In this episode, Dr. Paul Bloom talks about the power of empathy and how it can be weaponized by the media, politicians, and the general public. He talks about how empathy can be used as a weapon against evil, and how we can use it to push back against the darkness.
00:04:36.360People have been talking about the weaponization of compassion in different realms for quite a while.
00:04:43.700Paul Bloom is a Yale psychologist coming from a secular perspective who wrote, I believe, back in 2016, a book called Against Empathy.
00:04:53.700And from his professional and scholarly perspective, a hyperfixation on empathy actually makes people more cruel to the out group.
00:05:03.800And in the name of protecting a perceived victim actually is extremely exclusive and unfeeling and calloused towards those that are perceived to be against this perceived victim.
00:05:17.880And so my book, from a Christian perspective, simply spoke about the truth that the progressive media and progressive politicians and activists capitalize upon Christian compassion
00:05:31.960and manipulate our sincere desire to be loving and kind to convince us to support progressive policies that ultimately are really bad for our country,
00:05:46.480for ourselves, for the very people that the media claims to want to help.
00:05:51.500That is true when it comes to abortion.
00:05:53.420It's true when it comes to immigration.
00:10:41.160Like, we want to hold on to the generosity that Christians are called to, but we don't want to do the hard thing of actually voluntarily emptying out our pockets.
00:10:49.500And so we support a welfare state, and we call that Christian love.
00:10:52.740But again, that's just a perversion of Christian love.
00:10:56.060And it's the same thing with toxic empathy.
00:10:59.020But this woman is especially mad that I am a woman talking about this.
00:11:06.100She says, fundamentalist Christian influencer.
00:11:08.860I would love for all of these people to define their terms.
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00:24:42.460We do believe this individual, when they came into the country, we know he was unvetted.
00:24:45.900He was brought into the country by the Biden administration through Operation Allies Welcome and then maybe vetted after that but not done well based on what the guidelines were put forward by President Biden.
00:24:59.960And now since he's been here, we believe he could have been radicalized in his home community and in his home state.
00:25:05.900So as we continue to talk to his family and his contacts, more details will be revealed and we'll release those when it's appropriate.
00:25:13.640But this is something that for these individuals, when they're brought into our country, it's a dangerous situation.
00:25:19.420If you don't know who they are, if they're coming from a country that's not stable and doesn't have a government that can help you vet them, that we shouldn't allow it.
00:25:26.540So let's talk about why the shooter is here in the first place.
00:25:31.580How did this person, who is not a citizen, who is from Afghanistan, a military-aged male who obviously has very extremist beliefs and violent tendencies, why is he here in our nation's capital?
00:25:44.680Well, we got to go back all the way to 2021 when Joe Biden was president to understand that.
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00:27:31.780After American forces withdrew in 2021, the Taliban took over Afghanistan's capital city, Kabul, on August 15th of that year, effectively winning the war in Afghanistan.
00:27:46.120After facing intense criticism for the deaths of 13 U.S. service members during the withdrawal, President Biden immediately blamed the collapse on Donald Trump and Donald Trump's foreign policy.
00:27:58.400Of course, Trump was not president at that time.
00:28:00.880Even $7 billion of military equipment the U.S. gave to the Afghan government was left behind and ended up in the hands of the Taliban, which, of course, could very easily be used against us and our allies.
00:28:14.260Biden ordered the Department of Homeland Security to bring in vulnerable Afghans who worked with various U.S. government entities, including the CIA.
00:28:21.400So this suspect apparently had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, and that's how he was able to come over here in this program that's called Operation Allies Welcome.
00:28:32.940It granted Afghans two-year humanitarian parole with no permanent immigration status.
00:28:38.540Now, you might be wondering, OK, but it's 2023 or it would have been 2023 when that expired.
00:28:44.340So why in 2025 is this person still still here?
00:28:49.400Well, after roughly one year, O.A.W., that is the Operation Allies Welcome, transitioned into the longer term operation Enduring Welcome.
00:28:59.700Combined, the two programs resettled almost 200,000 Afghans in the U.S.
00:29:06.440Now, hopefully all of these people from Afghanistan were well vetted, right?
00:29:14.540A 2024 DHS Inspector General report confirmed data inaccuracies in some evacuee files.
00:29:21.500Every person who came in under this program is supposed to have something called an A number or an alien number.
00:29:27.000But this report found at least one occasion of two different individuals sharing the same A number or there were multiple alien numbers assigned to one individual.
00:29:39.420Another example that was highlighted, ICE Records had two different spellings for an O.A.W. parolee's name with a different A number assigned to each spelling.
00:29:49.060We have no idea how often that happened.
00:29:51.300There was simply just no way to track these people or to even know their background, because to do a background check, you have to at least somewhat rely on Afghanistan and their officials to tell us the truth about these people.
00:30:07.680A June 2025 DOJ report stated the need to immediately evacuate Afghans overtook the normal processes required to determine whether individuals attempting to enter the United States pose a threat to national security, which increased the risk that bad actors could try to exploit the expedited evacuation.
00:30:25.820And of course, that is always what we are weighing.
00:30:28.020I understand the argument that, look, these people helped us over there, so we should try to prioritize getting them to safety.
00:30:35.780Okay, that may be a priority, but it's got to be weighed against the safety and security of the people that you actually are tasked to govern, whose interest and well-being should come first.
00:30:47.800That is the righteous responsibility of any government to put the well-being, the security, and the interests of its own people first.
00:30:55.580Well, in this case, they decided that these people that we are not actually tasked to govern are more important.
00:31:01.660Their security is more important than the security of American citizens.
00:31:04.900We see that tradeoff happening over and over again, especially when a Democrat is in office.
00:31:10.740The same report that we were just talking about revealed that 55 OAW evacuees were later identified on U.S. terrorism watch lists.
00:31:21.500So this particular suspect had been living in Washington, had no prior criminal, Washington state, had no prior criminal record.
00:31:30.160The suspect's government file claimed he underwent biometric and biographic screening, apparently didn't have any disqualifying information in his background.
00:31:40.000Now, it is important because you're going to see people say this.
00:31:45.760He applied for asylum in December 2024 and was granted it on April 23rd, 2025.
00:31:52.560Okay, so this is three months into the Trump administration.
00:31:56.720So the Trump administration has got to figure out how exactly this happened, why this person was granted asylum.
00:32:02.940Now, if it's true that he didn't have anything in his background and he was trying to go through legal means,
00:32:08.480that's not necessarily nefarious that he was granted asylum.
00:32:12.260People do have the legal ability to do that, and that's fine.
00:32:17.020But it is important to note that part of this happened under the Trump administration.
00:32:22.640Leaked emails even show that refugee agencies and state services were actually warned that the suspect had been spiraling into mania since March of 2023.
00:32:32.740But no effective action, no effective action was taken before the attack.
00:32:41.220This is according to the New York Post.
00:32:43.380Now, why did the people in the Trump administration or the people who are responsible for this,
00:32:48.780they may not have been hired by Trump at all of granting him asylum.
00:32:52.740Like, why did they not know that a neighbor had repeatedly contacted the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, USCRI,
00:33:01.500claiming that the suspect had become not functional as a person, a father or provider,
00:33:05.440that he had been abandoning his family, that his children were seemingly abandoned,
00:33:10.360that he would take the car and just abandon everyone for days and weeks on end.
00:33:15.560And these organizations who were supposed to be kind of like vetting and tracking these refugees,
00:34:33.640And when it comes to this, the risks outweighed the benefits for the American people.
00:34:39.400So here are some other crimes committed by resettling Afghans.
00:34:43.240Two Afghan nationals were charged with plotting an ISIS-inspired attack to disrupt the 2024 election in Oklahoma City.
00:34:49.920Another Afghan evacuee was arrested in Texas for posting a TikTok video featuring bomb instructions that happened very recently.
00:34:58.100He said he was going to blow up a building in Fort Worth.
00:35:00.020There was an attempted sexual act with a minor, assaulted multiple minors at base, charged federally to eight years in prison, according to the DOJ.
00:35:08.560There was also, according to The Washington Times, a rape of an 18-year-old woman in a Montana hotel by an Afghan national.
00:35:15.080Well, domestic assaults threatened to send his wife back to the Taliban, multiple domestic violence and child assault cases at bases, some charges reduced to misdemeanors, according to Fox News.
00:35:31.220And I know people are going to say, well, you know, this is not just this group.
00:35:35.340You're just demonizing this group because they don't look like you or whatever that, you know, American citizens and white people and they commit crimes.
00:35:43.060Of course, people of all nationalities, citizenship statuses and skin colors commit crimes.
00:36:26.480To the military aged men that are coming in here and raping children and murdering National Guards men and women?
00:36:34.240It's certainly not empathetic to the victims.
00:36:36.520As the problem with empathy is that it has the ability to blind you to both reality and morality.
00:36:43.320It has you focus so much on one side of the moral equation that you ignore the other one.
00:36:47.300You have so much empathy for the person born in the wrong body that you ignore the rights and the privacy of girls and women.
00:36:53.420You have so much empathy for the plight of the pregnant mother that you forget that abortion butchers the child inside the womb.
00:36:59.080You have so much empathy for this illegal migrant coming from violence in Honduras that you have no empathy and no thought about Kate Steinle or Molly Tibbetts or all of the victims of these preventable crimes committed by illegal aliens or people who should have never been allowed in legally in the first place.
00:37:33.780What is biblically true most importantly?
00:37:36.420And how can I love this individual while still upholding what is true and what is right for my country, for my community, and for my family?
00:37:47.420Empathy is actually the easy way out because you don't have to deal with the consequences of toxic empathy if you're rich enough.
00:37:54.540And that's exactly why, of course, most Afghan nationals were resettled to Houston, San Diego, Sacramento, San Antonio, and Denver, and not to D.C., where all of these politicians who decided this live.
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00:39:19.780White House boarder czar Tom Homan predicted on Sunday, yesterday, that most third-world migrants will be deported because there's no way to properly vet them.
00:40:03.780Like, I know you see a lot of people and a lot of your friends who are totally incensed about this and they believe all of the lies that citizens are being rounded up because they look brown or being deported to Mexico.
00:40:16.760That is not something that is happening.
00:40:19.500That's not something that's happening.
00:40:20.920And Obama deported more people than Trump has.
00:40:25.700And Biden also deported over a million people.
00:40:28.920Did you hear about ice raids under Biden?
00:40:31.220Did you hear about ice raids under Obama?
00:40:34.660Did you hear about kids in cages under any of these administration administrations, even though that was happening?
00:40:42.060If you want to call these detention centers cages, like, did you hear about all of the lost children who were abandoned and not accounted for under these administrations?
00:40:52.000Did you hear about the sex trafficking, the human trafficking, the drug and weaponry trafficking that was happening under these administrations?
00:41:00.580No, it's not because it wasn't happening.
00:41:02.700It's because the media is in bed with the Democrats and they don't want you to see the Democrats doing things that they are criticizing Donald Trump for.
00:41:12.440That's, again, how the weaponization of empathy works.
00:41:16.080There's a reason why you read a story about abortion.
00:41:18.040You only get the perspective of the mother.
00:41:20.320Not that the mother doesn't matter, but, again, her comfort and her desire to have an abortion has to be weighed against the life and the rights of that child who is about to be murdered.
00:41:30.700But they only want you to see one perspective, one way.
00:41:34.160So you have to be more thoughtful than that.
00:41:50.980They are hardworking people who have rejected DEI, who have rejected the welfare state, who have rejected every single opportunity to join this, like, complaint-driven coalition who is constantly seeing the system is out to get them.
00:42:30.980Like, I would rather live next to them than some Portland Antifa lib or even some toxic empathy, like, liberal wine mom from Buckhead any day of the week.
00:42:51.020We can acknowledge that we shouldn't paint a broad brush, that we shouldn't generalize, that we shouldn't say everyone from one country is like this or all immigrants or all refugees.
00:43:02.100Like, we should love people and see people as individuals while also saying, but in principle and statistically and in general, it is better for the well-being and security of our country if all refugees and all asylum seekers and all migrants are extremely well-vetted.
00:43:24.400And that it makes sense, at least for a period of time, to say, you know, some immigrants from some places are just not getting in.
00:43:32.480We don't have the capacity to vet them right now.
00:43:35.540And because we care about the safety and security of our Americans, of the people that we're governing, then we just can't let them in.
00:43:43.980And that is why Donald Trump, he said that he would halt all immigration processing for Afghan nationals pending a thorough review of security and vetting protocols.
00:43:55.460He said, we must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden.
00:44:00.300We must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country.
00:44:07.320Again, I say yes and amen, like, let's go.
00:44:11.640And in principle, on a micro level, everyone agrees with this.
00:44:15.180There's a reason why you live inside your home.
00:44:18.020There is a reason why you don't sleep on your front sidewalk.
00:44:21.680There's a reason why you don't leave your door open.
00:44:24.020There's a reason why you don't let strangers come into your home and eat all of your food and sleep in your children's bed.
00:44:30.680That doesn't make you a good neighbor.
00:44:33.360And countries are like families, just on a bigger scale.
00:44:38.520You put the safety and security of your people first, not because you hate people from other countries, but because you love people in your country.
00:44:45.340It is not possible for us to equally prioritize all of the interests of everyone in the world and all of their safety and security.
00:45:35.580And I'm trying to decide, like, I can't read the whole thing.
00:45:39.520So he kind of weaves together a couple of things that are happening here.
00:45:43.580He says, OK, I'm just going to I'm just going to read it and we'll see how far I get.
00:45:47.420He says a very happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our great American citizens and patriots who have been so nice in allowing our country to be of divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged and laughed at toxic empathy,
00:46:01.340along with certain other foolish countries throughout the world for being politically correct and just plain stupid when it comes to immigration.
00:46:11.060The official United States foreign population stands at 53 million people, most of which are on welfare from failed nations or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs or drug cartels.
00:46:21.760I mean, does that sound like a good process for Americans?
00:46:24.040No, they and their children are supported through massive payments from patriotic American citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape or form.
00:46:35.520They put up with what has happened to our country, but it's eating them alive to do so.
00:46:40.520A migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family.
00:46:46.840The real migrant population is much higher.
00:46:49.320This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II.
00:46:57.040As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great state of Minnesota.
00:47:03.840Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for prey as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses, hosting...
00:47:10.520Hoping against hope that they will be left alone.
00:47:16.640So then he uses, which I know my, like the world, it has mixed feelings about the R word.
00:47:24.000And I will not say it, but he does call, he's calls governor of Minnesota Tim Walls mentally incompetent, which, okay, you can quibble about the use of the word.
00:47:37.520He said that Tim Walls does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst congresswoman in our country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the USA illegally, and that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our country and how badly she is treated.
00:48:39.200This is a much bigger issue, because what is happening in Minnesota is absolutely awful.
00:48:44.840And it does go to show, again, that our empathy that is extracting our tax dollars from us to support not only migration, but to support these good causes and these programs, that it's actually working against us.
00:49:06.100That our empathy is allowing us to be stolen from and for children to be stolen from.
00:49:24.000Okay, if you actually want to love, not just feel deeply for someone, which only goes so far, but actually love someone, then you should put your money where your heart is and support pregnant moms in need.
00:50:37.360My Blaze colleague, Chris Ruffo, has done a lot of great work when it comes to the corruption in the state of Minnesota through Somali nonprofits.
00:50:51.720So this is according to Blaze Media and City Journal.
00:50:54.220A City Journal investigation exposed multiple massive fraud schemes in Minnesota's welfare programs,
00:51:00.060almost all perpetrated by members of the state's Somali community collectively stealing billions in taxpayer dollars.
00:51:06.720Okay, just think about all of the people who are working so hard to pay their mortgage and to pay for their kids' school.
00:51:15.240Think about that family who has made the sacrifice to live on one income so the mom can homeschool their kids.
00:51:56.880So, for example, the Housing and Stabilization Services Program meant to cost $2.6 million per year exploded to $104 million annually by 2024
00:52:06.480and $61 million in just the first half of 2025 before being shut down because the vast majority of it was fraudulent.
00:52:14.940Federal prosecutors say that HSS providers were fictitious companies, often run from rundown storefronts,
00:52:20.740that signed up vulnerable people for services they never intended to deliver while billing Medicaid anyway.
00:52:25.500The $250 million Feeding Our Future scandal saw Somali-owned nonprofits claim to feed thousands of children daily
00:52:34.240with fake rosters and invoices, then use the money for luxury cars and overseas real estate.
00:52:41.380On September 18th, 2025, the 56th defendant pleaded guilty.
00:52:45.880So, you see, like if you were, say you were a Republican who had been running in Minnesota and you had run on,
00:52:52.580hey, we got to cut, we got to, we got to cut spending and we have to cut the taxpayer dollars that we are giving to feeding our future.
00:52:59.720What would the liberal media have said?
00:55:21.620At least 28 major fraud scandals have erupted in Minnesota since Governor Tim Walz took office in 2019.
00:55:27.000And if he ran right now, every Democrat in the state of Minnesota would vote for him.
00:55:31.600I mean, we already had someone in the state of Virginia win after texts were leaked that said that he wanted to kill his opponent's children.
00:55:38.940So I don't think that fraud is like the moral limit that the current Democrat Party has.
00:55:45.640Billions in stolen welfare have been sent as remittances from Minnesota to Somalia.
00:55:58.640But when America does it or when Britain does it or when Italy does it, it's bigotry and it's wrong.
00:56:04.620But the important thing is, is that people, not that people see this fraud, not that people are worried about their hardened dollars, not that people are worried about corruption.
00:56:13.220The important thing is, is that we're not mean to the people who are committing this fraud.
00:57:06.260If you are unified by something much deeper than skin color and nationality, if you're unified by a creed, if you're unified by the gospel, then having different perspectives and different backgrounds can actually be a benefit.
00:57:18.200But if you only have diversity, if that's the only commonality that you have, then no.
00:57:31.160That's how the world has functioned for all of time.
00:57:35.300We're not different or new or better than people throughout history.
00:57:39.940You have to have something very real in common.
00:57:43.620And if it's not going to be culture, like if it's not going to be patriotism in your nationality, it's got to be something deeper like religion.
00:57:52.760When you have nothing, then it just doesn't work.
00:57:57.420And before we close out that section, I just want to remind you of the book of Nehemiah.
00:58:02.720The book of Nehemiah is so good at explaining the wisdom, the prudence of borders and protecting the city that you love.
01:08:51.980So she hates the city that she is trying to represent.
01:08:55.860She also said this about birthers on her podcast in 2020.
01:09:01.920She said, I think as an organizer and as an activist, we really have an opportunity here in this country to talk about what type of progressive policies we want to see as young women.
01:09:09.980And I think we have as birthers, as women who can give birth, men and women who can give birth.
01:09:44.120Every legislative session, I promise to carry a trans bill of rights so that we could push back against the far right narrative that is being emanated by Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire, who have set up their home in Nashville.
01:09:56.040I promise to fight for our trans community.
01:09:58.560Matt Walsh with an honorable mention there.
01:10:01.580December of 2024, Ben sponsored the, not Ben Shapiro, since I just talked about Matt Walsh.
01:10:07.860Ben, Afton Ben, sponsored the Reproductive Freedom Act, which guaranteed every person a right to make decisions about reproductive health care.
01:10:15.600So, of course, that includes abortion.
01:10:18.060She would love abortion through all nine months.
01:10:21.200In November of 2025, she was asked by MSNBC reporter whether she would stand by now deleted tweets from 2020, condemning the police, calling them for them to be defunded and celebrating the burning down of a police station.