00:27:53.920My simplistic analysis that I've given that I gave a few weeks ago that a lot of people agree with, a lot of people have said, too, is simply that.
00:28:02.280I mean, I understand that Trump is leading the primary field and that he's popular.
00:28:06.900I don't think that he can win against Biden.
00:28:09.120I don't know if he can even even if all of the if everything was in his favor, if everything was totally neutral and everything was very fair.
00:28:16.660I don't think that he could win against Joe Biden.
00:28:18.780I do think someone like Ron DeSantis could.
00:28:21.040I think, honestly, there are other candidates that can't win the primary that could probably win against Joe Biden.
00:28:26.600I think Tim Scott could probably win against Joe Biden.
00:28:34.720I think there's a lot of people that could win against Joe Biden.
00:28:36.620And I think Trump is one of the only people who could not win against Joe Biden.
00:28:40.540Something else that kind of that worries me about Trump.
00:28:43.500You talked about his trustworthiness is and some people like this.
00:28:47.060They see this as him championing their concerns, too.
00:28:52.120But I think he is so caught up on his own personal vendettas, which, you know, I can't really blame him for.
00:28:58.180But he's so concerned with how he's been treated and how he's been unfairly maligned that his only goal when he gets in office is to try to enact revenge on the people who have unfairly treated him, whatever.
00:29:13.440And he's not as concerned with the plight of everyone else who has supported him or the plight of conservatives or the plight of parents.
00:29:21.460I think that he is so Trump minded that that's going to be his main focus.
00:29:27.640And I like I really want him to kind of move past that and to say, OK, but how is everyone else being mistreated?
00:29:34.040How about these parents over here who are being cast as domestic terrorists?
00:29:37.740And I'm just not sure he has the the vision, the wide enough perspective to be able to see the importance of that.
00:30:06.200OK, what's the difference between a MacArthur who loses early in World War Two and vows, I shall return and wants and wants.
00:30:15.140And wants revenge on the Japs who did it to him and and is single minded in purpose to walk out of Manila, the victor later in the war to King Saul, who goes and visits the witch of Endor, who goes to look for to extract vengeance, but in order to satiate his ego.
00:30:34.940And I think the difference is to what end, to what end?
00:30:39.300And you have seen like I'm like for me, I love the idea of Donald Trump with with a taste of blood in his mouth.
00:30:47.300And I'm someone that I don't like his personality most days.
00:30:50.000I find his branding and many of his branders beyond obnoxious.
00:30:53.480OK, but I love the idea of a guy with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove.
00:31:15.460OK, then there is the way he behaves a lot of the days in between those kinds of speeches.
00:31:20.400You know, he's over there doing poop lib videos on truth social, dimly lit, you know, coming up with stupid nicknames for Ron DeSantis because he just can't believe Fox News covered his press conference again.
00:31:31.520That kind of stuff is and it goes back to the good and bad of his presidency.
00:31:35.920The first fight of the Trump presidency, remember, is when he enlisted Sean Spicer to go after the media about how many people actually attended his inaugural compared to Obama's.
00:32:24.760And then there's the Samson who tears down the temple of Dagon, the pillars of that temple to plunge the fish demon as worshippers face down into the dirt.
00:32:56.640There are days where it looks like, OK, I can see why when the people went to the Lord and said, give us a king so we can be like everybody else.
00:33:49.680Meanwhile, Fauci's over there creating his own Vichy government right underneath Trump's nose and ends up usurping his authority altogether repeatedly.
00:33:59.580And so this is, again, where are we with him?
00:34:02.860And I think, if nothing else, it is vital for Ron DeSantis to be in the race to help us get an answer to that.
00:34:09.160Because if you think keeping Trump on message is difficult now on a daily basis and not making it all about himself now, if he didn't have a legitimate opponent, if his opponents were all the other dwarf candidates who are irrelevant, then this would only be about him all of the time.
00:34:26.100And so I think when you're, you know, it is good to have competition.
00:34:30.480Okay, let's analyze for a second one of Trump's recent posts on Truth Social that, you know, I started thinking about this.
00:35:29.440We spent all of 2020 saying, no, we're not on the hook for the sins or even perceived sins of our ancestors.
00:35:37.520Obviously, slavery, chattel slavery was an egregious sin.
00:35:40.680But some of the things that, you know, white people are accused of, of, you know, systematically being responsible for all oppression of black and brown people, ridiculous assertion.
00:35:50.900But then saying, you know, we're on the hook for our ancestors, not just even our ancestors, but just people who might have looked like us a long time ago in the same relative region.
00:36:05.220Like, so we've spent a lot of time saying that's not biblical, that's not moral, that's not practical.
00:36:10.560We shouldn't try to inculcate that in our legal system.
00:36:14.480And here is the here is the former president, Republican president of the United States saying, no, actually, it does make me better.
00:36:39.260Because they've also been saying for the past several years that this kind of stuff absolutely does matter, that we are condemned because of the sins, not just of our ancestors, but white people who lived in America 200 years ago.
00:36:51.820And we need to dismantle everything that had a hint of white supremacy in it 300 years ago, except for Planned Parenthood and except for Joe Biden, I guess.
00:37:01.080So in that sense, it is kind of interesting.
00:37:03.360Like, how would progressives respond to this?
00:37:05.340Why doesn't it matter in his case and why does it matter in other cases?
00:37:09.700But on the surface, it's really just kind of dumb.
00:37:41.180And so there is potential in this statement, as you articulated in the second half, and that would require, though, you'd have to pivot to an outcome.
00:37:55.720So a complete and total sellout and a nutter.
00:37:58.600OK, that's essentially his staff, his inner circle, those types of people, people who will feed his worst instincts and then people who will actually try to take his best instincts.
00:38:12.900And there's no cogent because he has no cogent worldview.
00:38:15.400So it's the it's the it's the it's the it's the the commentary that Tucker mentioned the other night that Donald Trump is subject to his being flattered, to letting people in who will just flatter him and tell him what he wants to hear.
00:38:26.400That's a very Saulian instinct, by the way.
00:38:28.860And and and so because of that, he could that statement could be used to say to then have a campaign, a team, then turn and message that and say, so why did no wonder voting for these people for the same party decade after decade, generation after generation didn't work.
00:39:27.560And he didn't have that very often during his own presidency.
00:39:30.740And so instead, these things often this is an example of something he will say that will absolutely max lit the other side, put them on max lit.
00:39:57.380And I think that that again, there's no the worldview is art of the deal.
00:40:02.160Whom whom offers Trump the best deal as but it's but it's but it's plumb line is what's best for Trump.
00:40:08.880Most of all, I think at his core, if you look at the long and he's had a long life and a lot of it in the public, I think there are there are two principles that guide Trump's art of the deal.
00:40:19.700Number one, himself and his own self-interest.
00:40:22.680And then number two, I do think he loves America.
00:40:25.080I've described I think he's a patriotic narcissist.
00:40:27.100And and thankfully, there are plenty of times where what's in his self-interest also happens to be in ours.
00:40:35.420But but ultimately, transactionalism is not any.
00:40:39.460You can't have any form of long term relationship based on that because someone will come along without conviction in their worldview.
00:40:46.260Some pressure will be applied like what happened with covid.
00:40:49.200Some better deal will be offered like his previous wives experienced.
00:43:24.740OK, because I think the challenge for Ron DeSantis is the is is the quote unquote vision thing is what's the vision for America?
00:43:36.180And I say this as someone who was is a it was absolutely an endorsing of him running as a candidate because it's the most he has he has proven to succeed with the most ruthless, ruthlessly efficient deployment of my worldview politically.
00:43:53.140I've ever seen, maybe like in modern history.
00:43:55.880Yeah, here's the problem, though, on the flip side.
00:44:39.080That's that's not a that's not a campaign message.
00:44:41.560And I think he's got to he's got to figure out ultimately what is the rallying cry like build a wall, make America great again, forward, putting people first.
00:45:13.220Lots of people in Florida messed around.
00:45:15.060Republicans who didn't want to do any of this stuff when Rick Scott was governor and for the last 20 years in legislature, they messed around.
00:45:20.360They found out, dude, I would I would take mess around and find out.
00:45:23.560I'd not only put that sign in my yard alley, I'd mow it into my yard.
00:45:26.740I'd mow that into my grass so that when you flew over it, you could see it on Google Earth.
00:45:31.260He's got to figure out what is the rallying cry, not what is the purpose, not what is the the the the the the the the policy.
00:45:41.000Outcome. But what is the rallying cry for my candidacy to capture the imagination?
00:45:47.000And he's and he's up against someone who's masterful at casting that kind of vision.
00:45:52.340Yes. OK, I've got you for maybe a minute and a half left.
00:47:24.000The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a major ruling on affirmative action, rejecting the use of race as a factor in college admissions as a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.
00:47:37.440Guys, we have had affirmative action in this country for decades.
00:47:41.040You heard Steve mentioned that briefly.
00:47:45.140Students for Fair Admissions, a student activist group, brought cases against both Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
00:47:51.380The group initially sued Harvard College in 2014 for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal funds or other federal financial assistance.
00:48:07.440The complaint against Harvard alleged that the school's practices penalize specifically Asian American students and that they failed to employ race neutral practices.
00:48:16.660Of course, I mean, entities have been doing this for a very long time and legally.
00:48:21.380The North Carolina case raised the issue of whether the university could reject the use of non-race-based practices without showing that they would bring down the school's academic quality or negatively impact the benefits gained from campus diversity.
00:48:38.060So the six conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts, if you can call him a conservative, not really, but he's kind of unpredictable.
00:48:48.060The associate justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett voted for the decision striking down those schools' race-conscious admissions policies,
00:49:00.280while the three liberals, while the three liberals, Kagan, Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, dissented.
00:49:06.280Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case, actually, due to her previous role on Harvard's Board of Overseers.
00:49:17.240So this is really, really interesting and exciting.
00:49:23.880Now, I saw Oren McIntyre point out that universities have already been anticipating this decision.
00:49:32.940And so they have started to shift their standards.
00:49:37.640They've started to lower their standards and say, oh, we are no longer, I saw this, actually, several Ivy League schools are saying, we're no longer going to allow things like the SAT to carry so much weight.
00:49:49.640Instead, we are going to be placing more weight on things like extracurricular activities.
00:49:54.220Now, who does that indirectly or, I guess, directly but in a non-overt way penalize?
00:50:02.820It typically will penalize the Asian-American students who do have, in general, a heavy emphasis when it comes to their academics on the actual scholastic academic portion of their education rather than the extracurriculars.
00:50:21.280And that's a general statement that has actually been made by some of these administrators and some of these people on these college boards at these Ivy Leagues.
00:50:30.180And so they are already trying to change the standards to ensure that they can still, without saying that they are, give preferential treatment to black and brown students who statistically, okay, don't get mad at me, statistically do not score as well on these standardized tests and even have as high of a GPA as the white and the Asian students who are applying.
00:50:57.360And so as the universities start to shift the standards around, they can say, well, it has nothing to do with race, but really they are considering all of the factors that would help the black and Hispanic students get in and would actually make it a little bit more difficult for the white and Asian students to get in.
00:51:15.060And Clarence Thomas said this, I saw Samuel say, tweet this out, it is not even theoretically possible to help a certain racial group without causing harm to members of other racial groups.
00:51:28.980And of course, what he means by that is what Thomas Sowell talks about in the quest for cosmic justice, which I could not recommend to you more.
00:51:37.780If you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, then you know that you've heard me say that a million times, as well as discrimination and disparities by Thomas Sowell.
00:51:47.860But he makes this case that basically the social engineering that comes from the top down that says, oh, we are going to lift up the marginalized, we are going to lift up the black and brown in this country.
00:51:58.780They've never been able to accomplish that without trying to hold back the groups that they see as privileged, that they see as having too much opportunity, too much success, too much wealth, too much safety.
00:52:11.780In order to lift this one group up that they say have been victims of the system, they have to hold this group back in an attempt to not make an even playing field, but to provide equal outcomes, which is not only wrong, it's immoral, it's showing partiality.
00:52:47.280Forcing individuals, forcing groups to only be able to reach a certain outcome is a form of communism.
00:52:53.000It's also known today as social justice that is impossible without oppression and repression of certain people.
00:53:00.560As Thomas Sowell points out, if you cannot even guarantee the equal outcomes of two siblings, of the same ethnicity, of the same upbringing, of the same background, the same socioeconomic class, how in the world are you going to guarantee the equal outcomes of two people who live totally different lives from across the country from each other with different backgrounds, different upbringings, different talents, different strengths?
00:53:27.480Individuals bring different things to the table.
00:53:32.640And so the only fair thing that you can do is to say, this is the standard, no matter your skin color, no matter your background, this is what you have to reach.
00:53:41.640Now, we can provide tools to help you reach this standard.
00:53:44.940We can do everything that we can to help you work hard, to make sure that you are completely prepared to excel and to reach the standards that we have set for admissions or for employment or for passing this test, whatever it is.
00:54:00.560But we are not going to lower the standards so that you can reach them, because that takes everyone down to the lowest common denominator, which, of course, it has implications in everything.
00:54:12.860It has implications of what kind of doctors we get, what kind of nurses we get, what kind of teachers we get, what kind of lawyers we get, what kind of politicians we get.
00:54:20.660If the standards are lowered in college, they have to be lowered than in employment.
00:54:23.960They have to be lowered than in everything.
00:54:25.980And you see the ripple effect there, that we end up being a cake-istocracy.
00:54:30.200A cake-istocracy is a society that's run by idiots.
00:55:01.760Both experience and logic have vindicated the Constitution's colorblind rule and confirmed that the university's new narrative cannot stand.
00:55:09.460Harvard and UNC now forthrightly state that they racially discriminate when it comes to admitting students, arguing that such discrimination is consistent with this court's precedence.
00:55:19.040And they, along with today's dissenters, defend that discrimination as good.
00:55:23.860More broadly, it is becoming increasingly clear that discrimination on the basis of race, often packaged as affirmative action or equity programs, are based on the benighted notion that it is possible to tell when discrimination helps rather than hurts racial minorities.
00:55:38.700So before we end this segment, let me just give you an example.
00:55:41.980And this is this was tweeted out by Greg Price of just how insane these admissions policies had gotten, particularly at Harvard.
00:55:53.560An African-American student in the 40th percentile of their academic index is more likely to get into Harvard than an Asian student in the 100th percentile.
00:56:06.480Black students in the 50th percentile are more likely to get in than white students at the very top.
00:56:14.220Harvard's admissions data revealed astonishing racial disparities in admission rates among similarly qualified applicants.
00:56:20.180So, I mean, that's that's part of what created this decision is the obvious racism, the obvious discrimination.
00:56:31.200And all of us have to pay the price for that.
00:56:33.880Again, the ripple effects are devastating when we think about that people are allowed into these Ivy League schools who really have no business being there because they weren't able to reach the standard.
00:56:43.340And then they fulfill professions that have an effect on all of our lives, like in really, really impactful ways, especially when we're talking about surgeons and things like that.
00:56:53.120OK, so I just wanted to briefly cover that.
00:56:58.300I don't know how actually it'll shake out at the end of the day, but absolutely a win for actual equality rather than the newfangled equity that progressives are always trying to push.
00:57:13.920OK, I just wanted to briefly talk about this Chrissy Teigen story, which you guys have probably seen, that she announced that she had her fourth child birthed through surrogacy just the other day.
00:57:25.920Now, you may be a little bit confused because she actually birthed her own child or she she birthed her own child herself five months ago.
00:57:35.480And now she has another child that was birthed via surrogacy.
00:58:29.000She said that she's always wanted four children.
00:58:31.280And she says, after losing her baby, Jack, I didn't think I'd be able to carry any more babies on my own.
00:58:36.020To be honest, I've personally blocked out a lot of my mindset during that time.
00:58:39.620In 2021, we reached out to a surrogacy agency with our first correspondent inquiring about perhaps having two tandem surrogates to give us a healthy boy and a healthy girl.
00:58:49.960So twins, so two wombs to be rented there.
00:58:53.420At some point early in our surrogacy journey, I came out of a therapy session and she decided she told her husband, John Legend, that she wanted to actually try to carry a baby again.
00:59:55.100And then she said just minutes before midnight on June 19th, I got to witness the most beautiful woman, my friend, our surrogate, give birth amidst a bit of chaos, but with strength and pure joy and love.
01:00:07.280And so precious child made in the image of God, as all of her children are.
01:00:12.380I'm sure Chrissy and John very much love their children.
01:00:15.340And I'm sure it did seem like a very beautiful and redemptive process.
01:00:19.760But the fact of the matter is, is that surrogacy is still the exploitation of female bodies.
01:00:26.620It is still prioritizing the wants of adults over the well-being of children.
01:00:31.280Because for nine months, like we know this from psychology, from physiology, we know this from scientific studies,
01:00:39.260that there is a bond that is created between the child and his mother or the woman carrying him during gestation.
01:00:48.020That he feels her heartbeat, knows her smell, knows the sights and the sounds of the life that she is creating around her.
01:00:56.880And that the immediate instinct, that primal instinct, when that baby is born is to attach himself or herself to the mother,
01:01:06.240to rest on the chest of the mother, to feel again that heartbeat that had become the familiar background thumping of that child's life for nine plus months.
01:01:18.220And in surrogacy, you are ripping that child purposely intending to, from conception, rip that child away from the woman,
01:01:28.620the body that he or she has bonded with for the previous nine months because you wanted to create a child, because the adult wanted to.
01:01:38.140And I don't think that we even put any thought into the psychological, mental, emotional, physical well-being of a child who is created in this way
01:01:51.960and then gestated in this way and then given to people who, as far as the child knows, are strangers.
01:01:59.380And it's even worse, of course, when you have to buy the eggs from one woman, which this doesn't, this is not Chrissy Teigen,
01:02:05.260it's her own eggs, but you have to buy the eggs of one woman, rent the womb of another woman,
01:02:09.580as you do when it's two men going through the surrogacy process.
01:02:13.840And then you take that child away, not just from the biological mother who sold her eggs
01:02:18.580and not just from the woman who gestated the child with the womb that was rented,
01:02:23.480but you also take that child away from the possibility of ever having a mother at all.
01:02:29.920And so there are even more ethical and moral problems when it comes to that.
01:02:34.160But even when it comes to this form of surrogacy, like it is still buying a body.
01:02:40.880It is still going through a process intentionally, intentionally going through a process that you know is a breakaway from the ideal for the healthy development of a child.
01:02:52.680And the only justification is that the parent wants to.
01:02:56.240I don't think that's a good enough reason to rent a womb and to take a child away from that natural process of birth and gestation.
01:03:05.640And the whole surrogacy industry is wrought with corruption.
01:03:10.180The contracts are very, they can exploit these women.
01:03:15.720I don't know if that's true of this surrogacy.
01:03:18.160Obviously, this surrogate situation sounds like they had a good relationship, but even so, I'm against surrogacy.
01:03:25.860I can sympathize absolutely with wanting to have a child by whatever means possible.
01:03:32.260I can sympathize with the women who become surrogates who think that they are doing something that is selfless.
01:03:38.240But at the end of the day, this still is a process that we are manufacturing to fulfill adults' wants at the expense of children's needs.
01:03:52.800And there's also, I mean, there are ethical issues too with IVF.
01:03:57.480I mean, it's a very high attrition rate.
01:03:59.360You are putting this living embryo, this little image bearer of God, at a very high risk through the creation and the transfer and the gestation process.
01:04:08.480And that's a risk that adults, again, are willing to take with these little lives simply because of the desire to become parents.
01:04:17.140I'm very thankful for Katie Faust, for Jennifer Law, who have been spearheading this issue for such a long time.
01:04:23.640I've had them on my podcast several times before.
01:04:26.740I will give a shout out to Relatable because we were one of the, and I'm very thankful for this,
01:04:34.340we were definitely one of the first conservative podcasts to talk about this.
01:04:39.760Back in 2020, we talked about birth control, IVF, surrogacy, and then have been beating this drum with the help of people who have been talking about it for a long time for the past few years.
01:04:51.000And when we first started talking about this, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, the conservatives that thought that I was crazy,
01:04:58.880the conservative Christians who thought that I was cruel and lacking compassion for talking about the ethics behind this stuff at all.