00:01:12.000And he is going to tell us this tragic but crucial for us to hear story of his son who died by suicide in December of last year after he fell victim to a sextortion scheme on Instagram.
00:01:27.620You do not want to miss tomorrow's conversation.
00:01:31.080I know that that already sounds dark and sad.
00:01:59.920And I never have time to talk about everything that I want to talk about.
00:02:03.360But because there are so many theological implications in this story or so many theological points being made online about this Tennessee three who happen to be using the Bible to try to defend their politics and not just their politics, but their political strategies.
00:02:20.220I wanted to speak to it as much as I can.
00:02:22.260And again, I won't be able to get into the theological depth that I want to, but I will try my best since so many of you have been asking about this.
00:02:29.260So let me give you a little bit of background on the Tennessee three.
00:02:32.860That's been their new nickname that the media has given them.
00:02:36.820Even as these three Tennessee Democratic state legislators have risen to prominence and fame, thanks to a lot of Democrats and left-wing activists on Twitter, who have dubbed them as some kind of heroes for going against the majority conservative state legislature in Tennessee, who are pro-Second Amendment.
00:02:57.420And yet the Tennessee three, apparently they're on the front lines of the anti-gun rights movement in the wake of the Nashville shooting that occurred a couple of weeks ago at Covenant Christian School, which we've covered extensively.
00:03:11.540So three Tennessee state representatives, Gloria Johnson, Justin Pearson, and Justin Jones, led and participated in anti-gun protests last week from the floor of the House chamber that disrupted proceedings following the Nashville shooting.
00:03:28.420They each face votes of expulsion or votes of removal as representatives from this two-year session that the state legislature in Tennessee is in from the GOP-led House for violating chamber decorum.
00:03:40.320Justin Pearson and Jordans were expelled and Johnson survived the vote by one.
00:03:44.320There is a theory, by the way, about this one legislator who decided to vote against Johnson's expulsion, that she was pressured to vote against it so that this would turn into some kind of race issue because Gloria Johnson is white.
00:04:01.380Justin Pearson and Justin Jones are black.
00:04:04.280And so the reaction to their expulsion has been this is the deep south being the deep south.
00:04:09.220This is the white GOP being the racist white GOP, white supremacist that they are.
00:04:15.500The reason why Gloria Johnson was not removed, was not did not actually face expulsion is because she's white.
00:04:22.960And these two dudes, these two state representatives are black, but she survived by one vote.
00:04:29.580Again, there are theories about that one vote, but also she had a different posture after this, which we'll get into in just a second.
00:04:39.220So the Tennessee House of Representatives rules of order, there is a rules of order that you are supposed to follow as a as a representative or as a legislator in Tennessee.
00:04:49.280But it doesn't outline specifically what constitutes what constitutes expulsion.
00:04:54.400It does outline that a member who does not follow the rules of order could be liable to censor a formal statement of disapproval.
00:05:01.900The initial protest on the House floor on March 30th consisted of three chanting no action, no peace in response to gun legislation that followed the Nashville shooting.
00:05:14.960We'll also put up pictures of the protest that was happening at the Tennessee state capitol.
00:05:38.760And I use that word loosely as generously as possible because there was a lot of aggression.
00:05:44.080Some might even call this some form of an insurrection at the Tennessee state capitol after the Nashville shooting occurred.
00:05:53.860These three legislators were reportedly a part of that.
00:05:57.900And again, as we just saw, they actually disrupted proceedings on the House floor.
00:06:02.240So they weren't just outside of the chamber, but actually within the chamber trying to disrupt Democratic proceedings because they didn't like the way that it was going.
00:06:12.620It goes without saying that is that if this were the other direction, Republicans would be called Nazis.
00:06:19.860They would be called out for undermine undermining a Democratic process.
00:06:26.940In an interview, Representative Gloria Johnson said that this was an act of fascism to have these representatives removed.
00:06:35.360That's something that you're hearing echoed by a lot of people on the left.
00:06:41.140And of course, President Biden had something to say about this, as many Democrats did on Twitter.
00:06:47.840President Biden said this, three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting.
00:06:52.080And what are GOP officials focused on punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action?
00:07:00.240It's shocking, undemocratic and without precedent.
00:07:04.860So I just want to note that this is more.
00:07:07.620This is more than Joe Biden said after those three kids and three officials, three adults, officials is kind of a weird choice of words there at Covenant Christian School were actually gunned down.
00:07:20.520He spent much more energy honoring, quote unquote, trans people right after a, quote unquote, trans person murdered these six people that week than he did honoring the victims.
00:07:31.880I'm not sure if he ever even uttered their names.
00:07:44.320In fact, the first time that Joe Biden was supposed to be making a statement about this publicly, he stood before the crowd and he made a joke about chocolate chip ice cream before he addressed anything to do with the victims of this shooting.
00:08:00.820And so now he's pretending that he is incensed over this, that he is just so distraught over these victims of gun violence.
00:08:08.000But it's only because he sees this as politically expedient for Democrats.
00:08:12.760And by the way, it is because the media is on the Democratic side.
00:08:18.480And so, of course, they are going to use this opportunity to say, yes, these people are being removed because they're on the right side of history.
00:08:25.800Republicans are on the wrong side of history and because they're white supremacists.
00:10:37.020He looks like some kind of Malcolm X type activist.
00:10:41.260That's the purpose of the news interviews that he gave after it's obvious that they are trying to bill him, paint him as some kind of civil rights era hero.
00:10:52.120The aesthetics, the branding, the branding, the PR that's going into this is extremely intentional.
00:10:58.820It's extremely orchestrated and it's extremely strategic.
00:11:19.420And so that was him on the House floor.
00:11:21.360But let's look at him from just a few years ago in 2016, when he was just a good old college student and he was running, I guess, for class for class president.
00:11:37.460And here's what Justin Pearson sounded like just a few years ago.
00:11:42.920I want to do this by partnering with organizations from the Boone Democrats to the Boone Republicans.
00:11:48.980I want to bring together different voices, dissenting voices, voices that may be more liberal or more conservative in order that we can reach a point of sort of the radical middle.
00:12:20.640These family members are still reeling from their loved ones, dying at the hands of a mass murder just a couple of weeks ago.
00:12:29.240And they are seeing the brightest, the shiniest moment of their careers.
00:12:34.800And President Biden, Kamala Harris, MSNBC, CNN, left wing activists are all using it to show, look, how great we are, how racist the GOP is.
00:12:46.860And I saw James Lindsay say this, and I think it's a really good point.
00:12:49.960They are using the Tennessee three to try to distract from the Nashville six because they don't really want to talk about that because the shooter was transgender, period.
00:12:58.860And so because they're more concerned about, quote, unquote, transphobia than they are, the deaths of these children, not all of them, but the people that we have talked about listed specifically on the show, the activist class on the left.
00:13:13.360They want to instead point you to these three supposed heroes.
00:13:20.180Also, Justin Jones, he is a part of this.
00:13:24.220He's another he's another representative here.
00:13:28.000And then, of course, as I said, you also have Gloria Johnson and something that we see in all three of them is the use of scripture to try to justify their stance, to try to give more substance to what they're doing,
00:13:45.640to try to paint themselves as some kind of biblical, as some kind of biblical heroes.
00:13:54.600You will see, for example, that Justin Jones says there's a scripture that says the stones will cry out.
00:16:14.760That is not necessarily justice, especially when the policies that you're advocating for don't actually have any kind of provable correlation to saving lives.
00:16:25.600And then he is also talking about a passage in Luke 19 when Jesus says this, and I'm just going to pull it up so I get it correct.
00:16:37.360And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher, rebuke your disciples.
00:16:41.880And he answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.
00:16:49.160The very stones would cry out even if you silence them.
00:17:02.560He is talking about the worship of God that even if you silence the human worshipers, even the very stones will cry out to worship the Lord and to declare and affirm his Lordship.
00:17:14.580And so per usual, with progressive eisegesis, you are twisting scripture to try to make a point that scripture simply is not making.
00:17:24.680And yet it's really incredible, all of the professing Christians that you see on Twitter hailing these people as amazing revivalists, as people who understand the canon of scripture, people who understand the gospel.
00:17:40.060He is also referencing at one point Jeremiah 6, 14.
00:17:45.040He says, they have healed the wound of my people, lightly saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace.
00:17:52.120Again, extracting that verse out of its context.
00:17:56.160This is also the problem with thinking that scripture is about us.
00:17:59.980Scripture is to us, but it's not about us.
00:18:02.640Thankfully, graciously, we play a role in the eternal redemption story.
00:18:10.660When we put ourselves at the center of the narrative, which this kind of liberation theology always, always does, then we get interpretations extremely wrong.
00:18:19.740That's also where we get theological liberalism, because when you put yourself at the center of the story, your culture, your political beliefs, and then everything starts to change depending on the changing morality of society at the time.
00:18:34.260Now, Shane Claiborne, he's a progressive, I guess he would call himself a progressive Christian.
00:18:44.400He said that there is a revival happening at the Tennessee Capitol.
00:18:48.020I saw other Christians who are similar to him in his ideology also saying that these three legislators, especially Representative Jones and Representative Pearson, are doing an amazing job for Christians.
00:19:01.420I saw Dr. Anthony Bradley, who, you know, he does a lot of important work on the crucial role of fathers in society, specifically in the black community.
00:19:12.700But when it comes to issues of social and racial justice, he tends to be extremely progressive.
00:19:17.800And he said, you know, white evangelicals in the GOP, they are just they don't know what to do with these men who are drawing from the black tradition of understanding and applying the whole canon of Scripture rather than just the Gospels and a few epistles.
00:19:32.560Well, look, these guys, as we would expect, are not theologically solid.
00:19:41.020Like, if you look at some of the things that, for example, Representative Justin Pearson has said in the past about God, I guarantee you even someone like Anthony Bradley would not agree with because these guys are liberation theologians.
00:19:52.780They come from the tradition of James Cone, who himself was not an actual Christian.
00:19:57.960He did not believe in the exclusivity of Christ.
00:20:00.360He did not believe in the absoluteness of the gospel.
00:20:04.680He said that he believed that all religions were on an equal playing field as long as they led to some form of liberation.
00:21:20.640He has a lot of clips like that saying that Jesus is Jesus is black and gay mother God rather than father God.
00:21:31.440And so the fact that you have Christians that fancy themselves real Christians hailing these people as some kind of theological heroes, champions of the faith.
00:21:42.920It's just not it's just not what's really going on here.
00:21:47.080Just a couple of days ago, these three representatives were on Good Morning America and they were taking selfies.
00:22:06.900They were posting and tweeting about how awesome it is.
00:22:10.360This is what Representative Gloria Johnson said in a picture in front of the Good Morning America sign with the two other representatives.
00:22:30.220These young people and their parents want us to now to act now to save lives.
00:22:36.020I mean, but they're just like they're grinning on their they're grinning in front of a Good Morning America sign.
00:22:43.900Like they're obviously excited about the fame that they have been afforded by the media.
00:22:50.760As I already said, President Biden, Kamala Harris, they're using this as a media opportunity.
00:22:56.800They're using this as a way to up their approval points.
00:23:01.460We've already forgotten about these little victims.
00:23:03.620We've already forgotten about the fact that apparently there are transgender people that are purposely targeting schools.
00:23:09.540This is not the only story there was thankfully a plan for a plan foiled, as we talked about earlier this week, by a person who identifies as transgender in Colorado, who planned to shoot up a school, apparently for the same kind of motivations.
00:23:24.080It's also odd, by the way, like apparently we were so done with that story that we are not even curious about the manifesto anymore, because remember, the shooter wrote a manifesto.
00:23:34.800Remember the Buffalo shooter, that horrible, horrible shooting that happened in Buffalo, New York, where the guy went there because reportedly he was really literally a white supremacist and wanted to go into a majority black community and shoot up a grocery store and kill as many black people as possible.
00:23:50.140We got that manifesto out really quickly because it was really useful for the media to say this is right wing violence.
00:23:56.740This is a result of mainstream conservatives somehow ginning up hatred and violence against black people.
00:24:02.720But when it comes to this person who identified as the opposite sex, who apparently targeted targeted a Christian school that she allegedly felt was opposing her stated identity, we're not allowed.
00:24:16.960We're not even allowed to see what her stated motivations were.
00:24:19.680Don't you think that that's a little odd?
00:24:22.800And now we are just using this as an opportunity for Democrats to become famous and not just that, but to also whip up even more hatred and outrage against Republicans.
00:24:32.960There's an independent journalist by the name of Judd Legum.
00:24:36.160And I think that's how you pronounce his last name.
00:24:38.940And he has he has decided to dox the House Speaker in Tennessee, Cameron Sexton, or at least his children.
00:24:49.920And he's sharing some information about this House Speaker, including the school that his children attend.
00:24:56.460And he's putting it on his website, which is popular, popular information.
00:25:02.620So Legum says that he believes that Sexton is violating the Tennessee Constitution because he also resides in Nashville during the year rather than the district that he represents.
00:25:13.060The Tennessee Constitution says that he can only represent the district if he is a qualified voter of that district.
00:25:17.620And so he is saying that this guy is violating his own rules.
00:25:21.600He thinks that he's pointing out hypocrisy.
00:25:31.100So I don't know if what he is saying is true.
00:25:33.200But look, if he has done the digging and he believes he has a story, whatever, he can report on that story.
00:25:39.540He but he decided that he was going to post the address of this, the House Speaker's former private residence.
00:25:48.740He did get that information from Sexton's website.
00:25:51.400So that is not necessarily that's not necessarily doxing because it is public information.
00:26:00.040But you are purposely trying to more widely circulate that.
00:26:04.720But really what the doxing is and the message that I received from one of you being concerned about this was in regard to the private school, which I'm not going to put up here.
00:26:16.740I'm not going to stay here, but was in regard to the private school that his children, the House Speaker's children attend.
00:26:26.840And this person even says Sexton and his spouse are show regularly attending events on the school's Facebook page.
00:26:35.100What are you trying to do here as a journalist?
00:26:36.560Are you trying to make sure that his children are endangered?
00:26:41.340Are you trying to make sure that his children get hurt, that his children get, I don't know, kidnapped to try to politically pressure him to make a different decision than the political decisions that he is making on behalf of his district?
00:26:55.740OK, it's one thing to talk about what you think is a violation of the Tennessee Constitution.
00:26:59.620It's another thing to try to put his family, his children in danger because you politically disagree with him.
00:27:06.800And this is happening at the same time that we are trying to elevate the Democratic Party and and elevate these three legislators as some kinds of heroes.
00:27:49.020That are representing the things that we are voting for, the things that we hold dear.
00:27:53.460We should be praying for their safety.
00:27:54.820I mean, it goes without saying that I would not like this if this were going in the other direction.
00:27:59.320No, kids should absolutely be off limits.
00:28:02.700And this, again, is by the same people who have already forgotten, who have already given up on the story of these three children and three adults being murdered in Nashville has nothing to do with it.
00:28:14.400And these are the same people, by the way, who want to convince us to give up our guns.
00:28:18.920You're trying to simultaneously show me that you're willing to dox children of your political opponent while you are asking the rest of us to give up our guns.
00:28:29.720So you're making us feel very vulnerable.
00:28:31.660I mean, we already know that you guys vote for the politicians that will not enforce the laws and actually put people in jail who are a harm to society.
00:28:40.520So you've already given us that reason not to give up our guns.
00:28:43.260But now you're showing us as a form of journalistic activism that you are willing to put our children at risk because you don't like the things that we believe in or the things that we have to say.
00:28:53.840And you're trying to convince us to support anti-gun legislation.
00:28:57.700Like, do you not see how that's probably not going to work?
00:29:01.340Do you not see how people would see that and then think, well, you know what?
00:29:04.780Maybe you actually just want to hurt me.
00:29:06.920Maybe you just actually want to hurt me and my family.
00:29:08.800And that's why you want to take away my guns.
00:29:12.820So this is actually what encourages people to go out and find ways to defend themselves.
00:29:18.280So it's just really, really ugly stuff.
00:29:33.040And look, I haven't even gotten into the debate over what the specific gun legislation is.
00:29:38.760As I've said before, I've said this many times.
00:29:41.740I am not against honest, in good faith discussions about legislation that would provably and logically protect the lives of people against violence perpetrated by people who are carrying guns.
00:29:56.800But as it is, we have a lot of laws on the books that are currently not enforced right now.
00:30:03.300I got a message from someone saying, you know, I'm a fan of you, but we've got to ban right now high capacity magazines.
00:30:10.200And if you're, you know, on the right side of history or if you're a reasonable person or if you're really creative, whatever, then you will support this too.
00:30:17.400So, and look, okay, let's have a discussion about that.
00:30:21.800And I think it's okay to have questions.
00:30:23.400And as soon as you ask questions, as soon as you give an opposing side when it comes to this, the other side shuts down and just gets mad at you and pretends like you don't care about human life, which is not true at all.
00:30:31.800I want to know what you mean by a high capacity magazine.
00:30:36.700If we're looking statistically, the vast majority of deaths at the hands of someone who is carrying a gun is because of a handgun.
00:30:45.440A lot of these are happening in deeply blue cities where there are already strict regulations on guns.
00:30:51.760Why aren't we enforcing the laws already on the books that could actually prevent the deaths that are occurring?
00:31:00.200Like, have we ever thought about the criminal justice policies that are being put in place where a large majority of these gun deaths are happening?
00:31:08.260A lot of them, the majority of these deaths are because, especially of young people, people under the age of 18, is because of gang violence.
00:31:17.760Like, have we ever thought that maybe we're not enforcing the law?
00:31:20.940We're not making the punishments harsh enough for this kind of violence.
00:31:24.100And that's why these numbers are so high.
00:31:26.440When it comes to AR-15s, look, I want realistic solutions.
00:31:44.460For the first 40 years of its existence, it was not used for a mass shooting.
00:31:50.020The nature of the AR-15 has not changed.
00:31:52.920But obviously, something changed within those 40 years.
00:31:56.300And still, even today, even though every single murder is absolutely tragic and we should be looking at real solutions and real problems to try to figure this out, it still accounts for a tiny, tiny percentage of deaths by gun.
00:32:11.980Like I said, the majority of it, it's a handgun.
00:32:28.020It's not enough just to say, well, other countries have regulated guns and so we should regulate guns too because it works.
00:32:34.200That doesn't take into account the many, many other factors that go into crime statistics in other countries.
00:32:41.300People often list Australia, for example, and the ban on certain kinds of guns, certain kinds of weapons in Australia, and then a precipitous decline of gun violence.
00:32:51.420But they never show you that the precipitous decline of gun violence in Australia was happening long before this ban ever went into place.
00:33:00.500Again, not against the conversations, but the side that is for legislative solutions.
00:33:07.720And I believe that there could be some, okay?
00:33:11.020I believe that there could be some that doesn't violate Second Amendment rights, doesn't violate someone's right to be able to carry a gun and defend themselves and hopefully protect lives.
00:33:23.280I believe that there could be policy legislative discussions to be had there.
00:33:30.160But if that side, if the Republican side is willing to come to the table and have those policy discussions, then the other side needs to be willing to come to the table and have the moral discussion.
00:33:39.440Because like I said, we've always had tens of millions of guns in this country.
00:33:43.880The AR-15 has been around for a very long time.
00:33:52.700So if we're willing to talk about the guns, let us also talk about the moral and the cultural rot that progressive secular humanism has wrought, different spelling, in our country and has captured all of the institutions.
00:34:07.460Like, let's talk about the moral decline that has also occurred here.
00:34:11.900And I'm not saying that that necessarily comes with a straightforward policy solution.
00:34:16.100But if one side is willing to come to the table and talk about policy and legislation, the other side needs to come to the table.
00:34:21.100And let's talk about the moral and the cultural, the social, even the spiritual darkness that this country is facing.
00:34:27.640And maybe the people on the left side of this issue who think just gun confiscation is the only answer.
00:34:33.080Maybe they're going to have to take some ownership and perpetuating the godlessness and the chaos and the purposelessness that is driving, unfortunately, a lot of these crimes.
00:34:45.960But don't tell me we're not going to talk about the deeper stuff if I'm willing to talk about the policy stuff.
00:34:50.980And you're also going to I mean, we're going to have to be logical here.
00:34:53.940We're going to have to look at what would actually prevent these kinds of crimes and what laws are on the books that we can already go ahead and enforce.
00:35:01.100So all this to say, you know, I don't even know necessarily that the Republicans made exactly the right move in removing these two legislators.
00:35:11.280It seems so to me, I'm open to hearing the other side of this when it comes to just like the politics of it, the hip hop, whatever.
00:36:16.260All right, guys, so that's all we really had to say about the Tennessee story.
00:36:33.380Honestly, there was so much more in there that we could break down, that we could try to try to understand.
00:36:41.660And and we'll talk about it more probably with James Lindsay, because I think that he has a really kind of good grasp of what is going on behind behind the scenes here.
00:36:55.680Also, just a reminder, Mother's Day, Father's Day is coming up, especially Mother's Day, guys.
00:37:02.900And as I've said many times, your wives, they want that relatable merch.