Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 19, 2022


Ep 551 ｜ My Take on Pastor Mike Todd’s Spit Take


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

168.91028

Word Count

7,265

Sentence Count

473

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so
00:00:13.580 far. This episode, like our other episodes, is brought to you by our good friends at Good
00:00:22.020 Ranchers. I absolutely love this company. I love the people that run this company and
00:00:27.860 they are revitalizing the American farming ranching industry by shipping better than
00:00:34.660 organic chicken and craft beef right to your front door. All American made at a really,
00:00:40.360 really good price, especially if you use my link, goodranchers.com slash Allie. So make
00:00:44.780 sure you check that out. All right. We're talking about a few things today, depending on how much
00:00:51.260 time I spend on this first subject. You guys probably anticipated that I would talk about
00:00:56.000 this at some point, and that is that viral Mike Todd clip that has been circulating. Mike Todd is a
00:01:05.020 pastor out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He pastors a church called Transformation Church there. He is a very
00:01:12.640 well-known pastor in evangelical circles. I'm pretty sure that his church is a pretty big church. I don't
00:01:20.360 know if I'd go so far as to say it's a mega church. I'm not sure, but it's a pretty popular church. He's
00:01:25.360 written a few books. He's been very influential on the subject of dating and relationships especially,
00:01:32.140 and I've seen some interviews that he has done on that subject, and it's very good. He's got a lot
00:01:36.840 of good things to say there. In my humble opinion, I would say that that is his biggest strength is
00:01:43.400 talking about relationships and how to date and to be married in a way that glorifies God. So like
00:01:51.500 with anyone, there is a lot of good to what he says and what he preaches and how he influences people
00:01:59.360 to try to live like Christ through their dating and marriage relationships. So that is great. I don't
00:02:08.540 know if I agree with everything he said on those subjects because I haven't read or listened to
00:02:12.280 everything that he has said on them, but what I have seen and heard has been pretty good. He's had a lot of
00:02:19.460 good insight. Now, where I think that maybe our friend Mike Todd could improve, and I say our friend
00:02:29.960 not literally because I don't know him. I've never communicated with him, and I don't know anyone that
00:02:35.000 has ever communicated with him, but where I think Mike Todd could probably improve is in the preaching
00:02:42.720 arena as we saw in this viral clip. This viral clip is from a sermon that he preached last Monday
00:02:50.620 where he spit into his hand and he rubbed his saliva on a church member in order to make a point. We will
00:02:59.020 talk about the point that he was trying to make after I show you, and I apologize. I apologize for
00:03:05.080 showing you this clip, but I had to see it, so you have to see it. I'm going to be reacting in real
00:03:10.760 time. I've only seen it all the way through once, so this will be my second time, and I am bearing this
00:03:16.820 for you. If you're watching this on YouTube, enjoy. Here we go.
00:03:21.080 Oh, it's the sound. It's the sound.
00:03:31.860 I'm going to gag.
00:03:32.920 Yeah, because the vision I'm about to give you.
00:03:43.280 Oh my gosh.
00:03:44.180 I'm like, get nasty.
00:03:45.140 Guys, that's his spit that he's rubbing together in his hands, so he just hawked a loogie, rubbed it in his
00:03:49.420 hands, and is putting it on this guy's eyes. It's dripping off his face.
00:03:53.700 Hey, do you hear and see the responses of the people?
00:03:59.360 Oh my goodness, guys. Oh my goodness. If you're asking yourself why in the world was that necessary,
00:04:08.100 I think that's a really good question. So social media lit up with responses. There were a lot of
00:04:13.980 really funny tweets. Like if you just type in Mike Todd on Twitter, you'll see a lot of funny tweets.
00:04:19.520 Some of them were rude, and I don't think that that is necessary. Like trying to personally attack
00:04:24.440 him. I don't think that's right. But there were a lot of really funny responses to what he did. So
00:04:30.400 just check that out if you've got an extra 10 minutes and you want to laugh. Some people had
00:04:36.500 some humorous things to say about that, and a lot of people were grossed out. I mean, there were
00:04:41.940 articles written about this. People on Instagram were reposting it and talking about it. Twitter,
00:04:48.700 every social media outlet was like, what the heck is going on? This is so gross. And obviously people
00:04:55.060 pointed out that we are in the midst of COVID. And even if you are someone who is not worried about
00:05:03.380 COVID and you're kind of thinking, okay, we're over the worst of this pandemic, spreading Omicron is
00:05:10.340 not that big of a deal. Even if that is your position, this is disgusting. This is disgusting.
00:05:15.780 As someone who considers myself a germaphobe and a little bit of a hypochondriac, this might be on
00:05:21.600 the list of my top 10 biggest fears. So Mike Todd realized that he was getting backlash. I guess he
00:05:29.160 just opened up his phone. He probably got some texts from some friends saying, you know what,
00:05:34.140 what she did on Sunday. It wasn't just the audience there that was grossed out. Everyone
00:05:38.780 on planet earth that saw it is grossed out. Maybe you should respond. So he decided to release an
00:05:46.080 apology clip and we'll play just 30 seconds of it right here. Hey, what's going on everybody? I hope
00:05:51.780 you're having an amazing Monday. I just want to acknowledge what happened yesterday when the spit
00:05:57.600 hit the fan. I watched it back and it was disgusting. Like that was gross. I want to validate
00:06:05.440 everybody's feelings. That that was a distraction to what I was really trying to do. I was really
00:06:11.400 trying to make the word come alive and for people to see the story. But yesterday it got too live and
00:06:17.700 I own that. Okay. So he goes on to basically just expound upon that. And at the end, he says a funny
00:06:24.900 comment about how he spit on his friend and his friend is still bald. So I thought that was funny.
00:06:29.400 He has a good sense of humor. You can see why people like following him and listening to him
00:06:34.400 because he's very dynamic and he comes across as a very kind, very charitable. And he kind of just
00:06:42.580 draws you in. And like I said, he has a really good sense of humor and everyone likes that
00:06:47.020 in a communicator, even a communicator of the word. I think it's really important
00:06:51.120 to have good dynamic communication skills. And he, of course, has that. He also goes on in this
00:06:57.540 apology clip to say, you know, we should really listen to the whole sermon because things kind of
00:07:01.840 got out of hand. He was trying to make the word come alive, but he still believed that the message
00:07:07.280 that he preached was really important. And so I did that. I listened to the sermon because I did
00:07:16.160 want to give him the benefit of the doubt. And you know what? I appreciated that he made a video
00:07:19.940 apologizing and that he acknowledged it. We did an episode a couple months ago, a few months ago,
00:07:26.780 I think it was in October about a particular comment that was made in a sermon and posted on Facebook
00:07:31.660 by Stephen Furtick. And we will link that episode in the description to this episode. And I got some
00:07:39.260 pushback on that. A lot of people, however, appreciated it. I tried to be as charitable as possible while
00:07:44.400 still explaining what he said was not just a little bit wrong, but actually anti-biblical, not just
00:07:51.040 unbiblical, but anti-biblical, and anti-gospel. He basically said that Jesus doesn't make you into
00:07:57.300 a new person. He just turns you into, or he shows you who you always were. I'm paraphrasing that. And
00:08:06.520 we talked about how scripture says that we are actually new people. We go from death to life. We
00:08:12.500 are made into new creations. The old has passed, the new has come. And it's actually a very important
00:08:18.360 distinction between what the gospel says, what scripture says, and what Stephen Furtick said
00:08:23.760 there. And so this reminded me, this whole situation reminded me of that. But Stephen Furtick
00:08:31.660 never apologized. He never explained or clarified as far as I know. Maybe he did, and I just didn't
00:08:37.180 see it or hear it. But I looked for that, and I didn't see that. The post was deleted after some
00:08:41.320 backlash, and that was it. So I do appreciate, in the spirit of transparency, Mike Todd coming out
00:08:47.480 acknowledging, hey, yeah, that was gross. That was a problem. But he does say in this apology
00:08:52.260 video, please go and listen to the whole sermon. So because I liked the apology, and I wanted to
00:09:02.600 kind of take him at his word, and plus I just think this is important in general, I went back
00:09:06.920 and I listened to the sermon. And just to be honest, I only listened to the first 45 minutes
00:09:12.440 or so of it. I wanted to make sure that I got the context around this incident, but I also wanted
00:09:17.740 the lead up to it to really know what he was talking about. I'm like, you know what, maybe he
00:09:21.400 had some amazing expository preaching leading up to this, and it did just kind of, he was just trying
00:09:26.640 to give a demonstration, and it did just get out of hand. He didn't realize how disgusting it would be.
00:09:31.820 All right, that would be one thing. That was not the case. That was not the case. I listened to the
00:09:37.600 first 45 minutes of it, and I felt so tense the entire time I was listening because of
00:09:45.800 the blatant mishandling of the word of God. Because this was, and I can't speak to all of
00:09:52.600 his sermons, and I'm not talking about him in general. You guys know I don't throw around
00:09:56.180 the labels like false teacher, false prophet, and things like that. I'm not saying that because
00:10:01.640 I just don't know. Maybe there are some of you who you wish that I threw around those labels
00:10:06.140 more about certain pastors and teachers. I just don't because I don't have all of the information
00:10:12.520 and the knowledge to throw around those labels, and I just don't think it's the most helpful
00:10:17.620 and productive thing. So that's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about this particular sermon
00:10:22.080 that I heard was not a sound sermon. It was not preaching the word of God, and it seems like
00:10:31.980 because I listened to the first 45 minutes, and because I listened to the context around
00:10:36.760 this incident, it doesn't seem like it was something where he was just preaching from the
00:10:41.320 word, and he wanted the word to come alive. It actually seems like he worked himself up
00:10:46.040 so much because he was getting so much positive feedback from the audience every time he said
00:10:51.100 some kind of soundbite that he wanted a bigger reaction. I don't know. Maybe that's not true,
00:10:56.100 but that is certainly how it came across. And speaking of Stephen Furtick, this sermon reminded
00:11:02.760 me so much of what Stephen Furtick does. And it is called, as we talked about in that Stephen
00:11:08.160 Furtick episode, eisegetical preaching, where you take a verse, or really you take an idea,
00:11:14.520 and then you find a verse to kind of support the idea or the theme that you want to preach on.
00:11:22.060 So you take a verse. In this case, the verse that he used was Proverbs 29, 18. He used the
00:11:28.620 message version, I think, but this is the English Standard Version that says,
00:11:32.820 where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps
00:11:38.620 the law. And basically, the sermon, or at least the first 45 minutes, maybe the last hour or so of it
00:11:45.360 was way better than the first 45 minutes that I listened to, but he basically just uses this as a
00:11:51.320 springboard to talk about the idea of vision and how you might be in a situation that you thought
00:11:58.640 you were supposed to be in, but you didn't wait on God's vision. You might be in a situation where
00:12:03.180 your vision is foggy, metaphorically speaking, but you don't know what the future holds, and you got
00:12:08.680 to wait for God's vision. You got to ask for God's vision. Okay, is that what this verse is talking
00:12:15.460 about? I don't think so. Actually, we don't even know, based on his sermon, what this verse is
00:12:22.160 talking about. He doesn't talk about the context. He doesn't talk about the author. He doesn't talk
00:12:25.840 about who this verse is speaking to, what this verse is actually talking about, what this verse
00:12:32.340 tells us about God. Instead, he spent almost the entirety of the first 45 minutes talking about
00:12:39.100 different hypothetical scenarios in which someone might be seeking vision. And that's the problem
00:12:45.740 with a sermon that is almost exclusively focused on practical application. So there is a place for
00:12:53.360 practical application, but that's not why the Bible was written. The Bible is about God. It's not about
00:13:00.140 you or your situation. Now, what the Bible says about God and what a verse actually means may very well
00:13:08.500 apply to your situation. It probably does in a particular way. But the sermon that I heard,
00:13:14.800 the first 45 minutes of a sermon that I heard, makes it seem like the Bible in this particular
00:13:20.060 verse, Proverbs 29, 18, is about you. It's talking about your relationship with your boyfriend. It's
00:13:26.100 talking about the job promotion that you want. It's talking about that confusing situation that you're
00:13:31.820 in. Again, it might apply to those things in a particular way, but we don't even know how a verse
00:13:40.020 applies to our particular situation unless we first know what a verse means. And that is part of a
00:13:47.040 preacher's job is to tell us what a verse means, not just what a verse means to you, but what does the
00:13:52.320 verse mean? And in order to know what a verse means, you have to know the context. You have to know
00:13:57.880 who is saying it, why they're saying it, what the historical context was, what the cultural context
00:14:03.500 was, what the original language is telling us. You have to know what the verse actually means,
00:14:09.880 not just what the verse means to you. I honestly don't really even know what the point was of the
00:14:17.040 first 45 minutes of the sermon. I really did go in with an open mind thinking, okay, you know what?
00:14:23.560 Like I said, maybe this is an amazing sermon and this just kind of went off rails.
00:14:27.420 There certainly is grace for that. But the first 45 minutes, I wish you guys could have seen my
00:14:32.920 face. It was, I almost felt like I was in pain because it was such a mishandling of the word of
00:14:38.820 God. Because there was so little preaching of the word of God in it. There is so much in the gospel,
00:14:45.740 guys. There is so much in scripture to be dissected, to be analyzed, to be preached. It is actually
00:14:52.380 sufficient for our encouragement. It is sufficient for reproof. It is sufficient for correction. It is
00:14:58.700 sufficient for what we need to live a godly life that we don't have to travel outside of it.
00:15:05.180 And what I think happened in this whole spit take, if you will, is like I said, I think that it was,
00:15:12.740 okay, how far can I go to kind of continue to get a reaction? How far can I travel in order to
00:15:21.440 really make my point? But that's unnecessary. We don't need those kinds of illustrations.
00:15:29.800 We don't need those kinds of spectacles. We don't need those kinds of viral clips. You know why?
00:15:34.440 Because the gospel is scandalous. The gospel in itself is scandalous. The Bible in itself is
00:15:40.780 controversial. We don't need you to spit on a church member to see what the reaction is in order
00:15:49.020 to try to make a completely convoluted point about what this passage means. And he also, he didn't just
00:15:55.820 use Proverbs 29, 18. He also used John 9, the story of Jesus using his saliva to make mud and to put
00:16:04.780 the mud on the eyes of someone who was born blind in order to heal him. And he completely bungles that as
00:16:13.400 well. So in the portion of the sermon where he actually does this, the hawking of the loogie and
00:16:21.260 the spitting and putting it on one of his congregants eyes, he is talking about Jesus giving a man vision.
00:16:28.320 And this is something that I also see Stephen Furtick do a lot. They will use a passage from
00:16:33.680 the Bible. For example, Jesus in John 9, it says in verse 6, he spit on the ground and made mud with
00:16:40.580 the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said, go wash in the pool of Siloam,
00:16:47.420 which means sent. So he went and washed and came back seen. So what eisegetical pastors will often do
00:16:56.200 is they will use a passage and then they will use it as a metaphor. So again, rather than saying,
00:17:03.560 okay, here's what this verse means. Here's why what Jesus did is so stunning. What does this tell
00:17:07.960 us about Jesus? What does this tell us about the God that we serve? What is the historical cultural
00:17:14.140 context here? What does this text actually mean? They will use it as a springboard and a metaphor to
00:17:22.280 make the point that they want to make. So because I don't think I totally clarified this earlier,
00:17:26.740 although we've talked about this before, eisegetical means that you are putting meaning
00:17:32.980 into the text. Exegetical, which is the proper way to preach the word of God, and this is something
00:17:39.840 that I have learned from listening to many exegetical preachers over the past, you know, while I have been
00:17:47.700 a Christian, this is not something, I'm not a preacher, so I'm not saying it from that perspective.
00:17:52.060 I've learned from very wise people what exegetical expository preaching looks like, and that is
00:17:58.880 drawing the meaning out of the text. So you go to the text and you say, what does it say? And what
00:18:05.660 does it mean? What does it tell us about God? What does it tell us about sin? It is not, what do I want
00:18:10.620 the text to say? Or what do I want to say? And how can I get the text to then support what I want to
00:18:16.380 say? Now, you can preach eisegetically and not necessarily say something unbiblical. You could
00:18:25.300 say, I want to talk about the glory of God. What verses can I use to support that? That's not
00:18:32.580 necessarily bad. That's not necessarily going to lead you to some kind of unbiblical conclusion.
00:18:38.820 But even so, when you go to the text, you are looking for what the text actually means, not what you
00:18:44.280 want it to mean, and not what it means to you. So eisegetical preaching gets us into all kinds of
00:18:50.580 dangerous zones because we are fallible. And so we want to say something. We want scripture to support
00:18:56.800 what we say. And so we are going to bend over backwards and use all kinds of crazy tricks to
00:19:02.340 try to get the Bible to support what we want to say and the point that we want to make, when really
00:19:07.860 the Bible makes the point. And we draw out what the point is using careful study and understanding
00:19:16.080 of scripture. So he uses John 9 and he uses this miracle of Jesus using his saliva to heal this man
00:19:27.100 who was born blind. And rather than telling us, again, what this passage means, why did Jesus use
00:19:34.980 his saliva? Like I would want to know. I mean, that's kind of an open question. No one knows
00:19:38.780 for sure. I've seen some people make some guesses. Now, Mike Todd does talk about he was putting his
00:19:45.120 DNA on this person to say that you are like a part of my family. I don't know if that's true or not.
00:19:51.420 I haven't seen any evidence of that. There are some cult, there's some cultural context here that I
00:19:57.360 think could probably give us some clues, but we don't hear about that. I don't remember hearing about
00:20:02.200 that from Mike Todd. Instead of learning more about Jesus and what it meant that he was able to perform
00:20:11.540 these kinds of miracles, what this chapter of the Bible actually means, why it was included, what this
00:20:18.060 says about God, what this means when it comes to the power of God and the power of Christ, what does
00:20:23.900 this tell us about the gospel and about the God that we worship? Instead, it is used, at least in the
00:20:31.860 first 45 minutes that I heard, as a metaphor that God gives us vision, not just literally heals people
00:20:40.660 from blindness, but this is supposed to be a passage, I guess, about giving us some kind of grand vision,
00:20:49.100 prophetic vision of our life to give us clarity for what may come. He says that the audience had this
00:21:01.200 reaction, as you heard in the video, grossed out by this, obviously, and he was basically trying to
00:21:10.840 say that sometimes God's vision is going to get nasty, and we need to understand that. Are you kidding me?
00:21:19.520 Are you kidding? That's not what the passage says. That's not what it means.
00:21:25.560 And as I say, this passage, Scripture in general, has so much in it. We don't have to go outside of it.
00:21:35.620 We don't have to put our meaning into it. We don't constantly have to find modern day applications
00:21:41.740 to every person's situation. Tell me what the Bible says. Tell me the context. Tell me what the verse
00:21:49.920 means. Tell me what it says about God. Tell me what it says about Christ. That and that alone is what is going
00:21:57.900 to transform hearts and minds. And the transformation of the heart and mind through the power of the Holy Spirit
00:22:04.660 and the wisdom of the Word of God is what permeates in someone's life and then applies to the different
00:22:13.300 circumstances that they're in. I'm not saying, again, that application is always wrong or always bad,
00:22:18.720 that we can't speak to how a verse specifically applies to someone's situation. Because even though
00:22:24.640 the Bible wasn't written to us, it is written for our learning, our knowledge, our education,
00:22:33.280 our encouragement. And so, of course, we can apply it to our lives. But again, not until we know what
00:22:38.440 the passage says. Mike Todd never tells us that. Mike Todd never tells us that. At least in the first
00:22:43.760 45 minutes, maybe in the second half, it's this amazing exegetical sermon. Somehow, I don't think so.
00:22:52.020 This very much reminds me of Stephen Furtick. It reminded me very much of prosperity gospel preaching
00:22:59.780 that has really no substance. I hate to say it. It has no substance. No biblical substance. Really?
00:23:08.880 I mean, I didn't leave that knowing anything more about the Word of God or who God is. It was just a
00:23:17.140 bunch of repetitive soundbites and a bunch of different hypothetical scenarios in which someone
00:23:23.400 may or may not need vision from God. But it doesn't tell me anything about how to ask for wisdom,
00:23:32.580 how to ask for discernment from God, how to obey God when things aren't clear. I mean, there was just so
00:23:40.520 much scripture that wasn't preached. There was so much gospel that was missed. And that's what happens
00:23:47.180 when you have eisegetical prosperity gospel preaching. You miss the gospel. You miss the true gospel.
00:23:55.440 And I think people who are listening are worse off for it. It might pump you up and make you feel good.
00:24:00.440 I mean, there was certainly a lot of that in the sermon. There was a lot of pumping up and a lot
00:24:07.260 of excitement. And maybe that excites some people. And honestly, I think, like, I'm not judging here
00:24:12.820 because I imagined myself in college when I really first started ingesting a lot of Christian teaching
00:24:20.300 and preaching. I was very indiscriminate in the things that I was reading and listening to. I just
00:24:24.540 didn't know. I mean, I had been raised in a Christian home, but actually studying the Word
00:24:31.080 of God was something that was fairly new to me. That's something that I didn't start doing until
00:24:34.840 the latter part of high school. And so I was listening, watching Joel Osteen. I was listening
00:24:43.200 to Stephen Furtick. I was reading his books. I was listening to or reading, what's that book?
00:24:51.440 Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I was reading The Shack. But I was also listening to John Piper,
00:24:57.120 Francis Chan, David Platt, John MacArthur, Matt Chandler. And so I had a wide array of people that
00:25:04.660 I was listening to and learning from at that point. And so I don't judge people who are listening to
00:25:10.000 Mike Todd or listening to Stephen Furtick because I don't know where they are in their faith. And I'm so
00:25:14.480 glad that someone didn't come along when I was listening to this kind of stuff in 2011 or 2012.
00:25:21.040 And say, you're not really a Christian because you're not listening to that. The reality was,
00:25:25.840 is that I just needed to learn more. I had a friend my sophomore year of college get me an
00:25:31.020 ESV study Bible. And I don't even think she knows this. Maybe I should text her today. I don't even
00:25:36.740 think she realizes how pivotal that was for me in my faith. The ESV study Bible is still, by the way,
00:25:42.460 my favorite study Bible. I've tried multiple since then. The ESV study Bible is still my favorite.
00:25:47.540 And I think the commentary in the ESV study Bible really is what pushed me towards Reformed theology
00:25:56.500 and realizing the dangers of eisegetical preaching and the prosperity gospel that I really did not
00:26:03.420 see the problems in. It took years of studying the Bible. It took time. It took the grace of the Lord.
00:26:10.140 It took the kindness and a friendship and people gently pointing me towards the truth. I don't remember
00:26:16.400 receiving, you know, condemnation from people for listening to the wrong teachers. But I do remember
00:26:22.980 their people, God placing people in my life along the way when I was in college to point me towards
00:26:29.960 sound teachers. And so if you are someone who maybe you listen to Mike Todd or you listen to
00:26:38.980 Stephen Furtick and you're thinking, hey, you know, this all sounds great. This makes me
00:26:44.000 feel good about myself. I didn't realize there were problems in it. That's okay. I certainly
00:26:49.920 am not the arbiter. I'm not the arbiter of sound preaching and teaching or what counts as a sound
00:26:56.160 sermon and does not. I have simply listened to people who are much farther along in their faith,
00:27:02.700 who are much smarter and much wiser, much more knowledgeable than I am when it comes to studying
00:27:08.080 and preaching the Word. And that's the only reason that I do, by the grace of God, have any discernment
00:27:14.800 when it comes to this kind of thing. Unfortunately, and I truly mean that, unfortunately, the sermon
00:27:20.580 that I heard from Mike Todd was not based on any kind of clear understanding from what I saw of the Word
00:27:29.680 of God. And so I'm glad he apologized, and I'm glad that he was transparent about it. But man,
00:27:37.440 the problems were so much bigger than this particular clip, so much bigger. And so let's all just pray for
00:27:43.960 wisdom and pray for discernment. We're all fallible people. We're finite people, as are all pastors and
00:27:50.380 preachers. So let's just ensure that everything that we are listening to, everything that we are
00:27:55.500 digesting when it comes to Christian teaching is based very strictly, very closely on God's Word.
00:28:04.140 And when we have disagreements about what the Word of God means, because again, we will, we're fallible,
00:28:08.320 finite people, let us let the Word have the final word and not our own opinions and feelings.
00:28:17.740 Okay, totally shifting gears, I just wanted to talk about this story that I saw circulating on Twitter
00:28:23.340 yesterday quickly. And that is about Justice Neil Gorsuch refusing to wear a mask while they're
00:28:29.980 hearing oral arguments on certain cases. And the reason why this is a problem is because
00:28:37.260 another Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, whom we talked about a couple weeks ago when we were
00:28:46.360 talking about, well, we talked about her during the Dobbs case because of her claim that
00:28:53.020 a child in the womb who moves or even resists the prick of an abortion needle isn't necessarily alive
00:29:01.000 just because that child can feel pain. And we also talked about her a couple weeks ago when we were
00:29:09.420 discussing the vaccine mandate case when she said that a human being is basically a machine
00:29:18.080 that sparks and or that spews sparks. So just like a machine spews sparks, and I guess you have to
00:29:25.580 fix it or take control of it so that it stops spewing sparks, you should be able to do the same thing
00:29:32.800 with a human being. Of course, there is a big problem with that logic, but also human beings are not
00:29:42.120 machines. But I think her comments in both cases show us the progressive view of human beings that
00:29:48.060 really are just blobs of cells from the time that they are conceived until the time of death that can
00:29:55.940 simply be controlled and manipulated by the government. So I appreciate her giving such a clear picture of
00:30:02.200 the left-wing view of human beings and the value of humans. But now she is showing us that even while she
00:30:11.040 may not value other human beings that much, she very much values herself and is very, very scared
00:30:18.000 of COVID, which I think probably also is the motivator behind a lot of what she said in regards to the
00:30:28.160 misinformation that she spoke about to the vaccine and about COVID. When she was hearing those vaccine
00:30:35.520 mandate cases, she said that there were 100,000 COVID hospitalizations for kids, many of whom were
00:30:42.560 on ventilators. That is absolutely untrue. Even the director of the CDC, who I would say is a factless
00:30:48.560 fear monger usually when it comes to COVID, said that it's only about 3,000 pediatric hospitalizations
00:30:55.920 total. And the vast majority of those cases are with COVID, not because of COVID, which means that
00:31:01.720 a kid might be admitted to the hospital for whatever reason and he just happens to test positive for
00:31:09.800 COVID. And so she was very off base. No one really cared to correct her, I guess, in the moment, or even
00:31:15.640 there were very few people that wanted to correct her after either. So that's Sotomayor. I think she has a
00:31:23.240 lot of irrational fear surrounding this, which is probably why she is listening to the oral arguments from
00:31:33.620 home because Justice Gorsuch won't wear a mask. Now, to be fair, Sotomayor apparently has type 2 diabetes.
00:31:41.800 That is an underlying condition. She's also obese. And so these are underlying conditions and could certainly
00:31:49.980 exacerbate a COVID condition. So I don't blame her for being somewhat afraid. But here's the kicker.
00:31:58.440 Here's what CNN says. Under Supreme Court rules, media covering the court proceedings and lawyers
00:32:04.080 arguing before the court have to wear masks. But there are no specific rules regarding masks for
00:32:09.520 justices. All of the justices have been fully vaccinated and received booster shots. They are also
00:32:16.960 frequently tested. So if the vaccines work as well as she says that they do, what is she afraid of?
00:32:23.600 I mean, we know at this point that the vaccines don't stop infection or transmission, which is why
00:32:28.140 vaccine mandates are just ridiculous. They are unscientific nonsense. They don't make any sense.
00:32:32.680 And more than that, there are threats to personal liberty. And so but if she trusts them the way that
00:32:41.660 she says that she does, then why does it matter if Gorsuch isn't wearing a mask? But the bigger thing,
00:32:47.800 I think, is not the fact that they're all triple vaccinated at this point, but also that they're
00:32:52.540 tested frequently. He is not going to infect her. First of all, he's probably not going to infect her.
00:32:58.940 I'm sure he's not. I'm sure that even though they are apparently sitting by each other,
00:33:05.200 it would probably be difficult for that to happen, especially if he is asymptomatic. He's not going
00:33:11.960 to be hearing these oral arguments if he has COVID symptoms, but they're also tested frequently. So he
00:33:17.480 knows that he doesn't have COVID. It'd be one thing. Now, I would agree that it is selfish if he knew
00:33:23.200 that he had COVID and he's coughing and, you know, pulling a Mike Todd and rubbing his loogie all over
00:33:30.520 Sonia Sotomayor's face. I, yes, I would say that that is disgusting. I would say, Justice Gorsuch,
00:33:37.120 you are a very selfish man and that is gross, but that's not what's happening. He's sitting
00:33:41.380 in his own seat testing negative for COVID with three vaccines. Apparently, you know,
00:33:50.540 that means something to Sotomayor. And yet she is still making a big deal of this. She is still
00:33:56.040 listening remotely. That's fine if she wants to listen remotely. But the fact that this is becoming
00:34:00.980 a big thing where the liberal media is calling Justice Gorsuch selfish for this, that just doesn't
00:34:08.140 make any sense. Like in what way? Explain to me scientifically how someone who tests negative
00:34:12.660 and then refuses to wear a pointless mask is selfish. That just doesn't make any sense.
00:34:18.200 Is the virus going to secretly somehow? Is the virus saying, OK, I'm going to avoid testing positive
00:34:24.900 on this test, but I'm going to secretly like secrete out of Justice Gorsuch's mouth and infect Sotomayor?
00:34:32.620 Is that the scientific way this works? It's just another example of COVID really becoming
00:34:37.700 a religion. Like I said, I don't care that Sotomayor is doing this remotely. If that's what makes her
00:34:44.400 feel comfortable, that doesn't make a difference to me. But the media backlash about this and just
00:34:49.100 condemning Justice Gorsuch, it's really it's not because he won't wear a mask. It's because he's
00:34:53.480 conservative. That's why. But by the way, he's not even as conservative as conservatives would like
00:34:59.300 his decision in Bostock. Absolutely abysmal and has set the stage for just terrible policy when it
00:35:08.800 comes to gender and the protection of women's sports and spaces. But of course, because he is not
00:35:15.900 to the left of Bernie Sanders, he is going to be the target of condemnation for the media and people
00:35:23.900 who don't wear masks are apparently selfish. Even if you don't have COVID, it doesn't make any sense.
00:35:31.180 It's superstitious nonsense. And it's just a virtue signal at this point. It always has been. And the
00:35:37.980 media is kind of actually admitting this now. They're saying that, no, you really need a KN95 mask.
00:35:44.400 The cloth masks don't do anything. The surgical masks don't do anything. Yeah, I've been talking
00:35:50.160 about that for almost a year now. There have been many studies that have proven that the surgical
00:35:55.420 masks, that the cloth masks don't do anything. Sure, the KN95 mask, the N95 mask, sure, they can be
00:36:02.720 effective. If you have symptoms or like if you are infected, they might protect. If it's perfectly
00:36:11.460 fitted and you don't wear it for too long, that's possible. But if you're not sick, you're not
00:36:17.600 protecting anyone from anything. I don't even think we have good data or good science to prove that
00:36:24.420 asymptomatic spread is a thing. And if it is a thing, is it a significant thing? I don't think
00:36:30.240 we have any data to back that up whatsoever. So what is the point of a healthy person wearing a mask?
00:36:35.380 I don't think that it makes any sense. And we've been saying for a very long time that there are very
00:36:39.420 few masks that actually work. And we were gaslit and told, no, your little cloth mask that you got
00:36:44.860 in Target that was also made in Wuhan, China, it definitely works. It's definitely what's keeping
00:36:49.940 people safe. I mean, this is another reason why mask mandates in schools doesn't have it. They have
00:36:56.040 no significance in mitigating the spread of COVID at all. It's always been stupid. It's always been
00:37:04.340 silly. It's always been unscientific. And we've been saying that for over a year now, for almost
00:37:09.720 two years now. Jeez, it's been such a long time. And we've been told that we are the conspiracy
00:37:15.500 theorists. Of course, there are a lot of things that are now coming out about COVID that journalists
00:37:21.180 are reporting that we were told was a conspiracy theory. CNN recently reported that women are seeing
00:37:28.400 the change in their menstrual cycles after they get the COVID vaccine. And that some women are having
00:37:34.520 longer periods. Some women are having more frequent periods. Some women who are in menopause are
00:37:40.480 bleeding. Some women are skipping periods for several months. But CNN still assures us it's okay.
00:37:46.560 It's not that significant. And I'm like, yeah, you know, it's just your reproductive system. It's just
00:37:52.260 your ovaries. It's just ovulation. It's just your ability to be able to have children one day.
00:37:58.420 Don't worry about that. It's fine. It's fine. Of course, it's just going to keep coming out more
00:38:04.460 and more that, okay, it is significant or it might have an impact on fertility. But we don't really
00:38:11.300 know. They're just going to keep edging towards the truth. That's what we've seen since the very
00:38:15.200 beginning, that so many of the people who were accused of spouting conspiracy theories have been
00:38:20.600 vindicated. But there have been no apologies from the people that tried to take away their
00:38:24.500 livelihood, deplatformed them and called them conspiracy theorists. I think before the midterms
00:38:29.860 were just going to be incredibly gaslit. I think that Democrats realize that all of this hysteria
00:38:37.100 and the policies that just don't make any scientific sense are losing popularity even among Democratic
00:38:43.700 voters. I think they really need the economy to get back in shape. I think that they need to have a
00:38:48.920 sense of normalcy before the midterm elections to try to say, look, Democrats and Joe Biden are
00:38:54.620 doing such a good job with the economy. Look how great life is. And by the way, I think that things
00:39:00.000 are going to go that way because Omicron just isn't very virulent. And I think that shows that while the
00:39:07.240 virus may be transmissible, it's not as deadly as it once was. And so it's just going to get harder and
00:39:14.600 harder to justify some of the very cumbersome restrictions that exclusively Democrats are
00:39:20.220 putting into place, especially when it comes to remote learning. Parents on both sides of the aisle
00:39:25.660 are so weary of the politics that are being played at the expense of their children when it comes to
00:39:31.780 unscientific mask mandates, when it comes to remote learning and school closures. And so I think
00:39:36.700 Democrats are going to pretend that they have been the ones pushing for normalcy all along.
00:39:42.720 And you can't let them get away with that. You can't let them get away with the gaslight.
00:39:47.460 I saw another CNN headline that they posted on Instagram. And I was like, oh my gosh, wow,
00:39:53.360 this is brand new information. I would have never, ever thought of this. And the headline said,
00:40:00.100 new research shows kids experienced both mental and physical health problems. New research,
00:40:05.940 new research, anxiety, depression, lower physical activity, food insecurity, and school disengagement,
00:40:12.140 linked to school closures and social lockdowns. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much, CNN, for your honest
00:40:19.540 journalism. I know that I'm just dripping in sarcasm in this segment of the podcast. I'm sorry,
00:40:24.900 I'm over it. I am so over it. And I'm so tired of the gaslighting. These people ruined people's lives
00:40:33.020 and pushed kids to the brink of suicide or into suicide because of these unscientific school closures
00:40:40.000 and lockdowns and forced isolation. And a lot of kids were pushed into the arms of their domestic
00:40:48.020 abusers, were pushed into food insecurity, have fallen far behind academically. I mean, talk about
00:40:54.260 income gaps and success gaps between the rich and the poor. Those are going to be wider than ever. And I
00:41:00.240 don't know if they're ever going to close because these kids won't get their childhood back. They won't
00:41:04.540 get their elementary education back. Yes, I would love all parents to be able to opt out of public
00:41:10.980 school and just homeschool or send their child to a Christian school. I think that would be great. But
00:41:15.320 that's not the case. It's not a possibility for a lot of people. And so for the kids that have to go
00:41:20.800 to public school, they have no other option. They're really going to fall behind. The most vulnerable
00:41:25.480 kids have had it really bad over the past couple of years. And the conservatives who have brought that
00:41:31.700 up, again, have been told that we lack compassion, that we lack empathy somehow, that they're going to
00:41:36.940 die of COVID if they're sent to school without a mask. It was all a lie. It was a lie. Don't you
00:41:41.560 forget that these people lied to you over the past two years. Don't you forget who put these policies
00:41:46.020 in place over the past two years, especially when it comes to the midterms. Do not let them lie to you.
00:41:51.080 They did this and they're trying to act now like they want things to go back to normal.
00:41:57.540 Don't let them lie to you. I'm not going to let them. I'm not going to let them off the hook for
00:42:02.040 this. So if if you have to rely on me to remind you how much they lied to us, how much they deceived
00:42:09.660 us, how much they manipulated the data, how much they pushed for these cumbersome restrictions in
00:42:15.480 the name of public health and then ended up vindicating the so-called conspiracy theories that
00:42:20.360 they de-platformed people for. If you have to rely on me to remind you of that, I'll be here.
00:42:25.160 Trust me. All right. All right. That's all we've got for today. Tomorrow, we've got a great
00:42:31.560 interview. We're going to be talking about the Olympics happening in China. Can we even believe
00:42:36.980 that that is still going forth when we look at the havoc that has been wreaked, that has been wreaked
00:42:42.640 on the world because of China's corruption and incompetence? It's really incredible that that's
00:42:50.280 happening. So we're going to be talking about that tomorrow. Once again, if you love this podcast,
00:42:55.420 please leave us a five star review. That would mean so much. I will see you guys back here tomorrow.