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- [00:00]
A
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Book your next day Now. Average savings $72 select homes only welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. On this, the holiest week in the Christian calendar, Donald Trump's spiritual advisor compared Trump to Jesus Christ. And that was only one thing that happened this week. He went on to give that very sort of slurry, low energy speech which suggested that Donald Trump may know how to start a war, but he's very, very unclear about how to end it. And of course, on the same day, we now learn the Great Trump Purge be and the firing of Pam Bondi. But that is only one aspect of the purges that may be rippling through the Trump administration. There are purges ongoing in the Pentagon, and there are reports of other Cabinet members who might be on the bubble. So let's talk about an unusually deplorable week, And who better to talk about all of this with than our good friend David French? I apologize, David, that we just don't have anything to talk about this week. I mean, nothing very interesting happened. Oh, okay. Obviously, we want to spend some time talking about the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi just a week after the firing of Kristi Noem. All of the things that are going on, what this means for the Justice Department, what this means for the campaign of retribution, the Epstein, Epstein files, all of that. I want to get to that, but I want to start with what maybe an even more damaging purge. What's going on in the Department of Defense, where Pete Hegseth continues to lash out at the generals. He's fired several dozen generals this week. He fired the top officer in the US army, the Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, and there are suggestions that they're about to fire or he's about to quit the Army. Secretary Driscoll. So give me your sense of what is going on, because this is. I don't know, it just strikes me as a layperson. This is not the kind of thing that you would expect to in a time of war that we're supposedly winning every single day. So, David, what do you think? What's going on?
- [04:22]
C
Well, I think the first thing to understand here is you're looking at the way Hegseth and Trump view the federal government is the primary job. The primary job is for him to purge and to defeat his enemies and to eliminate anyone who stands in the way of that. And so I think that there has been this sense that the Trump people have that if you are part of sort of the legacy, permanent establishment, the quote, unquote, deep state, et cetera, in the absence of extreme loyalty, demonstrative extreme loyalty, you're going to be viewed suspiciously. And what we have seen is multiple generals fired with no real explanation that they've done anything wrong, that there was some misconduct or anything like that. And it's starting to look a lot like what you see. When authoritarian regimes take powers, they hollow out the senior ranks of the military. They tend to replace the officer corps that has been sort of created through merit and through the conventional process of promotion and replace it with one where politics represents the primary. Politics is the primary criteria for promotion. Now part of the problem we have right now is we're all, we're, we're kind, we're just speculating. This is, you know, they keep saying things like most transparent. All of this. It's nonsense. They are extremely opaque. They are not communicating the reasons for their actions to the American people. And you know, one of the things that that does is it creates this sort of vacuum of explanation into which a lot of our, you know, our fears get poured into. Because you're seeing something happen that from the outside looking in, looks a lot like a purge.
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B
Well, it is a purge.
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C
And we've seen purges, and we've seen purges in other places that have been purely political.
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B
Well, and this does appear.
- [06:22]
C
So you're watching this take place. Yeah, you're watching this take place. And it looks extraordinarily, transparently political. And there's no other explanation even being, pretending to being offered. And the historical track record for these kinds of purges is really, really bad.
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B
It is ghastly. Look, I mean, you know, the firing of Pam Bondi, you know, I'm gonna argue, you know, it's like people need to restrain their schadenfreude a little bit because it's not going to fix things in the Department of Justice. It is not going to fix what's broken in the Department of Justice. She was not fired for all of the egregiously awful things she did. She was fired because she was not sufficiently awful for Donald Trump. And I want to get to that in a moment. So. But in terms of real long term damage, this ongoing transformation of the US Military into an instrument in which loyalty is more important than experience or integrity or any of these other things, you know, ought to be alarming, particularly, you know, at the time, you know, at a time of war. And we can get to the president's, you know, speech the other day. And who knows, by the time people hear this podcast, we may have, I mean, we just don't know. We may have put boots on the ground. But what we learned on Friday morning is Donald Trump wants to spend $1.5 trillion on this military, his military. Now, this is already a 40% increase. At the same time, he is drastically cutting one domestic program after another, tens of billions of dollars in programs. That's completely eliminated the day after. He's saying that we don't have enough money for daycare, we can't take care of Medicaid and Medicare. And so he's, he is apparently going to run right in the midterms. This is his agenda on cutting all these domestic programs at the same time, we are becoming this, what, this, this militant state. And David, it's just, I mean, that's a hell of a midterm pitch that he's making. Now. He's, you know, the war is unpopular, but he's going all in on the militarization of the federal government. What do you make of this?
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C
Yeah, you know, when you, when you look at it, when you, when you pull back and you look at it from a third sort of a 30,000 foot level, what you see is that he is creating bureaucratic systems that are answerable only to him, that are. He is consistently expanding and enhancing the militarized portions of the executive branch at the same time that he's pursuing a legal strategy in courts of maximizing his control over the executive branch. And so what you're seeing created before our eyes, Charlie, is what you're seeing created is a purged military that is beefed up. It's purged of not, you know, I wouldn't even say political dissent. There's no evidence at all that any of these generals were engaging in any kind of dissent. We have zero information to that.
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B
Purge of political independence, perhaps.
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C
Purged of. Yeah, purged of professional and political independence. So the military is being in the middle of a purge. And then you have the creation, Charlie, of this vast domestic security organization through ice, where this huge funding of ICE becomes, you know, the largest law enforcement agency ultimately in the United States, which Trump now, you know, he feels free to just say, hey, well, let's send them to the airports. Let. It's going to be sort of the
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B
voting booths, the Allen.
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C
It's going to be like the Swiss army knife of the Trump administration. Let's send ICE here, let's send ICE there. And where do you have politically purged militaries and large loyal paramilitary forces? That's in authoritarian states. That's a classic recipe for authoritarianism. And if there's any goal, if there's any view of power that is now cemented as the Trumpist view of power, it's just thoroughly authoritarian.
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B
You had a really interesting conversation earlier this week with retired General Stanley McChrystal about what's happening in the military. And I talked about your interview on my podcast with retired General Mark Hertling. And what really struck me was, well, there were a lot of things in this interview, but you were talking about the danger of sort of the creation of a warrior caste, a military. And our military is increasingly sort of separated from society right Most people aren't going into the military. They don't have family members. You, of course, serve. But you're talking about what happens when you have a military that has its own culture and its own set of incentives that are perhaps not always aligned with the general public. Just talk to me a little bit about that because that was kind of scary. And this is not all Trump. I mean, this predates Trump, right? This sort of development of the professionalized warrior caste. Yeah.
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C
This is something that a lot of people have been thinking about for a long time, which is if you have decade after decade after decade of volunteer military, and the number one indicator of a propensity to serve is whether your parents served. So in other words, you're creating a sort of self perpetuating, multi generational legacy of service. Now, in many ways, that's really good. In many ways, like that's really good if you're handing down the traditions of honorable service from father to son, from mother to daughter. I mean, you name it, and you're creating this highly ethical, highly professional fighting force that's sort of the shield of the Republic, that there are aspects of that that can be really good, but we can't pretend that there isn't also a potential dark side, a potential downside, that when you create, and this is something that General McChrystal said, I thought really interestingly, which is if you create a world that is sort of like a closed system where your means of advancement in that world is warfare, then you're not going to necessarily be a check. Not that the military is supposed to be a check on the use of force. The military is, you know, the check on the use of force is supposed to be Congress. It's supposed to be Congress. But if you begin to have a military force in which it is a professional, it's like a professional cast of soldiers, the primary means of advancement within that professional caste is accomplishment, obviously on the back battlefield. And so maybe, and this was a very. And again, I, I want to say this, General McChrystal, this is a, this is one of the most distinguished warriors in modern American history was raising the alarm about this, that, you know, ultimately, in the absence of very strong ethical, moral leadership of such an incredibly powerful military, the military may end up having sort of a bias towards action.
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B
Yes.
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C
That is rooted in.
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B
That would my takeaway.
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C
Right. Rooted in sort of the self interest of a professional warrior caste. And I thought that was a very interesting argument. My own thought was that by separating, and I hadn't even really thought about the distortion of incentives. My thought about the separate warrior caste was it becomes easier to use force because the consequences of the use of force are cabined off in this closed community that the rest of America doesn't participate in and doesn't feel the loss and the sacrifice and so is therefore more willing to wield this sword because they don't feel the consequences of wielding the sword. That's always been my critique. General McChrystal added a different level and layer to it.
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B
Well, and then you layer on top of that the magification of the higher ranks, which again, we're watching in real time at a time of war. Okay, so let's talk about Pam Bondi and what took her down. Look, I mean, I think I want to make it very, very clear here that, you know, both Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi were uniquely unsuited and unqualified for their positions. You know, so no tears for them. But. So I absolutely, positively do not want to play the sexism card here, but I have to note that they got fired while Cash Patel, Pete Heth and RFK Jr still have their jobs. Just saying. So let's talk about Pam Bondi and your take at her rather unceremonious sacking this week.
- [14:53]
C
Oh, Charlie. In a sane and rational world, there would be nobody wanting to take this job because the reason why she was fired, let's just be really clear about this, is that because despite her very best efforts, she could not deliver on the corruption and vengeance that Trump wanted her to deliver on. That's why. Okay? And so that's why you look at it and people are going, haha, Pam Bondi's gone. I don't know why you're doing that.
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B
Because
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C
in a sane and rational world, she deserves to be fired for her corruption and incompetence. In this world, she's being fired because she wasn't corrupt enough or that she was incompetence incompetent in her pursuit of corruption. And so what I'm fully expecting is that the next Attorney general is going to have a mandate and an example right in front of him or her of, okay, my mandate is to be less incompetent, as I am corrupt. And that's. Yes, that that's not going to be an improvement, guys. It's not going to be improvement. Now, I have heard some word that he might be considering Lee Zeldin in the position.
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B
That's the conventional wisdom of the moment
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C
and that would be my best case scenario. Amongst all the names, it's not that I think that Lee Zeldin is particularly praiseworthy. It's just that I know some of the other names in the mix. You know, Gene Pirro, Todd Blanche. And those people are like guided missiles of trumpist malice. I mean, that's just what they are. And so I think they all are.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Okay. Here's what I think people. People need to recognize there's a certain pattern that Donald Trump has. The Trump 2 step where he'll put up a name of somebody like, so horrible. Remember how we got Pam Bondi? He actually appointed Matt Gaetz to Attorney General. I mean, people need to remember Matt Gaetz. So is it possible that he might appoint Alina Haba or Jeanine Pirro? And then people will go, oh, my God. And then the next egregiously bad nominee will look like Justice Cardozo or something like that. So I don't know. But your point is, like, who wants this job because she tried desperately to get these indictments. I mean, she tried to indict six sitting members of Congress. She went after James Comey, Letitia James. They've launched investigations into everybody. But there are problems. Federal judges who throw out the cases, Federal grand juries who say, this is bullshit. We're not going to hand down an indictment. Sometimes prosecutors who say, I'm sorry, there's just not enough evidence here. So what is the next attorney general going to do so that he gives Donald Trump those heads on a platter that he so desperately wants ignore? I mean, how do you go around the federal judges? How do you go around the federal grand juries?
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C
You're raising a Great point. Because the fundamental problem is that for the Attorney General, unlike other parts of the executive branch, for the Attorney General to succeed, the Attorney General and his or her employees have to persuade a separate and independent branch of government to go along with them. And so, unlike if you're Trump and you are firing generals, where Hegseth has maximum authority to do that, you can't just prosecute members of Congress without going through the separate branch of government. And so the problem that any AG has is that Trump is demanding something from them that they cannot deliver on their own. And so that's why I say, good luck next, Attorney General. I guess. I guess you're going for it because you want to live the rest of your life being called General this or General that because you were once an Attorney General of the United States. I mean, why else are you doing this? Because, you know, you. You walk into that job that is the one that has been. The Attorney General has been like the Donald Trump whipping boy through both terms. He has a view of what he wants that Attorney General to do that is incompatible with the office, that's incompatible with the law. And you're just walking into a Buzzsaw. You're going to be in a Buzzsaw in front of federal judges who do not appreciate the abuse of the rule of law.
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B
Yeah. Ask Sessions. Ask Bill Barr. Yeah.
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C
And then the other buzzsaw is when the judges don't go with you, then. Then the other buzz saw is Trump destroys you.
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B
You know? Okay, so let's. Let's. Because we have so much ground to cover. Speaking of the judges, we saw something that we've never seen before in American history. A sitting US President who decided he was gonna sit in on the Supreme Court arguments on birthright citizenship, which, with everything going on in the world, is obviously Donald Trump's obsession, at least for that day. So let's just talk about those arguments. You know, maybe Donald Trump thought that his presence. Rather he went with Pam Bondi to sit and, you know, stare down the justices he'd been calling them. Maybe he thought he was gonna bully them or intimidate them. There's no evidence that that worked. It may have even backfired. And then he walks out halfway through the argument of a case that, I don't know. You're. You're the expert on this. But this one seems like he's going to lose this one. And maybe at some point in his brain, he realized that he was going to lose this one again. What do you think?
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C
Well, I think the purpose of him being there, the prism through which he obviously views the world is that he has power that he will use to bully people into compliance. Whether it's a Republican member of Congress, whether it's the nation of Canada, whether, whether it's the nation of Denmark, whatever it is, his theory is that he wins by exerting or threatening to exert force or an intimidating presence. And there are a lot of reasons for him to think that that works. Often, as you just said, Republican members of Congress. For example, I made this point on a Times podcast that's coming out where it's like, Republican members of Congress have perfected the invertebrate life form so much that they're almost like a separate species of invertebrate. But I will tell you, the federal judges are not Republican members of Congress. They're not. And I do not think for half a second that they were intimidated or impressed in any way by the president sitting there, much less the president getting.
- [22:42]
B
And this continues to surprise Donald Trump, this continues to surprise him that he's not able to intimidate the judiciary the way that he is so many other folks.
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C
Exactly.
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B
And he doesn't get it. I appointed you. What's happening.
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C
Yeah, exactly. And so the inability to intimidate for him is always a shocking thing. And so, you know, there's a through line between his treatment of judges and the way he's going about the Iran war. What is some of the reporting now? He was stunned that Iran fought back the way that Iran fought back. He thought that Iran, after getting the first punch in the opening hours, would just kind of fold and capitulate. And so he and Hexith are in. When you think of that, you begin to realize, oh, now I'm seeing why they just never even decide thought about going to Congress at all. They thought they were launching a two day to three day operation and that by the time it would be controversial, it'd be over in a great victory. And which is just bonkers town that you would think that it's just bonkers town that that would cross your mind. But again, Trump's experience, especially here domestically, has been again and again, he will bully somebody and he will get his way, especially if they're in an elected branch of government. But that is not the case with judges. That is not the case with judges. And there's one domestic front where his bullying is not working. His bullying is showing diminishing marginal returns when it comes to our own allies like Canada, Denmar, et cetera. I mean, you're watching the French just like openly taunting him at this point.
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B
It's really something.
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C
It's really remarkable. And so everyone can see that this guy's losing his grip domestically, that he has not rallied the American people. And then the other thing is, Trump is running the place like he's Putin, but he's got less than three years left on a term. I mean, he's gonna be gone. There's going to be another election and he's gonna be gone. And, you know, the short sightedness of all of this is gonna become transparent to Republicans, I think, sooner rather than later.
- [24:55]
B
Well, it will happen. I don't know whether it's going to be sooner or later. So you mentioned a couple of things. You know, usually I can figure out why Trump is doing something, at least in his own mind. That speech that he gave the other night was rather extraordinary. There were all of these expectations the markets were expecting. Get some clarity. The cheap shot. It was low energy, but also it had no strategic vision whatsoever. How is he gonna open the Strait of Hormuz? It's just gonna open itself magically. He's not talking about regime change anymore. He's not talking about denuclearization anymore. It was, it really highlighted his kind of his cluelessness and his lack of an exit strategy. I mean, give me your. Why do you think he gave that speech? Other than somebody said, at some point you're going to have to talk to the American people about this war. You're just gonna have to do it. Because, man, that was not a strong, determined confidence building.
- [26:01]
C
19 minutes, Charlie. The line between a speech and a dramatic reading of Truth Social posts is very thin. Indee. I mean, that's what I thought when I was watching it. It's just like, this is a live reading of Truth Social. That's what this is. Every bit is incoherent, every bit is rambling. Just a total rehash. And, you know, part of me, I've said this, you know, there's something that is really bothering me about the sort of, the course of communication about this war. I think we have two things going on at once. We have a war being fought according to whatever particular strategy has been worked out internally at the Pentagon and then publicly. We have sort of an elaborate market manipulation strategy. Because the one thing that is, the one thing that checks Donald Trump in his second term is the stock market. He put so much stock, pardon the pun, in the market that when it diminishes, he kind of freaks out a little bit. And so he he'll do things like a true social post an hour or two before the markets open or the night before the markets open, giving the hope that the Strait of Hormuz will be open or that there will be some breakthrough and the war will be winding down and you'll see the surge of hope. And so the market kind of is staying up there. And so I feel like we've got two things simultaneously, a war and a market manipulation strategy. And we're not getting any real communication on what the actual war is supposed to be about, but we're getting a lot of market manipulation to try to keep the economy afloat while he fights this war. And so I think if anyone says, I know exactly where the exit strategy is. Do you really? Do they? Do they? I really am very unclear right now as to how this is going to end.
- [28:00]
B
Everyone is unclear. You know, I think there's gonna be an interesting book, maybe several books written about the war profiteering of this particular war. I mean, usually war profiteering takes place in a different way. It doesn't take place quite this much in the open. And I think it was Andrew Egger who made a really interesting point, though, that the markets are having a hard time reading Donald Trump, and Donald Trump maybe is having a hard time reading the markets in this sense that the markets had basically priced in his tacoing, that he was going to back out. So they don't freak out enough. And because they don't freak out enough, then Donald Trump looks at the market, says, well, it wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad. Well, it's not that bad. They still want you to not escalate this war. But again, it's sort of like there's something wrong in the feedback loop here. Do you follow me? I hope I'm doing justice to Andrews point, because it was really, really good.
- [29:00]
C
Well, yeah, No, I. You're doing total justice to it. That in essence, what's happening is that there is a sort of artificial, irrational optimism that this thing is not going to be as severe as the concerns are, or that it's not already as severe, as many people have said, about sort of the damage to various natural gas facilities and oil facilities, et cetera. And so there's a lot of irrational optimism. And my question, Charlie, is I'm starting to get that ominous feeling that I had years and years ago where there's just a lot of kind of optimism about sort of economic fundamentals that may not be warranted by events. You have massive, massive, massive investments in AI that have not yet paid off in ways that bring real, actual profits to the AI companies. You have gigantic investment in AI infrastructure. So you've had a lot of people warning about an AI bubble. And then you've got the Strait of Hormuz, and the markets have gone down maybe about 10% from the highs, which is not insignificant. But. But the question I have is just the fundamental strength of the American economy, which a lot of people have been sleeping on for too long. Our economy's sort of fundamentals are stronger than Europe, for example. They're stronger than many of our peer countries. Does that fundamental economic strength overcome sort of the blundering of the administration and the strains the administration is putting on it? It's, you know, it's almost as if what we've got is a thoroughbred that has an anchor attached to it. And how is the thoroughbred strong enough to keep dragging the anchor? Is sort of the way I think about the Trump administration policies. And that's, you know, it just remains to be seen.
- [31:05]
B
I have the same ominous feeling, in part because the pace of change and of destruction has been so great that a lot of the discussions seem to be just sort of assuming Titanic is going to continue to sail on past the iceberg, even though there's a hole in it. That there's. It's, it's, it's there. But people have, I think, a bias for normalcy, that this is the way things are. This is the. This is my understanding of the world. And, well, what if the. What if the pinions have been knocked out from under, you know, that. That world order, okay, we glossed over it. But your sense about the. And I'm. This may feel like we're jumping all over the place. So the president violated the norm of going to the Supreme Court on birthright citizenship. And, of course, this is his obsession, Stephen Miller's obsession. My sense is that the whole question. We would have been talking about this 10 years ago. This was settled law, right? This was a kind of a fringe theory that we ought to do away with birthright citizenship. You had a very interesting post the other day where you said, people wonder what has conservatism ever conserved? Well, it is about to conserve birthright citizenship. Talk to me about that. I like that one,
- [32:24]
C
Charlie. I got to confess something. That was. I just. That was rage bait.
- [32:30]
B
I know it was. Well, I liked it so much.
- [32:34]
C
I knew how Twitter. I knew Twitter would respond the way it did. Now, it's a completely true statement. I mean, birthright citizenship. Let me back up for a second. You're exactly right. This is a ginned up controversy. This is a created controversy that is rooted, though, in something really dark. And by the way, can I just say to all of you guys who are right now screaming at that tweet that I did and just screaming at birthright citizenship, you know, 99 out of 100 of you guys were not doing that. Eight, you know, we're not doing that five years ago. Like, this is a creation of the MAGA movement.
- [33:15]
B
And.
- [33:16]
C
And they've moved from never thinking about it to screaming at you if you disagree in a nanosecond. Like, historically speaking. But the reason why I put that out there and chalk that up to this is something that conservatism will conserve. Assuming the Supreme Court, every indication so far as the Supreme Court is not going to uphold the Trump eo. So assuming it doesn't, this is a real achievement for classical liberal conservatism to preserve birthright citizenship. And why would I be proud of that? Okay, we are not a blood and soil country, Charlie. And right now, what we have is a conflict, a sort of existential, definitional conflict about who are we? Are we a creedal nation? In other words, a nation of different ethnicities from all over the world, different religions, different, you know, just remarkably diverse people who are united by an idea. And that idea is that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That's the idea. And so when that idea binds you together, your blood isn't really relevant. What's relevant is your mind and your heart. Right? And so. And so the idea that you're some sort of patrilineal country or whatever it is, where the blood is the thing that matters, is sort of contrary to sort of the essence of the American idea. And so what we really are talking about here is quite definitional. It is not a coincidence that this birthright citizenship stuff is coming up at the same time that you're seeing this emergence of people calling themselves heritage Americans. And you're seeing, like, fringe figures online saying, well, to even run for office, you should have three generations in the country. In other words, can't even be a child of immigrants or grandchild of immigrants. And so what you're seeing is this weird populist nationalism, which is much more related to the European right than the Reagan conservatism, which was very much centered around the American idea. And I really love what George Will wrote several years ago when he was talking about what is the essential enterprise of conservatism it is to preserve the American founding. And what was the American founding? The American founding was a nation with a creedal idea of itself, with birthright citizenship. And the reason for the 14th Amendment was to correct the massive historical error of not granting birthright citizenship to, for example, to slaves and to black Americans. And so the whole purpose of the 14th amendment wasn't to constrict citizenship. It was to expand citizenship to make it consistent with the birthright idea. And so this is a real achievement of actual conservatism to conserve an element of the American identity that goes back to the Founding and goes back even before that to English common law ideas. And so this sort of, you know, if you want to talk about who's conservative, it is certainly not the radicals trying to upend, you know, well, more than 100 years of precedent and practice around birthright citizenship.
- [36:38]
B
Thank you for explaining this. Because, you know, as you were talking, I was thinking that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, literally everyone that I knew who was a conservative would have believed that America was the idea that creedal definition of America. This was virtually universal, not universal. I mean, of course, there were always the nativists out there. They were the recessive gene. But this was taken for granted very, very much part of that Reagan view of the shining city on the Hill. So for the people who think that. That what's happening now is really not a break from the past, that it is this continuing line. No, it is a radical break from the past. And you've described what conservatism would be conserving. The founding, much of what is passing for conservatism today is actually revolutionary, is actually almost Leninist in its. Let's tear things down, let's burn things up, let's throw things. Exactly. So there's nothing conservative about any of that. Speaking of which, and speaking of creeds, I don't want to pass this by because it's one of those things where you're tempted to simply to roll your eyes. The President of the United States has a faith advisor named Paula White. Is a Paula White. Cain, who I believe among most orthodox Christian denominations, is regarded as a crackpot heretic. But anyway, she is the person who the President listens to on faith matters, which explains a lot. In any case, they had an Easter event at which faith leaders. And for those of you that can't see me doing this, I'm doing the air quotes. Faith leaders who came and listened to Trump give this rambling partisan speech. And then this extraordinary moment where Paula White Cane very explicitly compares Donald Trump to Jesus Christ while the other faith leaders are doing the seal clap. Let's just play this because otherwise. Otherwise, you think that maybe I'm slightly exaggerating. But here we have the president's faith leader, who faith advisor, comparing during Holy Week, comparing Donald Trump to Jesus Christ himself.
- [38:58]
C
You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It's a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us. And, sir, because of his resurrection, you rose up. Because he was victorious. You were victorious.
- [39:17]
B
All right, David, help me out here. What, what was that? What did we just hear?
- [39:26]
C
You know, what you heard was I would call it borderline blasphemy, but it wasn't borderline. It was just blasphemy.
- [39:36]
B
It was.
- [39:36]
C
And you know, one thing that I don't think many evangelicals know is that Trump's chief faith advisor is somebody that is really far outside of historical mainstream Christianity. I mean, you know, a ton of historical mainstream theologians would just call her flat out a heretic. I mean, she's a advocacy of this prosperity gospel nonsense. She is, she is a Christian dominionist. She has just a ton of unorthodox, aberrational theological beliefs. And. But it's no secret why she is Trump's chief faith faith advisor. She. In the world, you know, in a world where, you know, we see Cabinet meetings where they, the, the cabinet officials praise Trump effusively in secular terms. Yeah, she's like part of the religious cabinet, and he's, she's going to be praising him effusively in religious terms. And when you hear it come out of her mouth, it just is gross. It's gross. Now, here's the thing. I did see a few, a few of what you might call more fundamentalist, Southern Baptist, Presbyterian types online critique this and be upset about it. But, you know, here is the reality shock. Here's the reality check, Charlie. The reality check is that these people who are critiquing Paula White are outside the. They're out of step that the number of American Christians who are going to look at Apollo White say this and think even if they don't go as far as she did, that there's something to it is more than you would think, because I have been in these Pentecostal circles, and this is the fastest growing part of evangelical Christianity. I've been in these circles, and a lot of these folks legit believe a lot of these prophecies and parallels, and they see Trump as almost like a Christ figure in the way he took on these indictments and the assassination attempt. And so you're dealing with a person who is talking to an audience who really believes a lot of this stuff. And a lot of some of the more fundamentalists, like Southern Baptists online, are actually out of as MAGA as they are, are still actually out of step with a lot of the evangelical public.
- [42:01]
B
You would have hoped they would have a stronger immune system for this sort of thing. You know, use the word blasphemy. You know, it's like, what did you think the Antichrist would sound like? I'm getting out of my lane here. But the point here, though, is that when we discuss, well, what does the MAGA base think about this or that? This is a base within the MAGA base. And we have used the term cult many times over the last few years. But it's not simply metaphorical that in analyzing the politics of all of this, it's a mistake to think that it turns on policies or that events are going to change views. If in fact you do see Donald Trump as the Messiah or as the vice messiah or something, there's nothing that's going to happen that's going to shake you. There is no set of facts. There's no budget issue, there's no spending cut. And so it's just like you're talking about something that has no relationship to what we're dealing with, that we're not talking about a political party with political gravity. We are talking about a cult that believes these things.
- [43:13]
C
Well, it's a group of people who are capitalizing on an awful lot of theological ignorance, quite frankly, sort of in the larger Christian public. There's a lot of polling done every year or two about what is it that evangelicals believe. And what you find is that evangelicals have a lot of misconceptions about scripture, about the nature of Jesus. There's a lot of theological confusion. It is just a completely wrong thing to say that if someone describes themselves as an evangelical that they know much of anything about the historical Christian faith or that they adhere to Christian smallo orthodoxy. It's a self identification, it's a tribal identification made by people who often don't have actually an enormous amount of theological instruction. And so in many ways, they're almost like empty vessels into which you can pour sort of corrupted ideas of who Donald Trump is, his role in God's plan. And so you've got a lot of people who are very firm.
- [44:19]
B
Well, that's a real failure of the church then. I mean, that's not just political. That's not just maga. That's a failure of the church itself or that aspect of the church.
- [44:27]
C
Oh, for sure. So what you've got is a whole bunch of people are very firm politically, but very uncertain theologically. And so if you're pouring a theology into the. If you're pouring a theology into them that affirms their politics, they're going to love it because the political conviction is the firm conviction. The underlying theology is much more loose. It's much more variable. And so that's a situation that is now, if it was reverse, where the theology was much more fixed and the politics were far more downstream of that, there would be a lot of antibodies to Donald Trump. So, for example, in 1998, the Southern Baptists passed a resolution on the importance of character in public officials that said tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of a culture, leads to unrestrained lawlessness, and surely will result in God's judgment. That's a theological principle. And if they held firm to that in 2016, we have no Donald Trump. Right. But the theological principle was less firm than the partisan principle, which was support Republicans. And so then you begin to see how the theology, any theology, Donald Trump is a Christ figure. Donald Trump is the prophesied savior. Donald Trump is King David, Don as King Cyrus. All of these things are pouring into an audience. It's like, give me information affirming my religious commitment to the Republican Party.
- [46:04]
B
Okay, well, but speaking of antibodies, let's talk about the Catholic Church right now, because we now have an American pope who has made it very, very clear that he is not buying into what they're signing. And just this week, we got this new book from J.D. vance. J.D. vance, the Vice president who's running for president. This is his campaign book and decided to write a book about his Catholicism and his conversion to Catholicism that is now coming out at the point where the Pope is saying, you know, Mr. Vance, your theology is flawed. What you are doing is not, in fact, Christian. So you've described what's going on in certain parts of evangelical Christianity. Something very different is happening with the Catholic Church. I do think that, that this is an undercovered story. This is going to be very much a part of the next presidential race. JD Vance is not just going to be running against the Democrats. J.D. vance is going to be running against the Pope, who's got a few more, you know, theological antibodies than perhaps some of these other folks you've been talking about.
- [47:12]
C
You know, look, I think, you know, I'm not a Catholic I'm evangelical, but I have enough exposure to the Catholic Church to know that one of the evangelical external critiques of Catholicism, that it's just some sort of hierarchical monoculture, is just completely wrong. Catholicism contains multitudes, it really does. And so you can have two things happening at once, side by side. One is the elevation of this American Pope, Pope Leo, who is really a uniquely moral force in the world, moral voice in the world right now. Just somebody asked me, who is the Christian public figure right now that you admire the most? And I said, pope Leo, I think if you're going to look, I would
- [47:57]
B
have said the same thing at a
- [47:58]
C
Christian voice right now. That is a balm to the soul, who is really a, you know, has a beacon of light in this culture. I would say the current Pope. If you're going to also tell me what are some of the most dangerous religious movements in America, I would say one of them is Catholic Integralist, which is a post liberal, authoritarian political movement of whom many members of this movement are very, very friendly with. J.D. vance. I'm not going to call Vance an integralist, but he's very friendly with a lot of the integralist, post liberal movement. And this is a sign.
- [48:28]
B
He's adjacent.
- [48:29]
C
He's very adjacent. He's not even in the suburbs. He's like, he's closer than the suburbs, you know. And so the reality is that I'm reminded of the old Homer Simpson quote, alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. And I sometimes think of the church in that way. I think of the church, not just the Catholic Church, but the evangelical church is like the church, the cause of, but also the solution to our problems. Because I can see if you have a Leo style religious revival, then a lot of our problems in this country and a lot of the hatred and the animosity will start to melt away, I hope. But if you have sort of a Catholic post liberal revolution, God help us, then everything gets worse. And so you can see how there are religious elements that could bring great healing and then there are religious elements that could bring great pain and potentially even great violence. And this has been the way it has been throughout history.
- [49:43]
B
It is. And I guess I would put my money on the Pope versus the Catholic group. How do you describe it? The integrationists, the integralists.
- [49:52]
C
Integralists. Integralists.
- [49:53]
B
Integralists, yes. I'm going to have to work on that. I actually made the mistake the other night on cable television when one of those really late, late, late night shows. The 11th hour. Yeah, I actually made the major error of trying to pronounce the word exogenous.
- [50:09]
C
I wouldn't even dream of that.
- [50:10]
B
Which, you know. Again, no, you see, this is like advice that I would give to young people. There are certain words that you might write, but do not try to say them on cable television. David French, thank you so much for joining me. It is always, always a pleasure. Thank you for coming back on.
- [50:25]
C
Thank you Charlie. It's always a joy to talk to you.
- [50:28]
B
And thank you all for listening to this weekend's episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. This week, even more than usual, it's important to continually remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [50:55]
A
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