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00:00:59.280connexontario.ca. I don't know if you saw that Trump is invading the Vatican. This is according
00:01:04.360to Christopher Hale. I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but that is essentially what a lot of
00:01:08.760people on Twitter are under the impression of. I went through the story. I went through some of
00:01:13.920the reaction from the based TradCath contingent of our MAGA coalition. I wanted to get into the
00:01:20.360story first? Because a lot of people are immediately saying, should we take this guy
00:01:25.120at face value? I mean, this is obviously, you know, like an Obama, Biden apparatchik, and he's
00:01:30.520reporting that, you know, a Trump or a Pentagon official spurged out and like, you know, crashed
00:01:35.600out on this Vatican official. What's your analysis on this story? I mean, I'm obviously a bit skeptical
00:01:41.200here, but what was your initial reaction to the story? Was it, you know, is this base? Is this
00:01:45.500justified? Or was this crash out a little too beyond the pale? I'm curious what you have to say.
00:01:49.240it's a very bizarre story i don't know whether to believe it or not it's also very odd for
00:01:54.320any administration to do this because what the official that is named in the story elbridge
00:01:59.580colby did is the he brought in a vatican official and a cardinal to uh castigate him for the vatican
00:02:07.420criticizing american foreign policy but the vatican has been doing that for many many years
00:02:12.660you know they oppose the iraq war they've opposed some of the actions we did in afghanistan this is
00:02:17.140not something totally new or out of the blue. This is just something they do. And according
00:02:23.960to the story, it's being treated as an unprecedented event that the Vatican has to be on our side,
00:02:28.820which has not always been the case in American foreign policy. So I found it odd. I don't know
00:02:33.640whether to believe it or not, because it just sounds pointless for defense officials to try
00:02:39.040to tell the Vatican to get on the side of America and be like, we need you to be supporting us,
00:02:44.140which, you know, they haven't really done that in the past.
00:02:47.860I mean, they did show, I mean, the Vatican and the Catholic Church did show support for America during the Cold War against the communist threat.
00:02:54.780But, you know, it's been very different over the last 35 years with the Cold War over.
00:02:59.140So I don't really understand why they would have this meeting or what they would accomplish by it.
00:03:04.940You know, even the claims that they're going to support an Avignon papacy.
00:03:09.120I don't know how that would work for America.
00:03:11.320Or there's this threat that keeps running up.
00:03:13.160I don't know what that would work. I guess we're going to have a Doral papacy pope appointed by Donald Trump.
00:03:19.980I don't know who he would pick for pope, maybe himself. I don't know what that would do.
00:03:25.160So but I don't think that's actually going to work out like it did in the Middle Ages.
00:03:30.040So I don't really understand what's going on with that. But it's just a very bizarre story.
00:03:35.400It's very weird. You don't know whether it's true or not. And it certainly wouldn't accomplish anything.
00:03:40.280I mean, there have been battles between the church and secular powers for many years.
00:03:46.940I mean, this characterized much of the Middle Ages.
00:03:49.260It characterized battles in the 18th and 19th century between them and the French government.
00:03:53.920And then, of course, the German government of Bismarck's time waged a culture war against the Catholicism in Germany.
00:04:01.100So there has been all these types of battles before.
00:04:04.420You know, it's not unprecedented for the church and a secular power to be at loggerheads.
00:04:09.280our heads but i think in this situation it just seems weird because you know they accept that the
00:04:14.640church is not going to be happy with uh wars that america is carrying out or certain policies that
00:04:19.940we engage in and i don't think uh you know a random department official or defeat our war
00:04:26.260department we were almost calling a defense department it's a war department official
00:04:29.820we're having to correct ourselves uh would gain anything by uh yelling at a cardinal yeah i mean
00:04:37.220it's not like the Pope's going to change his opinion. You already know why most people are
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00:05:46.920yeah before we get like the the thing where you accidentally slip up and say department of defense
00:05:51.320and then people literally uh like it's like the dead naming thing it's like oh it's actually the
00:05:55.960department of war and i'm like what i need like a three year like after three years if i'm still
00:06:00.840saying department of defense then you can get on my case but it's like what are we doing here with
00:06:04.840that i mean to your point it's a good point which is like okay the vatican has been you know opposed
00:06:10.220to american foreign policy for decades now this is really not too big of a surprise i think it
00:06:14.620does actually kind of get to the point that a lot of catholics are making which is um you know while
00:06:19.480you know obviously people are poking holes in this idea that there's a catholic resurgence
00:06:23.160the United States, because, I mean, you see numbers like for every Catholic convert, there's
00:06:26.460like eight that leave the church. So it's like on the whole, Christianity by and large is still
00:06:30.860declining. Maybe it's declining slower now. That's probably true. But again, like Zoomers are the
00:06:37.040least religious generation in history. So a lot of this like New York Post sensationalism falls1.00
00:06:41.520short. One thing that I think is true, and some Catholics are pointing this out, and it's true,1.00
00:06:46.740is that it is sort of ascendant, so to speak, in DC circles. You know, you see a lot of DC,0.76
00:06:52.500you know, people in the DC sphere, specifically in the Trump admin that are Catholic or Catholic
00:06:57.060converts. And so I think that could actually be what's going on here a little bit is you have
00:07:01.480people that are staffing the Pentagon or, you know, the Trump administration by and large
00:07:06.400that are simultaneously Catholic and devout Catholics, but also loyal to Trump. And that's
00:07:12.220a big point of contention for them. That's frustrating. And so I think that is why you
00:07:16.280are seeing this emphasis. That's why you did see a crash out from a Pentagon staffer. We don't know
00:07:20.900who it was because they maybe feel a little bit of tension here between, you know, the Vatican's
00:07:27.180stance on this was following the Venezuela operation. They were reacting to Pope Leo's
00:07:31.460comments where he was basically just, you know, finger wagging. That was kind of what this was
00:07:35.280in reaction to. They probably feel that tension with the fact that the Vatican and their employer
00:07:40.600are at odds here. And that's becoming abundantly clear. Or maybe they didn't think about that
00:07:45.020before. I don't know. Do you agree with this consensus? Do you think that could potentially
00:07:48.140be what's going on here yeah there is that element within the trump administration i mean there was
00:07:52.620last year where uh vance got into a theological dispute with the church over immigration and other
00:07:58.840matters which you know most uh prominent american officials have never gone into theology of like
00:08:05.160why we should deport people or why we should engage in certain policy but he was going really
00:08:10.080in the weeds on theological matters with the church and he had bishops and even the pope was
00:08:15.780rebuking him for his stance and it was just an odd matter because it's not it's something that most
00:08:21.780americans aren't that familiar with with what his arguments were making and it was like very in the
00:08:26.560weeds but it's something that was appealing to a lot of the people who are prominent in conservative
00:08:32.660circles and in the administration that they want these affirmative theological cases made for mass
00:08:38.460deportations or immigration restriction of that sort and then they're going to go and make these
00:08:42.720arguments so it's for a certain audience not necessarily the american public so you are
00:08:48.780this type of dispute between the church and the administration would definitely cause uh tension
00:08:55.720and awkwardness among them that they would have this and um i don't know why the administration
00:09:02.740okay remember a is for asking the questions that matter to me andrea the doctor will see you now
00:10:02.400I think they would just have somebody release some type of official to make a theological case for the Don Rowe Doctrine or some sort.
00:10:12.120I don't know what theological case they could make, but I'm sure they would find someone to do that.
00:10:18.780And then they can have this debate between the church over what's proper Catholic doctrine or what's not, like Vance was doing last year.
00:10:28.000But yes, no, I think it is very much true what you're seeing with the resurgences is definitely more a part of institutional conservatism.
00:10:36.260I mean, they've always been a large number of Catholic converts there, but it's much more assertive than it was in the past.
00:10:42.300And I think even a lot of the conversions are happening at a more elite level across the country.
00:10:47.440I think it's more when you're seeing this, it's not so much the large country as a whole or middle America.
00:10:53.760It's at elite institutions and elite universities, because if you talk to anybody who's still like Harvard or Chicago and all these places, they will note that there's a larger number of their fellow classmates who are turning to the church, are turning to even orthodoxy of some sort, which a decade or 20 years ago, this had been very rare and very seldomly seen.
00:11:14.820But now you're seeing a number of them doing that.
00:11:18.560And also journalists are aware of those trends.
00:11:21.080You know, they go to many of the same schools and they notice these trends and they're like, oh, that's odd.
00:11:25.480We should cover this. This wasn't happening before.
00:11:27.700But it's certainly a major factor within the conservative movement and the Trump administration.
00:11:32.480You know, no other past Republican administration would have trotted out their vice president to make a theological case, you know, really in the weeds case for a certain policy that they were pursuing.
00:11:45.000I mean, because you can tell it's kind of a new paradigm.
00:11:47.160I mean, because, you know, us along with Christopher Hale, we all share the same home state of Tennessee, the great state of Tennessee.
00:11:52.640And this whole like topic is just bewildering to the Republican base, that kind of evangelical base, because they just don't really understand what's going on.
00:12:03.020I can say this as someone that grew up evangelical.
00:12:05.400I grew up in the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:12:07.020I didn't even really meet many Catholics growing up.
00:12:09.400I mean, I grew up in the Memphis suburbs.0.99
00:12:10.920And so I always found this stuff just kind of like foreign and confusing.
00:12:14.800I understood it later when I kind of got like more into theology.
00:12:17.540But, you know, the average, you know, Republican is just kind of like tuning this out.
00:12:21.680I would say this is mainly a like in-house sort of thing that's going on.
00:12:27.280I guess this is kind of the frustration that a lot of people have had of the Trump administration, where they do kind of get sidetracked on these issues that really only are like beltway issues.
00:12:35.940These are only like topics that are really beltway.0.79
00:12:37.440And you can tell that the second Trump admin is staffed by a lot more, I guess you would say, zealous Catholics.0.63
00:12:45.520Because you'll see Trump on Truth Social every once in a while just randomly tweet out a Catholic prayer.0.66
00:12:51.260I remember a year or two ago, it was that archangel prayer, and he just chucked it up, and it was like, what's going on?
00:12:56.440I thought this guy was like a Paula White devotee.
00:13:01.020So, you know, I think that's I think that's kind of what's going on here is this is just an issue for maybe 10,000 people and it's kind of being exposed to the entire country.
00:13:11.620And that's why everyone's just kind of like confused by what's going on here.
00:13:15.300Yeah, exactly. I mean, I actually grew up Catholic in Tennessee, but you didn't meet any.
00:13:21.000And generally, this wasn't even a part of our experience there. It was more more Episcopalian, I guess, of that type of growing up.
00:13:29.960But, you know, a lot of this stuff even would seem foreign to me as someone who grew up Catholic.
00:13:34.400And I think that would even be the case for a lot of the average Catholics who maybe only go Christmas and Easter.
00:13:41.040You know, they're not as into this stuff as maybe their parents and grandparents would have been.0.66
00:13:45.080So this this is very much of an in-house matter.
00:13:49.240But it also is, you know, if the White House did bring in a, you know, a representative of the Pope to skewer him or to criticize him and to demand the Vatican get on their side, you know, that's just, you know, that's just very strange for any administration to do, which is why I'm very skeptical about this story.
00:14:10.060that they may have had they definitely had the meeting they confirmed the meeting but over what
00:14:14.900that meeting talked about and how they went about things uh i am skeptical as i'm not i'm not sure
00:14:21.500what they would have accomplished right by yelling at him and telling him to be on the side and
00:14:25.780generally it doesn't most catholics i remember even when the lead up to the iraq war was happening
00:14:30.560and the pope came out against it and that didn't really sway the average catholic in america because
00:14:37.380they're just like oh it's expected for the pope to oppose the war i remember my parents saying that
00:14:42.680yeah and then they i mean this is not an argument for the iraq war but that just didn't factor in
00:14:48.000people just expected it's like that's what the pope is supposed to say and i even think it's not
00:14:53.120like the pope is going to be like wow this maduro raid is one of the greatest uh accomplishments of
00:14:59.600all time thank you donald trump you know he like hashtag maga i don't think that's going to happen
00:15:05.260with that. I mean, the Pope is obviously going to oppose wars and military interventions. He's even
00:15:12.220had, well, I don't know, his predecessor, Francis, took a lot of criticism in Europe for wanting to
00:15:18.320end the Ukraine war and wanting to have negotiations with Russia. And so the Catholic
00:15:23.460Church was having a lot of this criticism and tensions and animosity with various European
00:15:30.140countries, particularly Ukraine, for wanting a peace deal with Russia, which, you know, it's
00:15:37.060standard practice for the church to want to end wars. I mean, they were like this in World War I,
00:15:41.320World War II, you know, pretty much every conflict they've wanted to end. And that's a problem for
00:15:46.780certain governments if it goes against their interests. So it was very common in Europe for
00:15:52.460them to bring in Vatican officials and then lecture them about how they're not supporting
00:15:56.560Ukraine and not backing the war effort and then being too pro-Russia. And there was all these
00:16:01.480conspiracy theories that the Pope is controlled by Putin for merely wanting a peace deal. So
00:16:07.060it is standard for the church to do this. And we saw this in Europe and many of the people who
00:16:11.560would be outraged by the Trump administration allegedly castigating this official would have
00:16:21.540been supportive if the same thing had happened under Biden for the church not backing Ukraine.
00:16:27.360Right. So, you know, you would have seen some of the changes in that.
00:16:31.620And this is I guess this would be kind of a good segue then into sort of the reaction to the story,
00:16:36.120because, I mean, to your point, you know, you go and you talk to, again, your average cradle
00:16:40.960Catholic, you know, anywhere in the United States. And if you ask them, you know, what their opinion
00:16:45.220is on Pope Leo or what their opinion was on Pope Francis, you're either going to get sort of like,
00:16:49.900I don't really think about it too much kind of response as in like they don't have a strong
00:16:53.640opinion because they're just used to this is business as usual there's always been a pope
00:16:57.440like I don't need to have a strong opinion on every single statement he makes or you'll get
00:17:01.340the take of like yeah he's a liberal I kind of expect that their their faith is very much
00:17:06.460detached from like the Vatican although they are part of the Catholic Church again they're not like
00:17:10.720pious zealots they're not zealot you know they're not going through every single ecumenical council
00:17:14.940and like giving their take on it that's just not how Catholics operate and to this point I mean
00:17:19.720that kind of demonstrates that I think, you know, Catholic, cradle Catholics in the United States
00:17:23.380are actually fairly well assimilated. I mean, people make this point all the time, you know,
00:17:28.100you know, outside observers that are Catholics make this observation about Catholics in the
00:17:31.800United States is that they do have this kind of Protestant flavor to them in some regard,
00:17:35.900where they do kind of make their faith their own, even within the Catholic Church, where it's this
00:17:40.260new breed of converts who I think another maybe classification you can make of these people be
00:17:45.580like for you page converts or Instagram real converts where they saw like a based edit and
00:17:50.640they converted for political reasons. Unfortunately, like we actually do have to address these people
00:17:55.960because they're dominating my timeline right now. Some people are calling it the great Catholic
00:18:00.360coal out, the great ecath coal out of 2026, where they're just taking the story at face value
00:18:06.660and adding to it. They're turning this into like, there's some sort of showdown between the Pope
00:18:11.580and Trump right now, which is just not happening. Trump probably doesn't even know this is going
00:18:14.720on right now, or he's probably not paying attention. The Pope doesn't really care that
00:18:18.260much. He's got a lot of, you know, bigger fish to fry. But they're making this into this, like,
00:18:22.720again, we have tanks right outside St. Peter's Basilica right now when we're about to go in.
00:18:26.540And they're like, I'm loyal to the, you know, the Pope before I'm loyal to Trump. And it's like,
00:18:31.200like, what are we even doing here? But it's this new breed of converts who, again,
00:18:35.960unfortunately dominate a lot of discourse online. And I was making this point at the top of the show
00:18:40.180that actually what happens on Twitter does have some implications, because again, a lot of Trump
00:18:44.700staffers and staffers across the world for various, you know, political institutions are
00:18:49.580reading, you know, Twitter, they are participating in sort of the political zeitgeist that is on
00:18:55.240Twitter, and that is leaking into different, you know, policy decisions. So, you know, it's really
00:19:01.400crazy to see, again, a lot of these people adopt a flavor of Catholicism that isn't hasn't really
00:19:09.540existed in the United States ever. And it's just really bizarre to see. I'm wondering what your
00:19:13.920take is, especially, you know, I mean, you have a Catholic background, so I mean, you have a
00:19:17.500particularly insightful, you'll have, you know, particular insight into this. You could say maybe,
00:19:24.100but I think it's that one thing about American Catholics is they do not live up to the0.76
00:19:28.380know-nothing myth that they would come here and be a fifth column for the Pope, is that they'd all be
00:19:34.460personally controlled by Pope and acting under his orders, which that was a lot of the
00:19:39.420nativist sentiment against catholics in the 19th century and as we've seen that was not the case
00:19:44.560and that was illustrated by jfk our first catholic president that you know he clearly didn't really
00:19:49.460care what the pope and the vatican were talking about he was not a very devout catholic yeah as
00:19:54.640you can see by his personal behavior and that would have been the case with biden as well
00:19:58.120our two catholic presidents even though the media like to hype up about biden's devout faith it's
00:20:03.680very obvious he did not have a devout faith he probably forgot he was catholic by the end of
00:20:08.080presidency anyway. And yeah, and some of these types want to live up to that know-nothing image
00:20:16.940of Catholics, but they themselves don't practice this because then if the bishops say something
00:20:21.180about immigration or they say something about Israel that maybe they disagree with or any type
00:20:26.760of other issue, it could be anything. And then they'll take great umbrage at that and demand
00:20:33.800that the bishops change their opinion based on what they have. And some of these, there are,
00:20:38.600I think this is a very small number of them that you really only encounter on social media. I don't
00:20:42.780think this is even the majority of converts, but some of them immediately convert and then they1.00
00:20:47.320become set of Achanists. This is a big problem under Francis. I don't, this has not really0.96
00:20:52.840emerged under Leo, but there'd become a lot who would join the Catholic church and say, submit to
00:20:58.560Rome. And then, you know, Francis would do a lot of, make a lot of liberal remarks, particularly
00:21:03.940about immigration, or sometimes there'd be a prominent official who would signal openness to
00:21:08.940maybe gays being welcomed in the church or some sort. And then people would get mad and then
00:21:14.540start demanding that this is not my Pope, you know, not my Pope. They can't have impeachment
00:21:20.560proceedings against the Pope, to the best of my knowledge, but they would almost like want that
00:21:25.800type of response to it. And so it's, you know, they immediately go convert and then they start
00:21:31.360advocating their own against their own hierarchy. So sometimes they will do that. I think there are
00:21:36.900a few people who maybe are taking this a little bit more seriously than it is. The administration
00:21:42.540is not going to be evading the Vatican City. I mean, if the government did come down hard on
00:21:48.760the Catholic Church, it would definitely make sense for believers to take issue with that and
00:21:54.500be very opposed to it and turn against Trump over that. But I don't think that's going to be the
00:21:58.820case. I think this is either badly remembered marks or maybe just one official decided to
00:22:09.120do some creative commentary on what he thought that the administration's policy was, because
00:22:13.420it is very silly for the administration to try to tell the Catholic Church what to do.
00:22:19.460It is. I mean, the church officials, particularly in America, haven't been that fond of Trump's policies.
00:22:26.960You know, they did issue that, you know, it was a pretty notable letter that the bishops issued opposing his immigration policies.
00:22:33.780And Leo himself has made it clear, even before he was pope, that he was not a fan of Trump's immigration policies.
00:22:40.220And he has doubled down on that stance as pope.
00:22:43.460Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, obviously him not just not showing up for July 4th, which is whatever.
00:22:49.460I mean, I don't know if I expected them to show up, but again, go to Lampedusa, I think
00:23:12.820I think people would recognize his profile.
00:23:14.620He makes this point, and I'm kind of sympathetic to it, and you might disagree here.
00:23:18.080But I think what's going on with a lot of the Catholicism energy you're seeing on the right specifically is because, you know, this is, you know, it's a Protestant country, not to say it's distinctly Protestant, but obviously the majority of, you know, religious people in the country are Protestant or evangelical at this point.
00:23:34.040And so I think something that's happening in regards to, again, this new interest in Catholicism is because it grants you something additional.
00:23:41.940It sort of grants you like a minority identity in the sense of being a Catholic, being a devout Catholic gives you access to sort of some of these perks that would come with a minority identity.
00:23:52.200You get like this in-group preference, this group solidarity kind of thing.
00:23:56.540Do you think that's part of what's going on here?
00:23:58.820Because, again, you see people convert. I mean, to your point, this isn't necessarily the majority of converts, but again, the people that are participating in the zeitgeist seems to be a good segment of them immediately become really zealous.
00:24:10.940They put the Vatican flag in their bio or whatever, and then they immediately adopt this group solidarity with other Catholics.
00:24:19.600And that's, to me, kind of a luxury of a minority identity in a country that, again, is a majority or at least the majority of religious people or evangelicals is it grants you that.
00:24:28.820I don't know, maybe if you agree or disagree, but it seems to be that's something that I think a lot of people are enjoying participating in is kind of this additional identity that you get when you, again, become a Catholic or if you are a Catholic, when you begin to take it very seriously.
00:24:44.120Yeah, I don't know if I would say minority identity, but they want a well-defined group identity independent of being a generic American.
00:24:50.840Right. And I think that's a common trait in a lot of Americans today. I mean, you can even see that among certain groups that, you know, maybe their parents were immigrant and they were raised as a normal American. Then they decide that they're suddenly very into the immigrant heritage that they have, that they weren't raised around and they didn't even learn their homeland's language. You see that.
00:25:10.440But what I think with a lot of Catholics is that they think of a generic American culture as just McDonald's and the NFL, and they want something more than that.
00:25:18.020And they feel that the Catholic Church offers them that.
00:25:21.760I can see that even with conservative circles today is that people, when Ash Wednesday comes around, they're very, there's a great enthusiasm to have the ashes displayed throughout the day.
00:25:34.940more so than it was i think 10 years ago when i know there was still some of that but there wasn't
00:25:40.020as uh overt but and you can see that even on fox news where there's far more guests and hosts that
00:25:45.660are displaying the the ashes throughout the day and these are people who are going to have makeup
00:25:50.460on so i've heard even reports that some of them have it like reapplied over the makeup uh to
00:25:55.580identify that but it is a way of saying that i have a particular uh well-defined group identity
00:26:01.480that makes it different from just generic American,
00:26:05.480which they think is there's a lot of things lacking
00:26:08.600in maybe that generic American identity today,
00:26:11.060and it gives them something unique and particular to themselves,
00:26:14.660and they would like to have that particular group identity
00:26:17.600that you can see in other religious groups such as Mormons
00:26:20.200that they would like to have for Catholics,
00:26:22.220which, you know, it operates to a certain level at the elite level,
00:26:25.820but I think for the rest of America, the average Catholics,
00:26:30.100As you can see by a lot of the people who only attend Christmas and Easter, they don't even go to Ash Wednesday and all that, that they are not as participating in that Catholic culture.
00:26:40.680They're practically generic Americans. But I think for a lot of the converts and cradle conservative Catholics, that it does provide that unique particular identity that is not offered by generic American identity.
00:26:54.460And so that's why they accept it. You know, maybe it in some ways resembles minority identity, but it's not so much to become.
00:27:01.640Even though some of them might want to protect, proclaim themselves as victims.
00:27:05.640But I think that's a tiny minority among the right because they also want to identify themselves with the right wing trends of America.
00:27:12.980And some of them even adopt nativist slogans and lingo and symbols while being Catholic.
00:27:19.120So they don't want to pretend that they were victimized by, you know, the Protestants of the 19th century.0.58
00:27:25.080They also accept that. But it's also adding this particular group identity with recognizable symbols and cultural cultural events and traditions that makes them different from being a generic American.
00:27:40.320Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I guess to kind of close here, maybe to escape the for you page discussion here and then go back out to like the geopolitical implications here. We talked about last time on the show, I think this was, I think we were discussing the Greenland situation. And we were kind of, we were exploring how useful Trump, the Trump administration's rhetoric towards Europe is for again, like our goals as American right wingers.
00:28:05.160This, I think it's kind of tough for people to parse.
00:28:08.100Would you say this is an example of the Trump administration just becoming increasingly
00:28:13.060frustrated with the Euros, so to speak, kind of mouthing off about American affairs and
00:28:18.060finger wagging from a position of authority that they don't actually have?
00:28:26.580But a lot of people are kind of tying this to kind of the same thing when like, you know,
00:28:30.640you have like, you know, the president of Estonia come out and like start shaming, you know, Donald
00:28:35.480Trump as if like his opinion matters at all. Do you think that's kind of maybe part of what's
00:28:40.180going on? Maybe not from that specific official, but the Trump administration largely just kind
00:28:44.260of increasingly frustrated with junior partners starting to try and dictate terms for, again,
00:28:51.280our foreign policy? Yeah, I think you could say that's a part of it. Whether it's what the,
00:28:56.560I mean, the church is always going to do its own thing or not, but it is part of a pattern of greater criticism from our allies in Europe, far more than we've seen in past administrations.
00:29:08.440Some of that might be with Trump's own commentary, but other times there's a greater overreaction towards it.
00:29:15.660I mean, Europeans, you know, when they assess on polls, they generally like Democrats more than they like Republican presidents.
00:29:23.020I mean, there was good reason not to like George W. Bush, but then they thought Barack Obama was like the greatest president we've had in many, many years, which that was not the case.
00:29:31.960And then they didn't really like Trump. They liked Biden a lot more, and they certainly had a friendly relationship with Biden, even though Biden would make these, you know, off the off the wall remarks.
00:29:41.760He was also forcing Europe to cripple its economy on behalf of American foreign policy objectives and other things.
00:29:48.340And, you know, the Biden administration likely played a role in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.
00:29:53.380And then Europe would practically said, we have no idea who did this, but thank you, America, for looking into it.
00:29:59.640So there's a different reaction towards it.
00:30:01.520And I think, you know, it's not like Europeans were not criticizing Trump in the first term, but maybe less so or less ostentatiously so.
00:30:12.760And I think the administration feels the need to express itself more assertively when dealing with Europe and these allies.
00:30:20.020So it could be seen as part whatever that conversation revolved around.
00:30:24.380I think the report is a little fantastical with their claims, what they might have tried to get across.
00:30:30.000But I do think it's a part of a pattern of the administration getting tired of their Europe and their allies constantly criticizing the administration.
00:30:39.380And you can even see that with Caroline Levitt's comments, I think she made yesterday of, you know, basically promising for America to leave NATO, which is big news.
00:30:49.700Whether that happens or not, that is it. But it is part of this pattern of the administration getting tired of dealing with Western allies in Europe.
00:30:57.300And I think that is part of, you know, the Vatican's comments about Trump administration align with European EU criticisms of the administration as well.
00:31:08.260Yeah. Well, Scott, thank you very much for coming on. As always, you always have the correct takes.
00:31:13.080That's why I say you come on to these different shows and then correct everyone.
00:31:16.120I think that's always really useful to have sort of a tastemaker on the right, so to speak.
00:31:21.880Yeah. Before we go, maybe if you could just quickly declare who you'll be loyal to in the incoming Vatican invasion, would you be loyal to the Pope and the President Trump? Obviously, you know, pick one there. And then where people can find you for more?
00:31:34.480I don't know what invasion that would be.
00:31:37.180I hope the administration wouldn't lock me up for being loyal to the Pope.
00:31:40.720I mean, I don't have a, I probably would not be,
00:31:44.260depending on what they're fighting over,
00:31:45.580if they're trying to get the Vatican to deport immigrants,
00:31:48.260I would have to side with the administration on that remark.