Ep 939 ｜ Russell Brand’s Jesus Journey & the State of the Race ｜ Guest： Ron Simmons
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Summary
My dad gives us his thoughts on the results of the New Hampshire primary and what we can expect going forward. Plus we have the latest in Dino news you don t want to miss! Click here to listen to the full episode.
Transcript
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We are going to talk about the faith journey that he has been on, according to his social
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We are also going to talk to my dad about the New Hampshire primary that happened yesterday,
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what the results mean and what we can expect going forward.
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And we've got the latest in dino news at the end of this episode that you do not want to
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.
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He's going to give us his analysis, not just on the New Hampshire primary, the state of
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the race, but also going to give us some encouragement because I've just been feeling, I don't know,
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kind of sad this week about the state of our country and politics, which you might think,
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well, I mean, shouldn't we always kind of be bummed about that?
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I mean, it's not like things have been going that great for the past few years, but I don't
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know, I guess realizing that we are about to be thrown into what is probably going to be
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I guess I just have some trepidation about that.
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But my dad is really, really good about giving us perspective and giving us encouragement.
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So you're going to love that interview as you always love the interviews with my dad.
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But before we get into some of that, I do want to remind you, especially related bros out there,
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that your related gal in your life, she wants relatable merch.
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We'll put that up if you're watching on YouTube.
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And guys, if you don't know what that is, that's like a light blue.
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We've got an ivory and then we've got the crew neck sweatshirts.
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We've got our totes and we've also got the same design on a sticker.
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Or related gals, get that Valentine's Day gift for yourself.
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Not in the name of self-love, but just because I'm telling you to.
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So before we get started with my dad, I'll just give you a little bit of information.
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And going into this, Trump was leading with a 53.9 percent and Nikki Haley was at 36.3 percent.
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And with DeSantis dropping out, obviously both candidates are vying for the votes of his supporters.
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And so here's what Nikki Haley said to the DeSantis supporters who are looking forward to voting for him in the primary, who obviously are not going to now.
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She said, what we say to DeSantis voters is it's time for a new generation.
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Which is just, I think, like a funny line, considering that she has been a politician for so long and she's older than him, but whatever.
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What we say to DeSantis voters is it's time for a new generation.
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It's time to stop the noise and get America back on track.
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And we know that they want a new generational conservative leader.
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And so what we're saying is we're going to fight for you.
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Okay, independent voters make up roughly 40% of the electorate and can vote in either major party's contest in New Hampshire.
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My dad will explain a little bit more of that and how that may be played into the results.
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So Nikki Haley, as we'll talk about, she came in second.
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And here she is saying, you know what, I'm not dropping out.
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Her next primary or the next primary is in South Carolina on February 24th.
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Now, obviously, people are calling for Nikki Haley to drop out Trump supporters like J.D. Vance.
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He said, congrats to Donald Trump and the entire team on a decisive victory in New Hampshire.
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At this point, Haley can either drop out or help the Democrats.
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So that's where that's where that's where things are right now.
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She's going to hold on and we'll see what happens.
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I'll leave the rest of the commentary on that to my dad that he'll be giving in just a second.
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Meanwhile, while that was happening, President Biden spoke at a pro-abortion rally in Virginia yesterday.
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Okay, so as Megyn Kelly said, election denialism is only bad if your name is Trump.
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If Trump had done something like this, if he had gone to a Democrat-run state and he said, oh, the real governor is ex-Republican, I mean, Joy Reid would have had a conniption.
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We would have had a thousand op-eds about how this is dangerous rhetoric that undermines democracy, but because the dementia patient and the White House said it, oh, it's just cute and it's just sweet Uncle Joe.
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I'm not saying that Trump's mental state is the same place as Biden's is.
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But both the Twitter pages, like the War Room Twitter pages for the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign, are both posting videos of the other candidate talking incoherently, saying things that just do not make sense.
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And again, I think that Trump is much more coherent and eloquent than Joe Biden is, but both of them are getting up there.
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And so they say things that just leave you scratching your head and you're like, what was actually said?
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So that's going to be also the next several months of our life.
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Yesterday, Trump got 54.55 percent of the vote.
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So just tell us, what is your take on the state of the race?
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Well, you know, there was a lot of talk about maybe some Democrats because New Hampshire has an open primary,
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much like Texas, actually, is that you don't have to declare whether you're Republican or Democrat.
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You can vote in either you can vote for a Democrat or vote for a Republican in the primaries.
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And so a lot of people thought that there was going to be a lot of Democrats voting for Haley to try to make Trump look bad.
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But when I looked at the numbers from the prior elections, for example, in 2020, when there was a contested Democrat primary,
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there were about 286,000 New Hampshireites, I guess, that voted in the Democrat primary and about only 155,000 in the Republican primary.
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In 2016, where both of them were contested, because remember, Obama had gone to his term limits,
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there were 251,000 Democrats voted and 285,000 Republicans voted.
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And this year, in 2024, there were 300,000 Republicans vote and a little over 100,000 Democrats vote.
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So it tells me that it really was mostly Republicans that voted in the Republican primary.
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A lot of Democrats stayed home because Biden, obviously, he didn't even participate.
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So that tells me that moderate Republicans, which are a lot of the people in New Hampshire,
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we would consider them moderate, certainly socially moderate, if not fiscally moderate.
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There is some concern about former President Trump with that particular part of the electorate.
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And therefore, they voted for Ambassador Haley.
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OK, we do have a video of a Democrat saying, yeah, I voted for Nikki Haley.
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I think it would be better to have her against Biden in the elections than it would be Trump and her.
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Do you consider yourself generally independent, Republican or Democrat?
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So when you undeclared, you voted for Nikki Haley.
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If it was Nikki Haley against Joe Biden in the general election, who are you voting for?
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I guess he is trying to say either he's trying to say that he thinks it thinks Nikki Haley is more likely to lose against Joe Biden.
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Or he's trying to say, well, if Nikki Haley won, I'd be happier with that than I would with Trump.
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I mean, some people just they'll do whatever it takes not to have Trump in office.
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Yeah, I think he's I think he's really trying to say I'm ignorant.
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And what I mean by that is if he looked at the polls, Nikki Haley actually beats Biden worse than Donald Trump.
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So that's just I don't know what the guy is thinking.
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There are a lot of people in the Republican Party that don't like Nikki Haley.
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She flip flops, they say, on things like abortion and gender issues.
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Obviously, these culture war issues that conservatives care a lot about.
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I mean, you don't have to give your personal opinion on Nikki Haley.
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But what is your what is your thought about what support Nikki Haley actually has on the right?
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Yeah, and I think that it's difficult in the primary because generally what happens in most primaries in any state is that the further right you are, the more likely you are to win the primary.
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Because the further you are on extremes, whether it's right or left, Ali, those people are more charged up about voting, right?
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The people in the middle, especially in a primary, are not necessarily as excited about even going to the polls.
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And that's why we need to make sure that your audience gets out there and vote, whether they're right, left or middle.
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They need to get out there and vote, because if we let the extremes of each party control who's going to be elected, then we're always going to get some type of what might be considered by some an extremist government.
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And Nikki Haley doesn't fall on the extreme either side.
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She's more of what we would consider a traditional conservative Republican.
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And, yeah, there are some personal things that I might disagree with her on, but I will tell you that she will be a better president if elected than anybody that's being considered, especially Joe Biden, on the Democrat side, in my opinion.
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I would say that Trump was not the most conservative person in the field.
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I think DeSantis was probably just looking issue by issue, probably the most conservative candidate.
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Obviously, DeSantis couldn't get the support that he needed.
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I don't think DeSantis being as conservative as he was.
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Certainly, I don't think that he would have been any kind of like extremist leader.
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I just worry about someone like Nikki Haley and a little bit about Donald Trump, too, that they're going to be too compromising on the things that I care about.
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But obviously, I agree with you that they're better than Biden.
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Yeah, you know, it's interesting you brought up Governor DeSantis.
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And it's just I did a social media thing on this the other day, and it's just confusing to me.
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I can't tell you how many people, and probably you experience this as well in messages that you get, how many people told me, look, I love the policies of the Trump administration.
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If he would just but not be so bombastic or so condescending or just get off of Twitter X more, I would be 100 percent behind him.
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His policies were every bit as conservative as anything the Trump administration did.
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He's proven that as a governorship, and yet he wasn't bombastic.
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He wasn't someone out there that sought personal attention, and yet he didn't get the traction related to that.
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So it's disappointing to me that people vote for someone that they like or someone that they feel like has the pizzazz and that type of thing.
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Because really, you're not voting for the person.
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You are voting for the policies that his or her administration puts into place.
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If they've got the right policies, that's how we should vote.
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And, you know, people who vote for Trump in the primaries, they, of course, would say that they do like his policies,
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and they would point to plenty of his accomplishments.
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And they just don't feel that it is DeSantis' time yet.
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I think it would be better to have someone a little bit younger.
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I think that DeSantis is more conservative than Trump.
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They think that he didn't get the opportunity to have the eight years that they really wanted him to have.
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But what is your thought about the legal obstacles that he faces?
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It looks like he's the presumptive nominee at this point.
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I think that Trump is going to take the nomination.
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But do you think he's going to be able to overcome all of these indictments that Democrats, I think, shamefully have thrown toward him?
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One of these cases, because they're held in large Democrat areas where the jury pool, when there is a jury, will be almost exclusively Democrat.
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But I do think that he will be exonerated, in a sense, by either an appeals court or the Supreme Court.
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And I know that courts don't necessarily like to get involved in the political side of it.
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But if you go down this road where it's obvious that every single case against him has been brought by a Democrat, every single thing has a political motivation behind it.
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The worst one probably being the one in New York, relating to the banks and what have you, then the Supreme Court allows that to stand.
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It's going to unleash the future of our electorate or electoral process like we've never seen before in doing the same thing.
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As they say, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
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And Republicans will do the same thing if this door is open.
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So I think the Supreme Court will shut the door and say, let the people decide.
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I do think Donald Trump can win, but I think it's going to be very, very close.
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He's probably the only he's probably the he probably can win.
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But he's also probably the only guy that could lose to Joe Biden.
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And, Dad, let me just tell you, I have gotten a lot, a lot of hate and a lot of anger over the past couple of days for saying,
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that, I mean, people know I voted for Trump in 16 in 2020.
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My personal opinion, and I hope that I'm wrong about this, my personal opinion is that Donald Trump may not be able to beat Joe Biden.
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And it's not that I agree with the people that will vote against Donald Trump.
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We already saw in 2020 that these progressive institutions nationally, internationally all said that we're doing everything possible to keep him from getting in the White House.
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Now you have not only those people, but you've also got the January 6th problem that people are going to point to.
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I feel like he's only gotten less popular, at least with people who support Joe Biden.
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And so I'm just afraid that he's not able, that he's not able to do it.
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And people get really angry at me when I say that.
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Yeah, I think the RFK issue will split on both sides, honestly.
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But I do think, first of all, anybody that's angry with you, just tell them to come through me first.
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I'm going to vote for him again in 24 if he's a nominee.
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And we're going to know whether or not he's a nominee in, oh, just about five, six weeks, because Super Tuesday comes on March the 5th.
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And no matter what Nikki Haley has done between now and then, this race in the Republican primary will be over by March the 5th.
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Now, I want to say something real quick, though.
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I want to encourage your people, because I know you have listeners all over the country.
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Do not stay home if you're a Republican, even a Democrat.
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But don't stay home because you think it's a fait accompli for the president.
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Those down ballot people need to either get your vote or vote against them by voting for somebody else.
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But please don't stay home because you think it's going to be Trump or you think it's going to be Biden.
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Well, a lot of people are very discouraged because and we understand this is how it works.
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But I think a lot of people living in the other states feel like, wow, I didn't even get to I didn't even get to voice my support for DeSantis or whoever they were going to vote for.
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They feel like Iowa just decided it for all of them.
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I do see that a lot of people are going to be too demoralized to go out and vote in the primary.
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Well, I well, I can sympathize with it, but it is a dereliction of our duty as a citizen.
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A participant does just exactly what you're talking about.
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When things don't go their way, they usually take their ball and kind of go home.
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And maybe they'll have opinions, you know, from the peanut gallery.
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We need people that are listening to your show and watching your show to be crusaders, to be out there.
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But believe me, if 100,000 people go out there and vote that were individually thinking their vote didn't count, it makes a huge difference.
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So I want you to be a crusader, not just a participant that usually just chirps.
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Let's be action people, not be people of just words.
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Is there any possibility that if things go south for Trump legally, that Nikki Haley being in second place could take the nomination?
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I think she's holding her cards just in case because she doesn't know either.
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Now, what will determine whether or not she stays active in the race is money.
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So it's not that she can't stay on the ballot, but she may not be able to be as active after maybe even South Carolina.
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Certainly after March 2nd, just because the donors will probably have quit giving to her.
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Now, what can also happen, and we can talk about this later, but the convention is something that I need to explain to people in the future as to how that could work if something happened to either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
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Who do you think is going to be Trump's VP pick?
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And I think a good pick, assuming that they want to do it, would be like a governor, like Kristi Noem, might be a pick for that.
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Someone in that Sarah Huckabee Sanders could be a pick for that.
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The only negative about either of those is their states are solidly Republican already, so you don't really pick up votes.
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I mean, Trump is such a populist candidate that he's going to be so domineering.
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I would have a lady, if I was him, as my vice president.
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First of all, because I think we have a lot of qualified women in the Republican Party that are just at that level ready to explode.
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And the two ladies that I've mentioned are two of them, and I'm sure there's more.
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But, you know, we'll just have to see as to who that is.
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Although whoever it is, we'll have the frontrunner's choice in 2028.
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They will be the assumptive Republican nominee in 2028.
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Yeah, I said the other day that I would like Sarah Sanders.
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Now, I know Arkansas would be very sad to lose her because she's a great governor.
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And I think a lot of other suburban moms really like her.
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And I like, you know, no-nonsense is what we need.
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And she's not going to be intimidated by the press.
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In other words, the show will not, the stage will not be too big for her.
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She obviously handled that as the press secretary.
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And if I'm honest, I don't know if other people feel this way.
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And I am just kind of worried about what 2024 holds.
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But there just seems to be a lot going on at once that puts us in a very precarious spot.
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It's really not much different than in the past.
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I mean, if you look at history, there have been elections that have been a lot tighter
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And what generally happens is, yes, these are unusual candidates.
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Remember, people would say he was just an ex-actor and whatever.
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Yeah, he had been a governor, but people didn't look at him that way.
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I mean, Jimmy Carter was a governor of a small state peanut farmer.
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And people thought, oh, the world's going to come to an end.
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You know, people on my side of the fence or what have you.
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The great thing about democracies is that things tend to change slowly.
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Now, we have had a rapid acceleration of that due to COVID and some, you know, where we allowed
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as a people, in a sense, the government to gain more control, a little bit like we did
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after 9-11, which I would say that we all need to be careful about in the future.
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But the day-to-day things that people live their lives about, okay, those things change
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And I have more faith in the American people than I do in any individual.
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And what usually happens is things adjust to the mean.
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And the mean of our country is that we are a law-abiding country, that we care about others,
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And that we believe that we want to have leaders that fit within a parameter that uphold those
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We're being attacked by different value systems and all that type of stuff.
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But I believe the silent majority, which represents the 65% to 70% that falls inside the extremes,
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are the ones that ultimately make the decisions for this country.
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I just look at the Biden administration coming after its political opponents in a variety
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I mean, people literally going to jail for peaceful protesting, pro-life protesters.
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And then you've got everything happening at the border.
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And everything Donald Trump is going through, people fearing that this election isn't going
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And that's the only place that I really find peace.
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But there's no question that there will be concern.
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There will be tense and all that type of stuff.
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But I will tell you that ultimately, American people always end up winning within, when I
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And listen, in hearing you tell some of the stories you tell us and some of the other podcasts
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I listen to and the people that are listening, I'm very encouraged, especially by people of
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Will we go through some turmoil to get there again?
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But I absolutely believe in the millennial generation and Gen X and not quite as sure
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And I believe that we can, you know, that the better days are going to be coming.
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I think we're going to have a huge revival in this country.
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And I don't know when that's going to be, but I absolutely believe that's going to happen.
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You and mom do get all of the positive, sweet messages that I get.
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And God is always really faithful to send me those messages when I'm most discouraged.
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People's minds can change and are changing in a lot of very positive ways.
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Just give, remind people about your book quickly and then where they can get that book.
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And we'll put it, we'll put the cover up on the screen if you're watching on YouTube.
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My book is Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon.
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And you can find that on Amazon or anywhere that you buy books.
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If you're a Ronald Reagan fan, Ronald Reagan, I'm not going to tell you how I did this, but
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Ronald Reagan helped me read a portion of this book.
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So if you're a Ronald Reagan fan, go to Audible and download that.
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He'll be giving us election updates and analysis periodically throughout the year.
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So I think Russell Brand is one of the most fascinating people.
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I really like following him, seeing his takes, listening to him.
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I'm sure there are plenty of things that we don't agree on.
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I don't think he's the same kind of traditional conservative that I am.
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But he does encourage people to question and to think through things and not to just listen
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to all of the talking points that are parroted to them, but to really be inquisitive and
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to ask the right questions and to not be controlled by propaganda.
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I think he's really courageous in calling out a lot of the lies that we are told by the
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Voices that aren't necessarily partisan, who maybe are stepping outside of the traditional
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political binary and saying, hmm, I got questions about both sides of this.
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So I think that he has had a very positive impact on people and getting people to just critically
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And he has been posting recently about his faith and how he is learning more about Christianity,
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I think some people would have maybe considered him.
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I don't even know if there's one label that you could give, but some people may have considered
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And so maybe some people even would have said that he's kind of new age.
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I don't know that he has ever expressed traditionally his affinity toward Christianity, but recently
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So here's a clip of him talking about why he wears a cross.
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It occurred to me that if instead of always talking to myself inwardly, I could replace
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It says in Galatians, it is our job to die so that as Christ died on the cross, he might
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I'm very interested to hear what you think, because for me, my heart is open.
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And before that, we couldn't play the entire video, but he says, the reason I wear a cross
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is because Christianity, and in particular, the figure of Christ are, it seems to me inevitably
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becoming more important as I become more familiar with suffering, purpose, self, and not self.
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Now, does he believe that Jesus was a real man, really God made flesh, who came to earth
00:31:30.700
in a virgin birth and lived a sinless life and then died on the cross for our sins and
00:31:37.380
was raised again three days later and now stands at the right hand of God?
00:31:41.360
I don't know if he believes literally in all of those things or if he sees Christ more as
00:31:46.880
a figure, more as a metaphor, more as someone to emulate rather than a God to worship.
00:31:53.780
I'm not sure exactly where he is, but I'm excited to see this, and I love that he's talking
00:31:59.520
about it, and you know, God is so faithful, and the word of God does not return void, so
00:32:04.680
even hearing him quote Galatians, it's exciting to me because I so trust the Lord, and I so
00:32:11.520
trust the power of his word that no matter where Russell Brand is right now on his spiritual
00:32:17.940
journey, I can be so enthused about the fact that he is reading the Bible and that he is
00:32:23.000
considering, that he's considering Christ, and he posted also just the other day, maybe
00:32:31.260
it was yesterday actually, that the post went up on Instagram, that he's reading two books
00:32:35.200
right now, and one of them is Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and the other one is, yep, there
00:32:41.580
it is, and the other one is Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.
00:32:45.420
Now these are two very different books, I'm not the biggest fan of Rick Warren, he is considerably
00:32:53.820
more to the left than I am, I'm not calling him a communist or anything like that, but
00:33:00.000
he's certainly egalitarian when it comes to gender roles and the roles of women in the
00:33:05.500
church, he's been very outspoken about that, and I might have made an error, and I do want
00:33:10.420
to apologize for that, I think I said on Instagram that he was pro same-sex unions, and I should
00:33:17.000
have been more careful before saying that, so I apologize because I'm not sure if that's
00:33:21.660
entirely true, he said something recently that made me think that he was wavering on that,
00:33:27.480
but you know what, before I said that, I should have, I should have checked, I should have thought
00:33:32.240
more carefully about that, so I do apologize, but regardless of that issue, Rick Warren is more
00:33:39.680
of a prosperity preacher than I would say is biblical, than I would say is good, so I'm
00:33:48.360
not in alignment with everything that Rick Warren says theologically, I personally have
00:33:53.180
not read Purpose Driven Life, a lot of you have shared your concerns with me, and so I'm
00:33:58.620
sure that I am in line with my Reformed brothers and sisters when it comes to the problems with
00:34:04.900
Purpose Driven Life. However, I am still very excited to see this post. First of all,
00:34:10.640
Mere Christianity is one of the greatest contributions to the church that exists.
00:34:15.700
I don't even agree with C.S. Lewis on everything theologically, but gosh, that is such a transformative
00:34:23.740
book. It's such a foundational book to encourage people to think about the existence of absolute
00:34:29.600
truth, the necessary existence of God, the existence and the reality of Christ, God made
00:34:36.260
flesh. It was life-changing for me. I mean, God used that book when I was in high school
00:34:40.800
to really just create in me an appetite for theology and for apologetics and thinking through my faith
00:34:48.500
and taking my faith seriously. C.S. Lewis was the author to introduce me really to the world of
00:34:56.820
theology and the world of apologetics, and I realized in high school that Christianity has such a rich
00:35:03.280
intellectual history to be explored, and so I love that Russell Brand. I love that Russell Brand is
00:35:10.620
reading Merit Christianity, and I would just encourage you, if you see him post things that
00:35:17.940
you're like, eh, I'm not so sure. Gosh, why is he listening to Rick Warren, or why is he reading that
00:35:22.460
book, or why is he, you know, saying these other things that don't seem to be in line with Christianity?
00:35:28.660
Like, let's just allow the Holy Spirit to do his work. I know that when I was in high school, when I
00:35:35.180
first started taking my faith seriously, that I was reading a lot of different things. A lot of
00:35:42.740
different things. I mean, a very wide range of authors, and I would not recommend all of these
00:35:48.940
authors today. Like, I was reading Rob Bell, I was reading Donald Miller, I was reading Stephen
00:35:55.480
Furtick, and then I was also reading David Platt, and Tim Keller, and Matt Chandler, and C.S. Lewis,
00:36:02.080
and John Piper. I mean, I was reading all kinds of people when I was in high school because I was
00:36:07.600
just devouring whatever Christian book and whatever sermon people were giving to me, and the Lord is so
00:36:14.540
faithful to give us discernment and to give us wisdom and to surround us with the people that
00:36:19.480
he needs to surround us with. It was really the gifting of the ESV Study Bible from a friend of
00:36:25.620
mine when I was going into my sophomore year of college that kind of refined my theological beliefs
00:36:31.900
and kind of put me on the path towards Reformed theology, and I'm very thankful for that. But let us
00:36:37.640
just be so encouraging of Russell Brand and anyone, not just a celebrity, but anyone that we see
00:36:43.960
wrestling with their faith, working out their salvation, perhaps. We don't know where people
00:36:49.520
are on their journey, and it's really easy to discount someone because they seem to be embracing
00:36:55.180
something or someone that is not representing, you know, biblical truth. But God is really faithful.
00:37:02.560
He's really faithful, and he's really powerful. And there's a lot of power in prayer, too. Like,
00:37:08.140
we should be praying for these people. Again, not just Russell Brand, but anyone that we see on this
00:37:14.940
path. And it's so easy when someone has a public platform like that for us to point fingers and for
00:37:19.400
us to expect them to be perfect in their faith and perfect in their message. But you know what?
00:37:24.940
Public people are still fallible people. They're still finite people. And so let us be gracious.
00:37:31.220
Let us be patient, just as we would want and do want for ourselves, because no matter where you
00:37:37.580
are on your spiritual journey, there are going to be things that you get wrong. And I hope I'm making
00:37:43.340
that clear about myself that I certainly don't think that I was on some journey of sanctification,
00:37:48.260
and now I have all of my theology figured out. Of course, that's not true. I learn new things every
00:37:53.520
year. It's even interesting to look back just like five years ago, and I'm like, oh, I didn't understand
00:37:58.420
that then, or I thought that then, and that wasn't true. That wasn't in line with Scripture.
00:38:02.080
Again, God is just so faithful and so persistent. And so I'm really thankful for that. I'm thankful
00:38:07.900
for his testimony. Pastor Greg Laurie responded to Russell Brand when he has been posting things
00:38:15.660
like this. He posted a long letter addressed to him in which he explained that he was once put off,
00:38:21.160
Greg Laurie was once put off by Christians until he heard the gospel. And so explain the gospel to him.
00:38:25.720
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon wrote, if he, if Russell Brand is not a Christian already,
00:38:31.960
he may get there soon. The important question he needs to answer for himself is not whether
00:38:37.660
Christianity is useful, but whether it is true. And that is absolutely, absolutely true.
00:38:44.860
Independent presidential candidate RFK Jr. replied to Brand's video simply,
00:38:49.240
really brilliant. So that's really, it's really interesting. It's really interesting to see all
00:38:54.260
of this. Russell Brand, I would love for you to come on Relatable like Kat Von D did and talk about
00:39:00.340
your faith and talk about theology. I think that that would be, I think that would be fun and very
00:39:07.640
encouraging for me. All right. Just a couple other things that I want to talk about, but I wanted to
00:39:13.020
give you that good news that God is working. God is working in people and changing minds. Absolutely.
00:39:19.880
My dad was right to bring that up. And that is just, it's, it's so true. And we can be,
00:39:26.720
Okay. We don't have time to talk about all the things that I want to talk about. We had like a
00:39:43.720
whole segment plans, um, that has to do with surrogacy and sperm donation might need to just,
00:39:49.960
um, dedicate a, we might just need to save these. Actually, we might just need to save
00:39:56.600
these for another day because they all go together. You know what? I think I'm about to
00:40:02.300
make a game time decision. Uh-oh, I'm going to make a game time decision here. And you know what?
00:40:07.560
We're going to talk about Brie, instead of talking about those subjects, we're going to talk about
00:40:13.000
dinosaurs. I thought you might go there. I went there. Okay. And, uh, okay. So here's what,
00:40:20.980
here's what is sparking today's discussion of dinosaurs, which per usual is going to make
00:40:27.780
people angry. So this is from the Washington Post and this was posted on January 21st.
00:40:33.720
A megalodon study reignites debate over extinct sharks. Okay. So this is, this is what the WAPO says.
00:40:42.840
A new study published in the journal Paleontologia Electronica, bunch of nerds, is fueling the
00:40:50.600
ongoing debate about what the megalodon really looked like and what its role was in ancient
00:40:56.720
ocean ecosystems. The extinct shark megalodon is often imagined as a beefy, supersized great white
00:41:02.360
with a gaping maw of pointy teeth capping off a powerful body that spanned 50 feet from nose to tail.
00:41:08.940
Now, a team of more than two dozen scientists argues that the megalodon may have been slimmer
00:41:13.540
and longer than previous estimates. According to the Washington Post, the Otodus megalodon has been
00:41:22.340
extinct for 3.6 million years. According to the Washington Post. 3.6 million years. Okay. If you're
00:41:31.700
just listening to this, I have my eyebrows raised to that. Okay. So now they're saying that it's
00:41:38.680
different. And here's what I think is pertinent to our conversation about dinosaurs. Much of what
00:41:44.720
is known about the megalodon's body stems from a collection of 141 pieces of its backbone
00:41:50.920
discovered in the 1860s in Belgium. Okay. Can we just talk about for a second that a lot of weird
00:41:58.020
stuff was happening in the late 1800s? Okay. So a lot of weird religious stuff happening,
00:42:03.300
a lot of strange discoveries happening in the late 1900s. I just think it's interesting that so
00:42:09.540
much of paleontology and so much of what we know about Darwinism and so much of what we know
00:42:15.640
apparently about the world and philosophy and all that stuff happened in the late 19th century. I just
00:42:20.480
think it's interesting. And okay. So this was happening in Belgium. Okay. In 1860s,
00:42:27.680
we found 141 pieces of its backbone. And then from there, from there, we decided that it is a
00:42:35.240
megalodon. Okay. This huge fat shark with tons of teeth. And now they're saying, well, maybe not.
00:42:45.040
In modern day great whites, there's a mathematical relationship between the width of their vertebrae
00:42:49.480
and their total length. Okay. So it's not like they just completely guessed. In the 1990s,
00:42:53.740
scientists applied that to the megalodon vertebrae and calculated the Belgian specimen must have been
00:42:59.060
30 feet long. I don't know, Brie. I don't know. It must have been. It must have been. Okay.
00:43:07.420
Here's what Michael Gottfried, a vertebrae paleontologist at Michigan State University
00:43:11.880
who is not involved in the new study, has to say, we're trying to speculate on something based on the
00:43:16.260
very incomplete pool of evidence. Huh? Huh? That's interesting, Michael. So interesting. That's kind of
00:43:25.600
what I've been saying about dinosaurs. Okay. At the end of the day, I don't think it brings us that
00:43:34.220
much closer to knowing what megalodon really looks like, says Robert Bosenecker, a coastal
00:43:41.380
paleontologist at the non-profit Charleston Center for Paleontology who is not involved in the new
00:43:46.500
study. Outside experts said the studies on different parts of the megalodon still use
00:43:51.900
speculation to arrive at their different interpretations. Yeah. Dinosaurs are speculation.
00:43:59.140
You know what's funny is they did this whole study and then some guy came in and said, yeah,
00:44:04.320
this doesn't actually get us closer to knowing anything. Yeah. Nothing.
00:44:08.820
How much money did you spend doing this? Yeah. To learn nothing. I know. I'm picturing like what
00:44:14.360
happened in the Washington Post newsroom. Like you got megalodon. I got megalodon. I'm gonna do
00:44:20.240
it. I've been covering megalodon since 1899. I knew this day was coming. We were gonna find out he
00:44:25.940
was slim and slender. I don't know. All I'm saying is that this triceratops, you know what? He might have
00:44:36.240
just been a hippo is all I'm saying. Like maybe a large hippo. Now, this would be sad because if you
00:44:44.300
remember, I'm pretty sure that Baby Bop on Barney was a triceratops. Yeah, I think so. And so you're
00:44:52.120
telling me that Baby Bop, was it real? What is Barney supposed to be? Was it a hippo? Barney is a...
00:44:59.480
Barney looks like a hippo. Oh, that's a good question.
00:45:01.400
What kind of dinosaur was Barney? Does anyone know in this room?
00:45:07.440
A T-Rex? No, he was definitely not. A T-Rex? Oh my gosh. A T-Rex? Picture T-Rex
00:45:14.700
Barney and how terrifying that would be. Oh, he's a... He's a T-Rex. No way. Yeah, he's a...
00:45:21.640
Oh my gosh. Purple T-Rex. He was a T-Rex. He didn't have sharp teeth.
00:45:25.980
True, but he doesn't have little arms. And he didn't have short arms. Yeah, he has little arms.
00:45:31.000
Not as little as they say. Okay, well, on YouTube, we're gonna have to pull up a picture
00:45:35.660
because Joe was right and I was wrong. I was thinking there's no way. But you know,
00:45:40.700
the existence of Barney just goes to show how little we actually know about T-Rexes because
00:45:46.320
I thought T-Rexes looked one way and then they put out this like plush purple and green.
00:45:52.480
who I... Barney has flat teeth, okay? Barney is an herbivore. That's why I am confused about this.
00:46:02.160
I'm... Bree's looking. I'm looking at pictures of Barney. There's no... I cannot believe that Barney
00:46:09.920
is a T-Rex. Look at his little arms. Barney, T-Rex. I'm looking it up right now. Okay,
00:46:17.420
very strange pictures. Oh, I said that's because I said... I said Barbie T-Rex and I was like, why
00:46:26.860
is there a picture of Barbie in a dinosaur outfit that comes up? Okay, yes, we'll have to pull this
00:46:34.360
up. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Barney really was a T-Rex. I had no idea. Do we think the T-Rexes were
00:46:43.540
really purple and green? I mean, if they were that cute, then... Maybe. Yeah. I just can't get over
00:46:50.240
the flat teeth thing. This is just... Wow, this is rocking my world, changing my childhood.
00:46:57.860
Okay, anyway, all that to say, I'm just... All I'm saying is that we don't know what dinosaurs
00:47:04.660
looked like. We don't know what they sounded like. We don't know what their skin was. Remember that hair
00:47:12.060
doesn't fossilize. They could have had long... They could have had mohawks. They could have had
00:47:16.820
long hair. We have no idea. We don't know. And of course, I don't agree. I'm sorry I don't agree
00:47:21.580
with the age of the earth being tens of millions of years. I just don't. I just don't. You can go
00:47:27.440
listen to my interviews with Ken Ham if you want more on that. Okay, so that's the latest. That's
00:47:33.380
the latest in the history of dinosaurs is sketchy news. Y'all can get mad at me all you want to.
00:47:41.360
I'm just saying Baby Bop was probably a hippo. Okay, that's all we got time for today. We'll be back