Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1334 ｜ DEBATE： Allie vs. David French on Trans Pronouns, Empathy & James Talarico

00:00:00.000 New York Times writer David French is here today to debate pronouns, toxic empathy, James

00:00:07.000 Tallarico, voting for Kamala Harris, abortion, and so much more.

00:00:11.880 You will love this lively discussion on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:15.240 It is brought to you by The Last Stand.

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00:00:23.640 and 6th.

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00:00:43.800 David French, thanks so much for taking the time to join me. I really appreciate talking to you in

00:00:48.160 person. I'm very happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. I think it's been a minute since

00:00:53.700 I've been in Blaze Studios.

00:00:55.460 I think it's been 10 years, actually.

00:00:57.340 10 years.

00:00:57.560 Yeah.

00:00:57.840 And here you are.

00:00:58.640 And here I am.

00:00:59.200 And we met once before, we were on a panel, we were just talking about this with Lila

00:01:01.840 Rose and Ken Starr.

00:01:02.840 So it's been a few years since we've gotten to talk in person, but I'm glad to do so.

00:01:07.460 I would love to talk first about Toxic Empathy, the book that I wrote a couple of years ago.

00:01:12.380 You wrote two articles in the New York Times about Toxic Empathy, your thoughts about-

00:01:17.140 And the whole concept.

00:01:18.320 Yes, your thoughts about the concept.

00:01:20.000 Would you mind just restating your argument about the concept and my book for the audience?

00:01:25.500 Well, let me begin with my points of strong agreement, okay?

00:01:29.600 So one of the pieces that I wrote, I began with my points of agreement.

00:01:33.700 I think one of the problems that we have in this country is with emotional manipulation.

00:01:39.200 In other words, when we decide like whose experience really matters, and then we dive

00:01:46.180 in on one side's experience and we neglect the other sides. So in other words, if you're talking

00:01:52.360 about like, as you raise in the book, like the problem of immigration, if you dive into what are

00:01:58.020 the things that drive somebody like from Honduras to America, you know, fear of death, extreme 1.00

00:02:03.660 poverty, all of these things, that's a very, you know, in my view, that's a very valid thing to

00:02:08.860 dive into and understand, but we cannot neglect what happens to border communities when there's 1.00

00:02:15.380 a flood of undocumented immigrants. We can't neglect what happens to infrastructure, social 1.00

00:02:21.560 infrastructure. We can't neglect what happens with crime, et cetera. And so the issue in my view is

00:02:29.480 that I think you've very accurately identified how one side of the debate, and partisans are

00:02:35.620 very guilty of this on both sides, will use one story and one person's or one side's story

00:02:42.960 and then foreground that story and then say, well, you've got to satisfy their issues.

00:02:48.380 And one thing I think you do very well in the book is you talk about, so for example,

00:02:51.800 an abortion.

00:02:53.080 There's a whole nother person to think about here, right? 0.94

00:02:55.780 There's an unborn child.

00:02:57.500 And so, you know, you very vividly talk about what happens in abortion, right?

00:03:01.780 Which is a way of generating, quite frankly, empathy for the unborn child, that you're

00:03:06.880 trying to put yourself into the shoes of total innocence, total innocence.

00:03:11.660 And so I do think absolutely, as I was reading your book, the parts that really stood out to me were what I would describe as almost like emotional manipulation.

00:03:21.620 In other words, you're saying, here's the story, this is the story of a person's pain and anguish, and that's what we're gonna focus on exclusively, but there's other stories as well.

00:03:33.380 So my issue wasn't so much with your point that telling one-sided stories leads to bad decision-making, including immoral decision-making, because you only hear one side.

00:03:48.640 My issue was really we don't have enough empathy, that empathy needs to be more holistic.

00:03:54.680 In other words, we need to think about the unborn baby and the mother.

00:03:58.460 We need to think about the immigrant family and the border town or and the American economy,

00:04:05.500 et cetera.

00:04:06.160 And so in my view, one of our big problems is not enough empathy or very, and particularly

00:04:14.880 amongst very partisan people, very selective empathy so that only my ally's experience

00:04:22.320 really matters.

00:04:23.540 Only the people I've decided to ally with, only their experience really matters.

00:04:28.460 Whereas my view is I don't think that we can make morally informed choices.

00:04:32.420 We can't make morally sound choices unless our understanding is much more holistic that you're thinking about the unborn child as well as the experience of the mother.

00:04:44.960 And it sounds it really sounds like we agree because my definition of toxic empathy is that empathy that causes you to ignore the person on the other side of the moral equation.

00:04:54.640 So I would agree with you that I'm actually calling people into a deeper and more expansive

00:05:00.480 form of compassion.

00:05:02.340 Now, I tell both sides of the story.

00:05:04.520 I start with the story typically of, for example, the mom in crisis who is going through financial

00:05:10.900 turmoil.

00:05:12.100 She's got eight other kids to take care of. 0.74

00:05:14.280 She finds out that her baby inside the womb has anencephaly and is probably going to die

00:05:18.840 in or right outside of the womb.

00:05:21.360 And I tell her story in an emotionally evocative way to get people to care about this woman's

00:05:28.600 story.

00:05:28.860 But then I also tell the story of, as you said, the brutal reality of abortion to let

00:05:34.360 you know that this is a human too.

00:05:36.200 And so I'm actually doing what you say needs to be done, which is expanding compassion.

00:05:41.500 But I don't end there because I think you would agree we don't get anywhere if both

00:05:45.880 sides are just saying, well, my story's sadder.

00:05:48.120 No, my story's sadder.

00:05:49.160 I want Christians to be thoughtful enough to think about both the illegal immigrant and 0.67

00:05:55.560 Lake and Riley, but then ask ourselves, and this is maybe where we disagree, and that's okay with

00:06:00.280 me, ask ourselves, but what is true? Like, what is biblically true? What does the Bible say about

00:06:06.060 killing, for example? Because actually, we don't even get anywhere if we say, well, it's really

00:06:10.900 sad that there's this woman in crisis and this baby inside the womb. I'm sad for both of them.

00:06:15.200 That actually paralyzes you from making a good moral decision if that's where you end.

00:06:19.160 So we have to ask discerning questions.

00:06:20.880 What is biblically true?

00:06:21.680 What's morally true?

00:06:22.640 What's politically true?

00:06:23.480 Logically true?

00:06:24.160 Historically true?

00:06:24.800 All of that.

00:06:25.640 Now, I'm a fallible person, and so maybe someone would disagree with my arguments of, like,

00:06:29.480 what is actually true in these cases?

00:06:32.540 So it doesn't really sound like you disagree with me here, but it did sound like you did

00:06:37.100 in the articles.

00:06:37.440 Well, and also, I would say, in the articles, I'm talking about not just your book.

00:06:41.220 I'm talking about other books.

00:06:42.280 I'm talking about also secular.

00:06:43.680 But you do use the phrase toxic empathy.

00:06:45.180 You said, for example, in 2025, you said, for example, if people respond,

00:06:49.160 to the foreign aid shutdown and the stop work orders

00:06:51.360 by talking about how children might suffer and die,

00:06:54.520 then they're exhibiting toxic empathy.

00:06:56.200 That's not what I say toxic empathy is.

00:06:58.560 Well, it's absolutely what I see a lot

00:07:01.040 in the public discussion that when you raise this-

00:07:03.340 But you are using the title of my book

00:07:04.380 and you called me the foremost architect

00:07:07.040 of this concept of toxic empathy,

00:07:09.360 but I don't say that toxic empathy

00:07:11.100 is someone caring about children dying.

00:07:13.120 And that's how you describe it in the article.

00:07:14.420 One of the things that I've seen is that I've seen

00:07:16.680 when people are talking about the crises that have emerged, say, in the developing world about

00:07:21.580 the end of USAID, or if you tell a story about an undocumented immigrant who has come over with

00:07:29.020 their parents, you know, 25 years ago, and is being seized outside of a Home Depot and thrown into

00:07:34.260 extraordinarily brutal conditions in a lot of these detention facilities, and you raise this,

00:07:41.060 one of the sad things that's occurred, and again, I'm not putting this all on you, one of the sad

00:07:45.520 things that has occurred is this global larger attack and talk about empathy has led to an

00:07:50.960 immediate response when you talk about human suffering. I will see many Christians say 0.99

00:07:56.320 that's toxic empathy. Now, when you read your book, for example, you're very good at outlining

00:08:04.120 in many circumstances, here's the understanding and my understanding of the experience of somebody

00:08:09.140 else, which is an empathetic response. I think the problem that you're having and the problem

00:08:14.420 that we're seeing is that when we talk

00:08:16.600 about human suffering on the part of people

00:08:19.180 that maybe you're an immigration restrictionist

00:08:22.700 and you really wanna have fewer immigrants,

00:08:25.160 or maybe you want to see sort of the very,

00:08:27.200 very large scale mass deportations.

00:08:29.940 And then you get extremely resistant

00:08:32.960 to all of the stories of suffering

00:08:34.980 that are the consequence of your policy.

00:08:37.720 And then you write this off as, well, that's toxic empathy.

00:08:40.860 And I don't think that's what you're trying to say here,

00:08:43.040 But I do see that this has been a cultural phenomenon, especially in parts of like what I would call MAGA Christianity, that if you talk about human suffering that results as a product of policy, that the reference to human suffering is referred to as, well, that's what toxic empathy is.

00:09:02.480 But in my view, what we're talking about here is we're dealing with incomplete empathy.

00:09:07.300 We're dealing with selective empathy in the same way that let's say you had two kids and for some inexplicable reason, you loved one of the kids and you didn't love the other kid.

00:09:17.100 You wouldn't necessarily cause that failure to love the other kid, toxic love, because love itself is not toxic.

00:09:23.820 You would say you need to have more love.

00:09:26.460 There needs to be more love.

00:09:28.120 We need to have an expanded view of love, not a restricted view of love.

00:09:31.960 But if someone used for the title of a book or for the name of a concept, toxic love to describe, for example, the overbearing love that a mom has for his son so that he has a failure to launch, you would understand what they're talking about.

00:09:46.780 And you would understand the point that they're trying to make, that they're not saying that all love is bad, that there's actually a healthy way to do it, but that it's turned toxic.

00:09:53.720 And I would actually say selective empathy that makes us make immoral decisions is a

00:09:59.700 form of toxic empathy.

00:10:01.860 And you said in 2026, you said, are you concerned about children who might die because we

00:10:06.380 gratuitously and needlessly cut billions of dollars in foreign aid?

00:10:09.460 That's toxic empathy.

00:10:10.880 Are you worried about the conditions in detention facilities where migrants are held by the

00:10:14.360 thousands?

00:10:15.100 That's more toxic empathy, which, again, is not my argument.

00:10:17.840 And you might say, well, that's what other people are saying.

00:10:20.680 But if that is the case, like you would think that these articles would be defending me

00:10:24.180 and saying people are really misusing Ali Stuckey's concept.

00:10:27.460 That's not what she argues in the book, but you're not.

00:10:29.600 You're actually saying she is the source of their thoughts.

00:10:33.220 And that's not the source of their thoughts.

00:10:34.660 I have seen you online talk when people talk about the plight of others, the plight of

00:10:39.980 immigrants, et cetera.

00:10:41.420 I have seen circumstances where you bring up then again, this example of, you know,

00:10:45.260 what we were talking about with toxic empathy.

00:10:47.240 And I think that maybe-

00:10:48.520 Can you give me an example?

00:10:49.560 I don't have your Twitter feed in front of me, but the problem that I see is when we articulate ideas, you know, and when we articulate ideas about empathy, one of the things that is very, very important is that we need to be in a position where our position about that idea is crystal clear to people in a way that is reflecting your holistic view of this situation.

00:11:11.640 And one of the difficulties I have is that what we're seeing right now, and I've seen this again and again and again and again, is I'm seeing a remarkable decline amongst many Christians, a remarkable decline in whether you want to call it empathy or compassion for people on the other side of the political aisle.

00:11:34.640 Just remarkable. And I see this from the far left, too. I see a dehumanization of people on the right. I see a dehumanization of people who are, you know, Trump supporters, etc. I see a remarkable dehumanization of people from on the right of the left, like this phrase I frequently hear, like demon crats, for example.

00:11:53.320 and that in my view, one of the responses 0.50

00:11:56.720 and one thing that's absolutely necessary

00:11:58.500 is to be walking out into the public square

00:12:01.380 and saying, we need more empathy.

00:12:03.740 We need more empathy.

00:12:05.320 And if I'm gonna be talking to some of my friends

00:12:07.660 on the far left, which I do,

00:12:08.900 and they are mystified by Trump support, for example,

00:12:12.780 they just can't understand it.

00:12:14.980 And so one of the things that I do

00:12:16.120 is I try to walk them through,

00:12:17.700 like let's get in the shoes of a Southern Baptist pastor

00:12:22.360 in Mount Pleasant, Tennessee, and what has been their experience?

00:12:26.640 What have they seen?

00:12:27.580 Or let's get into the shoes of a young college student who goes to Yale University, for example,

00:12:33.440 and let's suppose they're a conservative Christian.

00:12:36.500 Tell me, just tell me what you think their experience is and walk, just do a thought

00:12:42.700 experiment, walk in their shoes for a minute.

00:12:45.120 And what I have seen time and time again is when we actually expand that concept of empathy,

00:12:49.800 Not restrict it, but expand it and say, you are not empathetic enough, as I have seen real progress at bridging some of these divides.

00:12:58.600 And so I would say, you know, amongst the, in the world of empathy conversation and the conversation about empathy, the last thing that I want to do is communicate to people that we've got too much of this, when the reality is we just have too, we have much too, we have too little.

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00:14:17.380 As you know, and I hope I don't think that your New York Times readers would know this based on the articles about my book or this concept, but I'm not calling all empathy toxic.

00:14:28.880 Actually, I start the book with an example of how someone who could put herself in my shoes really benefited me.

00:14:35.980 And then I was able to do that for another struggling mom in the airport.

00:14:39.140 And so I don't disagree that there is value in putting yourself in someone else's shoes.

00:14:44.140 is my argument is that feeling so deeply for a person,

00:14:47.640 that because of those feelings,

00:14:49.020 you end up affirming sin, validating lies,

00:14:52.120 or supporting destructive policies, that that's wrong.

00:14:54.980 Like for example, if I feel so deeply for someone

00:14:58.080 who tells me I've been born in the wrong body,

00:15:00.260 I'm trapped in this body, I can feel that deeply.

00:15:02.940 And that might be okay to feel empathy for that person

00:15:05.460 to say, gosh, I've never felt that way.

00:15:07.580 That would be so hard.

00:15:09.320 I can't imagine the distress that you feel.

00:15:11.600 But if I take that extra step to say,

00:15:14.140 You are. You are a woman. And you know what? As a woman, you can play women's sports and you can go

00:15:19.640 into the women's bathroom. That is my argument. We can talk about semantics, whether you want to 1.00

00:15:23.200 call it selective or whatever, disproportionate. But my argument is when your empathy leads you

00:15:28.600 there, and you could say it exists on the right or the left. I'm a conservative, of course,

00:15:33.740 but that is when it becomes toxic. And I think that that is a very understandable concept for

00:15:39.160 a lot of people. I think you understand it because you actually articulated it beautifully at the

00:15:42.960 start. You know, I think that one of the things, you know, in looking at your book that I looked

00:15:48.800 at and I kind of tripped over it was you really refer to empathy as kind of an emotion. You refer

00:15:53.740 to it as an emotional phenomenon. The ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes emotionally

00:15:59.020 because you're not doing so physically. Well, what you're doing also, you're doing it emotionally,

00:16:03.020 you're doing it intellectually. Sometimes you're literally doing it geographically. So for example,

00:16:08.760 one of the ways in which I developed much greater understanding about what was happening in Ukraine.

00:16:14.880 I can read about a Russian missile attack. I can see a video of a Russian missile attack. I can

00:16:20.700 even try to imagine what it is like to be under a Russian missile attack. But then when I was in

00:16:26.320 Kiev and we had a host of Kinzhal missiles coming in, you really, that allowed me, that allowed me

00:16:32.880 to be almost much more empathetic to the plight of Ukrainians. So it wasn't just an emotional

00:16:38.340 thing. It's a, it's a practice. It's a skill. It's something that is, uh, something that is

00:16:43.880 cultivated and developed. But you were able to feel how they feel, which is, which is my point.

00:16:48.580 Yeah. And also many other things. I'm also able to see what they see. I'm also able to, uh, I'm

00:16:55.100 also able to hear their arguments made in, in, in the place where, and I'm going to get a lot

00:17:02.260 better sense of their arguments by hearing them in person as opposed to imagining what they are,

00:17:07.300 etc so there's emotional components to empathy for sure no question about it but there's also

00:17:13.100 intellectual components to empathy there's practice physical practice components to empathy it's a

00:17:18.560 it's a pretty broad concept and it's actually pretty difficult like to do it well is pretty

00:17:25.400 difficult and what i really want i don't want people to think of empathy as just an emotion

00:17:29.920 because that's more of a concept like emotional contagion in other words like you experience an

00:17:36.400 emotion alongside somebody, and because they're experiencing an emotion, you experience an

00:17:40.820 emotion. That's a very normal human reaction. When people are sad around us, we tend not to

00:17:45.460 be happy. We tend to kind of join them in their sadness or vice versa. And so it has to be really

00:17:51.680 pulled out of that emotional context because it is an intellectual practice as well, very important

00:17:56.960 intellectual practice. And often it's the intellect that precedes the emotion because

00:18:02.780 it's the intellectual practice that allows you to imagine that allows you and then also you know

00:18:09.080 it provides you with opportunities to try to think about how can i understand better and this is part

00:18:14.880 of why i start every chapter with a story that maybe conservatives hadn't hurt the story of the

00:18:19.740 woman who is going through the hard time when she's pregnant the story of the illegal immigrant

00:18:24.220 who has built a life here and lived in ohio for several decades the story of the person who feels

00:18:28.960 that they're trapped in the wrong body. And so, again, I want to reiterate that my claim is not

00:18:33.840 that all empathy is toxic. Now, maybe we disagree on the extent of what empathy actually is. And I

00:18:40.300 think that you make an important point there that it can look different ways. I do wonder what you

00:18:45.740 think about my argument. And I wonder if this is part of also what tripped you up in that.

00:18:51.320 I make the argument, as others have, like Paul Bloom, secular Yale psychologist professor,

00:18:55.500 who claims that empathy itself is actually neutral that is really my one of my arguments there that

00:19:03.720 empathy itself is neutral because you could have gone and felt what they felt in ukraine and you

00:19:09.160 said okay i don't you know i don't care that doesn't actually you know i'm on the side of

00:19:13.500 putin i love putin so it actually didn't necessarily lead you to virtue there had to be something else

00:19:19.080 truth that led you to virtue conviction that led you to virtue and my point is leading people

00:19:24.280 towards that. I'm saying don't allow your empathy to drown you so that you make bad decisions,

00:19:30.700 so that you make desperate, immoral, unbiblical decisions. And I think you would agree with that, 0.94

00:19:34.920 that your empathy has to be tethered by truth. And for the Christian, it has to be biblical truth.

00:19:39.460 So I would say I completely agree that empathy is neutral. I think empathy is an indispensable 0.52

00:19:44.680 element of moral reasoning. And so it doesn't end the inquiry. So for example, I'm pro-life.

00:19:52.360 I have been a pro-life activist and lawyer my entire adult life.

00:19:57.660 And I have a lot of empathy, as you articulated, for the plight of unwed mothers.

00:20:03.180 It's one of the reasons why I'm pro-life, especially when I was in high school.

00:20:06.620 I was in high school at the age where abortion was far more prevalent than it is now, where abortion was almost like a form of birth control in some places.

00:20:15.480 And I saw the effect that that had on the young women

00:20:19.960 who were, many of them, their parents would pressure them.

00:20:22.920 Their boyfriends would pressure them.

00:20:24.140 There was this crushing pressure on them.

00:20:27.200 And so that made me more pro-life actually.

00:20:30.600 And so I think that when you're talking about empathy,

00:20:33.480 the value of it is this,

00:20:34.980 is I do not think that unless you are empathetic,

00:20:38.620 you can truly fully understand other people.

00:20:40.960 And it's a lifelong practice.

00:20:42.760 It's a lifelong process of becoming more empathetic.

00:20:47.100 And then once you have that understanding,

00:20:49.260 the virtue of the understanding

00:20:50.780 is that you apply superior understanding

00:20:53.700 to your moral reasoning.

00:20:56.100 And so-

00:20:56.340 I think we'd agree on that.

00:20:57.060 Yeah.

00:20:57.420 And so then that's why I see empathy as a real virtue,

00:21:00.960 as something that is, it's not morally neutral.

00:21:03.600 It can be used in-

00:21:04.320 Oh, I thought that you said that you agreed

00:21:05.760 that it was neutral.

00:21:06.820 No, it's not morally neutral.

00:21:08.800 It's an indispensable value.

00:21:10.920 Okay.

00:21:11.180 That then does, but it doesn't end the moral inquiry. So I can have empathy for somebody, which is a real virtue and value to have empathy, but the empathy alone doesn't settle anything. Empathy alone doesn't settle anything, but what empathy does is it gives us information and understanding that we then apply, say, for example, biblical reasoning to, that we apply logic to, that we apply science to, that we apply all of these other things.

00:21:38.520 But it's very much like, you know, how in college you have prerequisites before you take like the 400 level class.

00:21:46.980 I think of empathy as like the 100 or 200 level human interaction that is the necessary prerequisite to really understanding in a greater way who people are, how to reach them, how to talk to them, what their life experience is.

00:22:03.840 And from that standpoint, what I have seen and what really distresses me, and I've seen it in the church, is just a lot less curiosity about the experiences of the people that they oppose and a lot more harshness directed towards the people that they oppose.

00:22:21.100 You and I have both experienced this. I mean, I know you have experienced a bunch of hate online. I have experienced a bunch of hate online. It is something that is a very sad reality of being any kind of public figure politically nowadays.

00:22:35.740 You just get this enormous hatred.

00:22:39.300 And I do not believe that if we had more widespread empathy,

00:22:43.200 I think we would have fewer death threats, for example.

00:22:46.060 We would have much less cruelty, for example.

00:22:49.500 And one of the things that really distresses me now 1.00

00:22:51.820 is the sheer amount of Christian cruelty I'm seeing. 1.00

00:22:55.440 It's remarkable. 1.00

00:22:56.760 I mean, I know you've seen it.

00:22:58.000 You've been at the receiving end.

00:22:59.040 I remember I saw something that wasn't that long ago

00:23:01.140 where you made a very,

00:23:03.020 what I thought was important statement against pornography.

00:23:05.740 And then you got dragged. 1.00

00:23:08.660 You got called a feminist and all of that stuff. 1.00

00:23:10.400 I don't even follow Twitter draggings that much, but that made it to where I saw it. 0.94

00:23:15.220 Yeah, it was that widespread.

00:23:16.860 What is happening here?

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00:23:39.020 our first and second amendments. You are already donating to activist organizations

00:23:43.620 when you choose whatever company you work with, whatever company you pay to. But usually,

00:23:49.500 unfortunately, if you're with the big wireless providers, you are donating to causes that we

00:23:54.140 don't believe in, like abortion, open borders. So you might as well switch to a company that

00:23:59.520 supports our values like Patriot Mobile. You'll help grow a movement that fuels Christian 0.97

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00:24:21.620 I really do think that we essentially agree. And that's really the point of each chapter that,

00:24:27.040 okay, now we have empathy for these two characters, real people actually, that I've

00:24:30.580 introduced you to. What do we do? Now, that might be where we disagree. On some things, but not

00:24:36.580 everything. Now, like, for example, when that sweet little boy in the blue toboggan, where he

00:24:42.400 was left and all we saw was that picture of him by himself. And we felt so deeply. I felt so deeply

00:24:47.860 for him. I'm a mom. You're a dad and grandfather. Like, you do think you're like, what if this was

00:24:53.420 my child? That is a level of empathy. I don't want that to stop. Now, where I would disagree

00:24:58.660 is when people would say, and maybe they would for other reasons, but say it was just for that

00:25:02.740 picture to say, okay, we can't enforce our immigration law anymore. Okay. ICE just has

00:25:08.640 to stop. Now, again, you might have other legitimate reasons to be against ICE, but I

00:25:12.720 see that kind of thing a lot. When I told the story of the woman who had been reported, I believe it

00:25:18.740 was NPR in the first chapter about my book, the woman who had all of these hardships as she was

00:25:23.840 pregnant. All of the comments were talking about how much Texas lacks empathy because how dare they

00:25:30.180 force her to have this child and how dare they force her to remain pregnant. But really like 1.00

00:25:36.380 what I want Christians to see is no, no, no, that pro-life law recognized the dignity of her 0.91

00:25:42.580 unborn child, allowed that unborn child to be delivered and named and kissed and wrapped and 0.76

00:25:48.720 loved and buried. And so again, I just want to reiterate because I think we're talking past

00:25:52.860 each other a little bit. I don't disagree with you that there is some healthy empathy that's

00:25:57.360 needed. My point is exactly what you're saying. What is your empathy leading you to? Don't allow

00:26:03.680 your empathy to be untethered from thoughts and from biblical truth.

00:26:08.340 So one of the interesting, and I agree with a lot of what you said there, one of the things that I

00:26:14.200 think that I'm worried about in the pro-life context is the rise of what we see from part

00:26:19.860 of the pro-life movement of abortion abolitionism,

00:26:22.620 including with the drive to, for example,

00:26:24.500 potentially imprison mothers.

00:26:26.560 And that is an example where I think

00:26:30.060 that a profound lack of empathy for the mothers,

00:26:34.560 and if you had a more full understanding

00:26:36.620 of what they're experiencing and what they're thinking,

00:26:39.360 this sort of idea that what I'm gonna do

00:26:41.100 is I'm going to respond to this 1.00

00:26:43.260 by imposing punitive criminal laws on these young women, 1.00

00:26:48.160 that in that circumstance,

00:26:49.420 I think that that's an example where I think a shared sense of empathy, a greater sense of empathy and a more complete understanding would show that that is not just sort of political folly just from an instrumental way, that it's also moral folly.

00:27:03.740 That it's an apples and oranges comparison between, say, a murder statute and an abortion by a desperate 19-year-old, that these are very different moral and very different from just a matter of intent and mindset.

00:27:22.240 These are just very, very different things.

00:27:24.020 Yeah, I think they would probably argue, and I think it is an interesting topic, and we've kind of debated it and discussed it on this show.

00:27:31.160 But I think their argument, to be fair, is not necessarily a lack of empathy, but one that it's a case by case.

00:27:37.880 They're not always desperate 19 year olds.

00:27:39.740 And I do think that you have to look at each circumstance, that there are women who know exactly what they're doing.

00:27:44.480 And it's not just at six weeks gestation.

00:27:46.540 It's at 16 weeks gestation and that not all women just because they're having an abortion are an automatic victim.

00:27:54.720 And then I think the bigger idea is that if we really believe that all human beings are made in the image of God from the moment of conception, why doesn't that little baby deserve the same rights that you and I do?

00:28:05.020 We believe that if someone conspired to murder us, paid someone to murder us or murdered us, that they should go to jail.

00:28:10.900 And I think the argument, and you could tell me if I'm wrong by abolitionists, is that, well, then we really are treating those little embryos as unequal.

00:28:20.000 If we're saying that their murderer or the person who paid for them to be, say, in this case, knowingly murdered, if they don't go to jail, we don't actually believe in fair and equal justice for that embryo.

00:28:31.380 So I don't know if I can say overall that the abolitionists are lacking empathy.

00:28:36.320 I think that they're driven by, you know, the desire to oppose unequal weights and measures when it comes to these little babies inside the womb that I know you also care about.

00:28:44.680 Yeah, it's interesting. And maybe they're out there, but I have not seen too many people calling for murder prosecutions in IVF clinics. And as we know-

00:28:55.380 Oh, I think that you could get abolitionists-

00:28:57.300 Some of them.

00:28:57.920 Around that real fast.

00:28:59.440 No, they're aggressive. They're intense and aggressive people. They haven't always been nice to me either. So I'm not defending all of their tactics.

00:29:05.740 And so, you know, one of the things that I've seen, and when you're talking about the situation that a lot of moms are in, in these circumstances before abortion, one of the most interesting elements and phenomenon in the last, like, 30, 40 years is why is it, how is it that the abortion rate kept going down, down, down, down, down for year after year after year after year after it peaks around 80, 81?

00:29:30.240 And it goes down, down, down a lot because there's a couple of things going on.

00:29:34.060 One is that the abortion experience itself for a lot of people was just horrible, that they have deep, deep, deep and profound regrets and have communicated that to their own families, to their kids.

00:29:44.960 And so there's been an experience of abortion, especially when it's at its peak, that was just profoundly negative for people, and they communicated that.

00:29:53.120 But there was also another thing and that is when the pro-life movement for, sadly, for 40 years, we were really cut off from meaningful legal reform.

00:30:03.780 We could dabble at the edges, you could pass a waiting period law, things like this, but we were really cut off from major legal reform.

00:30:12.040 And so we had to get really creative and we had to get very intentional in interacting with human beings out in the real world.

00:30:20.000 And one of the things that we found was that, you know, this real intentional intervention

00:30:24.340 with women in their real lives was helping diminish and diminish the abortion rate.

00:30:31.080 And so we went through this period where by 2017, the abortion rate was lower than it

00:30:36.860 was before Roe.

00:30:39.180 And what's shocking is that this is something that's really surprising to a lot of people.

00:30:44.460 The largest drop in abortions actually occurred during the eight years of the Obama administration.

00:30:49.320 But, you know, presidents don't make laws and, you know, it was mostly state level Republican legislatures.

00:30:55.420 But the problem is it's not. We can tie some restrictions, some diminished abortion rates to some restrictions, but is well beyond that because we got more restrictive.

00:31:06.140 We kept getting more restrictive, but then the abortion rate went up again. And so in 2017, the abortion rate comes up again.

00:31:13.020 So for the first president, really since Carter, who ended with more abortions and a higher rate than when he started, was Trump.

00:31:22.260 And what do you think Trump did that caused that?

00:31:24.640 Because your argument is that he caused it.

00:31:26.380 No, no.

00:31:27.200 It's a very multi-causal factor.

00:31:29.860 So there's a lot of—

00:31:31.400 So it's not necessarily about Barack Obama or Donald Trump.

00:31:35.060 Complex social phenomenon typically don't have singular causes.

00:31:39.300 So, for example—

00:31:39.800 Yes, but you highlighted that.

00:31:40.980 You highlighted that it was Obama where the abortions went down, that it was Trump where

00:31:44.520 the abortions went up, but you're saying that they don't have a causal relationship.

00:31:47.080 No, they do, but they're not monocausal.

00:31:49.440 Not only that cause.

00:31:50.420 That's not the only cause, right?

00:31:51.680 So for example, just a minute ago, I said the experience of abortion was really, that

00:31:57.640 has nothing to do with who was a president, but the experience of abortion being very

00:32:01.480 negative for a lot of people.

00:32:03.520 And I know abortion advocates will often don't like to acknowledge that that's the reality

00:32:08.100 is that lots of women have a profoundly negative experience

00:32:12.120 because of abortion, and that often gets minimized,

00:32:15.120 but it's not minimized in the real world.

00:32:16.720 People talk about it, and that radiates out.

00:32:19.960 But I will tell you this.

00:32:21.020 I think that we've been dealing with some culture changes

00:32:24.080 that I think are really negative,

00:32:26.320 and one of those really negative culture changes,

00:32:28.560 and I do put this into the MAGA world,

00:32:31.540 is America is a lot more libertine,

00:32:34.860 and Donald Trump is a very libertine man.

00:32:37.340 He does what he wants. He does what he wants sexually. He does what he wants financially. He just does what he wants. And libertinism, not libertarianism, that's a different thing. Libertinism is incompatible with a pro-life ethic. 0.99

00:32:52.880 Yeah. And we would agree on that. 0.98

00:32:55.200 Yeah. And I would one of my problems is I truly believe that the right has become much more infected with libertinism in the last 10 years than anything when I was growing up.

00:33:08.380 That the emphasis on personal character is much less.

00:33:11.300 Yeah.

00:33:11.760 Sexual ethics. All of this is just less, less, less, less, less.

00:33:16.680 Yeah. And I remember I had a podcast with my friend, dear friend, Alexandra DeSantis, who's just a marvelous pro-life advocate.

00:33:23.880 Yeah, I've had her on the show a couple of times a long time ago.

00:33:25.980 And eight or nine years ago, I said, I'm really worried about what's going to happen with the abortion rate in this country because of the rise in libertinism.

00:33:36.340 And the more libertine a movement is, the more libertine a population is, I firmly believe the less pro-life they're going to be because parenting is immense love.

00:33:47.100 And as you know, it's also immense sacrifice that you are not the most important person.

00:33:51.180 And we would also agree probably that libertinism and just leftism has also increased on the left.

00:33:56.820 I don't equate those two.

00:33:57.980 I don't think libertinism is leftism because I think MAGA is extremely libertine.

00:34:02.520 No, I don't think that I – I didn't mean to say that.

00:34:04.300 If that's how I articulated it,

00:34:05.600 I don't necessarily think that they're synonymous.

00:34:07.860 I think someone can be a libertine,

00:34:10.820 right-wing, Trump-loving person, absolutely.

00:34:13.560 I was just saying that that has also increased

00:34:15.240 on the left as well.

00:34:16.800 I think that you would agree.

00:34:17.880 We were talking about a bunch of trans stuff

00:34:19.980 and Drag Queen Story Hour 15 years ago.

00:34:22.320 And now that's something that parents really worry about.

00:34:24.640 I would say that definitely on the ideological edges,

00:34:29.800 you have just seen a degradation of...

00:34:34.300 Gosh. I mean, libertinism is one word, just an extraordinary cruelty, an extraordinary—if you look at the actions of the wings of American life, and, you know, I know you're familiar with horseshoe theory, that when people become ideologically further apart, ironically, they often begin to adopt the same tactics, the same methods, the same morality, etc.

00:34:58.660 We just see this, I think, all over the place in the United States.

00:35:01.460 And I do think the extremes in this country are just ripping us to shreds because what

00:35:06.680 they're doing is they're dehumanizing their opponents.

00:35:09.860 They lack any empathy for their opponents at all.

00:35:12.860 And that they are in dehumanizing their opponents and in believing that they're righteous and

00:35:19.300 believing that we are the righteous side and the other side is entirely evil and horrible

00:35:24.120 and demonic.

00:35:25.340 I think they're harming their own souls in that.

00:35:27.460 We are not built to be that self-righteous.

00:35:31.020 We saw that a lot after Charlie was murdered.

00:35:33.580 Now, you definitely saw some empathy with liberals, and I'm not saying this is only a left-wing problem, but I was shocked by a lot of people who basically said he had it coming because he was racist.

00:35:44.020 And, yeah, it's ugly.

00:35:44.900 It also does something to your own soul when you're reading that and imbibing that. 0.99

00:35:47.940 Oh, and think about the way, like, the Candace Owens' of the world have treated Erica Kirk. 0.98

00:35:52.260 Oh, yeah. 0.70

00:35:52.900 I know.

00:35:53.260 It's horrific.

00:35:54.500 It's unbelievably horrific.

00:35:57.040 Yes.

00:35:57.320 And so, yeah, you had this, it's one of the more dispiriting things, Allie Beth, that I've seen in my life is this one, two thing that happened after Charlie was killed.

00:36:07.560 One was these people on the left celebrating his death, just like the, you know, the cult of Luigi or whatever, this guy who murdered a healthcare executive.

00:36:16.360 Like the fact that there are people in the world who will celebrate the death of an innocent person just because they disagree with them politically or believe that they were an economic problem or whatever is vile.

00:36:27.100 And then we immediately switch over and we see this host of conspiracy theorists and people just destroying.

00:36:34.680 Like I can't even imagine treating a young widow with young children the way they've treated her.

00:36:44.220 Totally. 0.99

00:36:44.640 It's insane.

00:36:45.660 I mean, we completely agree on that.

00:36:47.300 We just have, like, this whole idea, we just have to be more expansive with empathy.

00:36:52.940 Also, yes, that's part of it.

00:36:56.320 I think that also a lot of it is just, like, a lack of virtue and a lack of morality and a lack of guidance.

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00:37:59.560 one thing that you said in the article where you said that i was the prime architect of

00:38:09.420 of toxic empathy is that a lot of maga people have um decided that cruelty is a virtue that

00:38:15.620 decency is a vice and we live in the harsh new world that they made and i will say like it does

00:38:21.240 bother me for my argument and for me myself to be conflated with someone who is saying that virtue

00:38:28.840 is a vice and that cruelty is a virtue i think that you know if you've read my book and you've

00:38:34.120 talked to me that that is not who i am and that's not the argument that i make and again i think it

00:38:39.520 would have been interesting if in the article you have said you would have said like look this is

00:38:43.500 not what ali says and it's actually sad that it's being distorted or maybe even if you said if she

00:38:48.120 had been stronger and saying this it would have stopped those distortions but i was the hook for

00:38:54.200 the article in making your argument. And that bothers me.

00:38:57.120 Well, I understand that. The hook was the concept, this attack on empathy that we have

00:39:03.960 been seeing, not just from you, from a number of people. And one of my problems is that,

00:39:09.620 Allie Beth, we have seen Christians calling cruelty a virtue and attacking civility and 1.00

00:39:16.200 decency. 1.00

00:39:17.140 People who profess to be Christians. 1.00

00:39:18.600 Yes. And people who profess to be Christians also claiming to be pro-abortion.

00:39:24.200 And it's a problem.

00:39:25.580 There are people who are, in the name of Jesus, proudly cruel to their opponents, proudly cruel.

00:39:32.940 And it's an epidemic.

00:39:36.680 If you had told me, Allie Beth, if you had told me in 2015, early 2015, before Trump came down the escalator,

00:39:44.400 that we're going to be living in a world where there was so much blatant white nationalism and racism

00:39:50.780 coming from American Christian denominations,

00:39:54.520 evangelical denominations, 1.00

00:39:56.160 that you are gonna see just a shocking rise

00:39:58.780 of anti-Semitism, for example,

00:40:01.080 left and right that we have seen in this country.

00:40:04.420 And that you would see and you would have, for example,

00:40:09.420 a man in the Oval Office

00:40:10.540 who is vicious to his political opponents,

00:40:13.180 just vicious and cruel to his political opponents.

00:40:16.520 And sometimes his allies too. 1.00

00:40:18.460 Yeah, that is applauded, applauded by so many Christians.

00:40:23.080 And look, I don't live in a blue bubble.

00:40:25.780 In 2024, 85% of my neighborhood voted for Trump.

00:40:30.100 The large majority of my extended family voted for Trump.

00:40:34.260 I've seen with my own eyes the change in the character of the American church towards more

00:40:39.380 cruelty, towards more anger, towards more fury, towards more—it is one of the most

00:40:45.600 distressing things I've ever seen in my life.

00:40:48.180 And I feel like we're looking at the point where the American church, especially American evangelical church, has in many ways become so much more cruel than I remember with most of my life.

00:41:03.300 I feel like the one thing that we should absolutely be telling them is you need more empathy.

00:41:08.880 And that empathy should lead to a better way of knowing and loving people.

00:41:14.720 That definitely wouldn't be my primary message. 0.98

00:41:17.000 It would be to, yes, feel deeply for people on both sides of an issue, but don't allow your feeling to be untethered from biblical truth because you'll make bad and stupid decisions and affirm sins, which is not good. 0.94

00:41:27.720 I do have a question for you. 0.94

00:41:29.320 You have a colleague at the dispatch whose name is Brian.

00:41:33.060 He has claimed or now he goes by Jessica that he is transitioning into a female.

00:41:39.880 And when you were talking about this person in 2025 in a podcast, you referred to Riedel as she.

00:41:47.740 So is your stance one of pronoun politeness that you believe that a man who identifies as a woman should be referred to as she, her?

00:41:56.280 No, that's funny.

00:41:59.100 I didn't even remember that I'd done that when that blew up on Twitter or whatever.

00:42:07.040 I have a lot of grace for people.

00:42:08.300 This is a hard decision to make. 0.97

00:42:09.880 And my view is, my view is, number one, I'm not going to be, if there is a trans person in front of me, if there is, and, you know, Jessica Riedel is a brilliant analyst, a brilliant analyst of the federal budget, probably knows more than anybody else, right?

00:42:28.840 And one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to go out of my, I'm going to be kind to them, but I also don't want to say things that I don't believe are true. 0.74

00:42:37.540 And so the way I deal with that is I use people's names.

00:42:41.060 That's my practice is I use people's names.

00:42:43.760 And so that's been my practice forever that as I use people's names, but I'm definitely

00:42:48.720 not going to go out of my way to call Jessica he.

00:42:54.160 I'm not going to do that, but I'm also going to use names.

00:42:57.240 And that's the way I, because I want to be kind to people, but I also don't want to say

00:43:01.320 things that are, I don't believe to be true.

00:43:04.000 And so that's how I try to square that circle.

00:43:06.240 In 2018, you wrote this article, which I really appreciate and agree with. You said the use of a pronoun is not a matter of mere manners. So it's a declaration of a fact. I won't call Chelsea Manning she for a very simple reason. He's a man. You say that you'll use someone's legal name, but I will not use my words to endorse a falsehood. Do you agree with yourself?

00:43:27.100 Of course. Yeah, absolutely.

00:43:30.120 But you did just say that you are not going to call him he because you want to be polite and you want to be kind.

00:43:39.140 I'm going to call the name. I'm going to use the name.

00:43:41.020 But I'm not so I'm not saying if I'm using Chelsea Manning's name, that's the name I'm going to use.

00:43:48.380 But you would call Jessica he?

00:43:50.600 I would use Jessica's name.

00:43:52.580 You just would avoid pronouns altogether.

00:43:55.260 I would avoid pronouns. Yes.

00:43:56.260 Even when talking about that person like you did on the podcast.

00:43:59.760 Like, do you equate calling a man who identifies as a woman, he, with being unkind?

00:44:07.060 Like, if I tell the truth, as you said, it stayed in a biological fact, and I think it's wonderful that people are made in God's image from the moment of conception, be male or female.

00:44:16.040 So I don't see it as unkind, calling someone, whether it's to their face or not to their face, the gender that God made them.

00:44:23.620 Oh, I think if somebody is dealing with gender dysphoria and is struggling with gender dysphoria, I don't see the value in me saying something to them that I know and they know is going to be hurtful to them.

00:44:40.760 It's this normal, complete politeness and manners. 0.89

00:44:44.280 I mean, if you are interacting with somebody and there are words that you know, even if they're true words, they're going to be hurtful to somebody.

00:44:52.160 i'm generally unless unless we're in in a in a debate for example over for you know uh is a

00:45:00.420 trans woman a woman like if you're actually in a debate over that well then we're gonna we're

00:45:04.680 gonna talk about this we're gonna have that conversation but the one thing that i'm not 0.97

00:45:09.060 gonna do is i'm just not gonna go out of my way to say something that i know is gonna be hurtful

00:45:13.960 just because i can justify it as being true that's not the all true words are not kind by virtue of

00:45:20.940 just simply being true maybe then it's not going out of your way i mean it's easy to you know in

00:45:26.100 conversation you've already a few times you're not trying to go out of your way to talk about

00:45:30.580 this person but you know you've used the name where you would typically use a pronoun and so

00:45:35.460 if you hadn't though like if you had said he that wouldn't have been you going out of your way to

00:45:39.420 say that that would have just been you saying something that's true and so i just don't equate

00:45:45.140 telling the truth in that case i agree that you don't have to you know be rude to someone say

00:45:49.780 that shirt looks bad on you. That might be true, but it's not a kind thing to say. But when it

00:45:54.980 comes to this, like when we know it's a lie that damages someone, that hurts them spiritually and

00:46:00.700 physically and emotionally, hurts their family, I just can't get on board with assenting to the

00:46:05.120 idea that two plus two equals five just because they're struggling. Well, I'm not assenting to

00:46:09.440 that. You don't think you're assenting to that by calling a man she? Well, I don't do that. 0.61

00:46:15.400 I did that as so far as I know, one time.

00:46:17.560 It was a mistake?

00:46:19.300 I didn't even realize I'd done it.

00:46:21.540 Okay.

00:46:22.360 I literally, but the, because when you're speaking in names, like often pronouns just flow, you know, so it's very, it's an intentional act, right, to sort of reset your mind.

00:46:36.200 But I'm not advocating saying anything false at all.

00:46:41.760 Just avoiding the pronoun altogether.

00:46:43.360 I avoid the pronoun because I do not want to say anything false, and I do not want to be unkind.

00:46:49.160 Both of those things at the same time.

00:46:50.700 And you do think it's unkind to call a man he?

00:46:52.980 I think it is unkind if I'm talking to or about a person who's trans that to, if I don't have to call them he or she, depending on, I'm just not going to do it.

00:47:05.860 I'm just not going to do it. 0.91

00:47:06.760 I do not want to create a barrier, an unnecessary barrier between me and this other human being when, you know, I don't see the point of taking this thing that is so singularly important to them, that is so singular in how they're defining themselves and just shoving the contrary statement in their face in a context that where I know and they know it would be hurtful to what end?

00:47:36.080 to what end and and again a lot of truthful things are hurtful but that doesn't mean the intention

00:47:42.320 is always to hurt like i think if i had this you might even know who this is but she's a wonderful

00:47:47.400 woman her name is laura perry and she tells her testimony of she really believed from a young age

00:47:52.300 that she was a boy named jake and she was trapped in the wrong body i mean kind of textbook clear

00:47:57.120 gender dysphoria i don't think everyone who identifies as trans has true gender dysphoria

00:48:01.740 But I think that, you know, she really struggled with that. 0.76

00:48:04.920 Well, her parents, conservative, Christian, all of that, she goes off, she gets a double

00:48:09.100 mastectomy, she gets hormones when she's an early adult, and her parents would never call

00:48:14.380 her Jake.

00:48:15.220 And her parents' church, this conservative church in Oklahoma, would never say he.

00:48:19.640 And that offended her for so long.

00:48:21.540 And she really felt like, why don't they understand me?

00:48:24.220 Why can't they see that I'm happy, even though she knew she wasn't?

00:48:27.160 But one day her mom was like, hey, will you help me transcribe these Bible study notes?

00:48:31.260 anyway. God used that to soften her heart. But she said that she felt so much just affection and

00:48:37.440 love and welcoming from this conservative Christian country church in Oklahoma because

00:48:41.860 they never stopped calling her Laura, because it was more important for them to affirm how God made

00:48:48.980 her and what is true than it was to be polite in the moment. And do you agree that maybe little

00:48:56.060 offenses, like, aren't the worst thing that we can do in service to the truth?

00:49:01.660 I guess I'm a little bit stumped because in that story, they didn't call, you know,

00:49:07.980 they didn't use the biological pronoun and the biological pronoun was like, oh, that

00:49:13.240 led me to Jesus.

00:49:14.460 She does a Bible study, right?

00:49:16.360 No, but those are the people that, yes, I didn't make that argument, but those are the

00:49:21.020 people that welcomed her.

00:49:22.400 Those are the people that she realized after God had captured her heart.

00:49:25.660 oh my goodness, these are the people who have loved me all along. And the people who affirmed

00:49:29.220 me, called me Jake and all of this stuff, those people didn't really love me. And so I just wonder

00:49:33.540 if it's actually a greater testimony, if in kindness. I wonder if there's a way to do this.

00:49:37.580 You tell me. I had to do this when I was doing the Jubilee thing, which I don't know if you saw

00:49:41.240 that, but it was tough. You had someone sitting across from you being like, I think I'm a gay

00:49:45.360 Christian. Is that okay? That's hard. That is hard when you were dealing with an image bearer of God,

00:49:49.440 not just an abstract issue. And thank the Lord, I feel like I was hopefully able to do this to

00:49:55.100 be able to say, look, I love you. You're made in God's image. And yes, I believe that it is

00:50:01.980 impossible to actively commit any sexual sin without repentance and be in alignment with

00:50:08.220 Christ and his will, not just for you, also for me. Do you think there's a way with people who

00:50:14.140 identify as transgender to say, I love you. You're made in God's image. I'm not going to lie to you.

00:50:19.420 I'm going to continue to call you by the pronoun that corresponds with your biology because I

00:50:24.060 believe God made that good. I mean, look, if I had a, if I'm in a personal relationship with

00:50:28.720 somebody, you know, we're friends and I'm talking through this, you know, I would talk very frankly

00:50:35.720 and openly about this thing. And, but if I'm in a casual conversation with somebody or I'm

00:50:40.400 interacting with somebody professionally, I'm just, I'm sorry, Allie Beth, I'm just not going

00:50:45.340 to send them an intentional stab of offense and pain when divorced from any larger context

00:50:54.540 of love, concern, care, et cetera.

00:50:57.280 You know, one of the things that I grew up with, I grew up in a very fundamentalist church

00:51:01.140 background where it was just constantly my way or the highway.

00:51:04.780 And I am very used to this sort of argument that when you're talking about kindness, well,

00:51:08.820 my truth is kind.

00:51:10.580 If what I'm saying is true, then it is by definition kind.

00:51:15.340 And that's just not the case at all.

00:51:17.360 No, I don't believe that.

00:51:19.280 But I definitely don't believe lying and affirming a sin.

00:51:23.020 And you're saying that you're not using pronouns at all,

00:51:25.060 but pronoun politeness.

00:51:27.220 I don't think that's kind of either.

00:51:28.420 But I'm not lying and I'm not affirming a sin.

00:51:30.820 So you're having a conversation with a different person.

00:51:33.760 I'm not lying, I'm not affirming a sin.

00:51:36.460 What I'm doing is in circumstances

00:51:38.580 where I'm dealing with colleagues, with friends,

00:51:42.000 I am absolutely,

00:51:42.920 and this doesn't just apply to pronouns,

00:51:45.860 this just applies to a lot of things.

00:51:47.860 I am not going to engage absent very compelling reasons

00:51:51.440 in speech that they find to be hurtful

00:51:54.540 and do it, especially do it intentionally.

00:51:58.340 I'm just, that is not the way I interact with people.

00:52:00.900 I try to, you know, I believe Galatians 5,

00:52:04.660 through the Spirit, kindness, peace, patience,

00:52:06.580 gentleness, self-control, all of these things

00:52:09.080 against which there is no law.

00:52:10.400 I want, when I'm in communication with people, I really want them to take away, even when I'm

00:52:16.000 talking about tough things, tough things, I want them to take away from it, that this was an

00:52:21.880 interchange where there was kindness, there was self-control, there was patience, all of these

00:52:27.820 things. And if I'm sort of doing this, and I feel like one of the things that's happened in this

00:52:32.040 whole pronoun conversation is the world creates, the Christian world creates these litmus tests 0.84

00:52:39.180 to say, who's really bold? 0.89

00:52:41.060 Who's really bold?

00:52:43.420 Well, boldness isn't one of the fruit of the spirit, right?

00:52:47.780 And so if my boldness collides with my obligations

00:52:51.740 to treat people with kindness, patience,

00:52:53.680 gentleness, et cetera,

00:52:55.300 then my boldness needs to maybe take a half step back.

00:53:00.260 And, you know, it's funny.

00:53:01.280 I think where we disagree is equating kindness

00:53:03.920 with not using someone's biological pronoun

00:53:08.860 and equating using someone's biological pronoun with stabbing them with, I think you said like

00:53:14.280 a knife of offense. I don't think it has to be that way. I think you might think I'm conflating

00:53:19.520 with what you're saying with lying and you're conflating what I'm saying with being like

00:53:24.280 going up to someone who thinks they're a woman and saying, Hey dude, you're a man. I'm not saying

00:53:28.200 that. I am saying that if it comes down to it, I'm not going to avoid telling the truth.

00:53:34.280 that might be putting my hand on their arm and saying, look, I know this is hard, but let me

00:53:40.040 tell you my convictions. And if that offends you, I totally get it. But I can't lie to you. And I

00:53:45.540 can't avoid saying what is true. And so you're not saying that you're purposely lying. I'm not

00:53:51.840 saying that you should be purposely mean. I think that we shouldn't purposely avoid using pronouns

00:53:56.600 that correspond to someone's sex. You think that you should for the sake of politeness and kindness.

00:54:02.180 So I think that I, did I accurately summarize your position?

00:54:05.920 I think that's roughly correct.

00:54:07.780 Yeah.

00:54:08.000 Okay.

00:54:08.220 Yeah.

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00:55:08.860 In 2024, you said that you were voting for Kamala Harris. Besides just being the alternative to

00:55:14.620 Trump, like what is the positive case for a conservative voting for Kamala?

00:55:18.500 Oh, yeah. So number one, definitely more traditionally conservative on foreign policy,

00:55:24.220 for example, which is very, very, very important to me. If you go back and you look at 100 years

00:55:29.560 from now, what are historians going to be looking at at this point in life? And 100 years from now,

00:55:34.620 one thing that we know they're going to be talking about is the Ukraine war. 100 years from now,

00:55:39.040 if the NATO alliance breaks up, we know they would be talking about the breakup of the NATO

00:55:44.980 alliance. This would be a massive, the loss of the Ukraine war, the breakup of the NATO alliance,

00:55:50.440 we're talking a massive world historic, in my view, catastrophe. And so when I was looking at

00:55:57.220 these two candidates, especially in the world of foreign policy, I absolutely saw more of what

00:56:04.280 you would recognize as traditional conservatism in the Kamala Harris foreign policy, which was

00:56:10.480 supporting Ukraine, continuing to provide aid to Ukraine, continuing to support NATO. This was one

00:56:15.860 of the single most important issues for me. Now, number two, number two, I thought it was incredibly

00:56:21.360 important to hold Donald Trump accountable for January 6th. I think that it was a pivotal moment

00:56:27.780 in American history that we had a president who engineered an attempt to overturn an American

00:56:33.120 election. There was a violent riot that stormed the Capitol on January 6th. And we knew that if

00:56:40.380 Trump won, he was going to pardon those people and there was going to be no accountability.

00:56:44.420 I looked at this as an important event in American history where there had to be accountability for

00:56:49.000 criminal wrongdoing in the office of the presidency.

00:56:51.560 And I was not gonna get accountability

00:56:53.400 for criminal wrongdoing if Donald Trump won,

00:56:55.600 because he would just do exactly what he did.

00:56:57.440 He had the cases dropped.

00:56:58.660 He pardoned all of the people,

00:57:00.020 including the violent criminals on January 6th.

00:57:03.340 And so to me, it was very important.

00:57:05.760 The supreme law of the land,

00:57:07.920 the ruler in the land is the constitution.

00:57:10.820 It's not a person, it's the constitution.

00:57:13.120 And so when you have a person who so directly

00:57:16.380 contradicted and attempted to usurp

00:57:18.580 the American constitutional system,

00:57:20.720 I believed it was of paramount importance as a conservative

00:57:25.420 for the rule of law to be applied

00:57:27.400 to even the president of the United States.

00:57:29.280 If we have anybody, any person in America

00:57:31.900 who the rule of law does not apply to,

00:57:34.120 that's outside the constitutional structure.

00:57:36.120 So right there, we have strong support

00:57:38.860 for international alliances, strong support for our ally

00:57:41.880 in a confrontation against Russia,

00:57:44.160 strong, much more support for the rule of law and applied to Donald Trump after January 6th.

00:57:49.240 Do you think that Kamala Harris, because I do, I hear you about some of these things about Donald

00:57:53.700 Trump, but you know, I have friends that I really respect. I certainly would never take away their

00:57:57.220 conservative bona fides because they don't like Donald Trump or didn't vote for Donald Trump.

00:58:00.740 I got a hard time with you who I believe that you care about abortion. I believe that you care about

00:58:07.660 the Constitution, that you've defended the First Amendment. And I'm very thankful for that.

00:58:11.720 with making a case, a positive case for Kamala Harris that, you know, as we were talking about

00:58:18.260 off camera, had a years long campaign against David Daleiden, the pro-life activist who,

00:58:24.260 when she was state AG, I mean, she went after these pro-life pregnancy centers,

00:58:28.500 violated their First Amendment rights by trying to force them to advertise for abortion when she 1.00

00:58:33.300 was the state AG. She has partnered with Planned Parenthood under the Biden administration

00:58:37.800 with the DOJ to go after pro-life activists and track their movements and track their travel.

00:58:44.220 That's the new report by the DOJ. I'm like, I don't know if it was me. It's probably Lila Rose,

00:58:48.220 probably a lot of other people. That was before the Biden-Harris DOJ arrested, charged,

00:58:55.220 sentenced these pro-lifers, grandfathers, grandmothers, to double the time on average

00:59:01.440 that they sentenced the pro-abortion terrorist Jane's revenge. And so it's hard for me to

00:59:07.000 square that. I hear what you're saying about Donald Trump, and I don't know that I completely

00:59:10.420 disagree with you. But Kamala Harris is no friend to the Constitution. She's no friend to unborn

00:59:15.820 babies. She's no friend to gender-deceived kids. So let's talk about abortion for a second. 1.00

00:59:21.720 It's hard for me to justify that. So let's talk about abortion for a second,

00:59:24.820 because I talked about that. I began my piece about that, saying I'm pro-life. I would vote

00:59:29.160 for the Florida six-week abortion ban that was up for a very, very important vote, which, 0.79

00:59:34.800 thank the lord it narrowly survived the six-week abortion ban and i think it's about the only

00:59:39.520 significant electoral victory for the pro-life movement since dobbs and i'm furious at the

00:59:46.800 republican party and i definitely wanted to punish them and i'm furious at the republican party

00:59:51.460 because what it did in service of donald trump was it took out the pro-life plank in the republican

00:59:57.020 party platform there's no more call for the human life amendment it's now a functionally pro-choice

01:00:01.740 platform by state. But I'm livid about that, too, and I talked about that, and I would never vote

01:00:06.200 for Kamala Harris. And you lived in a red state during this time, and so you know that electorally

01:00:10.600 your vote was not contributing to her victory and wouldn't really, in practicality, hold Donald

01:00:15.220 Trump accountable. So it was so important to your conscience to vote for the, I think, rabidly more

01:00:21.280 pro-abortion candidate in Kamala Harris, and that's hard for me to square. And also my problem,

01:00:26.640 Malibeth, is I'm looking at a world where under that dude, abortions went up. For 40 years before.

01:00:34.280 But for lots of reasons, as we've already talked about.

01:00:36.620 Yes, but see.

01:00:37.540 That he is not the monocausal reason in your words.

01:00:39.240 It's not monocausal, but he's part of it. I believe he's part of it.

01:00:42.640 What did he do that caused abortions to rise?

01:00:45.800 What I'm saying is, as I said earlier, this is a man who contributed to an extraordinary,

01:00:51.560 extraordinary growth in libertinism, especially on the right.

01:00:54.880 Do we have data that shows us that it's more people on the right that we're getting abortions under Donald Trump?

01:01:00.220 It's the whole—I don't—we don't have data.

01:01:02.340 Okay, so tell me what you can prove that Donald Trump contributed to the rise in abortions.

01:01:06.480 If you have 40 years of uninterrupted decline in abortion, 40 years, and then you have an increase in abortion in 2017, and you have an increase in abortion—

01:01:16.280 And you don't think it has anything to do with the president who was in office eight years before that?

01:01:20.780 Well, the president was office eight years before that. He had 330,000 fewer abortions.

01:01:25.620 But you don't think that his policy or his advocacy had any contribution to the increase in abortion?

01:01:33.760 I'm just looking for, like, is that just a theory that you have?

01:01:37.720 I think his policies contributed to the decrease in abortion.

01:01:40.860 And do you? OK, well, I'm interested in which policies specifically, but which policies for Trump contributed to the increase in abortion under Trump?

01:01:48.940 In 2017, he had just become president.

01:01:51.460 I think it's the cultural effect of Donald Trump.

01:01:53.660 Okay, so you think the cultural effect of Donald Trump made MAGA more libertine, which I wouldn't necessarily disagree on that.

01:02:00.020 For me, I see it more in the endorsement of gay marriage and all of that kind of stuff, which I'm adamantly against.

01:02:04.940 Do you have any data that shows that it's MAGA that was getting more abortions? 0.51

01:02:08.060 Because that's the only way your argument makes sense to me.

01:02:10.100 So I think that what you're talking about is Donald Trump is reflecting a, because it's not just, it's not just evangelicals, obviously, who voted for Donald Trump.

01:02:19.180 A lot of what Donald Trump did was bring in a new coalition.

01:02:22.100 You're familiar with this term barstool conservatives, for example.

01:02:25.960 Which I'm not a part of, of course.

01:02:27.560 Yeah, what we've seen is a growth in the right, and what we've seen is a growth in the right of this very libertine UFC slash barstool culture of sexual, I mean, the, gosh, Allie Beth, go to, when you go to CPAC now, I've seen fraternity parties that are more restrained and circumspect than like CPAC now.

01:02:54.900 Well, I don't go to CPAC.

01:02:55.960 It's so it's unbelievable. And I agree with you. Like, I'm on board. It's lonely out there. OK,

01:03:01.540 being like a conservative who votes for Donald Trump, because I disagree with you. I think that

01:03:06.240 he is the lesser. You think I think Kamala Harris is the lesser of two evils. I think Donald Trump 0.63

01:03:11.200 is the better alternative. I still stand by that. But I agree with you on libertinism and all of

01:03:16.560 that. Your argument, I think what I'm hearing is voting for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump is that

01:03:23.340 abortions went up Donald Trump, but under Donald Trump. That's one of the reasons, maybe.

01:03:27.880 No, no, no. Wait, let me finish. So one of my problems is, is I saw a Republican Party that

01:03:33.180 had become more pro-choice than I imagined it would become. Effectively pro-choice. We've now

01:03:39.040 had this, you know, Robert F. Kennedy's department has, you know, permitted the generic abortion

01:03:48.620 pill, for example. We have seen, you know, explosion of support, for example, for IVF

01:03:54.060 and parts of the Republican Party. We have seen a lot of these things that have happened

01:03:58.940 that are dramatically, in my view, dramatically negative. Also, at the same time, we have seen

01:04:05.800 abortions go up. Now, that's a super complicated factor. If I'm looking at a situation where in 40

01:04:11.120 years, I've seen abortions go down, and now they go up, and then the same president under whom they

01:04:17.760 went up is has watered down the abortion plank that same president is talking about nominating

01:04:24.680 a robert f kennedy jr who's a radical pro-choicer i think the difference between kamala and donald

01:04:30.280 trump here is very very very little and then as a and then i if there's no real and i saw them as

01:04:37.940 very little difference and then you have a uh where the results sort of speak for themselves

01:04:44.160 on the trend in abortions.

01:04:45.960 And then you have the Republican Party

01:04:48.300 departing so dramatically

01:04:50.380 from its historical moral commitments.

01:04:53.220 And I'm gonna vote for the,

01:04:54.920 I had two motivations in supporting Kamala Harris. 1.00

01:04:57.960 One, she had multiple policies 1.00

01:05:00.520 that I felt were much more in line with- 0.88

01:05:02.960 Foreign policy-wise.

01:05:03.520 Foreign policy, rule of law, et cetera.

01:05:06.820 Much more in line.

01:05:07.440 But you knew from her history 1.00

01:05:08.620 what rule of law looks like. 1.00

01:05:10.160 It means targeting pro-lifers,

01:05:11.760 the very pro-lifers that you have defended in court

01:05:14.000 Kamala Harris would go after.

01:05:16.220 She did.

01:05:17.080 I mean, under the Biden administration, she did.

01:05:19.020 As AG of California, she did.

01:05:20.940 Like her history is lawfare against pro-lifers.

01:05:24.480 So when you say the rule of law, 1.00

01:05:25.940 are you only talking about J6ers? 1.00

01:05:27.940 No, I'm talking about- 1.00

01:05:28.920 Because were these pro-lifers-

01:05:29.700 I mean, my goodness.

01:05:30.180 The Trump administration, pardon, praise God.

01:05:32.380 What on earth is happening

01:05:34.720 to the Department of Justice right now?

01:05:37.000 What we are seeing is the total-

01:05:38.940 Oh, they're doing some really good things,

01:05:40.280 like using the FACE Act to go after Jane's revenge.

01:05:43.500 That's a really good thing.

01:05:44.880 And to make sure that those people are being charged and sentenced.

01:05:47.580 Compared to the corruption of the justice system right now under the Trump Department

01:05:54.360 of Justice, it is stunning.

01:05:56.720 Right now, we're beginning to see the DOJ is lying and defying quarters to such an extent

01:06:01.960 that is, for the first time in my lifetime, is losing something called the presumption

01:06:05.540 of regularity, where federal judges can count on the honesty of the Department of Justice.

01:06:11.760 We're seeing essentially pardons for sale at a scale that is mind-boggling.

01:06:16.720 We're seeing a dramatic drop in prosecution of public corruption and white-collar crimes.

01:06:22.760 We are seeing a situation where the DOJ is firing people for doing their jobs.

01:06:28.440 If they were involved in the January 6th investigations, et cetera, they're being fired for doing their jobs.

01:06:33.560 What is happening to the Department of Justice is a catastrophe.

01:06:37.300 And so, yeah, there were a lot of things about Kamala Harris.

01:06:40.420 In normal circumstances, that is not somebody that I would consider voting for.

01:06:45.200 But against this particular president who had both transformed the Republican Party in a way that I find to be just morally abhorrent, and then the migration of Democrats to be stronger against Russia than the Republican Party, to be stronger on public corruption than the Republican Party, in my view, they were moving towards me in some pretty important ways.

01:07:08.660 And the Republican Party has been sprinting away from my conservatism, just sprinting away. Fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, national security conservatism. I was talking to somebody the other day.

01:07:20.040 I understand these frustrations. I don't understand voting for someone like Kamala Harris. I remember this just absolutely evil story that I think that you would agree is evil, that under the Biden-Harris administration, that they had used the USDA to take snap breakfast and lunches away from poor schools that didn't abide by the rewrite of Title IX.

01:07:39.240 So if a public school that took these funds for poor students that maybe didn't get meals at home, if they did not allow boys on girls sports teams or girls or boys in girls bathrooms, those poor kids, those kids like wouldn't get food anymore for that.

01:07:55.620 And like we can talk about is SNAP overfunded.

01:07:58.820 Like I'm open to conversations about welfare reform, but for that reason, and I mean, they

01:08:03.860 were so pro-trans, they had guidance.

01:08:05.660 I mean, talk about, okay, where you can talk about like who is the head of our health department.

01:08:09.380 Think about who was the head of the health department under Biden, who is a man who

01:08:13.080 identified as a woman who put guidance out for puberty blockers for kids.

01:08:17.100 And again, when it comes to abortion, Kamala Harris, all nine months without any punishment

01:08:23.240 or any regulation whatsoever. 0.98

01:08:24.680 She even promised to pass federal law,

01:08:26.620 if Congress was with her,

01:08:28.140 to legalize abortion through,

01:08:30.800 I assume through all nine months,

01:08:32.460 maybe it was 24 weeks across the country.

01:08:35.860 So I agree with you on so many of these issues.

01:08:38.600 I want the Republican Party and Donald Trump

01:08:41.360 to be more conservative, more pro-family,

01:08:43.660 not against taxpayer-funded IVF,

01:08:45.820 anti-abortion and all of these things.

01:08:47.240 I think I'm identifying some of our differences here.

01:08:49.140 I just don't think I could ever vote for Kamala Harris.

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01:09:46.860 I think I'm identifying some of our differences, and one of the key differences is in how do we

01:09:55.480 prioritize different policies. So we've talked a lot about trans issues, and we've spent a lot

01:10:02.100 of time, for example, talking about pronouns. Those are big ones for me, for sure, because

01:10:05.200 they're creation order issues. And so Genesis 1 issues, when it comes to policy, are important

01:10:10.400 to me. I would place a war in which a million people are being killed and injured, which could

01:10:18.480 potentially lead to a World War III that we may not survive as a species in an intact way. I'm

01:10:25.900 putting this way above things like pronouns. I'm sorry. It's just they're not even in the same

01:10:31.560 universe. Hang on. I just gave you, I assented to, okay, yeah, that's a really big deal. You

01:10:36.840 diminished what I'm talking about into pronouns, but that's not what I'm talking about. You know,

01:10:43.040 I'm not just talking about pronouns. I didn't say anything about Biden forcing pronouns.

01:10:46.680 I'm talking about medical guidance for hospitals to chemically castrate kids. I am talking about

01:10:52.080 in Democrat states, I don't know where Biden or Harris stood on this, but taking kids out of the 0.99

01:10:56.620 custody of their parents because the kids won't, or the parents won't affirm this newfound gender

01:11:01.080 of the child. I'm talking about Democrat-run states. I don't think that Kamala Harris was

01:11:04.860 advocating that. And I just said that. I just caveated that. But that's the kind of thing that

01:11:08.520 I'm talking about when I say that I care about transgenderism. I'm not just talking about

01:11:13.080 pronouns. That's a personal thing that you diminished my stance on that to that. And I

01:11:17.240 don't think that's fair. I mean, we spend a lot of time just talking about pronouns.

01:11:20.720 But we were talking about it in the context of an election, were we? In the context of Kamala

01:11:26.060 Harris. So the question I, the issue that I have is that we have, and I see this all the time.

01:11:32.040 what was it, Al Mohler, after Trump did something just unbelievably absurd. He goes, well, at least

01:11:37.220 he knows what a woman is. It always, it seems to come back to this trans issue again and again and 0.87

01:11:42.560 again, almost no matter what else we talk about. And I disagree with my Democratic friends on a

01:11:47.880 number of fronts on trans issues. For example, biological male participation in female sports,

01:11:53.480 youth gender, medical youth gender transition. I agree with them on protecting against employment 0.88

01:11:59.140 discrimination and secular employment. I think that I agree with them on as very famously people

01:12:04.560 got very upset at me at saying that, for example, drag queens have the same free speech rights as

01:12:08.740 anybody else. So I have agreement and I have disagreement on these issues. But what stumps 0.97

01:12:14.600 me, what puzzles me is the extent to which so many people in this moment, when we're looking at

01:12:22.640 the crumbling of our separation of powers, our constitutional structure, we're looking at the

01:12:27.720 potential crumbling of the most important military alliances, that we're looking at the crumbling

01:12:31.980 of the credibility of the Department of Justice, when we're looking at large-scale public corruption

01:12:37.260 in the Trump administration, that the final thing to say is, well, at least, you know, and we're

01:12:42.400 looking at the Trump administration being, in many ways, I don't know much how different they'd be

01:12:46.960 than a Harris administration right now in abortion. And we're looking at that. And then at the end of

01:12:51.420 the day, we're going, well, I still can't understand why you would support this other side

01:12:56.220 because of the trans issue these are things that are i just don't have the same priority

01:13:01.760 of on on that issue especially given the way in which the federal government is not in total

01:13:09.840 control and the president is not in total control of these issues and the way that a president is

01:13:14.020 and as we have seen extraordinarily extraordinary control of foreign policy including starting an

01:13:18.820 illegal war without going to congress that is you know again you know when i'm talking when i was

01:13:25.720 talking about voting for Kamala Harris, the number of people who gang tackled me to say,

01:13:30.820 warmonger, we're going to go war with Iran if you do this. And then here we have a war with Iran.

01:13:36.620 And look, I think the Iranian regime is loathsome, but we just launched a war in a dramatically 0.96

01:13:43.920 unconstitutional and lawful way. And that is extraordinarily significant. And it's so weird 1.00

01:13:49.840 to me, Allie Beth. I get it. I wrote in my piece about voting for Kamala Harris. I said, look,

01:13:57.960 people will disagree with me who I really respect. They'll absolutely disagree with me.

01:14:03.360 And I understand that family members, people, I absolutely, but what blows my mind is the idea

01:14:10.440 that in the face of everything that I just said, people will say that the choice that I made or

01:14:14.460 other Christians made to support Kamala Harris means they're not Christian. I don't think you

01:14:18.540 would say that. But the choice to vote for a Democrat in these circumstances, when the

01:14:23.480 alternative, and we haven't even gotten into Trump's, I mean, I'm learning, Allie Beth,

01:14:28.440 I'm far more conservative than lots of my evangelical friends. I'm much less permissive

01:14:32.540 regarding adultery and pornography than they are. It's, you know, I'm old enough to remember 1998

01:14:37.940 and Bill Clinton, and I'm old enough to remember the statement said, tolerance of serious wrongs

01:14:43.560 by leaders, sears the conscience of a culture, leads to unrestrained lawlessness, and surely

01:14:48.480 will result in God's judgment.

01:14:49.980 That's what we, the evangelical church, said in 1998.

01:14:53.700 And you just feel like we need to be saying that now.

01:14:56.580 On the issue of gender, I do think things like Title IX do matter.

01:15:00.800 I think that how that's rewritten—and look, Gorsuch was part of the Bostock case, and

01:15:05.400 I understand all of that, and he was appointed by Donald Trump.

01:15:08.000 So I don't think that Supreme Court nominees and appointees are everything.

01:15:12.060 But I do think as a man of religious liberty, like you could agree that the current makeup that we have of the Supreme Court is really good for religious liberty.

01:15:19.940 It's been pretty good for life.

01:15:21.720 It's been pretty good on the issues that I believe you still care about.

01:15:25.120 We do have to give Donald Trump some credit for those things.

01:15:27.560 I do believe also that being able to define reality, whether or not Donald Trump can always see that, I think he's actually been like sometimes a little weird about the question, like what a woman, she, her and all of that.

01:15:39.200 But the people around him absolutely do.

01:15:42.060 I really care about that. I really care about them getting rid of the people in the DOJ. And

01:15:47.260 we can talk about the other issues that you think that we have another time, but getting rid of the

01:15:51.420 people who were tracking the movements of pro-life activists along with Planned Parenthood and

01:15:56.000 feminist movements. Like talk about the rule of law. It's again, I strongly, like with your history

01:16:02.080 of defending the first amendment, it again, Kamala Harris with her history of just lawfare

01:16:07.200 and hatred against pro-lifers, you know, pro-lifers that you've defended, that's tough.

01:16:12.560 Okay, I really want to respect your time, and I think that I gave you a fair hearing

01:16:17.220 in describing your case for Kamala Harris.

01:16:19.720 So I just want to, last question.

01:16:21.660 So you wrote an article for The New York Times claiming that James Tallarico,

01:16:25.340 state representative, he is running for Senate,

01:16:27.880 is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian.

01:16:33.760 Now, this is someone who said this summer after the Dobbs decision was decided, Tallarico said more than half of our population became second class citizens, talking about women, every one of our neighbors with a uterus became the property of the state and nothing is more unchristian.

01:16:49.100 He says our trans community needs abortion care too.

01:16:53.640 He says there are certain interpretations of certain passages from the Torah that give instructions for an abortion.

01:16:59.000 And then he also says, God is non-binary, trans children are God's children made in God's own image.

01:17:05.080 So when you say Tallarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians who acts like a Christian, what do you mean? 0.55

01:17:09.900 Yeah.

01:17:10.300 So in the article, I said there's two ways to sort of think about a progressive Christian.

01:17:15.900 One is on policy, and progressive Christians and conservative Christians have disagreed on policy forever.

01:17:21.860 I have been arguing with Christian friends of mine about abortion, more left-leaning Christian friends of mine about abortion my whole life.

01:17:28.740 I've been arguing with more left-leaning Christian friends of mine about trans issues ever since trans issues have become part of the national conversation.

01:17:36.840 Absolutely. 0.91

01:17:37.900 So to me, it's not interesting.

01:17:39.540 It's not necessarily interesting that he's a left-leaning progressive Christian on policy.

01:17:45.500 And as I said, that's not interesting to me.

01:17:48.060 But what is interesting to me about him is the way in which he interacts with his opponents and the way with which he interacts in the public square.

01:17:56.760 And what we have seen, and one thing that is ripping this country to shreds, is our country was built from the ground up to accommodate disagreement.

01:18:06.580 One way to think about the American Constitution is it's really a kind of an elaborate dispute resolution mechanism.

01:18:12.220 It's how we channel all of the fights that used to lead to war.

01:18:16.840 How do we channel it into a political process that still leaves us with a united nation?

01:18:21.500 And the First Amendment, for example, is absolutely critical in all of that. 1.00

01:18:25.240 But, and so I'm very used to Christians 0.95

01:18:27.620 disagreeing with me on political matters. 0.99

01:18:30.020 What I'm not nearly as used to,

01:18:32.320 and what I think really is threatening

01:18:34.020 the fabric of our country,

01:18:36.320 is it's a very different thing to disagree on substance

01:18:38.880 and then to turn around and be cruel to another human being,

01:18:42.220 to be vicious, to be cruel to another human being

01:18:45.120 because you disagree and you dehumanize them

01:18:47.660 and you hate them because of your disagreement.

01:18:49.860 And we have a massive problem with that in this country.

01:18:52.380 And one thing that I liked about the Democratic primary was you had a really interesting confrontation there, and you also have it on the Republican side that's coming up with a runoff.

01:19:02.000 And the confrontation was you had two progressive politicians, one of them who made her name being vicious and cruel to her political opponents, and another one who was making his name by reaching out and trying to extend an open hand, even though he's much more progressive than I am.

01:19:16.980 and his kindness towards opponents, his openness towards opponents, and that I saw, to me, 0.60

01:19:23.780 that's acting like a Christian. And when you look at the kindness and the openness to people,

01:19:29.120 that is acting like a Christian, even though I strongly disagree on policy. With Jasmine Crockett,

01:19:34.980 what I was seeing there was, not only do I disagree on policy, but I also think she's 1.00

01:19:39.260 just cruel to people. So you go to Cornyn and Paxton, both of them are very conservative men.

01:19:46.800 One of them, however, is a serial adulterer. 0.98

01:19:49.760 One of them is remarkably corrupt. 0.98

01:19:52.360 One of them is incredibly cruel to his political opponents.

01:19:55.000 One of them tried to overturn a lawful election.

01:19:58.600 And so I don't look at these people as balls of policy only.

01:20:03.940 I see them as both possessing a set of policy positions and possessing a character and temperament

01:20:09.720 in the way they interact with their fellow man.

01:20:12.120 And in Tallarico, I saw somebody who was interacting with his fellow man in a way that was kinder and more Christian than the way I've seen many cruel Christian politicians relate to their fellow man.

01:20:24.020 And I will tell you this, you know, also it's very important to know part of this column was just pure analysis.

01:20:31.740 Why do so many people email me?

01:20:35.220 And I put it right at the beginning, like I get more questions about James Tallarico than anybody not named Donald Trump.

01:20:41.300 like on my inbox.

01:20:42.360 What do you think?

01:20:43.040 What do you think?

01:20:43.680 What do you think?

01:20:44.700 And I'll tell you the reason why.

01:20:45.940 They like his kindness.

01:20:48.100 They like the way he reaches out.

01:20:50.740 And I'm telling you that this moment,

01:20:53.920 we're moving towards a moment

01:20:55.480 where I believe this strongly.

01:20:57.400 We're moving towards a moment

01:20:58.360 where people are going to be reacting against cruelty

01:21:00.620 after this age,

01:21:02.260 and they're gonna be moving more

01:21:03.900 towards civility and decency.

01:21:05.920 And if Paxton beats Cornyn,

01:21:09.220 one thing that's gonna be very sad for me

01:21:11.180 is to watch a lot of Christians then sort of come out there and say, well, Christians can only

01:21:15.500 support Paxton. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm literally, you know, I get it from the

01:21:23.380 standpoint of kind of MAGA radicalism. You don't get it from the standpoint of policy?

01:21:29.300 No, no, I'm talking about in the primary. Are we really, is in the state of Texas, guys,

01:21:35.780 Is it really the case that whatever minor sins Cornyn has committed against conservatism, it's worth kicking him to the curb for an election denying adulterer corrupt man who was impeached by a Republican controlled house?

01:21:49.380 What?

01:21:50.300 I think that's a more like interesting argument and one that I would kind of understand from a conservative.

01:21:55.820 Yeah, I got a I got a hard time with even just saying, you know, his polite Tallarica's polite disposition is more like a Christian.

01:22:03.620 Yeah, he's a politician. And it might be genuine, but this is his strategy. We've seen a lot of

01:22:08.820 nice politicians from both sides of the aisle for a long time. And honestly, he probably thought

01:22:13.240 he's a good foil to Jasmine Crockett, who is kind of out there. I don't know if you could say that

01:22:18.280 someone who uses Christianity—I would say this about the right or the left, by the way—who uses

01:22:23.960 God to justify abortion, uses God to justify something like transing kids, who uses God in 0.94

01:22:31.160 such a blasphemous way. I think we agree on blasphemy to say that God is non-binary. I don't 1.00

01:22:36.900 think I could ever say, that's a Christian right there. Now, it might be interesting to say he

01:22:41.740 seems more civil. He seems more polite. I like that. I like his disposition. I like that he's a

01:22:47.420 little bit more polite. And you could say, I don't like Paxton. That's totally fair. But to say that

01:22:53.680 he's more Christian when he's saying these openly blasphemous things, that's a lot. That's a lot. 0.94

01:22:58.820 I was saying he was more Christian in his conduct. 0.61

01:23:01.660 In his politeness, basically.

01:23:02.900 In his conduct, and it's much more than just mere politeness.

01:23:06.660 And I think that it is very important, and this circles back to an issue that I've been

01:23:13.300 really having problems with over the last 10 years. 1.00

01:23:17.260 We're very eager to write people out of Christianity based on their political positions.

01:23:21.960 It's a weird thing to me, and I see this all the time.

01:23:24.520 He can't be a Christian because he's pro-choice.

01:23:27.180 He can't be a Christian. 1.00

01:23:28.320 Not with Calo Rico. 0.98

01:23:28.820 he can't be a christian because it's because he said that he believes that they're like all

01:23:34.400 religions share truth share the central truth i'm just really not willing to say that james

01:23:40.340 tallarico is not a christian i'm just not going to do it and and i you know when i when i look at

01:23:47.340 the the when i look at our political discourse around christianity in this country and political

01:23:52.260 christianity it's so broken because here's what we're doing what we're constantly doing is we're

01:23:58.000 writing people out of Christianity based on policy positions.

01:24:02.020 Or biblical positions.

01:24:03.460 They're not policy positions to say God is non-binary.

01:24:06.500 That's not a policy.

01:24:07.900 Or to say our trans neighbors need abortion care too,

01:24:11.260 or to say that I think all religions share the same central truth.

01:24:15.120 That's not a policy position.

01:24:16.600 That's a theological—

01:24:17.120 Well, some of those were policy and some of them are not.

01:24:18.840 Well, not really. 0.97

01:24:19.540 Is God is non-binary?

01:24:20.560 I don't think he—

01:24:21.240 Well, the abortion policy you're talking about. 0.95

01:24:23.100 Yeah, but those are theological issues first, I think you would agree,

01:24:26.180 before they're policy issues.

01:24:27.280 So that's what I have contention with.

01:24:29.580 It's not only the policy. 0.88

01:24:30.940 When I'm talking about whether or not he's a Christian, which I don't know if I've made

01:24:33.760 that strong statement or not, but I'm talking about what do you believe about Jesus?

01:24:37.740 What do you believe about God's authority?

01:24:39.420 How do you define these things?

01:24:40.760 Can you even affirm Genesis 1?

01:24:42.460 Okay, no.

01:24:43.420 It's going to be tough.

01:24:44.820 Yeah.

01:24:44.980 Well, I'm just not writing these people out of Christianity, and I'm just not doing it. 0.99

01:24:50.040 I think that's fine to say you don't know where they're going to end up without saying

01:24:53.640 they're a great Christian example.

01:24:54.900 Well, the conduct that I was referring to, I do think he's a Christian example. And I think that that's one reason why people are responding to him is because he is so countercultural in this political moment. And this brings me to, I think, a really important point. And this is something that I really want folks to sort of sit with.

01:25:12.640 the Bible says a lot more about how we treat human beings than it says about public policy

01:25:19.860 positions, a lot more. And one of the things that I think is very important in this Christian

01:25:26.800 curriculum, this political curriculum I created with Russell Moore and my friend Curtis Chang,

01:25:31.940 we said, look, you go to Micah 6.8. This is a key verse in the Bible. Anytime that it says,

01:25:36.800 what does the Lord require of you, oh man, what is good? In other words, you really want to listen

01:25:42.200 of this. This is one of these big summary verses. It says to act justly, so you cannot forsake

01:25:47.120 justice. You should pursue your positions that you believe are right and just biblically.

01:25:53.100 But it also says, and to love kindness, so you cannot abandon kindness. And it also says to

01:25:58.220 walk humbly with the Lord your God. And so one of the things that I have seen is an immense amount

01:26:03.940 of cruelty and almost no humility being directed at political opponents, all in the name of justice.

01:26:11.480 And so when you see people who actually seem to walk with some humility and also with some kindness in their pursuit of justice as they see it, and we're going to disagree on a lot of it, but we're also going to agree on a lot of things.

01:26:24.400 Then in that circumstance, I think it's entirely appropriate to say this person's commitment, look, I can't peer inside his soul, Ali, but I can't say that he has pure motives or he has mixed motives or he's just a malign actor who's using politeness for his own ends.

01:26:40.500 But in the bottom line is when I see things like kindness, when I see things like humility in the public square, I think that is something that is we should be really reinforcing.

01:26:50.760 We should be really we're going to be a lot better country if we have, for example, a situation where you have a Republican and a Democrat who disagree on policy, but they're united on kindness and humility.

01:27:01.460 It's going to be a lot, a lot better for our country because right now, hatred is killing us.

01:27:06.940 I disagree. I disagree with someone who denies the basic tenets of Christianity to be, you know, someone who's a Christ-like example. Is there someone on the Republican side that you think reflects that level of Christian civility?

01:27:20.800 Spencer Cox, governor of Utah. Spencer Cox has been phenomenal. I don't know if you followed his disagree better initiative, but he, you know, what he did, and this is what I really appreciate is Spencer Cox is a conservative, but he's also, he is also kind to his political opponents and he sees them as fellow citizens and neighbors to love and not enemies to oppose and hate.

01:27:44.680 And so he's absolutely conservative at the same time he reaches out to people.

01:27:49.500 And there are other Republicans like that as well.

01:27:53.040 He's not the only one.

01:27:54.100 He's one who comes to mind right off the top of my head.

01:27:57.440 But, you know, I think of it, you know, it's funny of people to ask me, because I'm not

01:28:03.540 really as much a political pundit as I am right about law and religion and armed conflict.

01:28:08.640 But people ask me all the time, I mean, what race are you really looking at this midterms? And I said, I'll tell you, it's not even a general election race. It's the primaries in Texas. And if you end up with Cornyn and Tallarico, that's a sign I think American politics are turning a positive corner.

01:28:26.460 You're going to have a conservative who is not corrupt, who is known to be the person of integrity that people across the aisle can interact with, against a progressive who is not corrupt, who's known as being a person of integrity, so far as I know, who can operate with people across the aisle.

01:28:43.100 That is a nature is healing moment.

01:28:44.940 If we ended up, thank the Lord we don't have a Paxton Crockett race, which I think would just be an unmitigated disaster no matter who wins that.

01:28:54.700 I'm really hoping we don't end up

01:28:56.140 with a Paxton-Talerico primary.

01:28:59.200 But if we have a Cornyn, I mean, Paxton-Talerico race,

01:29:02.540 if we have Cornyn and Talerico, 1.00

01:29:03.940 I feel like that's a sign that America,

01:29:06.360 hopefully at least part of America

01:29:07.720 is starting to turn the corner

01:29:09.000 from this sort of worship of power

01:29:12.060 and cruelty in the name of power.

01:29:14.820 Okay.

01:29:15.720 In the spirit of that, let's see.

01:29:18.860 Just a couple of things.

01:29:20.020 And if you want to respond, I'll let you respond

01:29:21.700 or we can just move on.

01:29:22.740 I just wanted to respond to the Micah 6-8, which, of course, is a beautiful verse, an important verse, a verse that all Christians should believe in.

01:29:28.960 We have to define justice and love and mercy and kindness the way God defines these things.

01:29:34.020 And one thing that stands out to me in the abortion conversation, we talked about that very thoroughly, but that I meant to say at the time when you were saying abortions go down, this president, they go up in this president.

01:29:44.460 I think that you would agree that justice is not just about outcomes.

01:29:47.740 outcomes. Justice is not only for unborn children about how many children are slaughtered. We care

01:29:54.220 about that a lot. And there's a lot of things that Christian pro-lifers do non-legislatively

01:29:58.160 to help those women. But it's also about the process of justice and giving them their due.

01:30:04.360 I think you would agree with that. Acknowledging their rights. And when I look at not just the

01:30:09.220 candidates, but the people that they're going to put in place, the people that they're going to

01:30:12.440 appoint, the judges that they're going to appoint, do they recognize the due process of justice for

01:30:19.020 any person, but especially when it comes to that unborn child? For me, it's like, well, Kamala

01:30:23.940 Harris, no way. It's not even her. It's everyone that she's going to appoint, what she did

01:30:28.040 in California, whatever. Donald Trump, more likely. Can you understand that position?

01:30:35.060 Can you understand my position to say, you know, I don't really love everything that Trump does.

01:30:40.300 that's tough for me i think it's more likely that we'll see a better definition of justice when it

01:30:45.760 comes to certain things under trump than under kamala harris oh not only do i understand that

01:30:50.020 position but i wrote to that i understand that position like that that is a i explicitly said

01:30:56.040 that in that very article that i do understand that position and and as i said you know 85 percent

01:31:02.900 of my neighbors voted for trump i think they made a mistake but i love them i you know and i don't

01:31:09.660 disrespect a human being simply because they voted for Donald Trump. Now there are Trump voters I do

01:31:15.200 disrespect, but not just because they voted for Donald Trump. And there are Harris voters I

01:31:19.980 disrespect, but not because they voted for, I mean, obviously not because they voted for Kamala

01:31:24.580 Harris. We can't be using somebody's vote as a shorthand for in total assessment of their

01:31:32.380 character. We just can't do that. I'm never going to say to somebody who says, you know, look,

01:31:38.600 I don't like abortion.

01:31:39.960 I want there to be fewer abortions.

01:31:42.100 I also don't want a corrupt person in the White House.

01:31:45.300 Look, in this really hard decision, what I have seen,

01:31:48.420 if you go back to, I remember an eight-year span

01:31:51.220 when abortions went down by 330,000,

01:31:53.400 and you asked me, are there any policies?

01:31:55.960 And I'm gonna say, yes, there were policies,

01:31:58.180 because one of the things that, to circle back,

01:32:00.960 I'm very big fan as a lawyer,

01:32:03.000 we always do this thing where we start,

01:32:04.900 we talk about what you're gonna say,

01:32:06.640 you're gonna say it, and then you circle back

01:32:08.080 to what you already said, circling back to empathy.

01:32:11.640 One of the interesting things when you really dig down

01:32:14.140 and try to get empathetic with people

01:32:16.540 who are facing this issue is you realize

01:32:19.400 that financial and healthcare insecurity

01:32:21.800 contribute greatly to an abortion decision.

01:32:25.520 They really do.

01:32:26.460 And so if you can address financial insecurity

01:32:29.000 and healthcare insecurity,

01:32:30.780 you're gonna actually decrease abortions.

01:32:33.220 I remember when Mitt Romney proposed his child allowance, which would begin prenatally.

01:32:41.320 So it would begin before you gave birth, you would get about, I think it was like $1,200 a month or something like that.

01:32:46.800 And that would allow you to get a crib and allow you to get the kinds of things you need to get ready for a child.

01:32:52.560 And there was an estimate that that policy alone, that policy alone could perhaps lead to 20,000 to 30,000 fewer abortions.

01:33:00.660 Yeah.

01:33:00.860 And so I'm—

01:33:02.320 I'm being told to rap.

01:33:03.720 Yeah, yeah.

01:33:03.980 I'm being told to rap.

01:33:05.080 Sure, sure, sure.

01:33:05.480 Do you feel like you fairly were able to articulate and defend that point?

01:33:08.920 Oh, of course.

01:33:09.380 That it's possibly—

01:33:10.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:33:10.820 Yeah, I think just to end on, I think where I would have an issue is that, or maybe where

01:33:17.680 we agree, is that I would love to talk about support for those women.

01:33:22.700 What can we do to reduce abortions without taking justice away from the unborn child?

01:33:26.640 So without advocating for laws that allow us to legally murder babies, because if it's

01:33:31.720 not legal to murder you and me, which I support those laws, I don't want it to be legal to

01:33:35.300 murder babies either.

01:33:36.580 And so I can't justify voting for that in my mind just because they might have other

01:33:42.340 policies that support.

01:33:43.420 That's unjust.

01:33:44.400 That would be against Micah 6-8, M-I-V-O.

01:33:47.740 Can we end on that?

01:33:49.560 Is that okay?

01:33:50.220 It's your podcast.

01:33:51.300 Do you feel like that's fair?

01:33:52.060 I know, but I like to be fair.

01:33:54.380 I want to be fair to you.

01:33:55.820 David, thank you so much.

01:33:57.020 This was an hour and a half of a very,

01:33:59.980 I think, fun conversation, productive conversation.

01:34:02.560 I really appreciate it.

01:34:03.720 No, this was a great conversation.

01:34:05.240 Thanks for having me.

01:34:06.000 Thank you.

01:34:25.480 You

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 17, 2026

Ep 1334 ｜ DEBATE： Allie vs. David French on Trans Pronouns, Empathy & James Talarico

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