Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1347 ｜ Going Soft on Islam？ The Right’s Shifting Views Explained ｜ Jeremy Boreing

00:00:00.560 Jeremy Boring is the former CEO of Daily Wire.

00:00:03.980 After a year of being away, he is back entering straight into the podcast wars, the culture wars.

00:00:09.900 Today we are talking about all of that.

00:00:11.620 In addition to his biggest regrets from his time as CEO,

00:00:16.500 we've got all of this and so much more in today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:30.000 Jeremy, thanks so much for joining us. You don't know this, but I'm having you on for a totally selfish reason. It's not for you at all. It's only for me. And your purpose here today is to make me feel better about the state of the conservative movement and conservative media.

00:00:47.960 I don't know if you're up to the task. I don't know if anyone is, but I've been listening to

00:00:52.700 you. And as I listened to you talk about the problems, there is something underlying that

00:00:57.660 makes me feel like, okay, maybe things are going to be okay. So this is a big question,

00:01:03.220 but can you lay it out for us? Like, how do you see the way things are post Charlie Kirk,

00:01:08.020 especially on the right, in the media, in politics, whatever? And how do we navigate it?

00:01:13.180 where do we go from here, those of us who are on Team Sane?

00:01:16.960 You know, there was a study that came out this week that talks about delusional optimism

00:01:21.000 and how healthy it is. Essentially, it says that realists live much less happy lives and less

00:01:27.820 successful lives, and that people who have a healthy dose of optimism, even if it's delusional

00:01:33.400 optimism, tend to live happier and more successful lives. I think about, you know, when I was a kid

00:01:39.960 in the 90s, you had Oprah Winfrey would put up like vision boards, you know, and talk about

00:01:44.500 manifesting all of your dreams. And of course, on a spiritual level, it's sort of silly and

00:01:49.760 superficial. But it's probably also somewhat effective in a really practical sense, because

00:01:55.080 as it turns out, if you're hopeful about the future, if you articulate your goals, if you

00:02:01.040 point yourself in a direction, you're so much more likely to achieve them. In my career, which has

00:02:06.460 been very entrepreneurial. It's involved a lot of risk-taking, a lot of trying and failing,

00:02:12.380 certainly a lot more failing than succeeding, though a fair amount of succeeding too along the

00:02:16.140 way. I would say that optimism has been like a central component of what's allowed me to take

00:02:22.640 the risks that I've taken in my life. And I think that the Bible calls us to a kind of optimism.

00:02:27.300 You know, the command before sin even enters the world to be fruitful and multiply is fundamentally

00:02:32.940 a command to optimism. It's a command to believe in a future that you don't understand, a future

00:02:37.580 that could be a bad one, and yet you're doing something very hopeful and sowing into that

00:02:43.700 future in both literal ways, but in the most important of ways by bringing children into

00:02:51.040 that world. And so I think, you know, if you go through the entire book of Genesis, it's just God

00:02:55.540 calling people to optimism, lift up now thine eyes, lift up now thine eyes. And I suppose that

00:03:02.180 I try to approach, not always successfully, but I try to approach life that way, and I try to

00:03:07.060 approach our political moment that way, which is to say, to the extent that we're called to

00:03:13.240 operate in the world, to have dominion over the earth, to participate in creation, as I believe

00:03:20.340 man is called to participate in creation, then we're called to have a kind of optimism. It doesn't

00:03:27.660 mean that things will go well. It's not a, you know, yes, delusional optimism might actually

00:03:33.020 help you have a successful life, but one shouldn't be delusional. One should try to have their

00:03:36.760 optimism centered in something real. And ultimately, our faith is not in outcomes that we can

00:03:42.800 control, but our faith is in Christ. And yet, faith as an animating principle is a kind of

00:03:48.700 optimistic hope in things that we can't see. And so, I look at the same information landscape that

00:03:55.360 you look at the enormous losses in the conservative movement in the last 18 months from essentially

00:04:01.420 from the moment the the election was over you know within one week Dennis Prager had his fall

00:04:08.480 then Jordan Peterson encountered his health challenges lesser but incredibly important

00:04:15.320 and powerful figures behind the scenes like David Horowitz left us incredibly powerful and important

00:04:20.700 Non-political figures like John MacArthur left us, and then Charlie's murder. 0.72

00:04:27.180 You know, those are—that's a lot of L's.

00:04:29.620 That's an unbelievable amount of loss for one ideological movement to absorb in such a short amount of time.

00:04:36.500 When you look at the prospects for the midterms are bleak.

00:04:41.180 when you look at the division in Congress that we haven't had a single major, Donald Trump hasn't

00:04:47.720 had a single major legislative accomplishment in the second term because Congress is so

00:04:51.820 dysfunctional. When you look at the fact that the country is run sort of by executive fiat now,

00:04:57.200 that we elect kings once every four years and they declare what the law is going to be in absence of

00:05:04.700 a working legislature. When you look at the changes happening technologically, the AI

00:05:11.180 displacement that we're obviously living through, when you look at the uncertainty in the market,

00:05:16.660 all the problems with Gen Z, incredible challenges ahead of us. And yet, what I know is that if we 1.00

00:05:22.900 don't approach it with hope in the future, well, then our pessimism will be self-fulfilling.

00:05:27.680 If you believe that the future is bad, then the future will be bad. If you believe that we have

00:05:32.980 an active role in creating the future, then you believe, I don't know if the future will be good

00:05:36.860 or bad, but I know it will only be good if we do good things. I know it will only be good if we

00:05:42.140 sow goodness into it. That may not be enough, but it's the one thing we've got, and every other

00:05:48.980 alternative is bound to end in ruin for us. And so, you know, in this black pill moment,

00:05:54.280 I try to be a white pillar. I try to say, well, we can build the future. We can impact the world

00:05:59.700 around us, we can affect change. God's going to do what God does. He can make a determination

00:06:05.980 about how it's all going to end. But for my part, I'm going to be hopeful. And as much as there is

00:06:12.680 to be pessimistic about, there's incredible cause for optimism all around us. It gets drowned out

00:06:19.300 by the podcast wars. But the technological wave that's upon us, as disruptive as it will be,

00:06:28.500 will probably bring about human productivity and expansion of human productivity that we've never

00:06:34.540 witnessed. It may even dwarf the industrial revolution. It will certainly be the

00:06:38.680 greatest change in human productivity that we've ever witnessed. And what that means is an

00:06:43.300 opportunity to see billions more people lifted out of poverty. It means the opportunity to see

00:06:48.060 our worldview promulgated in places that it's never been promulgated before. It means the

00:06:52.440 opportunity to cure disease. It means the opportunity to go on new adventures as a people.

00:06:57.880 So I think that all of those positive opportunities accompany the things that we're worried about, and a lot of it's just where we choose to focus.

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00:08:49.920 for $20 off blazetv.com slash alley code alley um at charlie's memorial were you at charlie's

00:09:01.440 i was not okay there was this just incredible moment the whole the whole day was really amazing

00:09:08.020 but there was this incredible moment when the band started to play and i didn't realize until

00:09:13.020 after it was totally spontaneous they didn't even know that they were going to continue in this

00:09:17.780 instrumental moment. And then I turned around and everyone started raising their signs, again,

00:09:23.400 not orchestrated. And it was a sign with Charlie's face saying, here I am, Lord, send me. And it was

00:09:29.760 this, it was maybe the most tangible experience that I've ever had of just feeling like the weight

00:09:36.400 of the Holy Spirit, like something is happening that is obviously beyond, you know, something

00:09:42.620 that a human can contrive. And in that big of a room with Donald Trump and all of these people

00:09:47.860 who have all these massive theological and political disagreements, everyone kind of felt

00:09:52.360 the same thing in that moment. And I just thought, wow, what is the Lord up to? What is he about to

00:09:56.500 do? This horrible thing happened to our friend, and yet God is clearly bringing something good

00:10:01.820 out of it. I don't know. Maybe it's a massive revival. Maybe it's the great awakening that

00:10:05.680 we've all been wanting. There's unity. You had Stephen Miller and Tucker Carlson and all these

00:10:10.880 crazy people going up there, not crazy people, but all these people who don't typically go in

00:10:16.200 the same category saying things that are like pretty true. And I'm like, okay, maybe we're

00:10:22.120 going to come together as Christians on the right, and maybe we're going to accomplish something

00:10:26.840 great. And that's the redemption that we're going to see from this horrible thing happening.

00:10:31.140 In addition to all the other horrible losses that we had in the year before, like all of that was

00:10:35.760 somehow mysteriously leading up to like this really great spiritual moment, this unifying

00:10:41.480 moment.

00:10:42.560 And I'm not saying that that's entirely untrue now that the Lord hasn't accomplished really

00:10:47.620 good things or that people haven't turned to Christ because I think that they have.

00:10:52.160 But the internet certainly doesn't look that way.

00:10:55.340 And I don't feel that.

00:10:57.740 And I know we can't, we obviously don't base our faith on just what we feel in any given

00:11:02.720 moment. But certainly, even when I look at my audience and when I get online, I'm like, wow,

00:11:09.480 that spirit of thinking that we were about to have this season of incredible unity and shared

00:11:14.100 accomplishment on the right or as Christians or whatever, that so did not happen. I feel like I'm

00:11:18.800 losing people left and right to just a worldview, a conspiratorial worldview, a strangely pro-Islam 0.93

00:11:26.420 worldview that I just would not have even had words to describe before Charlie died.

00:11:31.360 and some it just makes me feel sad like it just makes me feel like i don't know like where where

00:11:38.980 are we where are we headed are we ever going to have that moment that i really thought that we

00:11:44.240 were going to have are we going to have that great revival are people's eyes going to be open are we

00:11:49.100 going to have a moment of unity or are we just going to continue to be completely fractured and

00:11:54.580 the only thing you can do is focus on what god has called you as an individual to do and hope for the

00:11:59.360 best. I don't know if you have the answer to that, and I don't even know if that really makes sense,

00:12:04.480 but it's been very disorienting for me to look at people that I thought, okay, we're my allies

00:12:09.380 over the past few months. Sometimes it feels like I'm on an island, and I don't really know

00:12:14.760 what God is up to or how he's going to redeem the horrible death of our friend.

00:12:19.820 Well, I think that the forces that arrayed themselves against that revival that was

00:12:27.160 obviously trying to happen in the wake of Charlie's death have proven very powerful.

00:12:32.880 And none of us could have seen that coming in the days immediately following that terrible

00:12:39.240 event.

00:12:39.880 You know, like you, I wasn't present for the memorial, but watching the memorial, I certainly

00:12:48.240 thought, you know, this may be the great revival of our time.

00:12:51.880 and perhaps it would have been save a very small group of individuals who made it their mission

00:13:01.720 to blunt whatever that positive spiritual moment promised. And, you know, in its own way,

00:13:13.460 well, that's evidence of God as well. You know, a lot of the evidence of God ends up being negative

00:13:18.180 evidence. God very rarely reveals himself directly, and he very rarely proves himself

00:13:25.840 through positives. He usually proves himself through negatives. And I think that the presence

00:13:30.560 of evil is one of the great arguments on behalf of God. Evil is a thing that we get to experience

00:13:37.920 in the world, and because it exists, we're able to understand what goodness is. And we've seen

00:13:42.820 enormous evil done by people who we know, by people who operate in circles that you and I

00:13:50.080 move in, certainly. But I wonder if we were there at Pentecost. You read back on those events and

00:13:59.400 you see them through the lens of all the history that's happened since. So we live in a largely

00:14:06.760 Christian West, or certainly in the remnants of a Christian West, in which there's billions of

00:14:11.740 people who claim Christ in one form or another without getting into the theology of what might

00:14:16.760 divide us. And it's easy to sort of imagine Pentecost as the beginning of something and

00:14:22.760 then a straight line that can be drawn from there here that's always up and to the right,

00:14:26.480 but it wasn't always up and to the right. You know, Pentecost itself is a very small event

00:14:30.560 compared to the population of the world at the time. You know, they hadn't even gotten to

00:14:34.320 persecution yet. Stephen hadn't been killed yet. The church hadn't been driven out of Jerusalem yet.

00:14:38.840 I've been saying lately of technology, particularly around AI, that when there's technological

00:14:47.020 innovation, the negative impact of new technology tends to front load and the positive impact tends

00:14:53.840 to take time to reveal itself. And so the classic example is the printing press. The printing press

00:14:59.600 comes along and for the first time, really in any major way, we put the Bible in the vernacular

00:15:07.400 and people have access to it who've never had access to it before in the language that they

00:15:11.760 speak. And when they open up the Bible and first read about God's love for man, their very immediate

00:15:19.840 reaction is, let's kill each other over sectarian differences. And we have revolution in Europe for 0.55

00:15:25.340 30 years of Christians killing Christians, right? And you go, well, that's, I don't know, 500 years 0.95

00:15:29.900 later, I'm pretty bullish on the printing press. I'm pretty bullish on the Bible in the vernacular.

00:15:33.740 I think it's done a lot more good than it did ill, but there was a lot of ill front-loaded.

00:15:38.160 And I wonder if that's not only true of technological innovation, but sort of a spiritual awakening too,

00:15:45.560 that there is a kind of spiritual awakening happening in the country right now.

00:15:54.120 But it brings with it a kind of calling out of the forces of opposition to God.

00:16:00.360 And I wonder if we just have to sort of bear those between here and whatever the ultimate positive impact is going to be.

00:16:07.420 And in a way, if that's not the call to faith, because if you could look and see Charlie Kirk is assassinated and we have God in America again, well, then in a way that recommends Charlie Kirk.

00:16:20.300 But God doesn't recommend us.

00:16:21.800 God's in the business of recommending himself.

00:16:23.860 He uses Charlie Kirk.

00:16:25.140 He used Charlie Kirk during his life.

00:16:27.740 He used Charlie Kirk in all of our lives.

00:16:29.620 he's used Charlie Kirk in his death. But ultimately, the glory belongs to God. And

00:16:36.420 so perhaps this is part of how we have to experience that, is that we have to go through

00:16:41.900 a further darkness even after that beautiful moment that we saw begin to be born at Charlie's

00:16:47.820 memorial. Gosh, that is such a good and simple point that, you know, I say this to my audience

00:16:54.220 all the time. I say, God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without a hitch,

00:16:57.720 And that that is not, you know, he's never looking down and wondering, how did that happen? How do I clean this up? How do I make this right? I didn't see that coming. He's never, you know, caught off guard or taken aback. And that's not, you know, that doesn't change based on the election year.

00:17:12.460 But actually, when you're talking, I'm like, I actually kind of have had my mentality kind of wedded to the election cycle that I'm like, I think I did subconsciously think, well, if that revival doesn't happen quickly and it doesn't change the country before the midterms.

00:17:29.720 I wasn't consciously thinking that, but I think subconsciously I'm thinking, OK, everything now needs to fall into place.

00:17:35.960 it needs to change immediately. But even just your simple point about the Pentecost, I mean,

00:17:40.820 gosh, as you said, that was a small event, obviously a very monumental event. But then

00:17:45.860 after that, we had Stephen martyred, we had many persecuted and killed. We had Ananias and Sapphira,

00:17:52.760 I mean, dropped dead because they lied. I can't imagine what the Christians around them at the 1.00

00:17:56.660 time thought of that. Like it was very rocky, very turbulent.

00:18:00.160 I'm glad Peter didn't ask for a show of hands for who else had lied.

00:18:02.480 Yeah, come on. But there's so much. And obviously, that's true. When you look at the history of the church, it's not like Jesus came on the scene and everyone decided, yeah, you're right. I mean, he was crucified. He rose again. He said, take heart. I have overcome the world, which must have been a weird thing for them to hear, going back to your message of optimism, considering that he also said, you're going to be killed. You're going to be dragged into prison. You're going to be persecuted.

00:18:31.400 And that's exactly what happened.

00:18:34.020 And so, yes, the history of the church absolutely reflects that.

00:18:37.280 When you look at the Reformation, when you look at every revival, when you look at every

00:18:40.360 awakening, it's not just one moment happens and then everyone wakes up.

00:18:45.500 It's actually typically that some people wake up and the people who are not awake are really,

00:18:49.800 really angry that other people did.

00:18:52.340 And so you have accomplished what I selfishly set out for you to do at the beginning of

00:18:58.320 the conversation already.

00:18:59.380 you've given me a bigger perspective of the present moment that we're in in light of history

00:19:03.820 and not just in light of the present American political moment and election cycle um I think

00:19:09.500 it's hard to remember on a day-to-day basis when you're on social media and you're looking at the

00:19:14.160 state of things and you're like how are people losing their minds and believing things that

00:19:17.560 just aren't true um but yeah I guess you just can't you can't be inundated with the day-to-day

00:19:25.740 while at the same time like when i look at your podcast you are taking on like the issues of the

00:19:31.500 moment like you're taking on tucker carlson and what they're saying so how do you balance that

00:19:35.860 how do you balance that in your own life trying to remain hopeful and optimistic but you're getting

00:19:40.820 i don't want to say down into the weeds but down into the details of what some of these people are

00:19:45.040 putting forth on their podcast and their arguments without you know i don't know getting muddy

00:19:49.740 yourself? Yeah. Well, imperfectly, you know, certainly when you engage in political warfare,

00:19:56.760 you don't stay completely clean. You know, when you avail yourself of these tools,

00:20:01.920 my attitude doesn't always remain where it should be. My motives don't always remain what they

00:20:08.320 should be. You know, we're all fighting in this battle where you're trying to rightly order a set

00:20:13.280 of sometimes competing priorities.

00:20:15.020 And so, for example, you have temptations

00:20:19.220 that are unique to people in our space.

00:20:21.100 You have to get clicks and you have to be successful.

00:20:24.000 You have to drive revenue in order to pay all the people

00:20:26.680 who make this happen, to pay yourself,

00:20:28.720 to provide for your own family

00:20:31.120 and for the families of the people supporting you.

00:20:33.440 And you want your message out there,

00:20:34.640 which requires people to engage with the things that you say,

00:20:37.420 which require you to sort of fish where the fish are,

00:20:40.620 requires you to avail yourself of all the tools that are necessary in order to make a successful

00:20:45.300 podcast, for example. And yet, if you don't rightly order that alongside other priorities,

00:20:54.180 then it can take you to the dark places that we've seen other people be taken recently with

00:20:59.320 their quest for success in this medium. You know, there are things that you can say that guarantee

00:21:04.480 that your show will grow. There are things that you can do that guarantee that your show will

00:21:07.980 grow. On the internet, the one thing that's true is if you only are pursuing business goals,

00:21:14.640 if your highest priority, not if you're only, that's not fair. If your highest priority in our

00:21:19.340 space is a business goal, you will eventually make pornography. Because the thing that we can do

00:21:25.440 with these lights and these cameras and these microphones that will get the most clicks and

00:21:29.680 make us the most money has already been established. It's not a mystery. We know what it is.

00:21:33.660 If you play to people's worst vices, to their worst instincts, that's where the money's at.

00:21:39.140 So you have to have business goals.

00:21:41.980 There's nothing immoral or wrong about business goals.

00:21:44.600 They have to be ordered, though.

00:21:46.180 And the thing that has to be ordered in the highest priority spot, the goal to which all other goals will be subordinate, is the mission.

00:21:53.120 If the mission is the goal that is preeminent over all of the other goals, then you'll rightly use the tools that are available to us.

00:22:05.520 You'll rightly use the profit motive.

00:22:07.880 You'll rightly use that little bit of narcissism that every person who thinks that they should point a camera at themselves possesses or everybody who thinks that they should, you know.

00:22:16.680 Yeah, Reagan said, like, you have to have a little bit of an ego to run for president.

00:22:20.720 Yeah.

00:22:20.880 You have to have a little bit of an ego to have a podcast.

00:22:23.640 That's right.

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00:23:28.320 So you just have to keep that in check.

00:23:30.400 It has to be subordinate to the mission.

00:23:31.700 For me, the mission is the promulgation of the things that I think are true. 0.90

00:23:36.920 And because they're true, they're also, you know, if we're going to use this sort of Catholic

00:23:40.920 description of the true, the beautiful, and the good, which I find really resonant.

00:23:47.140 You know, true, beautiful, good. Those are the things that I've always wanted to do

00:23:52.480 in my career, in my own unique Jeremy way. It doesn't look exactly like it would look to everyone

00:23:57.140 else all the time. And I don't always rightly order those priorities. I can't say that there's

00:24:02.940 never a time when ego becomes dominant or when desire for material prosperity becomes dominant.

00:24:10.920 I don't think there's ever been a season where those things have been dominant because I've surrounded myself with other people who understood the need to rightly order those competing priorities.

00:24:21.380 And so it's not as though you could say, well, in 2022, all you were thinking about, no, because I had people around me.

00:24:27.960 It's more like moment by moment.

00:24:30.800 Did you make decisions from a place of cynicism?

00:24:33.520 Certainly I've made business decisions from a place of cynicism.

00:24:36.940 Did you make decisions from a place of ego?

00:24:39.260 certainly I've made decisions from a place of ego. But I try to make sure that I'm in a position

00:24:45.180 where as an operating thesis, as my operating premise, the mission remains preeminent over

00:24:52.060 my other priorities. And in this moment, picking these political fights that I've been picking

00:24:56.440 since I've been back from my time in the wilderness and since launching my own podcast,

00:25:01.560 um i've i've tried to only pick those fights that i think are essential for sort of winning the day

00:25:10.200 for my values for winning the day for my central mission and part of that is showing people i felt

00:25:17.240 during the time that i was gone in particular that these forces had sort of ascended in our movement

00:25:22.500 and the average person didn't have good language to answer uh some of some of those new voices that

00:25:31.160 Not that the voices were new, but new sounds they were hearing from those voices.

00:25:35.520 And so I've been trying to give language to it, because I think if you empower the audience with a framework by which they can understand what they're seeing, it helps immunize them against the effect.

00:25:46.860 Watching Tucker, he's an unbelievable communicator.

00:25:50.140 He's far more skilled than I am as a communicator.

00:25:53.160 Candace.

00:25:54.020 Candace has the most it, the most raw star power of any person I've ever personally met.

00:25:59.440 and I've spent my entire life working in one way or another in show business.

00:26:04.380 These are incredibly powerful voices.

00:26:07.700 And so any one of us might listen to Candace talk about Erica Kirk

00:26:12.540 and be swept away by what she's saying because she's incredibly compelling.

00:26:17.920 We might listen to Tucker talk about Israel or Iran or Islam

00:26:22.860 or the myriad things that he's spoken about in the last year

00:26:26.100 and be sort of swept away by the power of his rhetoric.

00:26:30.200 But it's an amazing thing.

00:26:31.520 If you go in knowing what you're about to hear,

00:26:34.280 if you're sensitive to what those techniques are,

00:26:38.040 if you have language that you can apply to those techniques,

00:26:40.160 it really does help immunize you

00:26:41.740 against what otherwise might be persuasive.

00:26:44.440 And that's what I've been endeavoring to give people in this moment

00:26:46.620 is just sort of the tools that they need

00:26:50.400 to process what they're hearing without being swept away by it.

00:26:54.420 I wonder what words you would give to the seeming about face when it comes specifically to Islam that I've seen. At first, I didn't really have words for it. I just thought, okay, that's a weird part of the manosphere. It's like Andrew Tate becoming Muslim. It kind of makes sense. It's like you can spiritualize the fact that you hate women. 0.91

00:27:14.800 And so that makes sense. But now it's not just people who hate women who are doing that. They're very sympathetic to it. I've heard people say, oh, well, maybe it was just propaganda in my own messages. And, you know, on Instagram, I have a very conservative Christian female audience. I've got some people, anytime I talk about Islam, there are some people, few, but they'll say, well, why aren't you saying this about Israel too? Oh, you think Islam is a problem? Israel is a problem too.

00:27:40.740 And it's a weird way to try to soften Islam. 1.00

00:27:44.000 I don't have a problem with criticizing Israel, but if I'm not talking about that in the moment, then I don't need to talk about that. 0.95

00:27:49.700 And so, like, what do you think this is exactly? 0.81

00:27:53.160 Why Islam?

00:27:54.140 The thing that I thought that the right all united on at least 10 years ago was like, yeah, Sharia law is not good. 1.00

00:27:59.580 We don't want it here. 1.00

00:28:00.900 Now, I don't know if we all agree on that.

00:28:04.320 Well, I think there's two parts of that that are interesting.

00:28:06.340 One, you know, there are 15 million Jews on planet Earth.

00:28:09.940 15 million, not 50, not 100, not 500. There are, you know, a billion and a half Muslims in the

00:28:19.160 world, like to try to even just as an order of scale, like if every Jew is 10 times worse than 1.00

00:28:25.280 every Muslim, there's still a rounding error. They don't even count. And so the scale of the 1.00

00:28:30.240 challenges that we face in the West as a result of, let's call it just radical Islam. Okay, maybe 1.00

00:28:37.260 only 3% of Muslims are radical. If every Jew on earth is a radical, militant, racist, jingoistic, 0.99

00:28:45.280 warmongering, genocide in his heart, okay, there's still more radical Muslims, you know, by a mile. 0.99

00:28:54.540 Like you, you know, I find it interesting that we all seem like we have to qualify 0.72

00:28:58.280 support for Israel now. Like you have to say, well, listen, I don't always support Israel,

00:29:03.600 but I think they're our ally, or I think they're—I try to avoid—I catch myself doing it because it feels like now you almost have to earn permission from anyone to say something positive about Israel. 0.95

00:29:16.760 But I'm trying not to do it because I just reject the notion that you can talk about Israel and Judaism in the same breath that you talk about Islam and the Arab states in particular relative to the threat that they pose to Western life. 0.78

00:29:36.760 You know, the West has been in some ways battling against Islam for 1,300 years. 0.88

00:29:44.060 I mean, it's been a massive part of the history of the West.

00:29:46.380 Islam almost conquered Europe many times, conquered parts of Europe many times.

00:29:50.640 Europe, you know, Christian Europe invaded into the Middle East many times. 0.79

00:29:56.100 You know, our Marines were basically created to go and fight the Barbary pirates.

00:30:00.520 So it's been a part of our history.

00:30:02.460 In our lifetime, of course, the defining geopolitical event of our lifetime is 9-11. 0.64

00:30:07.900 And Israel is Israel.

00:30:10.300 They're our allies.

00:30:11.660 Half of the Jews in the world live in this country and have been an important part of

00:30:15.320 the formation of this country. Israel is certainly, we say often they're our best allies in the

00:30:20.720 region, and that's certainly true by a mile. They may be our best allies that we have left right

00:30:24.520 now anywhere in the world, because our relationship with our historic allies is in some of the

00:30:30.900 roughest shape that it's been in, certainly in the lifetime of anyone living today. And so, yes,

00:30:37.680 do we have, are there critiques to be made of Israel? Of course, are there critiques to be made

00:30:42.560 of Judaism on a theological basis. Well, of course, I disagree with the Jews on the most 1.00

00:30:46.120 fundamental question that exists, which is the question of Christ. But I can tell a friend from 1.00

00:30:52.380 Foe, I know that Israel is a friend of the country. I know that the Jews are friends of

00:30:58.520 Western Christians. I know that radical Islam is not. I know that they present enormous challenges

00:31:10.360 to our way of life. And so, you know, I don't support Israel for eschatological reasons. I 1.00

00:31:16.300 don't have a well-formed eschatology. I'm kind of anti-eschatology. I think like all the people

00:31:20.540 who thought they knew what the Messiah was going to look like when he showed up, nailed Jesus to

00:31:24.360 a cross. Like, God doesn't give us prophecy so that we know the future. He gives us prophecy

00:31:28.760 so that when the future arrives, we'll remember that he was God. Like, again, God's always

00:31:33.720 recommending himself. God's taken the land of promise away from the Jews numerous times 1.00

00:31:39.560 throughout history. I don't know. There's a kind of hubris that we have that says we live in the

00:31:44.660 most important time, like this is it. But there could be 20,000 more years of human history ahead

00:31:51.000 of us, and God could take Israel away from the Jews 20 more times if he wants to. That's his 0.96

00:31:54.720 business. You know, I try to focus on who's friend and foe. The more substantive part of your

00:32:01.980 question is, why do so many people now say that our historical foes are our friends and our

00:32:06.400 historical friends are our foes. And, you know, I think that the answer to that is probably

00:32:13.860 somewhat complicated. But fundamentally, what I think that it's about is an emerging belief

00:32:21.080 among a certain very vocal cohort on the right that we could form a new governing coalition in

00:32:31.180 this country, a new governing majority in this country that is not currently represented

00:32:37.160 by either party, which is essentially premised on a left-wing economic populism, take from

00:32:46.260 those who have, give to those who don't, and a right-wing social populism, which is no 0.93

00:32:53.320 gay marriage, women shouldn't work or vote, get rid of abortion, get rid of the kind of 1.00

00:33:00.700 trappings of social liberalism. And I think that there are voices from Steve Bannon, who I think

00:33:08.520 was an early mover in this space, the Catholic Integralists, which is a very small cohort.

00:33:15.100 Obviously, the average Catholic isn't an Integralist. I don't even think the average

00:33:18.500 person who says that they're an Integralist is an Integralist. But there is such a thing as

00:33:22.120 Catholic Integralism, represented by, you know, Adrian Vermeule and others, who sort of marry a

00:33:29.500 Catholic economic policy of giving to those who don't have with Catholic social policy,

00:33:44.480 which is some of the most conservative social policy that exists, anti-IVF, anti-contraception

00:33:50.840 of any kind.

00:33:52.520 And so I think somebody like Tucker looks at, for example, if you see the very famous

00:33:56.180 monologue that he did about Nicolas Maduro, in which he said that perhaps America was only

00:34:02.240 interested in toppling the government of Venezuela in service of Globo Homo, you know, this idea that

00:34:07.780 we're really doing it because they're against gay marriage. And there's a great line in there

00:34:12.120 in which Tucker says, I mean, yes, he's a communist, but, and then he just elides that

00:34:17.160 and moves very quickly to the next point. But if you dig deeper into the things that Tucker said

00:34:21.420 in the last 18 months.

00:34:24.440 He says that the Democrats

00:34:25.900 that he most admires

00:34:26.800 are those like Bernie Sanders

00:34:28.020 and Elizabeth Warren

00:34:28.860 who have the most radical 1.00

00:34:29.940 economic policy.

00:34:30.920 They're the most closely associated

00:34:33.280 with like a communist worldview

00:34:34.580 of any of the voices

00:34:36.660 in the mainstream part

00:34:37.500 or elected voices

00:34:38.700 in the Democrat Party.

00:34:39.740 Gosh, I feel like Tucker

00:34:40.440 used to talk about Elizabeth Warren

00:34:42.020 a lot on his Fox show.

00:34:43.600 Yeah.

00:34:43.960 Like negatively.

00:34:44.600 You mean in the before times?

00:34:45.740 In the before times.

00:34:47.040 I really do.

00:34:48.460 I'm not being sarcastic.

00:34:49.560 Like I think I remember 0.93

00:34:50.760 multiple monologues about how hypocritical she is and how she used to have a book talking about 0.89

00:34:55.620 the like the double income myth or something about women going to work and he talked about 0.70

00:35:01.820 how she flip-flopped on that so it's just interesting how he's now just kind of outright

00:35:05.240 saying that he supports her maybe all right y'all our friends at alliance defending freedom they

00:35:14.300 need our help again they are like the busiest group ever because everywhere not just here in

00:35:20.140 America, but also abroad. There are governments trying to compel speech and trying to stifle

00:35:25.680 religious liberty. Right now, this is happening in Colorado. They passed a law that will force

00:35:31.460 using, quote unquote, preferred pronouns. That's a violation of free speech. But as Colorado has

00:35:37.260 proven time and again, the state has little concern for the First Amendment. And that is why

00:35:42.000 Alliance Defending Freedom is challenging the law on behalf of a Christian bookstore

00:35:45.940 and a Colorado-based sports apparel company

00:35:49.220 because these people,

00:35:51.300 they just want to be able to speak the truth

00:35:53.320 and to speak in a way that aligns

00:35:55.320 with their Christian faith.

00:35:57.400 Colorado doesn't want them to do that.

00:35:59.380 So we need to help ADF

00:36:01.580 because this fight that they're going to take,

00:36:03.780 hopefully all the way up to the Supreme Court,

00:36:05.980 that affects you, that affects your children,

00:36:08.060 that affects your free speech rights.

00:36:09.880 Go to joinadf.com slash Allie

00:36:13.360 or text Allie to 83848.

00:36:17.800 Have your gift doubled today.

00:36:19.380 Join ADF.com slash Allie.

00:36:26.380 I think because so many people put their hope

00:36:28.980 in the idea that Donald Trump was going to,

00:36:31.080 you know, destroy the left,

00:36:34.100 which hasn't happened.

00:36:35.260 He's given the country some victories over leftism,

00:36:37.420 but they're victories that exist in time.

00:36:40.160 They're not memorialized in lasting legislation. Most of it's through attitude or executive order. And I think that this group of people has become more and more disillusioned with the democratic process itself.

00:36:53.080 Yeah. And they believe that they can create this new coalition that essentially is very, very strict on social policy and is very, very left wing on economic policy. And if they do that, they can kind of enter a post-democratic future for this country in which we get a lot of the things that and listen, they had to pick a party through whom to effectuate that because we're a two party system in this country.

00:37:17.600 And if you listen to voices like Joel Webin lately, he's very open about it.

00:37:21.120 Like, well, we either have to take over the Democrats or we have to take over the Republicans.

00:37:24.740 It's probably easier to get the Republicans to be socialists than it is to get the Democrats to hate abortion.

00:37:29.800 And I think that's on a political level.

00:37:32.180 I think that's what we're witnessing.

00:37:33.560 I just don't think that there's enough people in the country to fill out that cohort.

00:37:37.540 Like I think about something, someone like Nick Fuentes that I assume maybe would be in this camp.

00:37:42.580 I don't think he cares that much about social policy. 0.59

00:37:44.760 I think a lot of people in this camp don't really care that much about social policy, and I don't think that there is enough people like the Catholic Integralist.

00:37:52.500 Most of them are not strong on secure borders, for example.

00:37:57.180 And so it's such a mishmash of a clash of worldviews, which maybe you could argue any political party is to some extent.

00:38:04.400 I don't see that being a viable option for it being its own entity.

00:38:08.560 I do see it tearing some people away from the right.

00:38:12.180 probably not the left because i think they're generally happy with the people that they have

00:38:17.220 in charge and what they're accomplishing but i do think for those people on the right who have

00:38:22.160 taken the black pill who do think which i understand maybe not liking donald trump or

00:38:27.040 not thinking the republicans you mentioned that they're so dysregulated and they're so

00:38:30.940 dysfunctional in congress that they're like okay what did i sacrifice my social capital for

00:38:36.540 What did I sacrifice these relationships for?

00:38:39.320 Like, I went against my pastor during COVID and all of these things because I wanted to

00:38:44.300 support Trump and accomplish whatever they set out to accomplish, and now they just feel

00:38:48.420 like it was for nothing.

00:38:50.500 And when there are voices reflecting that kind of discouragement and to say, okay, we're

00:38:54.940 going to move beyond this.

00:38:56.040 I've seen a lot of, oh, the left and right, like, we should come together and like, there's

00:39:00.220 some unity now that we should have.

00:39:02.000 I could see that being an appealing message to people who are just tired of Trump, tired of politicians, tired of Washington, tired of, you know, mainstream conservatives like us talking about some of the same things.

00:39:15.640 I could see how that's appealing.

00:39:17.860 I just think it's a road to nowhere.

00:39:19.740 It doesn't lead you anywhere, and it certainly doesn't lead to a brighter future for people.

00:39:24.420 Well, I think it does lead you to somewhere.

00:39:25.560 It leads you to the left regaining power in the country, which is what we're seeing, even at the state level right now.

00:39:30.060 Is that intentional in your mind?

00:39:31.560 I don't think that you don't think so. Like, do you do you feel that Tucker is really saying what he believes? Like, this is just how his worldview has changed. And he is saying the things that he believe, believes, or some people would say that there's no there's some like secret, nefarious, malicious thing going on where people actually are trying to get back at Trump or whatever. And they want the left to gain power to teach Trump and the right a lesson.

00:39:53.700 Yeah, well, I don't know Tucker to speak to his personal motives. You know, I can only observe from the outside based on the things that he does. I have no, you know, is he bought and paid for by Cutter? Maybe, I don't know. But you know the way that it really works in politics.

00:40:12.340 I think probably not.

00:40:13.820 Yeah.

00:40:14.080 I think probably not.

00:40:14.940 Probably not.

00:40:15.500 I feel like he has plenty of money.

00:40:17.280 But I would also say that the way, even if he's getting some money from the Middle East,

00:40:20.580 the way it usually works in politics, and I know this isn't what people want to hear,

00:40:24.300 but you usually don't get paid to say things you don't believe.

00:40:27.220 Yeah.

00:40:27.420 You get paid because you're saying the things that you do believe that align with the interests

00:40:32.520 of the people who write checks.

00:40:34.060 And so even if he's getting paid, I don't think that that is enough to answer why he's

00:40:39.220 taking the positions that he's taking.

00:40:40.540 You know, ego is a huge part of why people do the things that they do.

00:40:46.320 I don't know Tucker enough to know if he's operating from a place of ego or not operating

00:40:50.120 from a place of ego.

00:40:51.300 So I just assume he's saying what he believes.

00:40:53.640 But like you, I think that the end result of it is ruin for the right.

00:40:58.040 I don't think that this new political coalition forms that rules for a thousand years and

00:41:03.560 doesn't have to go through democratic processes anymore.

00:41:05.880 I don't think the left comes over to our side in any significant numbers.

00:41:12.700 I think the left just comes back to power.

00:41:14.400 I think, you know, Gavin Newsom becomes president if we're lucky, or AOC becomes president if

00:41:19.000 we're not lucky.

00:41:19.940 If we don't remember how to actually stand for the actual values of our movement and

00:41:25.140 to actually take positive, affirmative political action over the next two years, that's the

00:41:29.940 likely outcome.

00:41:30.560 I don't think the likely outcome is the one that they seem to think is going to occur.

00:41:35.880 Can we have a right that agrees on basically everything except for Israel?

00:41:40.380 No. 0.81

00:41:41.360 You don't think so?

00:41:42.480 No.

00:41:43.140 Why not?

00:41:44.680 Because the most powerful coalition on the right is the evangelical coalition.

00:41:51.580 And while there is a softening of support for Israel among evangelicals right now,

00:41:56.340 I think that that softening is happening against a backdrop of enormous pressure.

00:42:01.040 And that enormous pressure only really exists right now because we have political, because we've been the ascendant movement politically.

00:42:09.900 Once you're in a minority political position again, you're going to have to go focus on the fights that matter.

00:42:15.240 And when we go focus on the fights that matter and try to reorganize ourselves as a movement, which is going to happen, it'll either happen after defeat in the midterms or we won't have defeat in the midterms.

00:42:25.100 Great.

00:42:25.500 It'll happen after defeat in the next presidential election or we won't be defeated in the next presidential election.

00:42:31.040 even better. But we're not going to hold power forever. There will come a time when we're a

00:42:37.080 movement in the wilderness again, in the same way that they are. And when that happens, we're going

00:42:42.920 to have to coalesce around fundamental issues that bring us back into the fight. And when that

00:42:46.120 happens, the pressure by all these voices—I mean, Tucker, has he done three episodes in the last

00:42:52.700 year that aren't about Israel? The amount of energy it takes to soften evangelicals on Israel,

00:42:59.300 even as much as we have, which isn't enough to achieve their ends, won't be able to stay in place

00:43:06.300 permanently. And so once that pressure abates, I just think evangelicals will drift back toward

00:43:13.900 their priors, you know, in a meaningful way. Will it abate? It will have to abate because

00:43:21.440 we'll have to go focus on reclaiming power, reclaiming political power when we're no longer

00:43:28.040 and political power. Do the culture wars still matter? I mean, I think they matter to me. But

00:43:34.360 again, I feel like more and more on the right. And we talk about them less. Maybe not me,

00:43:39.400 maybe not you, maybe not Ben, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles. We still do, but it seems like some

00:43:44.260 people have felt like they're graduating from the transgender issue or the marriage issue or the

00:43:48.420 abortion issue, maybe because it's boring or maybe because they think the Israel topic is

00:43:54.080 more interesting or more important? I think it's just because we won. I think so much of what we're 0.56

00:43:58.720 dealing with right now is because of our political victory in November of 2024. The woke left is

00:44:08.380 defeated. We won the transgenderism debate, but we didn't win anything. We won a political victory.

00:44:16.520 Huge. I shouldn't say we didn't win anything. We won something very important for now. But

00:44:22.360 the culture war never ends.

00:44:25.680 You know, the left will come back to power.

00:44:27.640 When they come back to power,

00:44:28.880 we're going to lose.

00:44:30.520 People are going to be shocked. 1.00

00:44:31.520 Trans is back. 1.00

00:44:32.220 Of course, trans is going to be back. 0.99

00:44:33.440 The left never stopped. 1.00

00:44:35.240 The radical elements of the left,

00:44:37.100 the vocal elements of the left

00:44:38.160 never stopped believing

00:44:39.040 in the transhumanist agenda,

00:44:41.240 which is more important

00:44:42.200 than the transsexual agenda, by the way. 0.74

00:44:43.780 The transsexual agenda 0.98

00:44:44.960 is just a small piece

00:44:46.500 of the broader transhumanist agenda.

00:44:49.780 you know there's that great line in the dark night rises you know victory has made you weak

00:44:56.680 or whatever victory has defeated you you know peace has made you weak and that's basically

00:45:00.520 where i think we are as a right right now we we won an enormous and an enormous victory in

00:45:06.000 donald trump's re-election and we thought that it was the final victory for a moment

00:45:10.060 and when you no longer have to be organized and fighting because you're on top you just get soft

00:45:16.140 and you start focusing on issues that aren't-

00:45:19.000 You get tired.

00:45:19.840 And you get tired.

00:45:20.320 I feel like we, I mean, I think Conserve is, you know,

00:45:22.820 because Daily Wire did this really well in 2020.

00:45:26.400 Like it was such a fight.

00:45:28.500 It was a fight against COVID. 1.00

00:45:29.940 It was a fight against the BLM stuff. 0.90

00:45:31.880 It was a fight against all the things happening, 0.97

00:45:34.720 especially like over here in the evangelical Christian world,

00:45:38.780 the fight for the mind of the evangelical woman

00:45:42.200 to not be captured by BLM or COVID propaganda.

00:45:45.840 it felt like a fight every day. So when 2024 happened, it was like, Oh, my gosh, can I just

00:45:51.060 take like, a little bit of a break? And like, let's talk about some fun stuff or something.

00:45:55.860 But that fatigue, even in me, has lasted longer than I realized. And it's only in the last couple

00:46:02.520 of months that I've been like, not in again, not that my life or even my content is dictated by

00:46:08.040 the midterms. But you do start thinking about the very real consequences of Republicans losing power.

00:46:13.000 And you're like, oh, gosh, I got it.

00:46:15.020 Like, we got to get back into this.

00:46:16.560 We got to reengage all those people who are apathetic and thought we were just coasting

00:46:20.020 for a while.

00:46:20.600 We need those people.

00:46:22.380 Politics matters, policy matters, because people matter.

00:46:24.320 It's not just about winning elections.

00:46:26.300 It's about the people that policies affect.

00:46:28.980 And so I even find myself like, it's like I'm trying to wake myself up from a nap and

00:46:34.200 I don't really want to.

00:46:35.760 Like, I'm kind of tired about talking about it, even sometimes about the culture wars.

00:46:39.360 I'm like, how many times are we going to talk about this over and over again?

00:46:41.740 And and yet, I mean, every day I get a message or a comment or something of people.

00:46:46.260 I'm like, oh, yeah, there's a whole group of people who have never heard this before and who need to be convinced.

00:46:51.880 How do we like reinvigorate ourselves?

00:46:54.620 Because it can seem demoralizing because of all the stuff we talked about.

00:46:58.080 But also, like, it just feels like the same battle over and over again.

00:47:02.440 Yeah. Well, it is the same battle over and over again.

00:47:06.240 I mean, that's the trick. It doesn't it doesn't just seem like it.

00:47:08.480 it is, you know, as long as humans are drawing breath on this planet, as long as we're carrying

00:47:13.440 around the flesh, we're going to continue to deal with these exact same problems. And, you know,

00:47:18.960 ultimately, you know, the victory isn't ours to achieve and no, and the victory won't be achieved

00:47:26.240 in a lasting sense in our, in our mortal experience. That's just not, that's not the way

00:47:32.480 that the book is written.

00:47:34.500 How do we keep ourselves in the fight?

00:47:37.120 You know, it's funny to say,

00:47:39.100 but I have a kind of grace for myself

00:47:43.360 and for you and the people in our movement

00:47:46.940 around these sorts of issues,

00:47:48.760 which is to say, you know,

00:47:50.700 we're not going to do it well.

00:47:53.320 If we did everything that we could,

00:47:55.500 you know, Gary Sinise has that saying,

00:47:57.300 you know, we can always do a little more.

00:47:59.520 And that's us.

00:48:00.360 We could be doing more.

00:48:01.780 You do as much as anybody. Matt Walsh on the trans issue did more than anybody. And yet we could be doing more. Of course we could. Of course we get discouraged. Of course we get fatigued and exhausted.

00:48:19.160 Of course, when we do, the darkness has the opportunity to rise up, and yet there's a kind of freedom that we have to say, well, if you can do something, you probably should, and if you should do something, you probably must, and we fail at every point along that spectrum.

00:48:42.620 and that's why our hope's in Christ.

00:48:46.380 That's why we have to have freedom

00:48:49.280 and we have to have grace

00:48:50.260 because we aren't up to the fight.

00:48:53.000 We're not capable of doing all the things that we should.

00:48:56.660 We're not capable of giving a little more

00:48:57.900 and sometimes we're not even capable

00:48:59.320 of giving as much as we used to give.

00:49:02.500 I don't think that that's an excuse.

00:49:04.840 I think it's really kind of just an explanation

00:49:06.360 and another cause to be thankful

00:49:08.700 that God recommends himself and not us. 0.95

00:49:10.360 You know, if Matt Walsh could defeat transgenderism, he came pretty close. 0.85

00:49:15.940 But if Matt Walsh could defeat transgenderism, well, then we wouldn't need God. 0.84

00:49:19.640 We just need Matt Walsh. 0.73

00:49:20.880 You know, if you could save the soul of evangelical women from drifting to extreme leftism, we wouldn't need God. 0.62

00:49:28.300 We just have Allie Beth.

00:49:30.920 The beautiful thing is actually that God uses us at all.

00:49:35.440 You know, God exclusively uses broken vessels because those are the only vessels available.

00:49:40.360 and that he does, that we get to participate at all in the work that he does,

00:49:46.580 certainly is the privilege of what you and I do on a daily basis.

00:49:50.860 But I think for everyone, the great privilege of life is that

00:49:54.660 for reasons that defy any logic, God uses us.

00:50:03.140 And sometimes we're the bad example, and he's still using us.

00:50:06.360 and sometimes we're the right tool at the right moment for the right job and we score victories

00:50:12.100 on behalf of all the things that we value and believe and so you know i don't know how

00:50:16.740 we do it except i just know that we make ourselves available for him to do it

00:50:22.460 let me tell you about good ranchers we've been using good ranchers for about five years in our

00:50:32.020 home we still rely on it almost every single night every night that we are eating at home

00:50:35.740 we're eating Good Ranchers. I had bacon wrapped chicken the other night that was so good. Even

00:50:41.380 the bacon was from Good Ranchers. If you like seafood, if you want seed oil free chicken nuggets

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00:51:00.500 this is not Good Ranchers. It just doesn't taste as good. It's really high quality and you just

00:51:05.360 don't have to worry about going to the grocery store and wondering what is the quality going to

00:51:09.360 be like where is this really from gives you so much peace of mind and just makes your life easier

00:51:14.240 by having a freezer full of all-american meat at all times if you go to good ranchers.com and use

00:51:19.040 code alley you can get 40 off your first order good ranchers.com code alley after you and daily

00:51:30.740 wire parted ways that was what a year and some change a year and some change ago um i know people

00:51:36.840 are interested to hear how all of that went down and you've talked about it of course but did you

00:51:41.980 have a moment of thinking okay maybe i'm kind of like just tapping out of this particular fight

00:51:46.980 maybe it's just something else that i go into and the culture political podcast wars maybe that's

00:51:53.100 just not for me anymore well yeah 100 my wife and i looked at houses in maine you know um

00:52:00.740 I didn't expect to be separated from the Daily Wire.

00:52:09.160 It's not what I wanted.

00:52:11.200 It's not something that I thought even could happen, much less would happen.

00:52:17.220 It's the biggest blow I've ever gone through in my life.

00:52:23.600 And yeah, I was beat and broken and thought, well, you know, I don't have to keep doing this.

00:52:30.740 and for a long time people would ask me you know what are you going to do next

00:52:38.260 and I didn't have a great answer to the question I didn't know what I was going to do

00:52:42.400 in some ways I still don't know what I'm going to do

00:52:45.140 but there was one day in particular where someone said what are you going to do next

00:52:50.480 and it struck me kind of how funny of a question it was

00:52:53.660 and this example will sound very dark but this is how the thought occurred to me

00:52:59.240 so I'm just sharing it exactly as it occurred to me.

00:53:02.100 I thought, you know, like my wife left me for some other guy

00:53:06.140 and took my house and took my kid

00:53:08.960 and I was wallowing around sad right now.

00:53:12.920 No one would ask me, what are you going to do next?

00:53:14.900 As though the answer is, date guys?

00:53:17.380 I don't know.

00:53:18.040 I'm going to do what I've always done.

00:53:19.560 Like I'm still exactly who I was before this thing occurred.

00:53:23.840 And obviously it's kind of a farcical and absurd way to think about it,

00:53:27.780 But it did really sort of illuminate for me the reality of, no, you just are you.

00:53:32.500 You've always done the things that you do.

00:53:34.620 You do them because you're compelled to do them.

00:53:38.360 You know, whatever it is in you that drives you, you know, has always driven you down similar paths.

00:53:44.620 And so, of course, I'm just going to do the things that I've always done.

00:53:48.760 And it was a really liberating realization that I didn't have to solve my future or reinvent myself or become something other than what I am.

00:53:57.020 I just had to remember that it's okay to deal with embarrassment in life.

00:54:03.760 It's okay to deal with setbacks in life.

00:54:06.100 It's okay to not be where you thought you would be or not be where you want to be, which

00:54:10.260 are lessons that I knew very well in my 20s and 30s before Daily Wire because I failed

00:54:15.820 a lot during that period.

00:54:17.980 When my wife and I bought our first house, this isn't something that everyone will relate

00:54:23.900 to, but we lived in LA.

00:54:25.560 And when you live in L.A., no one owns a house in their 20s.

00:54:28.800 No one owns a house in their early 30s.

00:54:30.700 Like I had a couple of friends who owned their own houses, and they were all millionaires who had TV shows and movies.

00:54:38.440 And so it sort of distorts your thinking.

00:54:44.280 You know, yes, back home everybody owned houses, but in the city nobody did.

00:54:48.920 And then I had these friends, the Phelpses, who were in my tax bracket, and they bought a house.

00:54:56.360 And it was great.

00:54:57.260 They had all their friends over to help them do kind of the remodel before they moved in.

00:55:01.460 You know, you'd come over and sand on the cabinets or whatever.

00:55:03.340 And it was this kind of beautiful community experience of watching people who couldn't really play the game at the level that you thought you had to play the game, doing a thing.

00:55:15.740 And it made my wife and I think, well, we should, if they could do it, we could do it.

00:55:19.960 You know, and we started looking at houses in bad parts of town, you know, in very small places.

00:55:25.560 And we decided we were going to take the biggest risk and buy a house.

00:55:30.960 And there was a moment where we were driving and my wife said, you know, what happens if this doesn't work?

00:55:40.300 We lose this house.

00:55:42.060 I said, oh, well, we'll move back into an apartment.

00:55:44.400 as we've lived in an apartment for you know a decade or whatever you know we've both lived in

00:55:51.800 apartments why wouldn't we just move back into an apartment and she said well but what would

00:55:55.160 our friends think and i said our friends who all live in apartments yeah like when you think about

00:56:01.000 the question the question becomes a little kind of silly right like uh and that's just life you

00:56:06.080 know i had a big beautiful house it cost me everything to build it i'm i was so proud of it

00:56:13.300 And I was so proud of all the effort that went into it

00:56:17.560 and all that we were able to do with it.

00:56:19.980 Talking about Daily Wire.

00:56:20.960 Talking about Daily Wire, and then I lost it.

00:56:22.720 Yeah.

00:56:23.540 And it's embarrassing to move back into an apartment.

00:56:26.300 I never wanted a podcast.

00:56:27.840 If I wanted a podcast, I would have given myself a podcast 10 years ago.

00:56:31.160 I had a top 10 podcast company.

00:56:33.080 I could have given myself a podcast.

00:56:34.800 It would have been easier then.

00:56:35.940 It would have been a lot easier.

00:56:37.220 Yeah.

00:56:37.580 I had all the tools.

00:56:38.700 Yeah.

00:56:38.960 so I'm not

00:56:41.860 in the place

00:56:42.660 that I had hoped

00:56:43.360 to be

00:56:44.040 I've moved back

00:56:44.620 into an apartment

00:56:45.220 and that's okay

00:56:47.420 I'll just take

00:56:50.320 the next step

00:56:50.860 and do the next thing

00:56:51.880 and keep acting

00:56:53.040 in concert

00:56:53.560 with what I hope

00:56:54.360 are on the majority

00:56:55.900 of days

00:56:56.520 rightly ordered

00:56:57.820 priorities

00:56:58.880 mission first

00:57:01.520 business second

00:57:02.980 ego considerations

00:57:04.520 third

00:57:04.980 and

00:57:07.460 I couldn't have dreamed of where my steps took me in relation to the Daily Wire. Certainly Ben

00:57:14.660 and Caleb and I never imagined when we started that company where it would go or the things that

00:57:19.240 we would achieve or the places that it would take us. And I think that that's just true of life

00:57:24.520 generally. I have no idea where this new path leads, but I know that it's better to be an

00:57:29.780 object in motion than an object at rest. And so the very first opportunity to get back into motion

00:57:35.320 I took. And it's kind of exciting to think, well, we'll see where the path takes me.

00:57:41.100 Yeah. Looking back now, is there anything, and you might have 10 things, but just one is fine,

00:57:48.900 that you regret about your time at The Daily Wire? It could be your whole time there or just

00:57:55.020 how things kind of devolved there at the end that you wish you could change if you could.

00:58:00.320 well obviously life is replete with regret and particularly if you're in the arena you have to

00:58:07.420 make a lot of decisions and they're not always the right decision um you try to do the best you

00:58:13.800 can with the information that you have you know i mean i hired candace owens which is a thing that

00:58:18.900 i certainly regret in retrospect um and certainly there were things toward the end that if i could

00:58:27.900 go back and change, I think the outcome would have been very different. And some of those

00:58:32.980 things are probably beyond the scope of what I can really discuss in this conversation.

00:58:40.100 But absolutely, I hate how things ended at the Daily Wire. And I hate a lot of my own

00:58:50.980 choices in that process. And I hate other people's choices in that process, too. You

00:58:56.960 You know, it's a, human relationships are incredibly complicated things.

00:59:00.820 You know, we kept a band together for a decade and, you know, the Beatles didn't make it

00:59:05.880 any longer than that either.

00:59:06.940 Like success comes with its own enormous challenges.

00:59:09.800 Failures come with their own enormous challenges.

00:59:13.100 Being at war constantly comes with enormous challenges.

00:59:17.640 And so, you know, on the whole, I'm so incredibly proud of the Daily Wire and all the people

00:59:26.860 who contributed to its success along the path

00:59:30.520 and all the successes that we got to be a part of

00:59:32.580 within the movement.

00:59:34.000 The things that we made, for the most part,

00:59:36.900 the voices that we amplified.

00:59:39.880 Obviously, that's a very complex business too

00:59:42.680 where when you cultivate talent for a living,

00:59:50.840 I say often that being a director is like being a painter,

00:59:54.300 but all of your colors have opinions.

00:59:55.780 you don't necessarily get to determine exactly what the painting is going to look like

01:00:00.920 because they're in motion.

01:00:02.440 And it's the same with all talent-based businesses.

01:00:04.680 You know, our talent often say things that we disagree with.

01:00:09.800 In the case of Candace, they go so far that you are filled with regret

01:00:14.340 about whatever role you played in it.

01:00:17.100 But of course, it's just an occupational hazard, you know.

01:00:21.680 But for the most part, I'm so proud of the work and the people.

01:00:25.780 Um, and, you know, certainly would not say in any way that I regret, uh, the experience

01:00:35.240 or, you know, regret the, the journey.

01:00:39.540 Maybe a few of the particulars.

01:00:41.300 Yeah.

01:00:41.720 If someone were sitting in front of you and they were like, okay, I'm about to lead a

01:00:45.920 company.

01:00:46.320 I'm about to be CEO of a company.

01:00:48.240 Maybe they would call themselves God King.

01:00:50.000 Maybe not.

01:00:51.160 Lowercase.

01:00:51.820 Yeah.

01:00:52.340 Lowercase, lowercase.

01:00:53.200 um what would be like if you just had 30 seconds with him to be like okay i got 30 seconds to give

01:00:59.560 you the best advice about being a ceo of any kind of company that i can possibly give what would you

01:01:04.280 say yeah uh you have to make decisions you know it's it may sound obvious but um but it isn't

01:01:14.140 the goal of the ceo is not to well the goal of the ceo is to make very good decisions the

01:01:20.880 responsibility of the ceo is to make decisions and in many many instances the wrong decision

01:01:27.220 is better than no decision you know all living organisms are either growing or they're dying

01:01:32.740 and companies move so incredibly fast you know all of your problems get harder at scale

01:01:42.440 you you lie to yourself all the time and tell yourself well we're one higher away from this

01:01:49.600 getting a little easier or we're one, we're one deal away or one transaction away from this.

01:01:54.400 I can see that. Yeah.

01:01:55.700 But all of it gets harder at every stage. You know, people engaged in startup culture,

01:02:00.740 they don't sleep, they don't see their family, they don't eat regularly, their health falls apart.

01:02:05.820 And they think, you know, once we get out of startup phase,

01:02:08.920 that's when the problem, then your problems start.

01:02:11.460 Yeah.

01:02:12.200 I think about the phenomenon we see happening right now with talent,

01:02:15.320 where we live in a moment where the network seems to be in decline

01:02:20.620 and the sort of, you know, independent talent seems to be ascending.

01:02:27.800 And the funny thing is, if you go back in time, even 18 months,

01:02:32.980 a lot of the biggest independent talent in the movement

01:02:35.540 were coming to us asking if they could be part of the Daily Wire.

01:02:39.400 Why? Well, because they know.

01:02:41.240 They know how hard—being talent is hard.

01:02:43.200 Being talent is humbling, humiliating.

01:02:45.020 I say it's humiliating to be talent.

01:02:46.600 You get poked and prodded and everybody stares at you

01:02:48.760 and all of your mistakes are very public.

01:02:54.880 It's also hard to run a business.

01:02:56.880 Yeah.

01:02:57.080 And so if you're, you know, Chris Williamson or Tim Pool

01:03:02.820 or Joe Rogan or one of these guys,

01:03:05.600 you have to be both of those things.

01:03:08.400 Incredibly difficult.

01:03:10.680 And so it is true that we do live in a moment,

01:03:13.440 Especially, I think, because cancel culture is abated during Trump's second term to a large degree. So you don't get a lot of the sort of – you don't have the need for an institution fighting the big media companies on your behalf or fighting those wars on your behalf that you may have needed in 2023 and 2022 and 2021.

01:03:30.580 one. But I think what we'll see three years from now is a real return of the importance of the

01:03:39.760 network. Because being the CEO is just as hard as being the talent. And being both is an almost

01:03:48.940 impossibly difficult job. And so right now, I think a lot of talent has broken off from networks,

01:03:53.340 and they're able to make a ton of money, because they don't have to support an institution,

01:03:57.320 right they don't have to divide the pie at all but i think that's going to burn people out really

01:04:01.800 fast and and not just burn them out but ultimately be untenable they'll either have to build medium

01:04:06.740 sized businesses around themselves right that other people run in which case they basically

01:04:10.600 are just a network yeah a network of one of one yeah and then pretty soon like megan they'll go

01:04:15.980 well i have all this infrastructure i should start getting a few other people into my network

01:04:20.460 you know growing or dying yeah yeah so yeah if you're the ceo if you're a founder set yourself

01:04:26.580 up to make, to be decisive. And then you have to live with the things that you decided. And a lot

01:04:32.840 of them will be wrong because of the pressure and the speed with which you had to make them.

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01:05:24.300 switch to Patriot Mobile. Go to patriotmobile.com slash Allie. Use code Allie, and you'll get a

01:05:29.220 whole free month of service. Patriotmobile.com slash Allie, code Allie. I'm not a CEO, and I'm

01:05:40.340 very grateful for that, but even just, you know, making those little decisions, it is, especially

01:05:46.900 when you're talent it is very it can be very paralyzing to be like well it would be so

01:05:52.960 stressful to make that decision right now that i'm just not going i'm just not going to do it

01:05:57.940 and so for people even outside of the podcast space your your metaphor of it being an organism

01:06:04.340 living or dying is really good you can't really just be a stagnant organism how do you like what

01:06:11.880 is your process for making decisions? The best decisions that you've ever made professionally

01:06:16.820 when you look back and you're like, well, here's how I made that decision. And what would you say?

01:06:21.520 The hard way every single time, you know? Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Like,

01:06:26.180 you know, left to my own, I like to deliberate and I like to get my closest advisors in a room

01:06:34.560 and just bat an idea around until it's time to go home and then come back and bat it around some

01:06:39.100 or tomorrow. My wife has observed, and others have as well, but I talked to her about this

01:06:47.260 very recently, that I tend to have what appears to be a lot of chaos happening up here. And

01:06:55.660 it doesn't sort of like take shape until the last possible second. I take in a lot of information,

01:07:03.100 I take in a lot of different kinds of arguments. I usually don't know exactly what shape the

01:07:07.740 elephant is going to be. You know, like I don't know where he is. I just, I'm taking it in,

01:07:12.200 taking it in, taking it in. And then the pressure of the need for a decision usually gives rise to

01:07:19.000 what the vision for the decision is actually going to be. Of course, you're checking it by those

01:07:23.260 priorities that you have. You're checking it by the needs of the company. But in the end,

01:07:29.420 it always has to take a shape. And for me, that usually happens like right at the last second,

01:07:33.300 but the thing kind of clicks into place and you see it.

01:07:36.920 It's not a very scientific process.

01:07:41.420 There's these guys like Pat Lencioni or these other sort of corporate coaches

01:07:45.760 who really help people devise systems to make these kinds of decisions.

01:07:49.280 I've never really operated that way.

01:07:51.440 I usually am thinking about, you know,

01:07:56.420 I kind of have this guiding principle of being a lowercase r Republican

01:07:59.300 of both challenging the audience but also representing the audience,

01:08:02.800 leading and representing, which is the opposite of elitism or populism. It rejects the false

01:08:09.940 binary and it lives in that tension in the middle. So I would often think about,

01:08:14.720 is the decision that I'm going to make in the interest of the audience, which is much different

01:08:20.320 than thinking, will the audience like it? I very rarely think about, will the audience like a

01:08:24.660 decision? Because I don't think that it's my job to make the audience happy. It's my job to represent

01:08:30.260 them fairly. It's my job not to forsake them, not to throw their values in their face or flaunt

01:08:37.160 the places where we disagree. But sometimes it is my job to challenge them. It's my job to

01:08:43.900 encourage them not to give in to their worst impulses or to lead them in a direction that

01:08:49.680 they may not have ordinarily have wanted to go. And that means necessarily that you do things

01:08:54.420 that make the audience unhappy, which is also, by the way, if you're not willing to make your

01:08:58.780 audience unhappy, then just definitionally, you've given in to audience capture. You are no longer

01:09:05.020 an advocate for your beliefs. You're an advocate for their beliefs.

01:09:09.320 Which is why, by the way, some people assume that if you're independent,

01:09:12.940 then you are more trustworthy. And sometimes people who are independent are very trustworthy,

01:09:19.080 but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're trustworthy because for all the reasons that

01:09:24.440 you listed the difficulty of being independent. You are even more bound to what the audience wants

01:09:30.580 to hear. You have less freedom to just talk about the thing that you're like, okay, I don't think

01:09:34.880 this is going to go viral and get as many clicks, but it's really necessary. And that's okay if we

01:09:39.200 take a hit on revenue. It's hard to take a hit on revenue when you are the one personally paying

01:09:44.280 the salaries. I'm not saying that that's what all independent people are doing, but I think it's a

01:09:50.300 wrong assumption by people. When people say, oh, you're a part of a network, you must be getting

01:09:54.360 told to say this, you're independent, you must be completely untethered from handlers and things

01:10:01.800 like that. That's just not necessarily true. No, that's exactly right. One of the beautiful

01:10:06.340 things about a network, especially when it's functioning the way it should function, when

01:10:09.880 it's a healthy network, is the ability to make sure that each one of the talent is considering

01:10:16.280 the greater mission, not only their own needs and interests. And I think that we cultivated

01:10:21.980 that particularly well at Daily Wire, a story that we were talking about, my team and I

01:10:26.860 were talking about on the flight over, you know, Matt Walsh took on Vanderbilt Hospital

01:10:33.820 in Nashville.

01:10:34.580 Mm-hmm, I remember. 1.00

01:10:35.180 And it's one of the great successes of Matt's efforts against the trans movement. 1.00

01:10:40.540 Mm-hmm. 0.97

01:10:41.020 It was Michael Knowles' idea.

01:10:42.960 Mm-hmm.

01:10:43.320 And it was Michael's idea for himself.

01:10:45.560 Yeah.

01:10:45.940 He sort of realized that this story existed.

01:10:48.220 He was ahead of everybody else in seeing this story.

01:10:50.540 He came to us and said, hey, I've got this angle, and I think that we could engage in this activity, and I think that it could have a really positive result.

01:10:58.920 And he was right, and it was very clear to see that it was a great story, and it was a great idea.

01:11:04.260 But Matt had written Johnny the Walrus, and Matt had made What is a Woman?

01:11:10.600 And I said to Michael, I said, listen, this will give you a bump.

01:11:15.100 You'll get a little extra audience from it.

01:11:17.640 You'll get a little extra attention from it.

01:11:19.520 you'll get a pat on the back but i don't know if we'll win but if we take this idea to matt

01:11:24.820 given his authority on this issue given his stature um i think that we could score an actual

01:11:31.020 tremendous victory with this well no talent wants to give up no i lost him the second i said you

01:11:37.340 could be a little bit more famous you know he's like yeah so we do it right but in a network

01:11:41.440 setting you're able to say listen when the when the idea is the perfect idea for you you're going

01:11:46.420 to get it too and it's not that we i didn't take it away from michael obviously it was his it was

01:11:52.000 his idea but i was able to remind him that there's a mission greater than our own individual successes

01:11:57.540 too and and not even just stay it's not in in my opinion like what would be persuasive to me in

01:12:03.440 that moment and i assume persuasive to michael because he's such a good guy and really cares

01:12:07.860 about the bigger mission it's not just daily wire that he's thinking about he's thinking about

01:12:11.240 the actual injustice that is going on and okay what's going to be the most effective and that

01:12:16.700 speaks super highly i think to michael's character yeah and you know and matt took that because of

01:12:23.700 his position but also because of his unique talents matt was just able to take that the

01:12:28.740 places that that michael couldn't have taken that particular one and achieved an enormous success

01:12:34.200 yes for the daily wire but that wasn't like a monetizable event right for the world that was

01:12:40.780 That was for the world, that was for the country, that was for kids.

01:12:42.980 Yeah, totally.

01:12:44.580 That's, you know, being on a team is a pretty wonderful thing.

01:12:48.980 Yeah, it has its perks.

01:12:50.360 It has its perks.

01:12:51.880 A pastor once said, and I think about this all the time, and I'm just curious if you agree, that leadership is a commitment to being misunderstood.

01:13:00.360 Do you feel like that's true?

01:13:01.580 Yes.

01:13:03.540 When you're the boss, you're the bad guy.

01:13:05.540 And bosses who try to be the good guy are still the bad guy.

01:13:09.480 they're just also ineffective you know it is necessarily the case my my top lieutenant at

01:13:17.360 daily wire john lewis who is with me now at my new venture um he was walking out of a meeting

01:13:23.080 with me once in my office with one of the attorneys at daily wire who normally wasn't in the ceo's

01:13:28.880 office and i blew their freaking ears back over some issue i don't even remember what it was you

01:13:33.880 But they got a talking to that day. 0.92

01:13:40.320 And when they were walking out, the attorney looked at John and was just like, whoa.

01:13:45.620 And John said, yeah, you don't want to be in that room.

01:13:48.000 He says, everybody thinks they want to be in that room.

01:13:49.760 I always had glass.

01:13:51.360 My office was always glass, both in L.A. and in Nashville.

01:13:56.360 I just thought, people need to see me.

01:13:59.540 They need to see who I'm talking to.

01:14:01.240 They need to, I mean, one, just on a very practical level, there can't be any accusations if everything's on display.

01:14:10.360 And two, people need to see that you're working, that you exist and that you're present.

01:14:16.180 And John made the point.

01:14:17.580 Everybody thinks they want to be in the boss's office.

01:14:19.800 Everybody thinks that that's a very hard place to be.

01:14:23.880 Your job is to say no.

01:14:26.340 The fundamental job of the CEO is to say no, particularly in a creative business, because, you know, Ben Shapiro has 200 ideas a day and, you know, he bats above average.

01:14:38.680 So 100 of them are pretty good.

01:14:40.860 Doesn't mean you can do 100 of them.

01:14:42.740 You can't do 90 of them.

01:14:43.860 You can't do 10 of them.

01:14:45.280 Probably you can't even do one every day.

01:14:48.220 You know, you have to radically prioritize when you're the boss.

01:14:51.880 and that kind of radical prioritization

01:14:54.840 actually means that you're going to say no

01:14:56.700 the majority of the time

01:14:57.740 and you're actually going to say no

01:14:59.340 to the most productive employees the most.

01:15:04.340 The ones who have the most ideas

01:15:06.440 and the best ideas

01:15:07.460 are going to have to hear no the most.

01:15:09.480 Your worst employees

01:15:10.400 who have the worst ideas

01:15:12.320 don't even present them.

01:15:13.720 They never even get to the point of hearing a no.

01:15:15.460 And the most productive ones,

01:15:16.840 if they're going to hear no all the time,

01:15:18.020 they have to have that delusional optimism

01:15:20.000 that you talked about.

01:15:21.500 Like, okay, he's never liked an idea, but maybe he'll like the next one and keep bringing it.

01:15:26.640 Like, it's also a matter of persistence that they have to have.

01:15:31.120 Absolutely.

01:15:31.720 But it can be a very lonely and isolating thing to be the boss, you know.

01:15:35.380 It can be lonely and isolating to be talent, too.

01:15:37.740 The one difference is the isolation that comes with being talent requires self-honesty.

01:15:43.960 And the isolation that comes with being the boss is sort of imposed on you.

01:15:48.340 Like when you're the boss, you sort of know that you're alone.

01:15:53.300 You know, people stop talking sometimes when you walk into the room.

01:15:55.980 The isolation when your talent is the exact opposite is that everybody wants to be near

01:15:59.960 you all the time and everybody says yes and all of your ideas are the best and everybody

01:16:03.600 laughs at your jokes.

01:16:04.820 And at a certain point you have to go, oh, none of that's real.

01:16:07.600 And now I don't know who's being.

01:16:08.460 No, my team actually does think I'm funny.

01:16:10.860 It's genuine.

01:16:11.880 I know they do.

01:16:12.400 They don't laugh because they have to.

01:16:13.500 They laugh because I'm hilarious.

01:16:14.900 Not you, Allie.

01:16:15.240 Yeah, not me.

01:16:16.000 but now you're both well now i'm both yeah yeah and and i'm grateful that i've had so much

01:16:25.700 opportunity to watch so many good men go through becoming famous you know one of the unique

01:16:30.920 vantages afforded me in my life is watching so many of my friends become famous and so many of

01:16:38.300 them be above average at dealing with fame you know none of them are untouched there's no one

01:16:44.340 who gets out alive, like fame touch, you know.

01:16:47.400 I think sometimes about guys like Steve Carell,

01:16:50.140 who's like famously one of the nicest guys in Hollywood,

01:16:52.680 or Gary Sinise, who's absolutely one of the best guys in Hollywood.

01:16:58.080 And they became famous in their 40s.

01:16:59.980 You know, they achieved real, their real success in their late 30s, early 40s.

01:17:04.060 They were fully formed.

01:17:05.740 There is a kind of a resting effect that success brings,

01:17:08.780 you know, where it freezes you in time.

01:17:11.460 And so, you know, I've seen my friends become very successful,

01:17:14.100 very young. I've seen friends like Andrew Breitbart become very successful later. I've

01:17:20.940 seen guys like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles become very successful

01:17:25.080 in an environment where their worldview is actually what drove them into it. And so they

01:17:31.740 had extra guardrails, I guess. They had the values to actually be a bulwark against some

01:17:39.480 of the worst corrosive influences of wealth, fame, power, and pleasure. It's not that they're

01:17:44.820 untouched by them, but way beyond above average in terms of their ability to deal with success.

01:17:53.280 And I hope I can model after some of the good example that they've set. Well, first, I just

01:17:58.780 hope I'm successful and so that it's a problem in the first place. Yeah, of course, of course.

01:18:02.900 Okay, final thing. In addition to Christ being our hope and our anchor and all of that, what

01:18:09.220 right now is something you tell yourself or you have to remind yourself every day that gets you

01:18:15.080 back into the fight or keeps you hopeful i've been thinking a lot lately and i'll probably talk i'll

01:18:19.960 probably expand on this because i i haven't worked my way all the way through it i've really been

01:18:24.180 thinking about um okay boomer and honor your father and mother and how so much of what we're

01:18:32.720 being told right now is to hate the people who went before us that they destroyed everything

01:18:37.260 and that we have it so uniquely bad.

01:18:41.340 And you think, well, when the boomers came of age,

01:18:46.000 they got drafted and sent to Vietnam.

01:18:49.520 It wasn't a volunteer army.

01:18:51.460 They got, you know, pulled out of their life

01:18:54.220 against their will, shipped overseas to Southeast Asia,

01:18:57.460 and 58,000 of them died. 1.00

01:19:00.320 The older boomers, yes.

01:19:01.260 The older boomers.

01:19:01.880 58,000 of them were killed in Vietnam. 0.86

01:19:04.040 That's 10 war on terror.

01:19:07.560 That's the casualty count of 10 Iraq and Afghanistan's 0.82

01:19:12.800 in the most formative moment of that generation's existence.

01:19:18.580 And you go, oh, well, the boomers made a lot of mistakes, 0.69

01:19:21.360 made a lot of mistakes, you know, no-fault divorce. 0.72

01:19:24.700 Pretty terrible.

01:19:25.940 That's pretty terrible consequences.

01:19:27.920 And yet the idea that we sit in judgment of them

01:19:32.520 as though our hands are clean,

01:19:37.300 as though we can see our own flaws, you know?

01:19:39.320 I mean, the funny thing about eyes is they only look out

01:19:41.820 and we never see our mistakes.

01:19:44.800 And, you know, as Dennis Prager has said in the past,

01:19:49.800 the commandment to honor thy father and mother

01:19:52.100 is the only one of the commandments that comes with a reason.

01:19:57.460 That your days will be long in the land.

01:19:59.740 Honor thy father and thy mother

01:20:00.840 that thy days will be long in the land.

01:20:03.460 You can't have a country

01:20:05.180 if you hate the people who gave it to you.

01:20:08.800 You can't have a country

01:20:09.940 if you tear down all the wisdom

01:20:11.720 that has been bequeathed to you,

01:20:13.640 if you tear down all the structures

01:20:14.780 that have been bequeathed to you.

01:20:16.300 That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be critical

01:20:18.040 of the mistakes of the generations

01:20:19.400 that went before us.

01:20:20.100 Of course we should,

01:20:21.220 but we should understand those mistakes

01:20:22.800 before we're so quick to throw out

01:20:24.760 all that great wisdom

01:20:26.860 that's also been handed down

01:20:28.100 through history to us.

01:20:30.100 And so, you know, on one hand, I see that as a place where we can be really critical of ourselves, and we should be, and we should stop saying, okay, boomer, and we should be more respectful to the people who've given us our country. 0.55

01:20:42.580 At the same time, as you reflect on the challenges that the boomers faced and the things that they actually went on to accomplish, yes, myriad failures. 0.53

01:20:54.260 We're going to have myriad failures too. 0.89

01:20:57.620 Humongous successes.

01:20:58.480 I mean, the 20th century, the second half of the 20th century is the greatest period of peace and prosperity in all of human history.

01:21:05.080 It's never happened before.

01:21:07.060 And you just think, well, what can we do having been given this time of peace and prosperity, having had the blessing of coming of age in a time of peace and prosperity?

01:21:19.060 I know people like, you know, there's wisdom in the idea that, you know, good times make weak men and weak men make bad times and bad times make good, you know, that whole sort of continuum that gets parroted online.

01:21:32.240 Of course, there's wisdom to it.

01:21:34.420 But if you take that to its natural conclusion, then you should hope not to give your children good times, which, of course, is not what any of us hope.

01:21:43.320 We're motivated by wanting to give our children the best possible life, the best possible

01:21:47.920 future, the best possible opportunity.

01:21:50.240 You know, the Bible doesn't say fathers exacerbate the frustrations of your children.

01:21:56.200 It says fathers, don't exacerbate your sons.

01:21:59.660 Like, don't make their lives worse.

01:22:01.080 Don't lead them into exasperation.

01:22:04.460 You know, it says that a wise man provides an inheritance for his children and his grandchildren.

01:22:07.820 Like, of course we're supposed to leave a better life for our children and for our grandchildren. 0.91

01:22:11.700 And so in that way, the boomers, despite their failures, gave us a lot of at least material success to work with. 0.92

01:22:20.300 We have to correct the excesses of the second half of the 20th century. 0.68

01:22:25.520 We have to learn from the mistakes of the generations that went before us.

01:22:29.040 What a blessing, though, that we have all of the successes that they achieved that they didn't have.

01:22:34.780 from this vantage

01:22:37.640 having been given so much

01:22:39.080 what excuse do we have

01:22:41.740 if we don't do even more

01:22:42.940 I mean if we can't build

01:22:44.580 on the foundation

01:22:45.240 that we've been given

01:22:45.840 and the nice thing

01:22:46.740 about the mistakes 0.88

01:22:47.340 of the boomers 1.00

01:22:47.960 is that they're so obvious 0.98

01:22:49.440 the boomers weren't

01:22:50.580 like a subtle generation 0.99

01:22:51.760 you know 1.00

01:22:52.160 the boomers gave us 0.99

01:22:53.880 like songs like 0.99

01:22:54.680 Indian Outlaw

01:22:55.540 or whatever by Tim McGraw

01:22:56.600 like they weren't

01:22:57.280 the most subtle

01:22:57.880 they weren't the most

01:22:58.820 subtle group

01:22:59.200 I could sing it

01:23:00.140 but I won't

01:23:00.660 yeah we could all sing

01:23:01.720 but that's great

01:23:05.220 Like, I had this band director in high school who used to say, if you make a mistake, I want to hear it.

01:23:09.960 And what he meant was, you should be playing with confidence.

01:23:12.820 Yeah. 0.83

01:23:13.680 You know, and the boomers played with confidence. 0.93

01:23:15.540 And their mistakes are kind of embarrassing. 0.96

01:23:18.420 Yeah.

01:23:18.880 But that's great.

01:23:19.600 We get to see them.

01:23:20.640 Like, we don't have to sit around wondering, is no fault divorce a good thing?

01:23:24.160 Yeah.

01:23:24.560 We don't have to sit around wondering, is abortion on demand good for the country?

01:23:28.400 It ain't.

01:23:29.420 Yeah.

01:23:29.660 So, enormous successes to build on, obvious failures to navigate against, technological increases in human productivity, the likes of which we've probably never seen.

01:23:41.520 And I know we're being told that the robots are going to replace us.

01:23:43.840 The robots are not going—you might lose your job to a robot.

01:23:47.620 Of course.

01:23:48.500 It's creative destruction.

01:23:50.040 You know, Pony Express lost jobs to the automobile.

01:23:52.860 Of course there's going to be displacement.

01:23:54.940 Of course negative consequences tend to front load, as we discussed.

01:23:57.600 but but what opportunity also accompanies all of this innovation that's happening all around us

01:24:05.700 the likes of which no one's ever seen before i just think we you know if we if we remember that

01:24:14.000 we have agency if we remember that we can actually make decisions and impact the world around us and

01:24:20.180 change our own circumstances if we remember that we don't have to be the victims of the mistakes of

01:24:24.940 the past. We can overcome the mistakes of the past. And then, in fact, the places where we've

01:24:30.640 been done wrong, which are very real, can be accompanied by their own blessings because we

01:24:36.660 get to learn from the mistakes of others as we move forward into the future. I don't think that

01:24:42.380 it's just Pollyanna to think that that great revival you thought might be happening at Charlie's

01:24:48.980 memorial might in fact be happening. It's just up to us to ensure that it is. And nobody said

01:24:55.260 that would be easy. It wasn't easy for the generations that went before us, and it won't

01:24:58.580 be easy for the generations that come after us. This is our moment. So we just have to grab it

01:25:04.020 and do it. Yeah. Amen. And God's work doesn't always make headlines. And so don't allow X to

01:25:10.800 be your entire perspective of what's going on, because the conversations that I have personally

01:25:17.340 are much more normal and much more sane than the interactions that I see on social media.

01:25:21.780 Social media is a part of real life.

01:25:23.620 I'm not saying it doesn't matter.

01:25:24.860 You know that.

01:25:25.760 It affects people.

01:25:26.640 It affects policy.

01:25:27.720 It affects all of that.

01:25:28.800 But it's not the entire story.

01:25:30.580 It's a microcosm of what's going on.

01:25:33.080 And God also, He isn't bound to social media trends.

01:25:38.760 He can work how and when and how much He wants to.

01:25:42.280 I have a lot to say about boomers. 0.81

01:25:43.880 I love boomers, and I love my parents.

01:25:46.000 My dad guest hosts the show twice a month, and so people get a lot of boomer wisdom.

01:25:52.380 And my audience really loves it, and actually it does make me sad when I see people cutting

01:25:58.280 off their parents for arbitrary reasons because they're looking at their childhood through

01:26:02.580 the lens of modern psychology rather than through the lens of just, yeah, we were all

01:26:06.780 imperfect people, and that was hard, and my parents had it hard, but that's okay.

01:26:11.580 I still love them and honor them, is that there are people who are voluntarily giving up that

01:26:17.320 wisdom and those relationships. And then there are all these people that I talk to who are like,

01:26:22.260 wow, I love listening to your dad because I don't have a dad. Or I never had a dad who talked to me

01:26:26.080 like this. Or my dad died a few years ago. Or he reminds me of my dad or my father-in-law.

01:26:30.840 And I just think a lot of people are giving up the mechanisms that God gave us to be vessels

01:26:38.300 of wisdom like your therapist cannot replace your mom or dad the biggest thing that your therapist

01:26:43.720 will not give you that your parents will is tough love and sometimes truth that hurts your feelings

01:26:49.820 and i could go on and on and the government can't replace them yes and i'm kind of going off the

01:26:54.580 reservation a little bit but there is yeah there's just a lot of wisdom to to what you're saying and

01:27:00.480 also i just will say like there is a lot of positives i think that we can think of when it

01:27:05.320 comes to ai and it's really incredible actually like what grok can do and the answers that they

01:27:10.680 give you i just also always tell christians you know when techno like technology can tell you can

01:27:17.520 it can't tell you should you know it can tell you what is possible it can't tell you what's moral

01:27:21.720 and when technology takes us from what is natural to what is possible christians have to ask but

01:27:26.220 is this moral and i do think there is a risk of people giving up the image of god in ourselves

01:27:32.200 when we outsource our wisdom and our abilities and our creativity to AI and we're just like

01:27:39.320 we're voluntarily giving that up because it's more convenient because it's more lucrative in

01:27:44.440 some cases I do think AI has its purpose and I'm sure you agree with me but like in the future I

01:27:50.100 think that we're going to have businesses entities who say I'm 100% human we have 100% human company

01:27:55.940 I'm 100% like human podcast.

01:27:58.600 I don't use ChatGPT.

01:27:59.840 And like, I will be the one to buy from those companies.

01:28:02.760 I don't know if it's just nostalgia for me,

01:28:05.020 but there is something that just feels

01:28:07.220 a little icky to me about AI.

01:28:09.440 And I know I've opened up a whole can of forums

01:28:11.040 of conversation that we don't have time for.

01:28:12.920 I'll only say this, that I'm a human,

01:28:15.120 I'm very human centric in my theology.

01:28:18.480 Like, I basically think that the world exists

01:28:21.100 for the glory of God,

01:28:21.960 but the glory of God is revealed in Christ

01:28:23.520 and Christ is the part of God

01:28:24.720 that he associates with man.

01:28:26.500 And in a way, that means the universe exists for man.

01:28:30.800 No man, no universe.

01:28:32.060 There'd be no point in the exercise of creating the universe without man.

01:28:37.160 Not for machines.

01:28:39.080 The people who think the machines are going to replace us, or that there's a post-human future,

01:28:42.860 that we'll be uploaded to the cloud and we'll all just be machines, or whatever.

01:28:46.640 No, we're embodied souls, made by God.

01:28:48.480 The whole universe exists so that God could be tinted in human form in the person of Christ

01:28:54.160 and reveal himself in glory through the act of salvific redemption of you and of me.

01:29:04.760 That's why the universe exists.

01:29:06.280 And the fact that I'm so glad that the guys who are making all of this stuff are smarter than me. 1.00

01:29:11.540 And I'm also so tickled that they're so dumb. 0.99

01:29:14.560 Like, you're so smart. 1.00

01:29:15.860 You've invented a machine that can tell me how to make cookies.

01:29:18.420 And I can tell it what went wrong with my cookies,

01:29:20.920 and it can make adjustments to the recipe and tell me how to fix it.

01:29:23.740 It's amazing.

01:29:24.360 I love it.

01:29:25.600 It'll help us cure diseases and help us go to Mars, and the universe still exists for man.

01:29:31.440 It's not going to replace us.

01:29:32.560 We're not going to get uploaded to the cloud because the people who say that either don't believe or have forgotten why the world exists in the first place.

01:29:43.180 And so there's a lot of hope in just remembering the very fundamental truth that God created man, God walked as a man, and God redeemed man.

01:29:53.620 And that's kind of the point of the story.

01:29:55.560 Yeah.

01:29:56.320 Gosh, that's so true.

01:29:57.860 God's eternal plan of redemption going off without a hitch.

01:30:00.120 She's not going to let AI derail that.

01:30:02.120 And that eternal plan of redemption is not for machines.

01:30:04.780 It is for man.

01:30:06.020 Yes. 0.54

01:30:06.440 Okay.

01:30:06.780 I think that's a positive note to end on.

01:30:08.320 Jeremy, thank you so much.

01:30:09.220 People can find your show wherever they find podcasts on YouTube as well, right?

01:30:12.960 That's right.

01:30:13.400 Awesome. Thank you so much.

01:30:14.800 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 15, 2026

Ep 1347 ｜ Going Soft on Islam？ The Right’s Shifting Views Explained ｜ Jeremy Boreing

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