provide that to you. But we've been incredibly transparent about the way that Doge is working.

[Tim]

Okay, just pause right there. So she. She literally. Okay, so the question. The question, folks, just for context, is in court, the lawyers for Trump could not give the judge, who is the official administrator, over Doge. So. So that's not transparent. Right. There's no name that they could give the judge. So a journalist rightfully asks, hey, who is the person who's the administrator of Doge? And she defaults first to Elon Musk, saying that he's the one overseeing it. The journalist pushes back and she goes, no, no, no, it's Elon Musk. And then essentially says, I can't give you the name of the administrator for Doge. But also, we're all about transparency. So just imagine how someone can say that with a straight face and people watch that and go, yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah, no, totally super transparent. So this is what. That's what she was asked. She had no answer. Then they end up finding someone named. What's her name? Amy Gleason.

[April]

Yes.

[Tim]

Who, by the way, side note, was on vacation in Mexico when she found out that she was the administration administrator over Doge. And then the press asked Caroline about that, and here's her answer a few days later.

[April]

When exactly did Amy Gleason start her.

[Tim]

Job as DOGE administrator.

[April]

So Amy Gleason has been the Doge administrator for quite some time, I believe several weeks, maybe a month. I'm not actually sure of the specific timeline. She's a career official. She's doing her job as the administrator of this organization. I know everybody's very interested in her name and who she is and what she does. There's a lot of people who work for the federal government. They're just trying to do their jobs and, you know, that's what she's doing. Dosh Stepp has told us yesterday that they found out about her being the administrator. Administrator yesterday? Why is that? You have to ask them. They're clearly unaware. I don't know. Did you announce her position to the rest of the dosh that we.

[Tim]

We.

[April]

Everybody knew and we said who she.

[Tim]

Was to all of you because you.

[April]

Are hounds in the media who are so obsessed with this for some reason. Reason.

[Tim]

So in the effort of transparency, we.

[April]

Told you who that person is. There are so many bigger things in the world than who the Doge administrator is, but for some reason, everybody in the press corps is so obsessed with this that you were incessantly asking. So we thought, okay, we will be transparent.

[Tim]

So now you know who it is. Wow. I mean, the level of.

[April]

Of the level of gaslighting.

[Tim]

I mean, listen, I don't like using that word like, you know, all the time because I think it gets overused often. But, like, that's what that is. I mean, you can just, you can verify, like, what she's saying is not the reality of the situation. Journalists who are doing their job, like, hey, people inside of Doge are telling us that they had no idea who Amy Gleason was. Did you know about that? Well, then they don't know what's going on. They're unaware. No, it's obvious what has happened here, Caroline, and very obvious.

[April]

Immediately right after they were like, so how long she goes. Everyone. Everyone knew she was the administrator. Well, no, clearly not. Not the people you just said were unaware.

[Tim]

You didn't know. Neither did you. Like, obviously a ago, you had no clue who it was, which is why you defaulted to Elon Musk. And again, just to be clear, because we are Christians, this is the administration that most white Christians voted for on the basis of we're telling the truth, we believe in truth, and we want biblical values in the White House. This is just another example. There's a mountain of these examples that we're going to cover from now until the day Trump leaves office, talking about how there's nothing, there's nothing, quote, unquote, biblical or, or honest or loving or generous or good about how this administration does this stuff. Like, there's no accountability, there's no transparency. They don't respect the rule of law. These are the same people, April, who told us during COVID that. I'm sorry, not during COVID that told us during. Whenever Trump was in office, right? The rule of law, guys respect the rule of law. And then during COVID they said, no, the rule of law is tyranny. Now we, now we overthrow it. Then when Biden got elected and people tried to overthrow the election process, it wasn't as bad as we thought. We're misremembering things. And now. And then when Biden was in office, it's lawlessness. Biden's flooding the zone with, with undocumented immigrants. There's no laws, there's no borders. And now that Trump is in office, there are, There is no rule of law here. There is no respecting for the three independent, so called independent branches of government. Right? It's just lies and gaslighting and narcissism. And every accusation is a confession. You guys are hounding us in the media. You created this Doge thing and had people go through the government recklessly canceling tens of thousands of jobs. And then you tell, you tell the media there are people in the government just trying to do, trying to do their jobs. Guys, they're just trying to do their jobs. Stop it.

[April]

And the way, the way she downplayed, like, y'all are hounds in the media who just want to know who's controlling Doge. Like, yeah, because you're cutting so many people's livelihood, you're literally firing thousands of people. We'd like to know who's in charge, who's signing off on this because Elon Musk is unelected. Elon Musk is not American.

[Tim]

100 per sent. 100.

[April]

And just your friendly reminder that Carolyn Levitt is 27 years old and her husband is 59.

[Tim]

I, I mean, it's just, it's uncanny.

[April]

I believe love is love, but sometimes, sometimes things feel a little groomy.

[Tim]

Here's. Well, this is the thing coming from the party of watch out for the groomers. It's just uncanny. Same thing with Elon Musk. You know, Elon Musk has two different women suing him for neglecting his children right now. Right? He's under. He's facing two different lawsuits by people that he's had children with for neglecting his own children. I'm just saying, like, is this the party of family values or not? Do you guys care about. About the nuclear family? Elon Musk has 13 kids with all different kinds of women. None of these values are reflected in what they claim they're. They're advocating for in the American spotlight. Donald Trump flew back to America. Andrew and Tristan Tate, men who are accused of human trafficking in Romania. Andrew Tate is on camera beating women, beating them. And Trump, with a straight face in his administration, pressure the Romanian government to bring them back to the US and you're telling me, pastor, who told people like me that were so far gone, were so worldly because we couldn't vote for Trump, that somehow were the ones who didn't stand for these Christian values, were the ones on the wrong side of this conversation. Your dude is bringing back human traffickers in the US While telling you with a straight face that the real threat is the undocumented immigrant who doesn't look or talk like you, like, wake the hell up. It's bullshit.

[April]

I just need to tell you that Elon Musk did have 13 children, and it's 14 now.

[Tim]

Oh, my gosh.

[April]

He just had a fourth child with Siobhan Zillow.

[Tim]

I'm just so sick.

[April]

She announced that literally like a week ago.

[Tim]

I'm so sick of the hypocrisy. Why, why don't we take a short break? We'll come back and talk about. Because we actually outlined all the different jobs and roles and employees that the Trump administration is just cutting out of government.

[April]

Yeah.

[Tim]

And we'll talk about the effects. Then we'll also talk about to how Elon Musk is actually fighting with Trump's own staff members like Marco Rubio. So we'll talk about that as well. Sound good?

[April]

Yep. Hello, this is Terry from Wasilla, Alaska.

[Tim]

I started supporting TNE and Project Amplify.

[April]

As it gives me hope. I grew up attending a small evangelical church in Saskatchewan, a church that my relatives had founded in 1914. This was the 70s, and aside from the kooky end times teaching that about the Soviet Union, it was still a church of love. I married and moved to the US in the late 80s and became exposed to a very different church. I floundered and finally left for the Episcopalians in 2007.

[Tim]

While I love the Episcopal Church, I.

[April]

Grieve for the church in my youth.

[Tim]

Finding Tini, I can once again find.

[April]

Fellowship with the church of my tradition.

[Tim]

And hope for the future. Thank you Ti and E. We are talking about Doge. Is it friend or foe? Answer. It's foe. It's, it's not helping anyone. It is only helping Elon Musk. Did we cover, by the way, how much Elon Musk's government contracts are worth? Did we talk about that?

[April]

No, no, we have not yet. But Elon Musk has benefited from over $38 billion in government funds, loans, grants, all the things, contracts. And he's not cutting those things.

[Tim]

No, of course he's not. This is, you know when, when people say, when people say that our society is set up so it's socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor? They're absolutely correct. Elon Musk's. Elon Musk and his different agencies or companies. Right. SpaceX, Tesla, et cetera. Neuralink, the other ones, whatever is the one that. Skylink, Starlink. I think it's Starlink.

[April]

The Internet. Yeah, yeah.

[Tim]

They, they've all been made possible because the government has either subsidized or given them loans to the tune of $38 billion or more. And that same man wants you to think that gutting the usaid, which gives humanitarian assistance to people all over the world, is the problem in this country. Can we let that sink in for a second? Do you understand how upside down all of this is? It's completely ass backwards. And this is, this is the danger so many people warned about with the Trump presidency, right? It's the fact that Trump is going to bring in other billionaires who want to keep rigging the system to get to extract as much wealth as possible, whether it's through the taxpayer, through government contracts, or through corporations that are less and less regulated. And who suffers? You? Me? The average American? The majority of us suffer. And they're so effective in their propaganda because of right wing media that many, many, many people, especially the white poor and white moderate, vote against their own economic interests because they're convinced that big government is the problem. Not big corporations or the billionaire class that has set the rules up to intentionally benefit them at the expense of the small business owner. It's, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous and we have to call it out. We absolutely have to, by the way, just, just to be even more emphatic on this. And I, I, I like to be sometimes, April, if you're going to get real biblical about this, because I know that a lot of people who don't like us think that we don't care about the Bible. We're not real Christians. We're just Socialists. Let me just read from you for you, a little passage from the Bible. God's word to you. For. For you biblical inheritance out there. James 5 says this. Now listen, you rich people weep in wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look, the wages you failed to pay. The workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one who was not opposing you. There you go.

[April]

There you go. There you go.

[Tim]

The Bible is clear.

[April]

I will say earlier you said only Elon Musk and other billionaires benefit from these cuts, which I agree. But I do want to point out that Elon Musk has lost over $121 billion in his net worth because of people selling their Tesla stock and selling. And like stopping Tesla. Like whatever gains that he had made right around the election, he's completely lost those now.

[Tim]

Well, I'm glad to hear that. As good news, right?

[April]

Which is still a drop in the bucket. I think he's still the wealthiest man, even with losing $121 billion in net worth. But, you know, that's some good news, I guess.

[Tim]

A hundred percent. Here's a list. I pulled this from from ap. Here is a list of, of the various jobs and roles and funding that has been gutted so far, or at least attempted to be gutted. Some judges have put some stops to this. But if there were no judges stopping some of these actions, here's what we have. According to the AP Magazine, there have been 75,000 federal employees who have. Who have accepted a deferral resignation. That means that they've essentially said, look, if you pay us a certain amount of severance, we will eventually leave our post. That's 75,000 federal employees. A thousand employees have been cut From Veteran Affairs, 5,400 probationary workers from. From the Defense Department, 39 people from the Education Department, including special education specialists. I'm not sure how that's a waste of anyone's tax dollars, but okay. There have also been $900 million in cuts to the Institute of Education Services, which tracks the progress of America's students. Now, can I just pause there because I'm sure you saw the news that Trump is most likely going to create a magic order to dis, you know, dismember the Department of Education. That is a huge win for Christian nationalism. We don't have time to get into a deep dive right here, but there's been a war on education waged by Christian nationalists since the 60s. RJ Rush Dooney, the father of what's called Christian Reconstructionism, was one of the first people to really write prolifically in the 60s and 70s accusing the public school system on that it was indoctrinating students on humanism, which is another word for that might be called secularism, and that Christians have an obligation to pull their children out of schools and to eventually get the public school system replaced with either private schools or homeschooling. So there's a long legacy of, of the Department of Education being in the crosshairs. And so this is a huge win for Christian nationalism. Okay, we'll keep going. 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were ousted, but they were then they were later re employed. 5000 were cut from the Department of Health and Human Services, 700 at the CDC, 405 at the Department of Homeland Security, some of which, by the way, were in charge of cybersecurity threats. Thousands are being proposed to be cut at the IRS during tax season. A thousand newly hired National Park Service employees were cut. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which, by the way, this was put into place after the housing collapse in 2008. Gutted shut down. It was told to stop almost all of its work. The department that's supposed to protect consumers from predatory financial systems that almost tanked our entire economy in 2008, entire retirement savings wiped out. That that check and balance right. Gutted needs to go. The new Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, said on February 14 that her agency had invited Elon Musk's DOGE team with open arms and that layoffs will be forthcoming. A spokesperson for the department, which oversees the Forest Service, said Roman supports Trump's directive to eliminate inefficiencies by firing about 2000 probationary non firefighting employees. Elon Musk and Doge and Trump, whatever. They've stopped all. They stopped the majority of foreign aid in development. That's usaid. They're trying to stop all federal grants and loans, including freezing trillions of dollars in health care, research and education. Each of the federal government's largest agencies has its own independent inspector general who is supposed to conduct objective audits, prevent fraud and promote efficiency. So the very thing that Elon says he's doing. We've already been doing that. Trump fired at least 17 of them, including watchdogs that he appointed in his first term. At least one Democratic appointee, Michael Horowitz at the Justice Department was spared. And then about a dozen employees from, from the, from the Department of Justice have been also kicked. So, yeah, that's just, that's just like the quick overview of everything that's happening right now.

[April]

It's interesting when they say, you know, Doge exists to weed out fraud and, you know, to, to provide some oversight, to, to fix errors and waste and all that stuff. Trump, one of his first things that he did was fire a bunch of inspector generals. And their entire purpose is to provide that oversight to make sure that fraud doesn't exist. Like, like these, these checks and balances already existed. That doesn't mean that there's some contracts or fraud. I mean, what they're calling fraud is not really fraud.

[Tim]

That's right.

[April]

Everything that they have found, even if it's contracts, they're claiming are fraud or spending, they claim as fraud had been pre approved by Congress's budget. So legally those funds needed to be allocated and spent for what Congress deemed those for. So nothing that they're saying has happened has been illegal by any means. You can debate whether or not you agree with that spending, but it's not illegal and it's not fraud.

[Tim]

That's completely correct, 100%. But you wouldn't know that when you listen to right wing media or you listen to Elon Musk, et cetera. I mean, it really is. The foxes are in the hen house, folks. Like, there's just no way around it. We have people in the government who want to dismantle it. And by the way, that is a huge goal of the Christian nationalist agenda. April, we need to just mention this during this live, that Christian nationalism, broadly speaking, believes in restructuring the government in their way and then being in charge on top of everyone, over top of everyone else. Part of the chaos you're seeing, part of the sense of like, what's going on? Why is it so reckless? That is intentional. People like Russell Vogt, who helped architect project 2025, who oversee some major departments down the government, and they did in 2016 as well. They want this system to collapse. They want to break the system. They want to fire, they want to fire as many federal employees as they can so the system collapses and then they can tell their people, look, see, the government's not working for you. Keep giving us power so we can Keep building it, Making America great again, which, again, it's all propaganda. This is how the system, or this is how the Playbook is designed to go. It's how it's designed to go. And it's insufferable that we're here as a country and again, that Christians are the ones behind it. It's, it's truly. And they have very extreme views. These are people in our government and, and theologians who support people in our government who want to do things like repealing the 19th amendment. They want women's suffrage to be removed and revoked. They believe that we should go back to a one vote per family setup because only people who own land and who are men should be seen as real American citizens. This is the Playbook. And we've covered this on the New Evangelicals podcast time and time again. I'm dropping my America Fest recap video probably later on tonight on that, on that account that will document some of this stuff and what they're saying. This is the playbook, friends. This is Christian nationalism. They want the system to fail. They. That's why they love Musk. That's why they love what he's doing. And in return, listen, Elon doesn't give a crap about Christian nationalism. He doesn't care about their religious ideology. He will absolutely shake hands with them, though, because his benefit is that he gets a less regulated government that gives him less checks and balances. Can I show you guys this graphic real quick? While I have you all here? Let me show you this.

[April]

While, While I have you here.

[Tim]

Yeah, while I have you. Look at this. This is the conflict of interest graph. So for people watching on podcast, essentially what's going on here, this is from the New York Times. They show how all these different departments, Transportation, Interior, Justice, Agricultural, Agriculture, Nation, National Labor Relations Board, they all have different, either investigations or regulatory battles going on with various Elon Musk companies, whether it's Space X. Right. So, right again, you can't see this. You're listening on the podcast. So SpaceX right now is being investigated in a regulatory battle with the Department of Transportation on violations and fines. The Secretary of the Interior is looking at SpaceX's Starbase review and doing a federal investigation, all these different things. And if you look at what Elon is targeting, he's targeting a lot of these, like we said earlier, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has now been ordered to be dismantled. Well, that has an investigation, or, I'm sorry, that has a. Let's see, a regulatory battle currently with Tesla under various complaints from consumers. But, but Trump and Elon want that entire bureau gone. Do you understand what's going on? This is, this is why it's, it's wild to see, it's wild to see Elon in the position that he's in, given all this federal power to strip away the very things that are giving him checks and balances on behalf of the American people, the consumer. It's wild to watch. It's wild.

[April]

Right. And, and we've talked about too, how not only are there conflicts of interest, but, but it's not going like all of these benefits are going to the ultra, ultra wealthy and even the middle, like middle, if you are middle class or lower on the economic scale, you're not going to be benefiting much from Trump's plans at all. The new GOP budget plan, like even with these cuts that Elon Musk is making.

[Tim]

Yep.

[April]

It's really not going to matter because the GOP budget that they are proposing is increasing the debt already trillions of dollars. It would the, the budget that I think they're voting on tomorrow or sometime this week.

[Tim]

Oh, great, that's Thursday show.

[April]

Yeah. So basically it is tax cuts. So when you say it there it is tax cuts for everybody, to be clear. But the way that they are allocated very much benefit the wealthy in our country and not the lower and middle class. So it would cost nearly $4.2 trillion over the next decade with almost 60% of those tax cuts, or about 2 1/2 trillion would go to the top 10% of taxpayers. And to put that in perspective, that is anyone who makes more than $228,000 annually.

[Tim]

Yep.

[April]

Meanwhile, the top 1% of earners. Earners or those that make at least 743,000 annually would see their taxes reduced by more than $1.24 trillion over the next decade, which is about 30% of the total tax cut. The problem, I mean, there's a lot of problems here, but in order to pay for these tax cuts, they're going to have to cut vital programs that benefit working class Americans. So you might be getting us very small tax cut that, you know, estimated said it might be around $400 to $1,000 on a tax cut for like a lower middle class person. But they're going to be, they, they might. One of the biggest critiques of this is that they're going to have to go after Medicaid in order to pay for these tax cuts.

[Tim]

Right.

[April]

And who benefits the most from Medicaid? Lower and middle class people. Like, it's not, it's going to actually end up being worse when you take away all these benefits that they're going to have to cut in order to pay for these tax cuts that overwhelmingly mostly benefit millionaires and billionaires, especially billionaires.

[Tim]

Can you, can you cite that one stat that you read about? If you make a million dollars, like how much you would save in taxes.

[April]

Versus some money, you have to find it. I got to figure out, I got to remember where that was.

[Tim]

Well, while you're doing that, can I, can I, I, I really wanted, I've been meaning to do this, but I just want to give the audience out there some kind of mental picture of how much money we're talking about, because I think we're so used to hearing the term millionaire billionaire, we just assume that, like, a millionaire and a billionaire are operating, are operating in the same world of wealth. So here's what I did. I was curious, right, because I'm sure many of you know that Elon Musk spent, I mean, roughly $200 million during this last campaign. I think, I think that the total amount was like $280 million out of his $440 billion of wealth. So what I did was I said, listen, I, I asked Chad Chat GPT, because I'm, I'm no mathematician. I said, hey, if you spend $200 million out of $400 billion, what's the percentage of your net worth that you're spending? Because that's, that's essentially what Elon spent to help elect Donald Trump. According to chat to chat GPT, if you spent $200 million and were worth $440 billion, you spent 0.05% of your wealth. Okay? So that's how little Elon spent to help get Trump elected. Now, now, I then asked chat GBT, if you make $80,000 a year and you spend $4 a day on a cup of coffee, what is that percentage of your wealth? And ChatGPT said, hey, if you spend $4 a day on coffee on an annual income of $80,000, that's 1.83% of your wealth that you're spending, which is, to be very clear, a 3,560% increase or larger, more than the wealth that Elon Musk Musk spent on helping get Trump elected. Do you understand, friends, the amount of money we're talking about, like, your brain can literally not comprehend the amount of money we're dealing with here. If you, in. Most of us probably do spend at least $4 a day, on average, on a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And there's a good chance that statistically, I think the average wage in America is like $67,000. So $80,000 is like above the average wage. You spend 3,000 times more of your wealth annually buying a $4 cup of coffee on $80,000 than what Elon Musk spent on, on helping to secure a win for Donald Trump. Two hundred and something million dollars. That is. That's ridiculous. That's unfathomable. If you lined up $1 million, like, in terms of like dollar bills, it'd be 95 miles. If you lined up a billion dollars, it would be 95,000 miles. Do we understand the discrepancy? Elon Musk is worth $320 billion after he lost $100 billion of net worth. So, so the fact that we have this man, the most greediest man in existence, something that, that, that again, for you Christians out there, something the Bible condemns over and over again. The Hebrew Bible condemns that kind of wealth. Jesus condemns that kind of wealth. The book of James condemns that wealth. The greediest man in America, in the world. Sorry, excuse me. Is in charge now of slashing government programs for the least of these, cutting humanitarian aid that would go to feed children overseas while he continues to try and enrich himself and his friends. This is not ethical. It's not biblical. It's not Christlike. It is the opposite. It is Antichrist that we have the situation happening now in America. And again, that statistically speaking, white Christians are the largest voting bloc that wanted this to happen in America.

[April]

Well, yeah, I mean, the, the wealth gap is massive. And we've talked about too, like, yes, we have, we have some issues left to right on some, some fundamental social issues, but we have more in common with our Trump supporting neighbors than we do with billionaires and Trump supporters have more in common with us than they do with Trump or Elon Musk. The. It should be up and down right should be the actual battle here.

[Tim]

Not left and right. Not just left and right. Yep, right. That's right.

[April]

Okay, I did find the stat.

[Tim]

Thank you.

[April]

So to further point out your. The wealth inequality here with this new budget and these tax cuts. And this is According to CNBC, who was quoting the Tax Policy center, the top 1% of households who make about a million dollars or more a year would get a 3.2% boost in after tax income, which is an average of about $70,000 a year.

[Tim]

So the, so about the median wage or a salary for the average American, they would save that in a year in taxes.

[April]

Correct. By comparison, middle income households would get a 1.3% income boost, 3.2 for the top 1%, 1.3% income boost for middle income, which would average around $1,000 tax cut.

[Tim]

Yep.

[April]

So, and your average American, you know, Trump supporter is going to hear, oh, I'm going to save $1,000 and that's great. $1,000 is, is a lot of money for, for lower middle class people that.

[Tim]

I would love a thousand dollars. Yeah, hello, lower middle class right here would love a thousand dollars.

[April]

Exactly. And so people will see that they got an extra thousand dollars and so that, that's kind of all they need to see. They don't need to realize the discrepancies and the disciplines disparaging difference between what they're getting and what the wealthy in our nation are getting, which is again more and the, I mean, and to be fair, you can make the argument that people that make more money pay more in taxes and therefore would get a higher increase and that that's fair and that is true. Wealthy people do pay more in taxes overall because they make more money, but they are taxed at a lower percentage and this tax cut too, they will end up saving at a higher percentage than lower and middle income people who could use that money a lot more. Like once you hit a certain threshold of wealth, there's no need, you don't need that kind of money. But like that $70,000 would, would really help. Would like be life changing money, life changing money for me, for you, for.

[Tim]

Middle class people, life changing, life changing. Right. If I got 70 grand, I mean, wow, we could pay off our medical debt, we could pay off the remaining, the remainder of Sarah's student loan debt. It's not much, a few thousand dollars, but we could pay all that out all that often. Still have like a good chunk of change to put in savings for a rainy day. Right. And that's. You're exactly right, April. Like what we're trying to let people, or what we're trying to say is that look, people can make different amounts of money. I'm not advocating for like, you know, the same, the same salary for every single job we get that there comes like a drop off rate though where like after a certain amount of money, a million, 10 million, even 100 million, when you get beyond that, the amount of money that you're, that you're accumulating, you couldn't spend in your lifetime if you wanted to. Right. You're Just at that point, you're just hoarding money at the expense of someone else who maybe could use a fraction of that to not be in debt, for example. Right. So it really is wild that again, we have been convinced in America that, well, Elon Musk probably just works really hard. How much harder can he work than the average American doing 40, 60, 80 hour work weeks that gives him that kind of wealth that is somehow ethical, you know, to become a billionaire, not even a millionaire, a billionaire, you automatically have to be stepping on other people in some way, shape or form or skirting regulations or figuring out how to do backdoor deals. Someone always suffers when you're a billionaire, when you are. And it's just selfish. It's complete narcissistic selfishness that drives that. And in response, Christians in America said, you know what, what if we put that person really close to Donald Trump and let them wreak havoc in our government? Many of these programs that we're trying to target actually helps the least of these. It helps the person know, maybe in, you know, somewhere in America, it could be rural America, could be inner city America, that, hey, we'll take care of your health care because you can't afford it, because you have a right to health care instead. Elon and Trump are like, guys, if we're going to afford these tax cuts, we got to cut something. So I guess maybe Medicaid's got to go. Maybe, maybe we get, maybe, maybe we do have a touch Social Security. I mean, did you hear Elon Musk say that Social Security is a huge Ponzi scheme? That's Simon. Correct. It's lifted the most seniors out of poverty like ever in American history over the past like 80 something years. And we could pay for it by taxing billionaires in the future. I know, but no, it's wild. It's wild.

[April]

The love of money is the root of all evil. I guess. Some positive notes before we move on from this, which, I mean, there is a lot more we could cover on Doge because they're, they're just slashing and wheeling and dealing and just doing a lot. Doing too much. They're doing too much. But this past Friday, Trump did say that he wants must to go through the cabinet secretaries now and that his cabinet secretaries should be the ones to decide who gets the cuts. So he does seem to be trying to reel back some of Elon Musk's power. And I do think that is in direct response to one, the amount of errors Musk is having and mistakes, but also he's been getting a lot of pushback for this and not just from Democrats and left leaning people, but from Republicans. I mean, literally Republicans are, are stopping to do their local town halls because they've been getting just eviscerated by people who are mad, by Trump supporters who are farmers who are losing their farms because their government contract has been cut because of Elon Musk. Like, we are seeing more and more people who supported Trump becoming very, very unhappy with what Trump is doing. And so, I mean, it is good news that we the people can still force change. Now this government budget is probably going to be passed and that's going to hurt a lot of people. But it's not too late to call your representatives. I mean, there's, there are still things we can do. There are still, it's, we're not rolling over and taking it. And, and I do hope we'll see more Republicans stand up to what is happening.

[Tim]

I, I do hope so. I mean, Marco Rubio was like feuding with Trump, with, with Elon Musk in front of Trump and it's, it's chaos, friends. And again, it is designed to be that way. Like this is all intentional.

[April]

Did you see Trump tweeted on his Truth Social that in all caps that Rubio and Elon Musk were like the greatest of friends. Hold on. What did he say? I want to read it. I think I sent it to you. Where is it go? Where did it. Oh, hold on. Here it is in all caps. He put it on his truth social. Elon and Marco have a great relationship. Any statement other than that is fake news. Djt shout that in all caps.

[Tim]

All.

[April]

I don't know if they have a great relationship.

[Tim]

That's our president. It's whack.

[April]

Yeah.

[Tim]

All right, well, listen, let's do this. I mean, hopefully that helps people understand a little bit about Doge and just how absolutely unhelpful it is completely. And the, the motives behind it. Let's take a short break and then we're going to get, we're going to get into our favorite segment.

[April]

We. Christian.

[Tim]

Ah, yes, Weird Christian Shit. We'll be right back, friends. Hang tight. Still getting around to that fix on your car. You got this on ebay, you'll find millions of parts guaranteed to fit. Doesn't matter if it's a major engine repair or your first time swapping your windshield wipers. Ebay has that part you need ready to click perfectly into place for, for changes, big and small, loud or quiet. Find all the parts you need at prices you'll love. Guaranteed to fit every time. But you already know that Ebay things people love. Eligible items only Exclusion supply. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sandals going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to.

[April]

Sell wherever your customers are.

[Tim]

Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. All right, we are back.

[April]

I want to say I just literally during that break, got a notification for a headline that a government shutdown appears likely because a lot of people are against the spending bill that we were just talking about for all the reasons that we were just talking about. So, yeah, they said a government shutdown could appear as early as Friday because the current spending plan expires on March 14, and unless they get a new spending plan approved, the government will shut down. So.

[Tim]

Well, we will update you on that.

[April]

We'll be watching that.

[Tim]

Yeah, I mean, this Thursday we'll have an update for you because we go live on Mondays and Thursdays, so we'll see what's going on. Um, a couple of quick. Can we just talk about some housekeeping things that I want to go over with you and the audience who's live here? I'm sure Josh will edit this part out for the podcast community. Couple things, friends. Number one, look, this show is still very much new. Okay? I see all of your comments. I read them as we're talking. There's one person who kind of, like, has all the technology to, like, make everything come up, and that's me. So we're always working on, like, better ways to make this more engaging and more enjoyable for you. So if you have any feedback, you can always message us either on YouTube by putting it in the comments, or you can email, what is it? The Tim and April show at the new evangelicals.com just for feedback. You know, we're always thinking about, how are these segments doing? Do we like the deeper dive? Maybe doing shorter news stories? This is kind of a work in process. And yes, someone did mention, like, oh, this is a shorter episode. We are trying to get our lives down to, like, an hour and a half on average instead of an hour and 40 or two hours. And that's for a couple of reasons. Number one, it is a lot of work to kind of prep all this stuff. Number two, it is a lot of energy to be live for this long and Number three, we don't want to wear you guys out. I know that we're going live now twice, twice a week, but this is the beginning. I mean, we're only, what, a full month, not even yet into doing this format. Right. Going live twice, twice a week. And it just. I love doing this. So I think for me, in April and April, we'll love your thoughts. I don't know what hits well with. With the audience and what is like. And we can skip this, you know, like, how much banter do you guys like is? Me and April talk all the time. We love to banter, but I'm not sure if that's part of the show in a greater capacity, lesser capacity, et cetera. So I want to get that out of the way. And the last thing I'll add is that I know I, I know that you see these commercials that we do these like four ad spots. We are working on creating more and we split them up so it's two and two. Right now. I know that I'm on three out of the four. We're going to be changing that. I had to create something just to get this show off the ground so we can play something. But we are working on kind of changing that up a little bit, getting some other people who might want to do some actual ads on the show, etc. So again, this is new. This is a brand new show. It's a brand new YouTube account. Please make sure that you're subscribed to the channel. That really helps us, but that's what we're working on.

[April]

Yeah, I mean, we would love to have some more sponsors, which right now are zero to help pay for. You know, you get some research and all this stuff, which, I mean, Tim and I are doing pretty much our, our own research and planning and all that stuff, which we, we love to do, but it is a lot. We do this twice a week. We. I meant to actually bring this up in banter and I forgot. I know most people here probably do not listen to the podcast because you're here and watching us live, but this is also on podcast on Apple and Spotify, and we're currently ranked in the top 100 on Apple podcast charts for religion and spirituality. We're, We're. I think we're like two or three behind Mark Driscoll right now.

[Tim]

Do I have an.

[April]

If you have an iPhone, if you could go to the Tim and April show on podcast and just rate it, follow us, that would help us a lot because the higher we rank or the bigger, you know, it just pushes our exposure and more people can find us.

[Tim]

I wonder if we can look it up now. I mean, this is the fun part of being alive. We can do whatever we want. It's the top of the chart.

[April]

I know. Got all this out for the podcast.

[Tim]

Let's see what we got this year. Get rid of this. Get rid of this. Okay, so if we go to all categories, religion, spirituality. Okay. This guy's always number one. This Bible in a year guy, he's always number one. I'm not sure.

[April]

I think that's why I don't know who he is.

[Tim]

Different, there's girls gone. Bible number six kills me. Okay, let's see. Where are we? Are we even? Oh, Therehere we are. 66. This is us. So we're here. And mark Driscoll is 63. So if you could just go to the podcast feed, subscribe, get this little rating and review, I think we can beat them. But I will say the podcast charts are so finicky. I don't know how they rank. I don't know how their algorithm works because we're a brand new show. And I guarantee that some of the podcasts even below us probably have more monthly downloads because they're more established, yet we're higher. So I don't know how it works. So I don't know.

[April]

Yeah, I don't know either. All right, well, let's get to our favorite segment. Until we come up with more segments. It's our only segment with a jingle, actually, for now.

[Tim]

Christian, I love that. So good. So good. April. Yeah, let's get to some weird Christian shit. So. Okay, I gotta prep this one a little bit. We're talking about. There's this pastor. Actually, you know what? Let me back up, let me back up. So, April, if I told you that there was a church called Mercy Culture, what would you assume about this church off the bat? If I was like, hey, there's a church out there called Mercy Culture, what would some of the values be like? What were their pastors be like if you just had to kind of go?

[April]

I would imagine very focused on mercy.

[Tim]

Yes.

[April]

Forgiveness and grace and being a big tent kind of church where all are welcome.

[Tim]

Yep. Well, their pastor, his name is Landon Schaff. A shot. Sorry. He wrote a book. He actually wrote two. This one's called Jezebel the Witch's Back. And here's a short description. I'm gonna read these two paragraphs. This is from his words again, pastor of Mercy Culture, the spirit of Jezebel has risen to power in our culture and infiltrated the church. Her witchcraft has wreaked mass spiritual carnage through fear, manipulation, intimidation, and domination, carried out by those who fall under her spell, even those in leadership. Her wickedness has wounded and scarred countless believers, leaving them fearful, depressed, defeated, sick, and confused. Because of Jezebel, some have lost hope and aborted God's call on their lives. Her assault will continue until all of God's people are dead or defeated. Jezebel's bloodlust for death and destruction will only be stopped when met with spiritual violence. God's people must rise up in the power of the Holy Spirit to expose the spirit of Jezebel and her evil plans, gain authority and war against her, and war against her victoriously. Jezebel the witch is back. It will. And then it goes through all these different things. He also wrote a book. Oh, go ahead.

[April]

I was just gonna say I. I find the witch's back odd, because where did Jezebel go?

[Tim]

Yeah, where. Where. Where's she been this. This whole time? And who is like, is Jezebel just one person? Like, I'm just. Who is Jezebel?

[April]

Sound like she's omnipresent?

[Tim]

100%. Landon also wrote a book called Gay Awareness Discovering the Heart of the Father and the Mind of Christ on sexuality. So, you know, just a couple examples. Yes. Now, a couple other things about this man, and trust me, when we're going somewhere, friends hang in there. Landon in his church were trying to build, like, a center, I guess, for victims of sex trafficking and were arguing with, like, the. The town over how to build the facility. And so Landon went on his podcast and essentially called people witches and demonic. He said that, that, that, that, that quote, they have a group of people that are actively trying to resist us around every corner for two years from helping survivors of human trafficking and that this is spiritual. And he went on to say that they were evil and that they're demonic and there's a spirit of Jezebel over them, et cetera. Again, this is the pastor of mercy culture. And then most recently, he actually. Okay, so there's a scandal going on right now in evangelicalism. Shocker, right? With Michael Brown. Michael Brown is a messianic Jew. So he's a Jewish person who's a Christian. He's also an apologist, and he has a pretty. He has allegations of inappropriate behavior with a woman in the 2000s that was sexual in nature. Now, Michael Brown denies the sexual part, but he admits that he had. He had an emotional affair now, of course, April, you and I have been doing this for a while. We've heard this story before. And he was recently Michael Brown. He's under investigation for alleged sexual misconduct. He was honored with a standing ovation. This is according to the Roy's report at a conference last weekend at Mercy Culture, where Michael Brown serves as an Apostolic Elder. And essentially Landon went off saying that there is a. What did he say? There's an accuser of the brethren who is going after men of God that have given their lives to build the kingdom. This is to be clear, this is the pastor of Mercy Culture. Right. Okay. So all this is going on. Landon blocked me years ago. This is who they are.

[April]

Congrats.

[Tim]

Thank you. And then recently, Landon goes viral because he said this. Now. This is the same guy. This is the same dude. And by the way, one more thing while we're here. When I. Whenever I hear the word apostolic or I hear things about, like, the demonic spirit, that sounds very much a part of, like, this new apostolic reformation has kind of really become a very big player in evangelicalism. And I think Landon is either adjacent or swimming in those waters. A big telltale sign is this idea that God has raised up new apostles and prophets that are going to lead the church. And this comes with a lot of warlike language. This is why when he says we have to wage spiritual violence on Jezebel, that's a very. It's a very classic kind of line from these NAR type of people. They believe that there is a spiritual war going on as we speak and that demons are infiltrating people and trying to take over America and that people like Landon and the new apostles and prophets in this Christianity have to rise up in war against these people through prayer, through action, etc. So there. We could probably do a whole deep dive on Landon on that level. But it's important to keep that in mind because here's what he said the other day that has him going viral. This is real. This is not sarcasm. This is not him joking. Listen to this. Hey, guys, quick video. I just walked into an MC prep board meeting balloons, and it's a surprise gift. I'm like, what's this going out? And I just found out I'm a little behind on the news. I'm a little slow getting old, but I just found out we are the number one school in Texas for least vaccinations. And I guess the news got a hold of it and they were trying to spin it like it was some awful thing, but I Just want to congratulate all of the family members of MC Prep that embrace freedom of health, and they're not allowing government or science projects to affect how you live and lead your life. I know the entire world was shut down with insanity and people were fired from their job for forced vaccinations. And freedom is something that we take seriously. Religious freedom, freedom of our health. And so shout out to MC Prep for being the least vaccinated school in. In Texas. We'll take it. Or as mercy culture say, we celebrate it, we'll put it on the board.

[April]

April, I think this also. There is a measles outbreak currently happening in Texas because of people who are not vaccinated.

[Tim]

I think it's time for my line, we live in the stupidest timeline. I got to record that and just start using that as a button. We live in the stupidest timeline that could possibly be in existence. We have a man who claims to be a Christian, who claims to stand on truth, making fun and making light of the fact that his school is. I guess I don't know how you prove this, but it's the least vaccinated in Texas, and he's celebrating it like it's a good thing. Science so saves lives. Vaccines save lives. No one is debating if people can have an adverse reaction to a vaccine. Anyone can have an adverse reaction to anything. People. Some people can't take Tylenol because they're allergic to it. Doesn't mean that Tylenol isn't an overwhelming net good for people. This idea that Landon is smiling and laughing, I mean, he's literally endangering children and my. April, April. The thing that kills me is he frames it as freedom. Right? We don't want the government telling us how to live our life while him and his tribe are actively taking over the government to tell trans people how to live their lives. And telling people that DEI hires are destroying the country and we have to gut the government because it's too big and too bloated, which destroys the lives of other people. And this is the whole crux of what we've been yelling from the rooftops for years. Christian nationalists really was just in Matthew Taylor, the book, the author of the Violent Ticket by Force, he calls it. This Christian supremacist really is what we're talking about here. These folks are always going to weaponize language to benefit them, right? If vaccine mandates, which, by the way, have been around for a very long time. Vaccine mandates in public schools, in the military have existed for decades, suddenly that save lives Right. And suddenly that's big government infringing on them. But these same people have no problem taking over the government and using it, using it as a bat to harm people that they think are demonically influenced.

[April]

It is wild to me too, the whole religious exemption aspect of vaccines, because I've seen a lot of, you know, Christian homeschool moms that are anti vaccine will like use the religious exemption to be able to allow to send their kids to school. If they go to school without vaccinations or whatever. There is nothing in the Bible or in Christianity that would keep you from getting vaccinated. The whole religious exemption, it goes against my religion is so stupid as a Christian. Like there's nothing like that. That alone is just such a violation of like actual religious persecution. Like, oh, my government is trying to save my children's lives from polio and measles and I'm going to cry religious persecution or Christian persecution. We saw the same thing during COVID when Sean Foyt started holding super spreader worship events in the midst like the height of a pandemic where millions of people were dying because they were claiming Christian persecution for government quote unquote shutdowns. And I heard of people that were complaining about Christian persecution who never shut down, who were still having services, who were not social distancing. At a church where I lived in Cleveland, Tennessee, they never once closed their doors and they didn't social distance and they didn't wear a mask and they encouraged their people to not get the vaccine because of literally so many different conspiracies that were around that vaccine. But they had a Covid outbreak where more than 10 people died in their church and they still didn't learn the lesson. Like we have a group of people that is willing to sacrifice the this like the old, like older seniors and disabled people because of their own selfish interests. Because churches needed to stay open because that's how they got more money. That was what that fell down to. Because even in the Bible you don't have to go to a church in order to have church. We are the body. We are the body. The original, like the early church, they met in homes for their, for their church, like where two or three are gathered. Like they, they always twist these things to be Christian persecution and they rile everybody up, be like, oh, they're coming after your Christianity. They're coming after your God. They hate Christians.

[Tim]

They hate this.

[April]

Like, no, they're trying to save lives because there's a global pandemic and millions of people are dying and you don't have the audacity to just wear a frickin mask. My body, my choice. It is all hypocrisy and it is all projection and it is not Christian persecution that does not exist in America.

[Tim]

How is that loving your neighbor? I mean, let's just, let's just take it back to the basics, right? We were taught as children very early on in church that Jesus says we love our neighbor as ourselves. There is nothing, nothing, nothing that is tyrannical about wearing a mask, right? Or watching how, how close you are to someone during a little pandemic in Texas. According to Texas here, it's saying the reporting and outbreak of measles in the South Plains region of Texas at this time, 198cases, this is as of January, have been, have been identified. 23 of the patients have been hospitalized. There has been one fatality in a school age child who lived in the outbreak area. The child was not vaccinated and had no underlying conditions. A child is dead because of the stupidity of pastors like Landon. That child did not have to die. We have a vaccine that overwhelmingly prevents the measles virus or disease and that child is dead. Parents are mourning the death of a child because they were not vaccinated and because there was a measles outbreak. This is ridiculous. It doesn't have to be this way, you know, for there's, there's this, there's this language by people like Landon they call abortion, child sacrifice. Now it's a complete mischaracterization of what's going on. But that's the language that they use, right? They're we're sacrificing our children to Molech. No, Landon, you and your anti science, anti intellectual stupidity is the one that's actually sacrificing children. You're the ones who are actually causing real children to die for no damn reason. There is no reason this child should not be alive today if they've just gotten vaccinated, period. Full stop. We. We. I think it was, well, I think it was. I wish we had Jessica Melody Rivera here to help us out, but I believe in the year 2000 we pretty much declared measles not a thing anywhere. Like we pretty much eradicated the disease and now it's back because we have this anti intellectual right wing apparatus that is pushing things that are literally killing children. And these are the same people have the audacity to tell you that because Drag Queen Story hour exists, America is in jeopardy of losing God's divine protection. And that those people should be thrown in prison. It's unreal. It's unreal that we are here.

[April]

It has also spread to New Mexico. There are several cases in New Mexico now and a second death occurred in New Mexico as well, also from someone who was unvaccinated. They have not revealed the identity of that person, but that they were unvaccinated as well. Well, and that's just continue to climb as, as, as it spreads. And it spreads when people are unvaccinated and a lot of children aren't like early children are unable to be vaccinated with. Like you put people at risk, like babies who have not had the chance to get vaccinated yet or haven't got their second dose to be full like their MMR vaccine. Like you're putting people who are trying to do the right thing at risk as well.

[Tim]

Yes, yes. And lest we forget, lest we forget, April, rfk, the person who's currently in charge of our health nationally, right, he went to Samoa when there was a measles outbreak there and downplayed and blamed it on the vaccine. So what happened was a child, what actually happened was there was a case of a nurse mixing the wrong medication. I think it was a muscle relaxer by accident with the vaccine and the child died from it. That got spun though, that vaccines are killing kids in Samoa. RFK goes down there, works with the, the government of Samoa. There's this huge anti vaccine sentiment. Measles has a huge outbreak there and people die because of what RFK did with the government pushing this, this propaganda based on a lie. We are not, we are not looking at a future where our children are flourishing. We are not looking at a future where science has the opportunity to save lives. This government, Trump's own government, try to defund cancer research and somehow we're led to believe that we are the antichristian, godless crazy progressives because we think that's a bad idea. What are we doing here? And we got pastors celebrating the stupidest shit you ever heard. Hey guys, congratulations to everyone. We are the least vaccinated school. You might as well just say, hey guys, congratulations. 90% of our kids believe that the earth is flat. We're really doing a great job educating our kids, aren't we? That. That's how stupid you sound, Landon. Like if I ever had the chance to talk to this guy, he'll never talk to me because he's a coward. They always block me every single time. I've been blocked for years. But if I ever Talk to that coward of a human being, Landon. I would tell him that's exactly what you're doing. Your mind as well. Tell your kids that the earth is flat and say, look, quality education. Because the Bible says so. Because Jesus says, go to the ends of the earth, therefore the earth is flat.

[April]

That's how stupid you sound, though, because no one. I don't know anyone who's died from believing that the earth is flat.

[Tim]

Yeah, good point, good point. You're right, it's more dangerous.

[April]

But it's. It's literally like him just saying, oh, my gosh, you guys, guess what? We're the most. We were voted the most. The school with the most chance. Hold on, Brain. With the highest chance. I literally had it and then I lost it. It was going to be good. I was rolling into it. But no, I feel like he's literally bragging about how his school has the highest chance of dying from preventable diseases, Right? Like, look at us. We have the highest chance of dying from preventable disease. Let's put it on a T shirt. Let's. Look. I go to a school where I'm more likely to die, right?

[Tim]

We sneeze on each other for fun. Because herd immunity. It's like, what are you doing? It's stupid. It's so dumb. And deadly. And deadly. And these folks think that somehow. Not April, What? The kicker to all of this, right, is not just that Landon and his crew are so anti intellectual and ultimately ignorant. It's that they think everyone else has to succumb to their brutal fundamentalism that would kill more people. People like Landon really believe that we should defund vaccine research and that we shouldn't mandate in public schools certain vaccines that prevent diseases that save lives. They think that. They think that we should be in a society where people like Landon are the smartest folks in the room. They really think that? Because, look, look, to be clear, if you're new to the show, maybe you didn't grow up as an evangelical Christian like April and I did. And April, tell me if I'm wrong on how you heard it, but there's this Christian supremacy mindset in these churches. They believe that they have a very special, almost secretive knowledge that's been given to them by God because of how they understand the Bible. They believe that the. The. And we covered this, by the way. I did a response to Christian nationalism on the TNE podcast live last Wednesday. You can watch it here. There's this. The. The logic goes like this. We as Christians believe in truth. The Bible is God's inerrant word to us. Therefore, if we follow God's word, we are implementing truth that corresponds to reality. Therefore, whoever does not do that is not based in truth. That, that's, that's the general stepping stones to get to how they think. But what they don't tell you is that, is that a, they're interpreting the Bible through some dogmatic and presuppositional approaches that are actually really not even accurate to how the Bible thinks about itself. And number two, they forget or fail to realize that the world's much bigger than their dogmatic ideology. So in response to that, what they say is, look, because we have this truth from God and everyone else doesn't, we have a special obligation to be in charge and to lead the culture because we have truth on our side and the world believes a lie.

[April]

Yup.

[Tim]

And here we are.

[April]

Well, there's, There are so many things that go into this mindset too. When you grow up in an evangelical world that is very Christian nationalist, whether they realize that or not, you are taught to have major suspicions about anything that is not. Christian Scientists, doctors, experts on anything. Researchers high. Yep. Higher education. You are taught to automatically be suspicious of those things. And it's honestly probably why you have a lot of people in the maga movement right now who are deeming themselves experts on the war in Ukraine and, and experts on, like, they are like, oh, well, I know. Da, da, da. Because they read some article from, you know, russia.info.ccc.gov, right? Like, see, I know. I know more than this. I know more than that because I have God in me. You know, God, what is it? God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called. So you have all these people that are literally like, well, I believe God in me more than. I believe this expert on this, despite this person going to school for over a decade and having all, like, studying this for their entire careers. Like, you're taught to doubt those things by default. By default. You're, you're literally trained to be ignorant and to, to ignore facts. So that's why when you have someone like Trump come along, you had a group of people, white evangelicals, primed and ready to accept this new source of truth because we, we already believed everything else was fake news. So Trump coming in and saying that was just tickling their fancy, was just, you know, reinforcing their preconceived ideas already.

[Tim]

I don't, I don't like sounding this way. And there's. And there's no doubt that any people group, any group of people, religiously or not, have issues, right? You can find all kinds of problems with anywhere because people are people. We do dumb things. But personally, this is just my opinion. This is not any data. I am convinced that if white evangelicals were for science and for empirical research and cared about truth and cared about the actual human good of all their neighbors, right? We would have a livable wage in this country. We would have affordable health care in this country. We would not have Elon Musk, you know, running the gamut in the government. We wouldn't have Donald Trump. We wouldn't have any of that. If you look at the data, the only main reason why we are where we are is because of the fundamentalism and the zealotry and the fury of white Christians throughout American history. You can, you. You can pick it up really anywhere. But once you start with integration in the 60s and 70s, and you see that white evangelicals oppose MLK, Jerry Falwell, the founder of Liberty University, opposed school integration. He actually started private schooling out of that, right? Once you realize that during the AIDS epidemic, it was Jerry Falwell and white Christians who thought that God was judging the gays through the AIDS epidemic, and therefore they couldn't be helped, you can. You can trace so much of the harm and the hurt that's been caused by two marginalized communities because of white Christians. You really can. There's so much history on this. I mean, the Bible told themselves by. Told them so by J. Russell Hawkins. There are so many books that document this, and it makes me, like, so angry because I grew up in that world as a Christian. I was radicalized by those people. And I realized as I got more curious that something doesn't add up. And here we are now, right? We're running the outside, April, looking at this white evangelical thing where we literally have this dude celebrating to put it on his board at school that, hey, we're the least vaccinated school in Texas. That's the level of stupidity we have to deal with now in 2025America.

[April]

I know Wild what it's. What a time to be alive.

[Tim]

And we're here every step of the way ranting with you.

[April]

Step of the way. For better or for worse, next few years, we will try to do something.

[Tim]

Yeah. Wow. I mean, friends again. I mean, April, we can't thank you enough that we get to do work. We love showing up. It's a lot of work for all of us. I know. Even for you guys, it's a lot, but. But we're grateful for all of you. Please make sure to like this stream and to subscribe to the show. We wanted to make this as consistent as possible and reach as many people as possible and help us beat Mark Driscoll by subscribing to our podcast. Anything else, April? Did I miss? Did we cover it?

[April]

I think we got it through everything. We were so close to being on time. I know our last segment went off.

[Tim]

I saw that we were on track doing it. Maybe next time. Hour and 45.

[April]

Yeah. Maybe next time Thursday, huh?

[Tim]

Oh, yeah. No, I'm. I was going to say, you want to try and be real official? Be like, I'm Tim, I'm April.

[April]

Sure, I'm Tim.

[Tim]

I'm April. Good enough. Bye. It.