Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 10, 2019


Ep 97 ｜ Buttigieg, Trump & Evangelicals


Episode Stats

Length

33 minutes

Words per Minute

182.42882

Word Count

6,147

Sentence Count

370

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

29


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, Relatable listeners. Happy Wednesday. I hope that everyone has had a wonderful week.
00:00:05.860 Today, we are going to talk about Buttigieg, Trump, and evangelicals. That is how you say
00:00:12.140 Pete Buttigieg's last name. Because one time, randomly, a couple weeks ago, maybe a few weeks
00:00:17.340 ago now, I was watching a CNN town hall with him, and he specifically told the audience how to say
00:00:24.420 his last name, and it is Pete Buttigieg. So if you don't already know who he is, he is a Democratic
00:00:29.780 presidential candidate. We've talked about him on the podcast before. He is from South Bend,
00:00:34.760 Indiana. He is a 37-year-old combat veteran. He was deployed to Afghanistan as recently as 2014.
00:00:41.760 He remained a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve until 2017. He's a Harvard grad, magna cum laude graduate
00:00:49.300 there, Rhodes Scholar. He also happens to be openly gay. And the only reason that we need to mention
00:00:55.860 that is because that's an important identitarian characteristic. If you are someone on the left,
00:01:01.100 it gives you, of course, what we call an intersectionality point or some kind of oppression
00:01:05.660 point. It gives you what the left would consider more credibility because you have some kind of
00:01:10.880 intersection that makes you not just an uber-privileged rich white male. So according to PBS,
00:01:17.700 this is what Buttigieg actually stands for. He stands for universal health care, labor unions,
00:01:22.960 universal background checks for firearms purchases, protecting the environment by addressing climate
00:01:28.340 change, passing a federal law banning discrimination against LGBT people, and the Deferred Action for
00:01:34.760 Childhood Arrivals program, aka DACA. The reason why we are talking about him is because he is a
00:01:42.440 self-proclaimed Christian. And he has said that he thinks that Christians are hypocrites for supporting
00:01:50.220 Donald Trump. And so we're kind of going to get into the back and forth of that and why I think that
00:01:55.120 he is wrong. I see his perspective, but I think he's wrong. On MSNBC, this is another thing that he
00:02:01.900 stands for. On MSNBC, he said that he does not believe in restrictions for late-term abortions. He
00:02:07.680 said that since he is a man, that he doesn't need to be making those decisions. We actually played that
00:02:12.880 clip a couple episodes ago. Almost everything I and other conservatives have a problem with,
00:02:19.600 he stands for. So he does seem like an extremely reasonable guy. He's obviously very smart. When
00:02:24.560 I watched him on that town hall, and I've watched his news interviews since then, he's extremely well
00:02:29.440 spoken, seems very level-headed. And we might agree, conservatives and Buttigieg might agree on some
00:02:35.480 of the problems that our country is facing, but we vastly disagree on how to address them.
00:02:41.220 But like I said, he does come across as a reasonable guy. You have probably heard about
00:02:46.520 this Chick-fil-A controversy. We haven't really talked about it too much on the podcast. Back in
00:02:50.940 2012, Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A, he basically said that marriage is between one man
00:02:57.820 and one woman. God-defined marriage. That's what it is. And LGBT rights groups have come out against
00:03:04.560 Chick-fil-A for giving to what they consider, quote, anti-gay groups, aka the Fellowship of Christian
00:03:10.800 Athletes. What they mean by that is, of course, any organization that holds to a biblical definition
00:03:17.220 of marriage. That's what they consider to be anti-gay or some kind of hate group. But Pete
00:03:22.400 Buttigieg, he said, reported by CNN, he said, you know, he doesn't approve of their politics,
00:03:28.480 but he does kind of approve of their chicken. And he joked that maybe he could broker some kind of deal
00:03:33.300 between the gay community and Chick-fil-A. And he kind of spoke out against of just isolating
00:03:39.060 ourselves in our identity groups and pinning each other against one another. And I think that that's
00:03:44.660 a very reasonable position. You might not like as a gay person, especially a gay married person as he is,
00:03:49.720 that someone has a view on marriage that contradicts yours and kind of speaks against how you live your
00:03:55.600 life. But you can also reasonably say, you know what, that doesn't make them a bad organization
00:04:01.480 simply because they disagree with me and it doesn't make their food low quality. So I appreciate that
00:04:06.300 reasonable perspective from him. He also identifies, as I said, as a Christian, specifically as an
00:04:14.240 Episcopalian. The Episcopalian denomination, this is according to Pew Research, and of course,
00:04:19.140 anyone who is a Protestant Christian kind of just knows this inherently anyway. The Episcopalian
00:04:23.560 denomination in general is the farthest left of the Protestant denominations. So it's not exactly
00:04:29.120 surprising that he identifies as this. Now, if you're an Episcopalian listening to this and
00:04:33.000 you're like, that's not true, it might not be true of you. But the statistics do show that on
00:04:37.420 every issue, Episcopalians majoritively tend to lean to the left. Not every single Episcopalian,
00:04:43.980 but in general, that's true as compared to other Protestant denominations.
00:04:48.860 Buttigieg was asked by Kirsten Powers on CNN, his favorite Bible verse recently, and he said
00:04:53.480 Matthew 25, 40, which, of course, is not necessarily surprising from a Democrat. Not that it's a bad
00:04:59.740 verse, of course, but it's whatever you do to the least of these you do unto me. That's a wonderful
00:05:03.760 verse that is directed from Jesus, and it's something that we should all believe as Christians and all
00:05:09.320 apply to our lives. But what the application looks like, of course, tends to differ between
00:05:16.060 liberals like Buttigieg and conservatives like me. He was on NBC's Meet the Press with Chuck Todd
00:05:23.120 discussing Christianity as it pertains to Donald Trump, and here's that clip.
00:05:28.840 You said it's hard to look at his actions and believe that they are the actions of somebody
00:05:32.180 who believes in God. How do you square that assessment with the fact that the evangelical
00:05:36.800 Christian community is so devoted to his candidacy? Well, it's something that really frustrates me
00:05:42.100 because the hypocrisy is unbelievable. Here you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is
00:05:48.220 not consistent with anything that I hear in scripture or in church, where it's about lifting up
00:05:53.100 the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants, and making
00:05:58.440 sure that you're focusing your effort on the poor, but also personally how you're supposed
00:06:02.020 to conduct yourself. Not chest-thumping, look-at-me-ism, but humbling yourself before others. Foot-washing
00:06:09.200 is one of the central images in the New Testament, and we see the diametric opposite of that in this
00:06:15.940 presidency. I think there was perhaps a cynical process where he decided to, for example, begin to
00:06:21.240 pretend to be pro-life and govern accordingly, which was good enough to bring many evangelicals
00:06:27.080 over to his side. But even on the version of Christianity that you hear from the religious
00:06:31.600 right, which is about sexual ethics, I can't believe that somebody who was caught writing
00:06:36.180 hush money checks to adult film actresses is somebody they should be lifting up as the kind
00:06:41.100 of person you want to be leading this nation.
00:06:42.480 So Chuck Todd is right. White evangelical Protestants, especially Protestants really in general, but
00:06:48.360 especially white evangelical Protestants do still support Trump. 78% voted for him. That is a crazy
00:06:55.780 high amount. Now 69% approve of the job he's doing. So that number has lowered. I've talked about that
00:07:02.380 on Fox News as well, why I think that is, but that's still a majority of white evangelical Protestants
00:07:08.980 who support Donald Trump. So I agree with Buttigieg about some of this, especially regarding Trump's
00:07:15.700 personal behavior. He is saying, okay, this is hypocrisy. I mean, look at the guy. Does he exude
00:07:21.500 Christian values to you? And I would say no. I mean, even if we give him, Trump, the benefit of the doubt
00:07:28.440 about his past sexual life, cheating on his wives, the multiple divorces, etc. I mean, say that he's
00:07:34.320 repented since then, say he's come to a true faith in Jesus Christ, and that's no longer part of his
00:07:40.200 life. You still have a right, I think, to question his attitude, how he treats his enemies, how thin
00:07:46.820 skinned he is, how quickly he turns against someone, how quickly he is to issue insults. You would probably
00:07:54.120 say, if we're honest with ourselves and honest with the word of God, that he is not a representative
00:08:00.320 of, a good representative of someone who is dedicated to following Christ. Should we expect
00:08:06.820 perfection? Absolutely not, but we are looking for some kind of fruit. I mean, for example, speaking
00:08:12.100 of imperfection, I was convicted this past weekend reading Jesus' words in Matthew 5, 21-22 that says,
00:08:20.580 you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be
00:08:25.220 liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to
00:08:30.300 judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says, you fool,
00:08:35.460 will be liable to the hell of fire. I mean, that hit me like a ton of bricks, because honestly,
00:08:40.900 how many times a week do I go on Twitter and call AOC a fool, or some variation of a fool?
00:08:46.360 So, I am not saying that Donald Trump has to be perfect, that he can never display his anger in
00:08:51.880 some kind of imperfect way. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God, and I am a prime example of
00:08:58.260 that. But I am saying that if we are to say that Donald Trump is a saved Christian with a regenerate
00:09:08.160 heart, someone who is walking with Jesus, studying the word of God, who is in prayer, then we should
00:09:13.120 see some kind of fruit. And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness,
00:09:17.420 gentleness, peace, and self-control. I think I might have even missed one in there. I'm not totally
00:09:22.300 sure. I just kind of like rattled that off. But that is what we are looking for. We're not looking
00:09:28.160 for perfection, but we are looking for fruit. And again, I am not judging whether or not Donald
00:09:32.180 Trump is saved. That's not something that I can do, because I cannot see his heart. But you could see
00:09:37.480 from an outside perspective, particularly someone like Pete Buttigieg, who has a completely different
00:09:42.580 worldview than Donald Trump, could look at that and say, okay, is this really the guy that Christians are
00:09:47.800 handling as a hero? Is this really the guy that Christians are saying is Christ-like or who is their
00:09:54.860 president? But I think that Pete, I think that he is missing the point and he is missing the reason for
00:10:03.160 why Christians support Trump. And here's why I think that, because he says something else. He also says
00:10:10.320 that Trump doesn't represent Christianity because he doesn't care for the least of these. And that is
00:10:16.400 revealing because Pete really isn't just saying that about Trump. He's saying that about Republicans
00:10:22.940 in general. That's what Democrats say about Republicans. And I think that it's a very false
00:10:27.300 argument. They say we don't care about the poor. We don't care about the immigrant because we don't
00:10:31.780 believe in unlimited welfare, because we don't believe in universal health care. We don't believe
00:10:36.060 in open borders. So we don't believe in democratic policies that are intended to, they say, to help the
00:10:41.780 poor. And so we must not care for the least of these. And of course, that is not true. We simply
00:10:48.620 believe that the private sector, that individuals take care of the poor much better than the government
00:10:54.080 does. And that is true. Welfare is really good at keeping people poor. It is not good at getting
00:11:03.000 people out of poverty. People are good at getting themselves out of poverty. People on welfare can be
00:11:08.520 good at getting themselves off welfare. But welfare is not good at getting people out of poverty.
00:11:14.740 We believe, conservatives believe, that the best thing for the poor is, number one, purpose, of course,
00:11:20.120 and number two, opportunity, both of which can largely be found in a job, in hard work, in providing for
00:11:25.860 your family. That doesn't mean no welfare ever. That doesn't mean no government assistance. You do fall on
00:11:31.120 hard times. There are seasons in your life when maybe you do need that boost, when you just can't feed
00:11:37.140 your family and you need some kind of intervention or some kind of assistance. Ronald Reagan surely
00:11:41.880 believed that. He believed that there was good in what was called government relief around the time
00:11:46.860 of the Great Depression. But relief turned to welfare and welfare turned to entitlements. And so has our
00:11:52.060 attitude shifted. We don't view help from the government as just something that aids people who
00:11:58.420 are poor, aids people who are destitute, aids people who are desperate. Now we see it as something that
00:12:03.580 they are entitled to and should not be taken away for any reason. But that's just not what the
00:12:10.340 conservative believes. The conservative believes that welfare should be limited and that it should
00:12:15.060 be conditional. It should be more like relief and a supplement rather than something that you should
00:12:20.280 feel entitled to and that you should be able to live off of forever. We believe that anyone who has
00:12:26.280 the physical and the mental capacities, capabilities to do well in this country, if they make particular
00:12:33.780 choices, should be expected to do that. If they graduate from high school, if they wait until they
00:12:40.120 get married to have kids, those are two of the things that almost guarantee that you are not going to
00:12:44.860 stay in poverty for the rest of your life. Now, I am not saying, and I'm not sure that any conservative
00:12:50.600 would say that that is easy for everyone. I am not naive to the circumstances that surround some
00:12:56.020 people's lives that make those two things extremely difficult. Say that you're 15 years old. Say that you
00:13:01.520 have no dad at home, that your mom works nights, you have a part-time job in addition to going to class
00:13:07.240 every day to help provide for your family. Maybe you have to take care of your younger siblings while
00:13:11.320 your mom's gone. There's not really a whole lot of time for you to study and to do the things that are
00:13:16.680 required to graduate from high school. So there's no doubt that that 15-year-old who maybe is living
00:13:22.620 in the projects and who feels like there is no way they're going to be able to finish high school on
00:13:27.460 time, there's no doubt that that 15-year-old has it harder than someone like me who had two parents,
00:13:34.040 who had a stay-at-home mom, who didn't have to work when I was in high school, who was really only
00:13:39.600 expected to get good grades and be able to take my standardized tests and go to college. Of course,
00:13:45.020 I had it easier than that person did. But we believe that the beauty of human dignity and
00:13:51.000 the beauty of American freedom is that even that kid, even that kid is able to do it if he makes
00:13:57.520 the right choices. I'm not saying in every single situation, but we believe that that is better,
00:14:02.800 depending on that person's ability, is better than depending on the government to just help you
00:14:07.560 skate by for the rest of your life. I mean, think about Ben Carson, for example. He had a horribly hard
00:14:12.720 life growing up. A single mom, dad left, and mom tried to commit suicide. They were impoverished. He
00:14:18.600 had anger problems. He hopped around from school to school basically his whole life. And of course,
00:14:24.000 we know that he ended up being an esteemed surgeon and running for president on the Republican ticket.
00:14:30.060 And that's not to say that this one anecdote is proof, but it does point to human potential.
00:14:35.420 Conservatives believe that people have that incredible potential to do what they put their mind to
00:14:40.140 with help from their communities, maybe with some help from the government if they are mentally and
00:14:45.080 physically able to do that. But we do not believe that welfare is a right that should be given
00:14:51.020 indiscriminately. So there's a lot of nuance in this argument. When someone like Buttigieg or a Democrat
00:14:56.960 says, well, you know, Republicans don't care about the least of these. They don't care about the poor.
00:15:02.420 Well, yes, we do. We just don't believe. We don't believe in unlimited welfare. That's it. If you want to
00:15:08.940 have a policy conversation, let's have a policy conversation. But don't write us off as immoral
00:15:13.220 just because we don't agree with you. Let's talk about what actually works. As far as immigrants
00:15:18.220 go, Buttigieg is talking about conservatives being against illegal immigration. I don't know
00:15:24.740 one conservative that is against legal immigration. There are there actually are some actually I can
00:15:30.240 think of a few that are against legal immigration. Ann Coulter comes to mind. I don't think she's against
00:15:35.880 legal immigration, period. But she probably is for pausing it. But most conservatives I know
00:15:42.900 are for legal immigration. They're for changing the system to make it as streamlined as possible,
00:15:48.380 not necessarily easier, but as streamlined and as efficient as possible. But no, we're not for
00:15:53.660 open borders. Of course not. And no, we're not for claiming asylum for any reason whatsoever. And no,
00:15:59.780 we don't believe in an insecure country in which our sovereignty is forsaken for the sake of people
00:16:07.220 who just want to come here for a better life. Everyone wants to come here for a better life.
00:16:11.620 Of course, it's the beauty of America. And there's a process by which you can do that,
00:16:16.780 that you can follow to become a citizen and work and contribute to our society. But no,
00:16:22.400 we don't believe in illegal immigration. Of course, we believe in security. Of course,
00:16:25.920 we believe in sovereignty. Of course, we believe in the rule of law. We've gone through on this
00:16:30.020 podcast, the Bible's advocacy of walls. Though I don't think that that means that the Bible says
00:16:35.620 that we have to build a wall or that's the only form of border security or that it's even necessarily
00:16:40.180 the best form of border security. I don't know. I'm open to other things. I don't think it's the
00:16:45.260 only thing that we have to get behind. That does not mean, though, that we don't have compassion
00:16:50.320 for illegal immigrants, for the people who are crossing over because they want a better life,
00:16:54.700 especially the kids that are being exploited and trafficked and used to cross the border illegally,
00:17:02.420 especially the victims of the drug cartels. Of course, we have compassion for those people.
00:17:07.620 But again, compassion does not equate necessarily agreeing with the Democrats.
00:17:12.060 It doesn't necessarily mean that we want open borders, that we don't believe in any kind of
00:17:18.580 security whatsoever. So those reasons are not good reasons to say that Trump is not a Christian or
00:17:24.280 that Republicans are not compassionate. It's a different perspective. And in fact, I don't see
00:17:30.080 any support in the Bible, if we're honest, for the government becoming a nanny state.
00:17:35.500 Like, I don't see any support in the Bible for the government doing the work the church and
00:17:39.340 individuals are supposed to do. There is a role for the government in the Bible, but it is not meant
00:17:43.720 to eclipse the role of Christians, the role of individuals. Also, Pete Buttigieg says that he cares for
00:17:49.780 the least of these. He says that that is his favorite verse, but he has stated support for
00:17:54.540 the unreserved slaughter of unborn children. And just to remind you, again, we talk about this a lot,
00:18:01.580 what exactly third-term abortion is. It induces labor. You partially birth the child, and then the
00:18:08.340 doctor makes an incision in the back of the child's skull while the child is alive, takes a vacuum tube,
00:18:14.640 and pulls the brain contents out of the child's skull until the skull collapses. That is a DNX
00:18:21.060 abortion, a dilation and extraction abortion. You can go online and see that for yourself.
00:18:25.920 You can read it, not just on pro-life websites. You can read it anywhere. Second trimester,
00:18:30.540 it's equally grotesque. The baby's just not as big. You have to dismember the child and then take
00:18:34.880 the pieces of the child out. In the first trimester, you poison the child with a pill. There are
00:18:40.500 different kinds of abortions in each trimester, but all of them are gruesome. All of them kill
00:18:46.220 life. And Pete Buttigieg is going to talk to us about caring for the least of these, but he has
00:18:52.020 already stated that he doesn't believe that there should be any restriction for late-term abortion
00:18:56.380 whatsoever. And so I'm not saying that he doesn't care for the poor. I'm not saying that he doesn't
00:19:01.760 care for other forms of the least of these. But to turn around and say that the other side doesn't,
00:19:07.960 while he is for the slaughtering of unborn children, I'm just not sure how you square that.
00:19:14.060 And the Bible definitely has something to say about that. We can have all kinds of conversations
00:19:19.280 about the balance between the individual's responsibility and the government's responsibility.
00:19:25.960 We can talk about what is most efficient and effective in helping the poor as far as government
00:19:31.440 aid goes. We can talk about the best forms of border security, and that can all be within the realm
00:19:36.500 of biblical Christianity. Honest Christians can have honest and biblical disagreements on that.
00:19:42.200 Something that we cannot, as Christians, have honest biblical disagreements on is whether or not
00:19:47.120 abortion is right, whether or not abortion is okay and is acceptable in the eyes of God, and whether or
00:19:54.440 not we should, Christians or not, stand up against it. But especially as Christians, especially if you
00:20:00.560 are going to be someone like Buttigieg, who is using the Bible to support his views, well,
00:20:04.720 you're going to have to square that away for me with abortion. So I'm not totally sure how he does
00:20:14.560 that. And a lot of people, of course, you hear say, well, how can you be for small government and also
00:20:19.080 be about the government being in women's bodies or being in a woman's doctor's office? Well, no,
00:20:25.800 that's not what it's about at all, because it's not about a woman's body. You've got a whole other
00:20:30.480 body growing in there, and that body is defenseless. That body can't defend itself at all. It is
00:20:35.140 completely vulnerable, and it's completely trapped. And so if you're going to kill that child, there's
00:20:39.660 absolutely nothing they can do to save themselves. I can't even think of anything more barbaric or more
00:20:44.500 grotesque than that, and a more important role for the government to play, even the smallest and most
00:20:49.760 limited government to play, they're protecting the physical lives of its most vulnerable people.
00:20:56.540 So I'm not totally sure how someone like Buttigieg rationalizes that, especially with a biblical
00:21:07.020 perspective. And then another conversation that I would say that really can't be honestly had
00:21:14.060 within biblical Christianity, one is extra biblical and one is more biblical, more in line with the
00:21:19.880 Bible. Of course, all human systems are flawed because they're run by humans, but it's the socialism
00:21:26.000 versus capitalism conversation. I mean, socialism is totally off the table if you have a biblical
00:21:32.180 perspective. Let's just look at the Tenth Commandment. A moral law, by the way, by which
00:21:37.180 Christians still abide, as opposed to the Old Testament cleansing laws by which Christians do not
00:21:41.240 abide, is do not covet. Do not covet your neighbor's house or his wife or his ox or his donkey. Do not
00:21:48.200 covet. Do not want what is not yours. That's what socialism is all about. That's what Marxism is all
00:21:53.340 about, is you owe me because you have more than me. I don't have enough, and so I want what you have.
00:21:59.420 Well, that's covetousness, and the Bible takes care of that really early on and says, nope, that's not
00:22:05.120 what God wants. And that is also part of the basis that the Bible lays for private property, which has
00:22:11.140 been a huge foundation or a huge keystone, I would say. If not, I guess there's only one keystone
00:22:17.420 technically in a structure, so I don't know if it is the one, but it is a foundational principle
00:22:21.700 of the West, is private property ownership is a biblical concept. The early church in Acts,
00:22:28.340 a lot of people cite this for saying, oh no, they were socialists. Well, yeah, the early church in
00:22:33.860 Acts did give each other everything as they had need. No one was actually desperate or needy within the
00:22:41.720 early church, but that's because the church members were giving of their own free will. They were not
00:22:47.080 giving under government compulsion. Plus, let's just look at this practically, socialism has always
00:22:54.220 historically led to forced mediocrity, and it completely negates the need for hard work, and
00:22:59.080 it encourages laziness. Proverbs, as we've also talked about on this podcast, has a lot to say
00:23:04.600 about the evils of laziness. Now, Buttigieg may not himself be a socialist. I don't think he said that
00:23:11.100 he is a socialist, but this goes to why there are so many Christians, evangelical Christians,
00:23:16.920 who are supporting Donald Trump, because Democrats have openly posed themselves as the party of
00:23:22.020 socialism, of infanticide, and of open borders. Well, Christians in general care about the
00:23:27.540 Constitution. We care about property rights. We care about ownership, as is based in the Bible.
00:23:31.560 Christians in general care about liberty. Christians in general believe in hard work,
00:23:35.100 and charity, and in the security and sovereignty of our country. Christians believe in the sanctity of
00:23:40.080 human life from the womb to the tomb. So, if you want to ask, well, why are evangelical Christians
00:23:46.500 supporting Donald Trump? That is why. Democrats have positioned themselves against all of those
00:23:51.640 things. It's not because we love Donald Trump. It is not because that we agree with his sexual ethics.
00:24:02.480 I mean, Buttigieg brought up, I thought that, you know, the Christian right cares a lot about sexual
00:24:07.120 ethics. He kind of has a point there. Like, it is kind of weird for people to say, oh, you know,
00:24:12.040 I don't care at all what Trump does in the bedroom. But then to say, well, they would probably say they
00:24:16.760 care what Pete Buttigieg does in the bedroom. I mean, I think personally we should care about both.
00:24:21.580 Like, we should care about adultery, and we should care about homosexuality, because the Bible has
00:24:25.360 something to say about both of those things. The Bible is very clear about the definition of marriage,
00:24:29.680 and clear about the definition of biblical sexual relations. And so, we should care about both of
00:24:35.380 those. So, he brings up a point there. But I would say that most Christians don't support him,
00:24:41.120 because they're like, eh, none of that really matters to me anymore. Maybe the Bible doesn't
00:24:45.280 have a lot to say about that. I don't think that's why Christians support Trump. It's because Trump,
00:24:50.060 as immoral as he may have been at times, as annoying as he might be on Twitter, as obnoxious as he
00:24:57.620 might be, he is the only representative that Christians who care about the security and prosperity of
00:25:03.900 America have. Like, he is the only one, especially after eight years of Barack Obama, because Christians
00:25:09.500 care about religious liberty. So, when someone like Pete Buttigieg says that he supports a federal
00:25:17.420 law of banning discrimination against gay people and people of all gender identities, something like
00:25:21.700 the Equality Act that is going through right now, well, Christians fear that, okay, well, that means
00:25:26.540 that all organizations and all people are going to be forced to hire, to marry, to make wedding cakes
00:25:31.920 for, et cetera, people whose lifestyle doesn't align with the Bible. And they're worried about that.
00:25:36.300 That is what Christians fear, the squelching of religious liberty. If we remember, I brought up
00:25:42.020 Obama. Obama's IRS specifically targeted conservative and Christian groups applying for tax
00:25:46.980 exemption status under Lois Lerner, holding them to a higher standard, to more scrutiny than most liberal
00:25:55.980 groups. And also, let's not forget, Obamacare had a mandate that required employers, including
00:26:01.560 non-profit employers, to cover birth control for their employees, even organizations with religious
00:26:07.140 and moral objections. Birth control is also known in some cases, or it's thought to possibly to actually
00:26:14.460 kill the egg after it has been fertilized, which would be known as an early term abortion. And so,
00:26:19.300 you've got a lot of religious organizations that aren't okay with birth control in general. So, of course,
00:26:23.900 they're not going to want to pay for the birth control of their employees. If you'll remember the
00:26:29.300 Little Sisters of the Poor versus Obamacare, that was a Supreme Court case, and the Little
00:26:33.600 Sisters actually won it. They're a Catholic organization. They said they don't want to
00:26:39.000 directly provide coverage for employees seeking birth control or Plan B. And so, after that decision,
00:26:46.060 the Trump administration released two rules, according to Town Hall. The first rule provides
00:26:50.620 an exemption from Obamacare's contraceptive mandate for entities and individuals with religious
00:26:56.040 objections to the mandate. The second rule provides an exemption to non-profit organizations, small
00:27:01.820 businesses, and individuals with non-religious but moral opposition to such coverage. However,
00:27:08.160 however, a judge in Philadelphia challenged these rules in January saying, okay, no, the Obamacare
00:27:13.780 mandate should stand for everyone no matter what. They should be forced to cover birth control for their
00:27:19.260 employers. He was joined by another judge in California. So, now, the Little Sisters of the Poor and
00:27:24.640 Other Organizations are dealing with this same thing again. So, this is yet another issue the Democrats
00:27:29.900 are owning that Christians are categorically scared of. And they're not for this kind of squelching of
00:27:37.040 religious liberty. This is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. We should
00:27:42.520 not be forced to pay for medicine to which we are religiously or morally opposed. Of course not. I mean,
00:27:48.440 you know where this is going. The government is also going to force every organization, no matter what,
00:27:53.160 to pay for gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy or things like that, no questions asked.
00:27:58.680 So, I would say Pete Buttigieg, you know what Christians care more about than Trump's tweets
00:28:03.900 or his past sex life? They care about the slaughtering of unborn children. They care about
00:28:10.320 the safety and security of our citizens. They care about hard work and they care about religious freedom.
00:28:15.420 We are biblically opposed to abortion, to open borders, to the systemic covetousness that is
00:28:20.380 socialism and to the oppression of people of faith. These we are against. So, it's really not
00:28:26.320 that hard to understand. And we believe that all of these things that I just listed, abortion,
00:28:31.380 open borders, socialism, religious persecution, no matter what your faith background is, we believe
00:28:36.740 that all of these things actually hurt the least of these, not help them. They do not help the poor.
00:28:41.700 They do not aid the marginalized. They hurt everyone, especially the church, who is the single
00:28:47.140 greatest driver of charity, service, and compassion. That is why evangelicals side with Trump. You guys
00:28:54.540 really have given us no other choice. I mean, there are a lot of people in the middle. Even people
00:28:59.040 like me, I voted for Donald Trump, did not vote for him in the primaries, didn't like him in the
00:29:03.060 primaries, just basically for the reasons that I listed. Like, I didn't think that he was the best
00:29:07.700 representative of conservatism and of the biblical values on which I think conservatism is built.
00:29:13.720 But when it came down to him versus Hillary, I was like, okay, well, I'm not going to vote for her.
00:29:19.860 Like, I don't want four or eight more years of Barack Obama, the most progressive president in
00:29:26.000 recent history, who I think absolutely tore our country apart with identity politics. Like,
00:29:30.600 I don't want that again. So, it was really the lesser of two evils for me. And the left,
00:29:38.180 not necessarily Pete Buttigieg, but really the left that he now represents, whether he wants to or not,
00:29:44.320 makes it impossible, impossible for us to have any other position. I listen to Trump. I read his
00:29:51.080 tweets and I'm like, oh, this guy. This guy. Sometimes, honestly, I'm sorry, but sometimes I
00:29:57.380 listen to him and I'm like, oh my gosh, that was so stupid. Really? That was so stupid. And sometimes
00:30:04.000 I'm embarrassed by him and sometimes I'm like, gosh, no, he is not what conservatism is. I say that
00:30:09.320 a lot. I mean, I still, of course, believe that he's not what conservatism is. So, I don't talk
00:30:13.540 about him that much because he's so inconsequential to me. But then I look over to my left and I think
00:30:20.340 people even a lot more centrist than I am. I'm certainly not centrist. I just don't love Donald
00:30:25.240 Trump that much. But you've got people in the middle kind of saying the same things that I am
00:30:30.600 and even worse saying, oh my gosh, I hate Donald Trump. He's an absolute idiot. But then they look
00:30:34.760 to the left and they see, okay, you've literally got a crazy deranged mob of maniacs coming from the
00:30:41.740 left saying, okay, we're going to take your unborn children. We're going to take your borders. We're
00:30:47.320 going to take your wallet. We're going to take your health care. And we're going to take your private
00:30:52.540 property. That sound good? And so, you've got centrists and Trump skeptics saying, yeah, I think
00:30:58.420 I'm going to stick with the idiot. Yep, I'm good. I'm just going to stick with this guy. I might not
00:31:03.940 like everything he says. I might not like everything he does. But when I look over my shoulder to the
00:31:08.700 left and I see that coming for me, when I see that coming for the next generation, when I literally
00:31:13.600 see freedom on the precipice of existence about to teeter off into obscurity because of leftist
00:31:24.640 policies, I think, you know what? I'm okay with the tweets. I'm okay with the anger. I'm okay with
00:31:31.540 the pettiness because I think that he's going to do a better job or at least surround himself by people
00:31:37.740 that are going to sustain conservative and American and capitalistic and prosperous policies
00:31:47.160 much more effectively than the left well. And so, what the left doesn't understand,
00:31:54.040 and we had a whole episode on this a long time ago, that they can't not be crazy,
00:31:58.300 is that if they would just not be so crazy, if they would just not be so extreme, if they wouldn't be
00:32:03.720 socialist, if they wouldn't talk about infanticide, if they wouldn't compare Republicans to Hitler,
00:32:09.300 which is the most insane, did I say Republicans to Hitler? I meant Trump to Hitler and Republicans
00:32:15.600 to Nazis. The most insane comparison you could ever make, if they could just be a little bit sane,
00:32:21.620 then maybe they would win some people over to their side. Not me, of course, but they would probably
00:32:25.800 be able to win some centrist over to their side, but they can't. And so, what Pete Buttigieg just doesn't
00:32:31.060 understand is the party that he represents and just how crazy they are, just how far left they are.
00:32:37.520 And people who love America, people who love the Constitution, especially evangelical Christians,
00:32:42.300 we're looking over there and we're saying, I'd rather stay with the idiot. I'm good. I'm good.
00:32:48.440 So, just wanted to make that clear. I had a lot of people ask me what I've thought about
00:32:52.240 Pete Buttigieg. Obviously, we disagree on a lot of things. I'm sure that he is a great and very kind
00:32:57.880 and probably very reasonable person, but I think he needs to understand where people are coming from
00:33:02.280 who are Christians and who still support Donald Trump. So, I hope that you guys have a great rest of your
00:33:07.600 day. Please subscribe on YouTube. You can watch this on YouTube and you can share this with your
00:33:16.460 friends and you can listen on all different types of platforms, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast? No,
00:33:26.500 CastBox, if you feel like it. Okay. That's it for today. I will see you on Friday. Oh, Friday. Friday.
00:33:34.760 I am doing a fun episode with my husband answering some of your relationship questions.
00:33:38.780 So, I will see you guys then.