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Them Before Us Podcast
Them Before Us #062 | Post Election Recap | What Does a Trump Presidency Mean for Children's Rights?
00:36:02
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- [00:06]
A
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. This is a special post presidential election edition with Josh Wood and Patience Sunny, who also worked for them for us. Welcome, guys.
- [00:21]
B
Great to be here.
- [00:23]
A
I wanted to say Good morning America. It's only, well, it's nine on the west coast where I live, and then Patience is Midwest in a swing state and Josh is East coast in a swing state. So how are you feeling this morning?
- [00:41]
B
You know, I think the swing state I'm in is the swing state that wasn't Iowa got called as a swing state right before the election, to everyone's surprise. And I don't think anyone was surprised that it didn't swing, but overall, feeling pretty good.
- [01:00]
C
Yeah, I think there's a mixed bag here of things. Obviously, our movement is most often aligned with conservatives, but I think that there's probably a mixed bag for people that are fans of our movement and ultimately fans of defending children, that we certainly can't get ahead of ourselves and think that all signs from last night pointed to a country ready to embrace greater children's rights and protection within their families. But I would say it certainly could have been worse. There was definitely a way that this could have gone with a group of people gaining more power who did not agree with our movement and were pretty open about it.
- [01:39]
A
Yeah. And just to break it down, this is the Fox News, you know, election desk numbers. Donald Trump got 277 electoral votes. The, you know, colors of the map look pretty typical. I had someone text me saying, wait, is Oregon going red? And okay. And I was playing. I was doing volleyball as a coach this whole last evening. We were driving, we drove like 10 hours. And so I'm trying to, like, refresh and figure stuff out while we're playing. But I guess there was a brief moment where a pretty typically blue state went red. And so people are freaking out or, oh, you know, is Washington state going to get a conservative governor? And it's like the votes are in, but King county hasn't been counted yet. So it's like, okay, wait. But you know, there's nothing super surprising on the map when you look at the, the red and blue. And then in the Senate, Republicans picked up three seats. So 52. They have a majority in the Senate now. And then in the House, the Republicans picked up four, picked up a seat and flipped four seats, and they have 198 now. So a lot of people are saying, you know, this is a big indictment of. Well, it kind of becomes an indictment of whatever you want it to be. I Guess you can say this is because one side is letting men and women's sports, or you could say this is because one side is letting border, you know, the border be a free for all. But I do kind of like the feeling when you see everything swing in one direction. It does feel like a mandate. But it's interesting to Josh's point, it's not necessarily a pro child mandate because people are voting for Republicans for different reasons. But as a pro child voter, I feel very positive about the direction we're going. I don't know how much you all know. Did your states have different abortion amendments on the ballot this year?
- [03:34]
B
My state did not, but of the ones that were on the ballot, so Florida defeated Amendment 4. That's huge. That's an incredible win for children's right to life, especially, you know, a large state like that that has a heartbeat ban in place. And, you know, a lot of people were expecting that to go the other way. So that was an incredible win last night. South Dakota also defeated their constitutional right to abortion amendment that was on the ballot. And Nebraska had those two competing ballot initiatives, which made it a really interesting race. And the pro life one did end up winning. But what's really interesting with that is that both of them are really close margins, which I think shows where things are at in America in regards to the life issue right now. You have, looking at those numbers, it's entirely possible there were people who voted yes on both, which it's crazy to think of that. But I think that does show there's a lot of confusion among voters about what these various amendments do when they go to the ballot. And then also a lot of conflicted voters where, you know, they, they want some abortions, but they don't want all abortions and they're not quite sure how to articulate that. And they're also not quite sure what that's what that actually means when the rubber meets the road and when they're actually asked on the ballot.
- [05:08]
C
Yeah, I'd say if I start really big, wide lens. The coalition that elected Donald Trump last night was more diverse than the GOP has had, maybe ever. So you saw black men voting for Trump in a way that they have not in a long time. You saw Hispanic men voting. I believe Trump is going to win Hispanic men outright as a category, which, again, is wild. And then you look across the board and swinging or really sweeping the swing states. Yeah, I think you can draw a couple of things out of that that's encouraging outside of necessarily our movement. And Children's rights. I think you do see. Wow. We have a group of people who are a lot more values based than identity based, which I think is a good thing for our country. Um, I think they're motivated by some what I would consider common sense values. One of the most. One of the most effective ads of this cycle was the one where it just showed Kamala Harris talking about giving transgender care to illegal migrants for free on the taxpayer dime. Well, you can say it's a pretty niche issue. I think there wasn't actually even a single person that underwent that in this program that she was, you know, talking through, that she supported. But what it did do was highlight the fact that the left has a problem with values right now. They're not really sure where their empathy stops. And this is. There's a role for the left to play in society. Like, I believe there's a role to play in the right in society. The right does have to conserve. It does have to look back at history and say, what are the things worth carrying forward into the future? What are institutions that don't need innovation? You know, we believe very strongly that the family is one of those, that God created a man and a woman to have children, and that institution of marriage protects that child, binds them to them. It's the centerpiece for them to flourish. But the left also catches those people who maybe lack opportunity in society or through difficult decisions, have fallen off the bandwagon. They need safety nets. They need care, grace, compassion to be brought back in so that the hierarchies within our society that allow people to flourish don't calcify that you can always have opportunity in this country. That's extremely important. However, when that compassion goes unchecked, it does create a situation, like you saw in this ad, where Vice President Harris is advocating for transgender, free transgender health care for an illegal migrant. Where you go, oh, my gosh, is there any end to this? Is there any end to where you will go with your empathy? Because guess what? We as a country don't have enough resources to be empathetic, caring, compassionate, and the savior for everyone. We just don't. And you saw there was one specific county in Texas that's a border county. It's the most heavily populated Hispanic county in the entire nation. And it's never voted Republican. I think actually there was one time for Grover Cleveland, it voted Republican. Well, this county, 98% Hispanic, voted for Trump, or it had a 60% swing from last year. So that's an unbelievable margin. I think it's unprecedented. Why did that happen? Well, I think we sometimes count on identity politics too much. I think that illegal immigration hurts citizens whether they're black, brown, white, you name it. I think people care about safety, they care about trafficking, they care about drugs in their community. They care about people coming through the correct way. And so I do think that was an encouraging part of this, is that values and limits to this empathy really rang true. That while conservatives sometimes I think can be, you can argue that they don't always communicate it in a graceful and compassionate way. And I think that ad is an example of that. It's really punchy. It's Kamala Harris is for they them, Trump is for us or for you. I'm like, yeah, that's a little bit of a divisive rhetoric that I don't think we need to embrace to make the point. But it did emphasize that people were willing to look past that to say, but yeah, we do need values, we do need boundaries. And it's okay to say that.
- [09:25]
A
I think, to your point. Oh, go ahead. Patience.
- [09:28]
B
Well, I was just going to say, you know, with that, that issue of how far does the left's compassion go, I think that is going to be a reckoning for the left in the coming years and potentially for the right as well. You know, this, this election did yield some unexpected results, I think, for both parties where, you know, the left has, the left went into it expecting abortion to be the make or break issue and it wasn't, at least not on the presidential level. And so I think we're going to see possibly a shift towards the center from the left going forward because they're realizing that they went a little too far on some of these policies and they lost a lot of common sense Americans with them. But I think we're also going to see an evolution from the right as well. And we saw that with the change in their platform on the abortion issue and on marriage. I think that we're going to see possibly both parties shifting towards the center or if nothing else, shifting on the values that are important to us as an organization, at least on, on some of the life and marriage issues. And I think that's something that we'll need to be watching for and that pro child advocates will need to be watching for as well.
- [10:43]
A
That's an interesting point because Haley McEnany, I'm not sure if I'm saying her last name right, she used to be the press secretary for Trump first term. Well, earlier in his first term, I think, or later in his first term, whatever. Anyway, she's awesome. She's a, you know, pundit now on Fox and such. But she was talking about these are some of the first bills that have won when it comes to the pro life issue. But she talked about Florida specifically because she said Desantis actually went out and laid out what it was. He wasn't parsing support. He wasn't pretending. It's not really this. It's not going to be that bad. You're still going to have the right, you know, he wasn't trying to kind of play the game that it seems like the rest of the right has been doing around ivf, around abortion. And so they won on the issue in her take was because he clearly stated what it actually was and why you should not support abortion, you know, to that, to that level. So I thought that was really good, really interesting. And then another thing off of what Josh was saying, it's, yeah, the left. Well. And I guess I just don't know if they're going to have a reckoning of the soul. The MSNBCs and the things, the little clips you see on Twitter already now, Latinos are racist. You know, that was their take of, like, why Latinos overwhelmingly went for Trump. Well, they're also racist and misogynistic or white women did this to us or people can't handle that it was going to be a female president. But again, those are just talking heads, you know. But is there going to be a move? Are people actually going to make those adjustments based on what the actual data says? And then the final thought I had was when you look at sort of this unity party, the people that Trump's brought together, which I think is really neat. I've liked Tulsi Gabbard, I like Vivek Ramaswamy, JD Vance, etc, but I don't think any of them are pro life, really. Maybe J.D. vance. Tulsi Gabbard, I think is pretty socially liberal. So it is kind of this coalition, like Josh was saying, of some different interests. Tulsi Gabbard's like, we, I'm a soldier. We need to stop the endless wars. We need to stop censorship, because those are the things that directly impact your rfk junior we need to revamp what's happening with food and health in this country. Great. But all of them are soft, softer than me on protecting the life of the unborn, protecting children when it comes to marriage. But that's the new face of the party. So we've changed. But then it's interesting, I don't know if the Democrats are going to change or they're just going to double, triple, quadruple down on the same thing.
- [13:31]
C
I think the encouraging part is they can be moved. I mean, to some degree, I think right now, the party in power seems to respond to populism, to kind of giving people what they want, and they're trying to stay within bounds. They didn't completely abandon family and pro life movements, but they did hedge in every way possible. It seemed Trump even kind of went back and forth on the Florida ballot initiative. So I think that kind of tells us, I mean, thank God that the Supreme Court ended abortion on demand around this country. However, that's a good first step. But we do, as a movement on every issue here relating to children, the institution of marriage, the way divorce has gone in this country, ivf, I mean, art and assisted reproductive technology in general, and abortion. We have a lot of work to do to present this case in a compelling fashion, to explain to people the harms. Now, something like the transgender movement, it's beginning to have detransitioners that tell their story. People are seeing it for what it is. Well, it could be hidden for so long because the victims of this ideology weren't old enough to speak for themselves. That's changing the issue a lot of times with abortion is they can hide the victims because they can't speak for themselves. They're often, you know, not alive anymore, unfortunately, they've been killed. So, so much of what we do and we're caring about when it comes to ivf, art, all those things, is we have to get out there and really advocate and present the case to people. Because if we can change hearts and minds, if we can show the damage that these policies do when we rip apart the nuclear family, that is when you really distill it down. The things needed for family, a mother and a father creating one child. That is the nuclear family. When you rip that apart and change it and society changes with it, so much bad policy, so many bad outcomes happen as a result. When we get that across the American people, I do think we'll see shifts in the parties because they're just going to respond to what the people want. I feel like that's incumbent on us now to make the case.
- [15:43]
B
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And making the case for those who aren't going to be able to make the case for themselves. You know, the embryos destroyed by the assisted reproductive industry are never going to have the chance to speak up, which is why it's so important that, that we're speaking up and, and that other profiles, individuals across the nation are making their voices heard on these issues.
- [16:07]
A
A big thing that's come up. You know, a lot of people are saying this is when the alternate timeline started, all these different things. Right. But was Elon buying Twitter, turning it into X? Was that the game changer for world history? But it's interesting as to Josh's point. When we talk about when we're making, we need to make a case now. We actually have platforms where there's free exchange of ideas and there is a lot more freedom to engage and we can, we can know that we're not sort of being suppressed, but there's free exchange of ideas now there's people. There was a more robust debate about ivf, I think, when it came, when Alabama's court case happened. So it does feel like we're really well positioned to, to do that, to make the case for the pro life movement or pro child movement. And I was thinking too, that's what is so great about the pro child politics book. It's making a case based on, for all the different topics, debt and foreign policy and race and education. It's making a case based on the data and the stats and the arguments. But we also have the kids stories and that, that's a really unique thing that them before us. It's very important to us as an organization is the story of children impacted by these things. And that'll be really good for, you know, any of our advocates listening as we move forward. And I'm very hopeful that the side that's been given the mandate, okay, now go do what we want you to do, protect us and protect children in all these ways. But it gives us an instruction manual. How should I be emailing my senators? How should I be advocating for these policies in my company? The HR policy guidelines and things that we've researched and helped provide. How can I equip my church? We can take these resources and really get passionate about telling this story.
- [18:08]
C
Now, one thing that struck me was to dig. I mean, I think you heard this narrative talking about alternative media. If you didn't really dig into the data, you'd say, well, women hated Trump and men liked Trump, and that's how it broke down. But if you dig into it, I believe the data is going to bear out that Trump wins married women and Harris is going to win younger single women. I do think there's something there too, again, as it relates to our movement, about proving the case Making the case that there are some institutions. Why did the institution of marriage cause so many women to break conservative for Trump? I think that's just a question worth asking is are people similar to you think about women who, in the pro life movement, they always try to get them to have an ultrasound because it breaks kind of the spell. I was talking to someone the other day who said that a woman who was post abortive was heartbroken when she had her second child and finally saw an ultrasound at the same time she had had the abortion the first time. And at that moment she said, I didn't think that it was a baby when I went through the abortion the first time. Seeing it on the ultrasound. Now I feel horrible for what I've done. Well, it kind of occurred to me, she said, you know, I thought they would make something like this illegal if it was bad, if this really was a baby. Well, man, I'm like, something about her experiencing motherhood, experiencing an ultrasound radically shifted. Something that I'm just not sure the narrative could be broken on otherwise. And it's interesting to me that someone who has gotten married, begun to have kids, why do they change in the, in this demographic so often and lean. Begin to lean conservative?
- [19:59]
B
Yeah. And I think, I think one factor there is also kind of, I don't want to say that young women are more prone to group thinking, think than young men, but I think there is a little bit of a tendency of you should side with the other women. And sometimes breaking out of that by having, you know, your own family unit that you're part of now can help kind of break that spell a little bit where, you know, the closest person to you is someone who isn't going to say, well, you have to side with, you know, you have to side with your gender on this, but instead it's someone who brings a slightly different perspective. And I think, you know, both, both men and women benefit in that way from marriage because you're, you're constantly hearing the perspective of someone who does approach the world in a different way from you because they do have a different experience. And I think that as we're seeing, you know, Gen Z kind of follow the millennial trend of delayed marriage or foregoing marriage entirely. I think we are going to start to miss out on some of that, that benefit that happens when you've got someone that you're close to that you're, you know, in daily communication with who brings a slightly different perspective than yours. And I, I think, you know, both men and women are going to, to miss out because of that and our culture as a whole.
- [21:26]
A
I think too, we have to appreciate that for some of these groups, social groups, it's really difficult to break apart from. From the group think, especially if you're going to be called, you are not black enough. You're not, you're not a good representation of X, the cultural or ethnic identity that you have. And I think for women, that's also a factor. The amount it. Someone talked about this on Twitter, it's like, well, I guess abortion is not as. It's not the primary thing women are voting for. They're really not. They're. They're thinking. And I think to your point a little bit, Josh, when women get married and have children, there's also just an aspect of. You tend to be the person doing the grocery shopping. That has been. I think I've heard that the economy generally matters more to married women because they're generally the ones doing the grocery shopping and the feeding of the kids at home. So they are the ones that know the difference between the eggs of five years ago and the egg price of now. Right. And so those kinds of things. But the gaslighting about abortion was so strong, you're telling women you are an internalized misogynist if you do not vote the way we tell you to vote. But I think that's even more powerful for people of different, of like minority ethnic or cultural backgrounds. Because the only thing I can kind of compare it to is when Covid was happening. And I don't know if you were like, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna wear a mask into the grocery store or whatever, or whatever setting you might have chosen. I'm not wearing it. You were a person in a store and you were the only person not wearing a mask. That was a really interesting, especially for me, social, weird thing. Or I'm the one going against the arrows on the floor of the aisle. But socially, the way people would look at you and think about you, and there's this. It was like this looming pressure to make you conform to the right thing, which is so fascinating as humans. But it's crazy to take that even into those really broad, deeply personal and important things, like, am I a bad ex because I want to vote based on these other values.
- [23:52]
C
You know, you're probably right that the pandemic in general, people seeing what happens when the government takes more control, can they manage schools? Can they manage telescool tele education? And people just saw no. I mean, again, the government can be really good at certain things. It's just not equipped to be everybody's mom and dad. It's not equipped to do school for everybody at distance. It's not going to reach into the depths of the most impoverished places and provide three square meals a day for a kid along with wi fi, a hotspot, a tablet and screen, you know, adequate schooling. But that's okay. The government wasn't meant to do that. Which, again, as a believer speaking now, stepping outside of my then before us hat, and speaking as Josh Wood, a believer, I would say God put together an institution to help provide for, in a granular way, the needs of individuals, both a mom and a dad and kids. And that is more efficient than a government can ever be. And that's okay. It just needs to properly place government back in its role. And I think that's what I think a lot of people are reacting to is I do think I know better. I do think, you know, I had military friends who, who were deenlisted or kicked out of the military. I had my wife threatened at work with, you know, you know, your religious exemption isn't going to be good enough. There was all of these different things that I think people kind of are reacting to, which is where I would give, like, a note of caution, too, that we can't allow our disgust with the way things are going right now to cause us to message and talk about these issues in a dehumanizing way, in an overly aggressive way. Again, I referenced it a little bit with the transgender ad earlier, that you saw this a little bit. Even with migrants in general, it's okay to talk about how we have to have borders. I would just wish that as we approach this issue, we talk about it in a way that we're doing this so that. And I'll give Trump credit, he talked about this a little bit in his speech. We have to let people in, he said, and again, that's, like, better than I've heard. We do need to talk about we're a better country because of immigration. When done correctly with the right people who care about this country, who share our values, when they come in in an orderly way, you know, we are a better nation. We're stronger for it. I do think on all of these issues, whether it's abortion, ivf, family immigration, Covid restrictions, we just got to be careful that in advocating for a return to an anchored set of values, oftentimes that live outside of us and outside of government, to not do it in such an abrasive way. That, hey, we may have won this election, but also like, let's take a second and go, if he would have messaged these in a softer, more inclusive tone, the thing could have been a 50 state landslide. I mean, he won in a major, major way. While still I think probably employing more divisive and inflamed rhetoric than needed. I just don't buy this, that he had to do this through anger. I think the issues were on his side and people were frustrated. I think a more positive tone could have even been a bigger mandate.
- [27:21]
B
Yeah, and I think we see that, you know, even just looking at, you know, I know vice presidential debates are for nerds, but the response to Vance's performance in that debate with all the same talking points as Trump, but with a very different tone, I think we, we saw that people would be open to someone who's willing to present these things in a less divisive way than Trump did. And, you know, maybe, hopefully the Republican Party sees that and embraces that moving forward. But, but also, you know, as we've noted there, there are areas where the Republican Party and the current coalition at the top there are, is concerning for, for our movement as well.
- [28:10]
A
Yeah. I think, though, I looked this up because I was making an argument or I was putting something on Twitter or whatever, but it was every time a Republican candidate has been called Hitler or a fascist and it was like for the last 50 years and it was Mitt Romney, John McCain, these are men who married one woman and stayed with them for the, you know, a lot of these people, you know, just had kids with one woman. Pretty standard, go to church people. They're also racists, fascists, sexists, homophobes. So at some level, and Bill Maher even admitted this, he said when you call every single one of them fascists and racists and Hitlers and then one that you really think is, and they, okay, they really think Trump is one, really comes along, they're not going to listen to you anymore. And that's what the tweet I shared into our group, our staff chat about. It was a guy who said he had voted for Kamala and he does, doesn't like Trump. But he said, if you guys don't learn the lesson that your takeaway is that half of the country is racist, homophobic, etc. On and on and on. You didn't learn the lesson. That's not going to help you going forward. What will need to happen is to both of your points, more of a moving to the center, maybe both sides clipping off those extremes on the two ends and agreeing on the things we could agree on. Can we agree we don't want kids to have cancer and we could take some chemicals out of our food to help that seems like we could kind of get some consensus on that. You can wrap up any final thoughts with this final question with our last few seconds, but I would like to know if you think Peanut the squirrel was the game changer at the end of the election.
- [29:55]
C
Not. Not a game changer. Similar to the fact that the, the Puerto Rico joke, which was, you know, off color made by comedian at Madison Square Garden. I don't think people cared that much about that either. I do think it was just another thing that fit a very long narrative of just, man, the government overreach. Like the silliness of planning this spending. I was talking to my wife about how many taxpayer dollars went into planning this operation. Like, it's just absurd and it just shows you, man, we've got, we have real big issues to sort out, how active the government is in our lives. What are we really prioritizing? And was this really the best use of our time and dollars? So I do think it fit that narrative of like, government overreach and incompetence that I do think helps but is not a game changer.
- [30:51]
B
Yeah, same. I don't think it was a game changer. If it had been, it would have flipped to New York, which would have been incredible. But nah, sorry, Peanut, you died in vain.
- [31:03]
A
The memes, though, man. Yeah, it was. It's fascinating and I think, like you said, Patience, we are, I think, a little bit of staff of nerds in this way. But that's probably why we're interested in more the public policy and the, you know, marriage and family space. So. Well, everyone, thanks for listening to them before us podcast. Josh and Patience, I'd love you each to Maybe just share 30 seconds or so of the project or the thing you're excited about that people could come check out and get involved in. So maybe Patience will start with you then, Josh, and then I'll just wrap it up.
- [31:41]
B
Well, people can get involved in learning about HR policies and how the benefits that companies are offering can either hurt or help kids. It's November, it's open enrollment season for a lot of people. So people are thinking about what their benefits are covering. And, you know, if you're a company, start looking into what you're offering. And if you're not in a position to do that, next time that you get an employee survey asking about your benefits. Read through the pro child's HR benefits recommendations and throw in a couple ideas.
- [32:15]
A
That's awesome.
- [32:17]
C
We talked earlier about needing to make the case. I think the reason we do a podcast about the election, we're obviously not a political organization, but politics do give us a good bellwether on where the country stands. And I think we're walking away from this as an organization thinking we have got to the population will split tickets, they will pay attention on ballot amendments, they'll vote. We do have some critical thinkers. I mean, thank God. This is great. We have some people who when presented with information now we may have some people very dedicated to their camps. We may have some information to undo. But I just want to believe, maybe I'm optimistic in this way that when presented with the real information on the issues we care most deeply about the number of embryos that are sitting on ice. You know, every single day, the number of embryos that have been abandoned sitting on ice, the number of embryos that are being selected out for disease, that are being selected out for their gender that when we properly present the number of women that are being purchased, their wombs are being purchased to house a child, sometimes their own child to be sold. I think people will change. And so I'm most excited about the work we have ahead over the next several years that is not impacted by an election to change hearts and minds of people within this country to bring about hopefully both legislative change as a result of that, but also just people making different decisions in their very personal lives too. And so if you want to support what we're doing, you can always head to thembeforeus.com, make a gift, Join our newsletter, get educated on this and of course tune in to our podcast with Jen to learn more about these issues guys of in a longer form kind of format than you get just scrolling on Instagram.
- [34:12]
A
That's good. Awesome. And I'll just do our final encouragement for our small group curriculum. So if you are a person of faith and you're familiar with them before us, you know that we're making an argument from the secular world, from the natural world. And that's very intentional. But we also want there to be a resource for people who are in faith communities and small group curriculum or going through a book is a pretty common thing in a lot of churches. And so we recorded a seven video series with Katie walking you through the book, the Them Before Us book and integrating it with the Christian ethic about caring for the widow and the orphan and the weak and sacrificing big and strong people need to lower and humble and sacrifice themselves for the weak. And it's an incredible resource. It's got workbooks you can go through. You can go through it by yourself. You can show it to your pastor. But again, we love that we have these different spheres of influence we're trying to get into. And those of you listening, if you know someone who's working for a particular company that could benefit from this or want to equip your church, want to make a donation, want to attend one of our local events or come to our virtual gala, those are the ways you can get involved and be a part of this movement. Like Josh said, if the election had gone the opposite way, I wouldn't be as happy as I feel. I mean, I feel good about how things are going, but our work would not have stopped. If anything, we probably would have been like, all right, let's really get our heads down and. And we really need to get going. But we feel that way with the Republicans in charge anyway, because there's so many things they are off on. Right? But anyway, thank you guys for your time this morning. Super fun. Thank you, everyone for listening to the Them for Us podcast and thank you for joining the movement.