00:00:29.380we're in business we're in business well wade thank you very much for coming on today look
00:00:34.380people probably saw you uh you know i think it was wednesday or thursday and we tried to
00:00:38.660previously have you on obviously we had some tragic audio issues so i'm very glad to have
00:00:43.140you back on and uh your thread this is the thread that caught my eye was this thread on christopher
00:00:47.800hale now of course yeah thanks for having me on tate i appreciate it yeah absolutely now you know
00:00:52.800granted a lot of people have probably seen stuff from christopher hale and they're not entirely
00:00:56.220sure what to make of him. Maybe you could give people a quick intro of who you are, what
00:00:59.820you do, and sort of what this whole saga is really about and what it says about this current
00:01:04.380moment we're in. Yeah, so I'm Wade Searle. I'm a 23-year-old recent Catholic convert
00:01:09.180who works for LifeSite News as their media and Pentagon correspondent. So Christopher
00:01:14.320Hale, a lot of people have seen him on Twitter, and he sort of presents himself as this well-meaning
00:01:20.120and legitimate Catholic journalist who's just presenting the facts about MAGA and about
00:01:25.940their treatment of Catholics and about how Catholic the MAGA movement really is. And of
00:01:30.820course, he paints this in a negative light. He tries to agitate Catholics against the MAGA
00:01:35.600movement. And so you can do some cursory digging into who this guy really is. But I think it's
00:01:40.540important first to point out the stories that he's pushed recently, right? So last week,
00:01:45.560just before Marco Rubio met with Pope Leo, he claimed that Marco Rubio is Mormon. And so this
00:01:53.120tweet blew up because of course you can just google this information marco rubio is not mormon
00:01:59.140he's catholic marco rubio attended a mormon church uh in his teenage years so he was mormon for a
00:02:05.720little bit and then converted to catholicism and attends a catholic church so marco rubio is
00:02:11.800catholic um obviously that's just like straight up disinformation and of course when he's pushed
00:02:17.540on this everyone in the replies is saying this just like blatantly isn't true he says oh well
00:02:23.400like read my sub stack to find out like my full um you know here's the link here's the link to
00:02:29.000all my socials and you can find my full analysis on marco rubio this is the same guy who back in
00:02:35.120april was pushing this big story your audience may remember um where cardinal pierre met with
00:02:41.420pentagon official elbridge colby and they were meeting over the war in iran and there was this
00:02:47.040big report that elbridge colby threatened the vatican threatened cardinal pierre right and
00:02:52.760said the vatican better support what trump is doing in iran basically or else um and it turned
00:02:58.680out you know so this story blows up the mainstream media covers this this is one of hale's most
00:03:04.740viewed tweets this is one of his most viewed threads and stories this is a huge claim to fame
00:03:09.600for him this year and it turns out later the entire story is fake like this just never the
00:03:16.060threat never happened. The Holy See denies this. Cardinal Pierre denies this. They all say that,
00:03:21.840you know, the meeting was tense, but it was cordial and there was no threats made. Nothing
00:03:26.160like that. The Pentagon denies this. And so it comes out after the fact, you know, after all the
00:03:31.240views roll in, after he gets the Twitter payout, after this lie essentially spreads around the
00:03:37.440country, suddenly the truth comes out. But of course, you know, in the current media space
00:03:41.980we're in, the truth does not spread as fast as these lies. It takes absurdly and exponentially
00:03:48.500more energy to disprove a lie than it does to tell a good one. And so what Christopher Hale does
00:03:55.040is he pushes just straight up falsehoods that sort of, and there's two goals here.
00:04:01.420And this is important for people to remember. One of the goals, of course, is to align and confuse
00:04:08.040Catholics. So misaligned and confused Catholics. So a lot of Catholics, unfortunately, a lot of
00:04:14.340cradle Catholics are not really well catechized into the faith. For example, 70% of cradle
00:04:20.180Catholics think that the Eucharist is merely symbolic, whereas it actually has Christ has
00:04:26.540real presence in the Eucharist. And Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. So a lot of
00:04:32.820cradle Catholics are not really very well informed in their faith. And so Christopher Hale sort of
00:04:37.580cynically using this fact. And, you know, he started this organization, Catholics for Harris
00:04:44.320in the 2024 election. And specifically, what he said to the media who asked him, you know, why
00:04:50.660did you start this? Like, what's your goal with this? He said that he wanted to give Catholics
00:04:54.780permission structures to vote for Harris. So a lot of Catholics are like, you know,0.72
00:04:59.800Harris supports abortion. Isn't that against the Catholic faith? And so they would be correct.
00:05:04.540And so Christopher Hale's goal here is to misalign and confuse Catholics into basically supporting the Democrat agenda.0.68
00:05:14.660He's trying to twist Catholic doctrine in a way where Catholics who maybe don't know their faith as well, maybe can't defend it as well in their minds or to their friends, can be sort of convinced, you know, maybe I can vote for Kamala Harris.
00:05:29.720Maybe I can vote for these pro-abortion Democrats.
00:05:50.440So he worked for the Obama-Biden White House and campaign, and then he went on to run for Congress and obviously failed.
00:05:58.660But it's important to know in his congressional platform, he had a section on his website, which is still up, where it says, you know, this is his position, official position on choice.
00:06:10.340By the way, he ran as a pro-life Democrat, but this is his official position on choice.
00:06:16.440Roe v. Wade was a monumental decision that guaranteed women the fundamental right of reproductive choice.
00:06:22.780I'll defend that right wholeheartedly in Congress.
00:06:25.440And the question obviously is right to do what? The fundamental right to do what? And so obviously this is someone who planned on getting in Congress. And yeah, this guy was, spoiler alert, this guy was not planning on being a pro-life Democrat. I think that's pretty obvious.
00:06:44.040um so he runs he runs this organization called catholics and alliance for the common good
00:06:51.020and this is kind of where he got his start this was earlier in his career and it was expressly
00:06:56.660founded to subvert the catholic church by provoking a revolution within the church and this was
00:07:02.940revealed in wiki leaks um in 2012 and it was funded it got four uh it got 450 000 from george
00:07:15.020soros's open society institute go figure so yeah of course and it's funny how this like always
00:07:21.680somehow this always comes back to george soros it's like reality reality just bends to what like
00:07:27.960the boomer the conspiracy minded boomer thinks is happening it's like in a lot of cases they're
00:07:33.000right George Soros's fingerprints are literally on everything somehow yeah um so obviously this
00:07:40.600stream of like fake stories and just straight up fake news it's not a coincidence right right the
00:07:45.800democrats have been losing republicans um or the democrats have been losing catholics and they've
00:07:51.440completely lost the white catholic vote now yeah um and it's been trending more and more republican
00:07:56.920over time, especially with nonwhite Catholics, they've been breaking hard for Republicans
00:08:01.060recently. In 2008, Republicans only won 30% of nonwhite Catholics. Now it's 40%. In 2008,
00:08:08.820Democrats won 43% of white Catholics. Now they're only winning 35%. So the amount of Catholics who
00:08:17.080are voting Democrat is shrinking and shrinking. And I think what Christopher Hale and other
00:08:23.660Democrat Catholic liberal media apologists have sort of realized is that there's really no way
00:08:31.240to convince the majority of Catholics to vote Democrat. And so now the goal is to confuse
00:08:37.780Catholics and at least trick them into no longer supporting MAGA. And this sets them up for 2028
00:08:44.200in a big way. If you'll notice, these people fixate on J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio. And so
00:08:50.080they say, you know, any statement that J.D. Vance makes about the Pope, they say that, oh, this guy
00:08:55.540hates the Pope. This guy isn't a Catholic. You know, look at his book. The cover of his book
00:09:01.160is actually a Methodist church. And so this means he's not a true Catholic. This means he's deceiving
00:09:05.900all of us. His conversion wasn't legitimate. And now I think they don't really know yet what to do0.99
00:09:13.860with Marco Rubio. Yeah. Christopher Hale said that Marco Rubio's meeting with Pope Leo was icy
00:09:19.980because there was one picture where Leo wasn't smiling when they met or something, just like
00:09:25.940the biggest stretch ever. And also he's pushing that Rubio is Mormon. So I think they don't really
00:09:31.720know what to do with Rubio, but clearly the goal here is to paint early as they can. Vance and
00:09:38.400Rubio is anti-Catholic. I think they're making an early play to confuse Catholics about Vance and
00:09:43.800Rubio as we head into 2028. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. And this is why I'm so glad you're
00:09:48.560sounding the alarm bell on it. Because I mean, look, I was making this point when that initial
00:09:52.320Elbridge Colby story blew, which first of all, like I know, I don't know him personally, I know
00:09:56.740of Elbridge Colby, but I know people that work in fairly close proximity to him. I hope I'm not
00:10:01.000blowing up their spot here. But when that article came out, I was texting a few of them. I was like,
00:10:04.580guys like what's going on here and they're like he's confused he's catholic he's like what's going
00:10:09.820on yeah um so it's just bizarre from the outset and they're like no that that didn't happen i was
00:10:15.000one guy was like i was in the room that didn't happen um right beyond that i i think i'm glad
00:10:20.520you're sending the alarm bell because you know at that time people were saying well you're really
00:10:24.260roughing up on catholics and my point was that i was trying to make at least was you know there's
00:10:28.520so much vitriol targeted towards evangelicals even towards like more mainline protestants and
00:10:32.820they're saying, well, they're so susceptible to ops, you know, like, obviously, there's been a
00:10:37.280lot of influence from like, sort of the Christian Zionist wing within the broader kind of Christian
00:10:41.980apparatus. And they're saying, well, you know, they're able to just swindle evangelicals to0.85
00:10:46.120keep them supporting Israel. And that is broadly true. But my point was, all of Christianity is0.99
00:10:53.300getting attacked and swayed by ops all of the time. Because when that initial story broke out,
00:10:58.440you did see a lot of prominent Catholic people come out and they were like, see, this is proof
00:11:04.180that, you know, MAGA is anti-Catholic. We have no place in this country. And they just basically
00:11:08.660out of themselves as part of like a fifth column, like right away, all it took was one fake story.
00:11:13.460What I think was going on is they already hated Trump for various other reasons. And they were
00:11:18.480just waiting for an opportunity to be able to justify it by saying it's because I'm a devout
00:11:22.040Catholic. That's when I posed to MAGA. Because if you look at the bigger picture and you ask most
00:11:26.040normal Catholics, you know, not terminally online Catholics. They're just like, yeah,
00:11:30.720I don't know. Trump got Roe v. Wade overturned. So yeah, he's got my vote. I mean, that's like
00:11:34.960a really big issue for me. I mean, obviously the pro-life movement in the United States,
00:11:38.280the engine room has been Catholics, about Catholics. And so if you talk to those people,0.60
00:11:42.620they're like, yeah, why would I vote for the party that wants to over, you know,
00:11:46.500reinstitute all of the problems that came with Roe v. Wade? I'll go with the candidate that at
00:11:51.620least puts up a fight. So I remember when all that happened and people were like, yeah,
00:11:54.840you really are. But my point was, no, all devout Christians in the West in 2026 are devout in spite0.76
00:12:01.660of their institutions, not because of it. Because again, at the institutional level, there's so much
00:12:05.940pressure put on sort of their devout, you know, actual believers. And, you know, I hear this all
00:12:11.140the time from, you know, I'm a, I'm a Protestant, but I hear this all the time. The majority of my
00:12:14.320friends in DC are Catholic, which is, you know, well reported on the Washington Post talked about
00:12:18.000it, that there's, you know, a big swing in Catholicism among conservatives in DC. And
00:12:23.680they always talk about like i have a lot of trouble finding a traditional latin mass and
00:12:27.800you know if i try to take the communion you know on the tongue rather than um you know in my palm
00:12:32.700you know they'll like one guy one of my buddies is saying i tried to kneel to take it on the tongue
00:12:36.920and the priest slapped me so it's like there's a lot of institutional pressure to break this
00:12:42.140conservative strain the problem is and i think this is partially why catholics are swinging so
00:12:47.880hard to the republican party is because most catholics that are liberal or ambivalent are
00:12:52.380just leaving the church because we have seen that every strain of Christianity in the United States
00:12:56.680is losing membership. And I think what's happening is all of these churches, Catholic, Protestant,
00:13:01.500you name it, are just becoming more conservative because the devout ones are staying. They're the
00:13:05.240ones that are saying, no, I believe this. This is true. I believe this is true. I'm staying. I'm
00:13:09.380not going anywhere. So by default, it's shifting these institutions, at least the actual body of
00:13:14.660believers, more to the right. Therefore, they're going to vote Republican at a higher rate. Is
00:13:19.660that true do you think that's you agree with my you're right and the data supports that the less
00:13:23.600often that a catholic goes to mass the more likely that catholic is to vote democrat and that sort of
00:13:28.240scales of age but particularly with young people yeah uh yeah if they attend mass weekly they are
00:13:33.980much more likely to be conservative they're much more likely to vote republican in america
00:13:37.840and if they only go every few months or maybe if they don't go at all almost all of that group is
00:13:43.320democrat and of course they become all groups become more conservative as they get older
00:13:48.620And the data shows that. But I think it's interesting, you know, there's this particular, this particular attempt to sort of like negatively polarize Catholics into joining the Democrat Party. I think it's really not working because Catholics know what the Democrat Party is like, this is the party of third trimester abortions. This is the party of child sex changes. This is the party where everybody is transgender, right?
00:14:12.640And so Harris runs, Harris does horribly with Catholics, like historically bad with Catholics.0.74
00:14:20.000And it's because Catholics saw what the Biden administration was like, right?
00:14:24.820The Biden administration, there were text messages revealed in the Senate investigation
00:14:28.420where two Biden DOJ lawyers were planning to prosecute Catholic nuns that wear traditional
00:14:40.460And it's like, you know, this is clearly not a party that is friendly to Catholics. This is the administration, the Biden administration, monitored a traditional priest and his family, opened a profile in his entire church.
00:14:52.080There was an FBI memo that came out using the SPLC as a source that said traditional Latin Mass Catholics and their communities were hotbeds for terrorism and extremism.
00:15:04.680And I'll tell you something, Tate, I go to a traditional Latin Mass.
00:15:08.060And when I go to a traditional Latin Mass, it's the most beautiful mass I've ever seen.
00:15:12.060And when I look around, I do not see terrorists.
00:16:40.840And beyond that, Christopher Hale is specifically, and sort of his cohort, I do think there's other people that kind of would classify similarly to him. They're doing this weird thing where they're taking on almost like the animating aesthetics of like a trad cath and so far as like chest beating over the Pope and that sort of thing, but not actually having any of the policies that you would expect to see from like a more traditional Catholic.
00:17:02.700And what I mean by that is, again, when Trump was sort of exchanging blows in the media with Pope Leo, they were coming out and they were saying, this is an attack on the Pope.
00:17:11.180By proxy, this is an attack on all Catholics.
00:17:34.580And it's like, yeah, first of all, every Catholic is aware of that when they come to the United States.
00:17:38.560Like, they're not under the impression that this is like some base trad Catholic country.
00:17:41.620Like, they're very aware, like, that it's the nativist sentiments, how they have existed.
00:17:45.840But I think what's going on, there's two things going on here.
00:17:47.800I think the first thing is part of the reason that Catholics and Protestants increasingly so have been able to sort of link shields is because the secularism in the United States has risen so much that
00:17:57.760any nativist sentiment that existed we're just looking around like i don't know we disagree on
00:18:02.640the eucharist and a variety of other um theological points but generally we want the same thing um
00:18:07.720these people want to basically kill us so uh maybe we'll put the sectarianism aside until after we
00:18:12.760win then we can like re-litigate the reformation or something but you have this like segment of
00:18:17.560people it's christopher hale types but then also there's other i would say subversive elements
00:18:21.180who are like wanting to basically re-litigate the reformation right now when i don't know if i had
00:18:26.960the ballpark, maybe 20% of the population is actually like devout Christian of any stripe.
00:18:31.060It's like, what are we doing here? And the, you know, the unifying, I think the unifying factor
00:18:38.720is this. They are attacking us fundamentally for our love for Jesus. They're attacking us because
00:18:45.820we follow the teachings of Christ. And because we, you know, read our Bibles, like that is what
00:18:51.260unites um protestants and catholics is our love for the faith our love for christ yeah and that's0.56
00:18:57.980what they're attacking us for you know when they jail uh all these pro-life activists when the
00:19:03.180biden administration jailed these pro-life activists who are peacefully praying outside
00:19:07.400of planned parenthood they're not like checking what denomination they are right you know they're
00:19:11.960not letting the protestants go and targeting the catholics they're not letting the catholics go0.75
00:19:16.000and targeting the protestants it's just like you're praying you're under arrest you know your0.53
00:19:20.940hands are folded. And so I think Christians generally, I think there is a lot of Christian
00:19:26.340unity that is happening because we see the behemoth, the enemy that is standing before us.
00:19:31.780And it's like, they don't discriminate, you know? So I think you're right about that.
00:19:36.240Yeah, absolutely. And so that's, that's what makes this up. And then, and then Christopher
00:19:39.660Hale specifically, I mean, not to like rehash it, but he's literally like a DNC apparatchik.
00:19:43.760Like this guy on the face is just someone you just shouldn't listen to. Now the thing,
00:19:49.060what i'm thankful for is okay i'll caveat this by saying there's no not really any such thing as like
00:19:54.360a normie oracle anymore like typically when there's a big political story people will say
00:19:57.960well i was talking to one of my friends who's a total normie and he disagrees with your point
00:20:01.800as to say like oh you know the people that touch grass disagree with you i don't think that's true
00:20:05.960anymore i think everyone in the entire country kind of is affected by the political zeitgeist
00:20:10.800even online to some degree but what is true is again if you were to scroll your timeline you'd
00:20:16.360be under the impression that catholics were all like totally agreeing with christopher hale and
00:20:20.020they're like no this is trump is evil and hates me or whatever when you speak to again just normal
00:20:25.060catholic people that do have twitter accounts but they're not like obsessing over the for you page
00:20:29.360they're just like yeah i mean i have some criticism sure like you know i do like the pope but why on
00:20:35.260earth would i vote for the party that yeah like to your point jails pro-life activists um wants to
00:20:40.360expand abortion to like post-birth in some cases i mean it's like very obvious what's going on here
00:20:45.320Not necessarily that they don't know what's going on, but it's just they're not convinced that Trump is like this Oliver Cromwell region.
00:21:09.580We're ready to go to war for the Vatican on America.
00:21:13.160We're ready to like overthrow the government.0.54
00:21:14.740And I'm, you know, I'm exaggerating, but it's like, you know, where is that attitude when AOC
00:21:20.300and Pelosi are pushing abortion? Yeah, literally. So this is the pro-life Democrat, by the way,
00:21:26.040the pro-life Democrat Catholic. Very quiet when his entire party is trying to genocide the unborn.
00:21:33.040You know, I think that would be like a bigger concern than whether or not Marco Rubio smiled
00:21:38.080in a picture with the Pope. Like, what are we even doing here? Yeah. And I think, I don't know,
00:21:42.420maybe you disagree with this. I'm not sure. I feel like Matt Walsh is like a good yardstick
00:21:46.180to determine like how the average cradle Catholic feels because he just came out when this whole
00:21:50.180saga was going. I was like, I don't know. I think Pope Leo is wrong on this. He's like,
00:21:53.460I don't believe every single statement he ever makes is infallible. Like that's not Catholic1.00
00:21:56.960dogma. So I don't know why people are behaved. Cause you know, when I would debate some of my
00:22:00.480Catholic friends, they would reliably inform me that, you know, the majority of statements from
00:22:04.880the Pope is not, you know, ex cathedra. It's not binding. It's not infallible. But then all of a
00:22:09.740sudden this you know rift occurs between vance trump and the pope and then all of a sudden all
00:22:15.320of these like leftist catholics are like um actually no all of a sudden everything the pope
00:22:18.980says is infallible and i'm like you guys can't even keep your stories like what's going on here
00:22:24.260i think generally the war uh is pretty unpopular with catholics largely but it's like catholics
00:22:31.180support catholics support trump you know like we we see what trump has done for the pro-life
00:22:37.420community we you know he his judges overturned roe v wade and i think in a lot of cases you know
00:22:42.220of course there's always more we could ask from trump of course yeah like you know trump and his
00:22:46.920administration are pro-ibf i'm heavily against that as a pro-lifer and as a catholic um you know
00:22:52.520i'm not too thrilled about the war i don't think a lot of catholics are either but it's like you
00:22:57.220know you look on the other side you look on the alternative and it's like okay with trump i'm
00:23:01.460going to disagree with him on a few things with biden and harris they're going to like put me in
00:23:05.980jail yeah uh for attending a traditional latin mass they think i'm a domestic terrorist if i
00:23:11.140um prefer the latin one like so you're not exaggerating either you're not exaggerating by
00:23:16.940the way right there's there's absolutely no equivalency there right so i think what christopher
00:23:22.740hale is doing is just frankly evil yeah absolutely do you think you know because we are sort of
00:23:27.500coming down to the wire here do you think his op is having any success i mean you're a lot more
00:23:32.140tapped into Catholic circles than I am. Do you think people are responding to that? Do you think
00:23:36.440that fake news did poison the well enough where people will be considering these things, you know,
00:23:40.960devout Catholics heading into, you know, the next midterm cycle and even the next presidential
00:23:44.840election? What tends to happen is the Democrats always fall on their own sword, right? And so0.96
00:23:49.980even though if like narratively they make a few wins and they kind of like confuse a few Catholics
00:23:54.100along the way, it's always election season when the number one issue Democrats run on is abortion,
00:23:59.060right and so every catholic who's maybe like tapped a little out of politics they just like
00:24:03.960scroll the news occasionally they see it's like okay your two options are uh dan who is like a0.99
00:24:09.920christian and has a wife and kids and then um like a black trans person who wants to kill every baby0.98
00:24:16.460in a 500 mile radius literally and i think your average catholic goes yeah actually i'm i kind of0.98
00:24:23.620don't care if vance was like rude once you know i kind of don't care that the circumference of
00:24:30.100marco rubio's half smile wasn't satisfactory to christopher hale um yeah like the it's like
00:24:37.240so i think i think catholics aren't going to fall for it i think this trend of catholics becoming
00:24:42.620more conservative is going to continue yeah um and i think it's because a lot of these liberal
00:24:46.820catholics are just falling off like they were never unfortunately they never truly believe
00:24:51.420the core tenets of the faith. And I think that's actually very sad. But I think, yeah, they are0.99
00:24:57.040falling off. They're not attending mass as much. Increasingly, they're no longer identifying as
00:25:00.500Catholic in the first place. So yes, Catholics are becoming more conservative over time.
00:25:05.100Yeah. And I feel like kind of the thing, and again, correct me if I'm wrong here,
00:25:08.160but I think the key thing that's happening here, why we're seeing that change is because I think
00:25:11.700Catholicism in 2026 has fully, and I'm using this word precisely here, fully assimilated into
00:25:19.320american folkways insofar as prior to maybe the 1990s catholicism was still seen as like a minority
00:25:25.180identification so even if you were like an irish catholic from boston you hadn't been to mass in
00:25:30.140years if someone asked you'd be like yeah i'm a catholic because what else is there to identify
00:25:34.920as but now that catholicism has really just sort of integrated into the american folkways like no
00:25:39.560one when they hear catholic assumes you're like i don't know an immigrant or irish or something
00:25:43.000now liberal catholics have permission to no longer identify as catholic because catholicism as a
00:25:48.520culture is no longer integral to their, you know, self-identification. It's just now a religion as
00:25:54.020is, you know, if you're a Presbyterian or a Methodist or Baptist or something like that.
00:25:58.840Yeah, I think you're right about that. I think, you know, maybe in the past,
00:26:02.340I'll, you know, I'll be the first to admit America is not a Catholic country. That's not0.85
00:26:07.060really part of its founding. Yeah. And I'll be, you know, I'll say this, I think with a lot of,
00:26:12.700But with a lot of Catholics, maybe in the past who are liberal, part of being aggressively Catholic is sort of to like spite the American ethos, which is largely Protestant.
00:26:23.000I think that was a big play, you know, in a century ago, maybe.
00:26:27.800Yeah. But now Catholics are, yeah, like you said, more integrated into Americanism itself.
00:26:32.980And I think there are a lot of, you know, I think the majority of Catholics are patriots.
00:26:36.860So the majority of American Catholics, I would say, love their country and love Christ.
00:26:41.220And I think that's the most important part.