The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker on the New Religion of Trump’s America and His Mockery of Jesus Christ

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00:00:31.000 Donald Trump is a famously irreligious man, just not that interested, basically secular, a product of his time and place. 0.77

00:00:39.620 If you doubt that, some of the funniest clips ever of Donald Trump, and this is not a criticism, they're legit funny, 0.72

00:00:45.900 are him being interviewed during the 2016 campaign and asked basic questions like,

00:00:50.720 what's your favorite book of the Bible?

00:00:52.880 Which he says, with some confusion, well, the Bible may be unaware there are component books to it.

00:00:58.860 So Donald Trump is not someone who traditionally, or ever really, has weighed in on questions

00:01:05.620 of faith or theology, kind of gives it a pass, sort of smiles, yeah, I'm for it, I'm for

00:01:11.440 it, the Bible.

00:01:13.660 But in the space of one week, Donald Trump, the same famously irreligious Donald Trump,

00:01:19.000 has weighed in in pretty specific ways on matters of faith and theology and religion

00:01:24.680 publicly in ways that are disruptive and sort of hard to understand but worth trying to understand

00:01:31.980 so all this began about 10 days ago on easter sunday early on easter sunday before 9 a.m on

00:01:38.360 easter sunday when trump tweeted that he was planning on destroying civilian infrastructure

00:01:43.200 in iran it was going to be bridge and power plant day basically promising war crimes crimes against

00:01:48.580 civilians against the population of the country and then in that same tweet or truth he used the

00:01:55.360 f word on easter sunday and then he seemed to make fun of islam praise allah he said so in one

00:02:03.260 short statement of about 110 words he seemed to give the finger to the world's two largest

00:02:11.920 religions, Christianity and Islam. That was Sunday. And then exactly one week later, also on Sunday,

00:02:19.340 the Christian Holy Day, he attacked the Pope, the leader of the world's largest religion and

00:02:26.680 largest Christian denomination, and attacked him personally and said, basically, he's only Pope

00:02:31.260 because of me. He's bad. The Pope is bad. And then later that day, maybe most interestingly,

00:02:41.180 bafflingly of all he sent out this this meme take a look at this now there are two on the screen

00:02:49.760 the one on the right is the one that he sent out and it's himself it's donald trump president

00:02:56.380 united states dressed as jesus healing a man you can see the healing power coming off of his right

00:03:02.900 hand now the image on the left of your screen is the original image and it was floating around the

00:03:08.640 internet who knows exactly where it came from but it's been there for quite some time the one on

00:03:13.200 the right is the one the president sent out white house communications officer whoever does this

00:03:19.100 sent out and you'll notice that it's been changed and the american soldier over the president's head

00:03:24.840 the president as jesus's head has been changed and is now if you look very carefully a demon

00:03:31.920 some kind of winged creature of hell so it goes from an image that suggests you know healing and

00:03:39.960 light to an image that suggests i don't know a scene from revelation john's vision on the isle

00:03:46.100 of patmos the end times the apocalypse who knows nothing good it suggests demonic power because

00:03:52.200 there is a demon in it so he sent that out and then withdrew it deleted the tweet from the

00:04:00.140 internet after an outcry but was asked about it and he said yeah i sent that um didn't explain

00:04:07.020 how the demon got in there someone at the white house put it in didn't explain why and he said

00:04:13.480 i sent it out but it wasn't me as jesus though obviously it is it was me as a doctor because i

00:04:19.940 heal people jesus of course basically described himself as a doctor someone who came for the sick

00:04:24.820 to heal them which he did so maybe a distinction without a difference but still kind of confusing

00:04:29.280 and then today a day later was asked about it again and he said no no i didn't i didn't have

00:04:35.880 anything to do with that i didn't send it out which wasn't exactly an answer to the question

00:04:42.280 even more confusing what was that and then to make it even further mysterious sent out this

00:04:51.100 meme on truth social retweeting somebody else and it's him donald trump being i don't know

00:05:00.600 how would you describe that caressed by

00:05:03.920 healed by maybe endorsed by jesus that's unmistakably jesus the christian messiah

00:05:12.460 the man god at the center of christianity with his arm around donald trump

00:05:18.140 basically saying you go trump i'm on your side

00:05:21.880 so all of that in a little over a week what does it mean because it certainly means something

00:05:31.840 this isn't so much a couple of memes these are these are icons as iconography these are attempts

00:05:41.680 to send a statement about faith. What statement is the president sending? Well, not a coherent one.

00:05:49.360 Doesn't actually add up to a theology. It's mockery. He's mocking Jesus. He's making fun

00:05:57.440 of Christianity. The central figure of the religion is being held up for mockery, of course.

00:06:05.660 And his description of how this got out is itself mockery, mockery of the idea of truth. One day he

00:06:11.200 says, yeah, I did it. Next day he says, no, I didn't do it. Both are on video. That's not really

00:06:16.520 a lie. It's more than a lie. It's bigger than a lie. It's an attack not just on a specific set

00:06:22.440 of facts. It's an attack on the idea that there are facts. It's an attack on truth openly. No one's

00:06:30.200 hiding this. So this was kind of dismissed after an online kerfuffle for a few hours, and people

00:06:39.620 were outraged, and then they weren't, and we've got other things to worry about, they moved on.

00:06:44.140 But for sincere religious people, for Christians who care about Jesus and what's true and what's

00:06:51.740 not, a lot of them went to their Bibles to try and figure out, what are we watching here? 0.57

00:06:57.300 And a lot of them came up with a couple of verses that seemed to fit what we're watching.

00:07:03.260 And if you are a sincere Christian or know some, maybe you got these texted to you, but we'll read

00:07:08.240 them, just so you know how a lot of people of faith were interpreting this. The first is from

00:07:15.360 Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians, the church's Thessalonica, chapter 2, a very well-known

00:07:23.960 verse in which he's describing what's going to happen when Jesus comes back. And he says,

00:07:28.340 you're going to hear that Jesus is coming back. Don't believe what you hear. A bunch of things

00:07:34.260 have to happen before he returns to earth, redeems the world, history ends, and you'll know that he's

00:07:40.420 coming by these events, and among them will be the rise of a figure he describes as the man of

00:07:48.160 lawlessness, sometimes describes as the Antichrist, but the man of lawlessness is the phrase from

00:07:52.560 his second letter to the Thessalonians, and he says this, there will be a great rebellion against

00:07:59.780 God, led by that man of lawlessness. This man, quote, will oppose and will exalt himself over

00:08:05.460 everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple,

00:08:11.460 proclaiming himself to be God. He will pose as God. He will mock other gods and put himself

00:08:19.320 in their place. That's from the second letter to the Thessalonians. But that's not the first place

00:08:26.120 in the Bible, Old and New Testaments, where something like this is described. Variations

00:08:30.580 of this are in a number of prophecies in what Christians call the Old Testament, including

00:08:34.760 those contained in the book of Daniel. The prophet Daniel describes something very much

00:08:39.900 like this at the end of history, and he's describing this period, really, as is so often

00:08:45.800 described in the prophets, as punishment. Punishment for faithlessness and sin. God's

00:08:51.020 people are being punished for not following God. And that punishment, he describes in part in

00:08:56.460 chapter 11 from the book of Daniel, predicts the coming of a king, and we're quoting now,

00:09:01.420 a king who will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say

00:09:08.420 unheard of things against the god of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed

00:09:15.260 for what has been determined must take place. It's all ordained, in other words, preordained.

00:09:19.980 He will show no regard for the gods of his ancestors, nor will he regard any god, but will exalt himself above them all.

00:09:30.220 So to a lot of Christians or people who know the Bible well and believe in it, these predictions in both the Old and the New Testament, and there are others, seem to fit what we were watching.

00:09:42.500 Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them.

00:09:51.300 Could this be the Antichrist?

00:09:54.120 Well, who knows?

00:09:56.300 At least that's my conclusion.

00:09:57.520 Who knows?

00:09:57.960 We're also told repeatedly in the New Testament that you're not going to know that Jesus will return like a thief in the night, and you better be ready because you can't predict it.

00:10:08.260 But we're also told there are signs, and is this one of them?

00:10:10.720 Well, again, unclear.

00:10:14.660 This, by the way, fits the behavior of other leaders throughout history

00:10:18.920 who saw themselves in a kind of rivalry with the gods of their people

00:10:25.060 and sought to put themselves over those gods, exalt themselves above God.

00:10:31.000 That's actually pretty common.

00:10:33.160 That is really the definition of megalomania, and it's happened before.

00:10:38.740 and will doubtless happen again but that's clearly what this is this is mockery of god

00:10:44.760 by a temporal leader by a man this is the leader of our country saying i will take no instruction

00:10:53.920 from god because as he showed in the first meme i am god okay so that kind of raises the question

00:11:01.920 is that okay seems to be okay there were no massive protests in front of the white house

00:11:07.820 there was no attempt really to do anything about this in fact many republican leaders

00:11:13.220 shrugged it off self-professed christians shrugged off no big deal

00:11:16.480 you know he's just just true socialing don't pay attention it's just a joke it's just a joke 0.55

00:11:22.980 no sense of humor mocking jesus giving the finger to god you're so uptight

00:11:29.260 and as for his attacks on the pope republican leader after republican leader including

00:11:36.560 just hours ago, the Speaker of the House, the self-described Christian, fervent Christian,

00:11:42.700 Bible scholar, joined in, attacking the Pope. So you're going to have to wonder, is this the

00:11:50.580 behavior of a Christian nation? Is the United States a Christian nation? Well, that depends

00:11:54.760 how you look at it. The United States is the nation with the most Christians, over 200 million.

00:11:59.480 There are more Christians in the United States than in any other country on planet Earth.

00:12:03.720 So it is by that definition a Christian nation.

00:12:06.380 Of course, it's not officially Christian.

00:12:08.700 Our Constitution forbids the U.S. government from creating a state religion in the First Amendment, in the Bill of Rights.

00:12:17.720 So no, it's not officially Christian, but it is fundamentally materially Christian because it's majority Christian still. 0.81

00:12:26.020 And once again, it's the country with the most Christians, but it's not a Christian country.

00:12:29.520 And in fact, if you take three steps back, it's a nation, or it's a government anyway, that has for a long time really acted in opposition, explicit opposition to the interests of Christians, not just in the United States but around the world. 0.64

00:12:44.180 Our foreign policy, for example, seems to target Christians.

00:12:48.960 And this has happened consistently enough that it's probably not an accidental byproduct of the policy. 0.82

00:12:54.520 it may be the point of the policy, who knows what the intent is, but certainly a fact of every

00:12:59.680 foreign policy adventure, at least since Vietnam, which in the end, this is often forgotten, left

00:13:06.760 the Catholics, and there were many of them in Vietnam, in concentration camps. Didn't help the 0.68

00:13:13.060 Catholics at all. Vietnam went from a Catholic country to a communist country, and that's not

00:13:20.480 entirely our fault but that is that was the effect that happened the iraq war there were millions of 0.51

00:13:27.400 christians in iraq when it started there aren't now a lot of them are dead our policies in syria

00:13:33.220 today in lebanon the only country in the middle east with a christian president a christian head

00:13:38.040 of the military being bombed with our bombs dropped from our airplanes our munitions are 0.64

00:13:44.480 being used to kill christians our government is effectively sanctioning the ethnic cleansing of 0.69

00:13:51.300 southern lebanon including christian villages ancient christian villages so our foreign policy

00:13:57.160 abets the murder of christians and not just our foreign policy all of our policies europe

00:14:03.680 australia canada new zealand our country as well have all changed substantially demographically

00:14:12.280 and become much less Christian because of immigration.

00:14:15.980 So you often hear people complain, oh, Europe's becoming Muslim.

00:14:20.660 Yeah.

00:14:21.600 Why is that?

00:14:23.000 Well, because of mass migration.

00:14:26.320 We've abetted it.

00:14:27.500 The neocons certainly have abetted it.

00:14:28.860 They've been in favor of it.

00:14:30.540 They've attacked anyone who's opposed to it.

00:14:33.260 Viktor Orban in Hungary, just lost the other day,

00:14:36.040 the prime minister of Hungary, was hated by neoconservatives in Washington.

00:14:40.320 Why is that?

00:14:41.080 because he pushed back against mass migration into Hungary.

00:14:46.380 And he said, Hungary is part of Christian Europe.

00:14:49.840 It's a Christian country. 1.00

00:14:51.140 It's one of the main reasons I don't want mass migration. 1.00

00:14:54.380 Well, the entire foreign policy establishment in the United States

00:14:56.920 decided he was an enemy for saying that.

00:14:59.360 So it's not simply that they haven't stopped the destruction of Christian Europe. 0.90

00:15:03.600 They've been fully in favor of it. 0.58

00:15:04.980 They're fully in favor of the war between Russia and Ukraine. 0.91

00:15:07.720 Net effect, millions of dead Christian men.

00:15:11.080 So that's not just, again, an accidental byproduct. That may be the whole point. 1.00

00:15:17.220 So the United States government, as distinct from the people of the United States, who are still majority Christian, the United States government has been pretty aggressively anti-Christian for a very long time. 0.61

00:15:29.420 Donald Trump is not the first president to give the finger to Jesus, hardly.

00:15:33.860 But he is the first president to do it in public.

00:15:41.080 And this has been going on long enough, and it's reaching a kind of boiling point right now,

00:15:45.280 that we can begin to see the outlines of what the actual religion of the United States government is,

00:15:50.160 certainly of this administration, because there always is one.

00:15:54.360 There's no secular government, never has been one, never will be one.

00:15:58.300 A truly secular government would have no purpose.

00:16:02.160 Its leaders would have no destiny.

00:16:04.100 There would be no real reason to continue on.

00:16:07.340 It certainly wouldn't have any evangelical zeal, and our government does have evangelical zeal.

00:16:13.100 We're spreading democracy and free market principles around the world, freedom or whatever.

00:16:17.700 So every government is motivated by religious impulse, whether the government admits it or not, and ours certainly is.

00:16:25.200 So what is the civic religion of the United States?

00:16:28.320 What's the religion of the U.S. government?

00:16:31.440 What's the religion, honestly, of Donald Trump?

00:16:33.660 it's not christianity clearly it's israelism it's the defense of israel now how do you know that

00:16:42.200 well because the united states has set up as its chief foreign policy in the defense of israel

00:16:46.280 that's one clue there's that but it's much deeper than that who are the main enemies as identified

00:16:55.400 by the president of the united states of his government domestically who are his enemies who

00:17:00.980 does he dislike? Who does he attack? Who does he go out of his way to undermine? Well, it's people

00:17:07.100 who doubt Israel, people who stand in the way of the aims of the secular government of Israel.

00:17:15.840 And that would include Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey, and the Pope. Now, how do you

00:17:24.400 know that's what it is? Well, because that's the only thing they have in common. The Pope,

00:17:29.080 the american pope first american pope pope leo is in american political terms a liberal he is by

00:17:35.920 the way for mass migration shamefully so i would say as a non-catholic but while not anti-israel

00:17:45.660 he's not a zionist because catholicism doesn't recognize zionism as part of its catechism you

00:17:51.920 can there are plenty of catholics who love israel and there are some who don't love israel maybe

00:17:55.840 some who hate Israel, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the core tenets of

00:18:00.100 Catholicism. And unlike so many other newer versions of Christianity, Catholicism has been

00:18:05.600 around for thousands of years and has a very clearly articulated catechism. You know what

00:18:11.080 Catholics believe or what the Church believes, and what it tells its members, its parishioners,

00:18:15.580 its Catholics, communicants to believe. It's all written down. And unwavering support for the state

00:18:24.440 of Israel is just not on the list at all. At best, it's a faith that's agnostic toward the

00:18:31.420 political fortunes of the Netanyahu government. And that's not going to change because, again,

00:18:37.560 there's a structure and there is a list of beliefs, a creed written down. So it's pretty hard

00:18:44.540 to force a church like that to change its views because those views are effectively set in stone.

00:18:53.500 and have been for a very long time.

00:18:57.260 So the president's problem with Pope Leo

00:19:01.020 probably has nothing to do with Pope Leo's views on crime,

00:19:04.480 which may be annoying, by the way.

00:19:06.600 His views on mass migration are very hard to defend

00:19:10.480 and very destructive,

00:19:11.700 but that's not really the problem here.

00:19:14.300 The problem is that Pope Leo criticized this war with Iran,

00:19:20.760 which was waged in partnership with Israel on behalf of Israel at the instigation of Israel,

00:19:25.840 and he criticized that. That's his problem. So did Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey.

00:19:31.420 Thomas Massey made the mistake of criticizing Israel's lobby in the United States, AIPAC.

00:19:35.560 That was his sin. Marjorie Taylor Greene didn't say a lot about AIPAC, but wasn't enthusiastic

00:19:39.820 about waging wars on Israel. She got attacked too. That's the only thing all three of them have in

00:19:46.200 common. Thomas Massey is a pretty strict libertarian. Marjorie Taylor Greene is what

00:19:51.700 we used to call a MAGA conservative. She believed the Trump program from 2016. Hardly a liberal, 0.98

00:19:57.720 totally opposed to mass migration, tough on crime, as they used to say. Has basically every single

00:20:04.960 belief in common with the Donald Trump who ran for office in 2016, 2020, and 2024. There's no

00:20:10.380 daylight between them. She ran for Congress because she was inspired by Donald Trump.

00:20:16.200 She was the number one Trump acolyte in the Congress.

00:20:21.380 Why did they break?

00:20:22.140 Over Israel.

00:20:23.640 Over Israel's connection to Jeffrey Epstein and over Israel's push for the United States to join all kinds of foreign wars, particularly a war with Iran.

00:20:32.820 That's why they broke.

00:20:33.640 That's the thing that split their relationship and got the president attacking her and Thomas Massey and the Pope.

00:20:40.200 So what does that tell you?

00:20:41.660 It tells you what the religion is.

00:20:43.480 the religion is israelism it's the support of israel that's why the president is totally

00:20:51.660 comfortable surrounding himself with evangelical preachers every one of whom has one thing in

00:20:57.160 common whether they're word of faith preachers or charismatic preachers or not that's a huge

00:21:01.780 split among evangelicals are you charismatic or not do you believe that glossolalia tongues

00:21:07.660 prophecy seeing has a role in contemporary christian worship church services they're mad

00:21:14.380 at each other about that trump probably is even aware of that distinction all of them are welcome

00:21:18.920 as long as their faith includes unwavering support for israel that's the common denominator there

00:21:25.540 that's the only thing that matters and because that's the only thing that matters the coalition

00:21:32.900 the ever shrinking day-by-day shrinking coalition that supports this president is now out in force

00:21:40.080 explaining that actually the pope and catholics the catholic church itself which about 20 minutes

00:21:48.300 ago most people thought was conservative in that it's pro-life for example that used to be a tenet

00:21:53.800 of conservatism before this president it wasn't for abortion that the catholic church is somehow

00:22:00.260 liberal and not just liberal, anti-Semitic. It's evil. It hates Jews. It's actually pro-Nazi. 0.63

00:22:10.840 Watch Lindsey Graham make this case. They're religious Nazis in the Catholic Church. God 1.00

00:22:16.320 bless the Catholic Church. In the 30s, you didn't really get Hitler. To the Pope, you really don't

00:22:21.440 get this religious Nazi regime, the Ayatollah and his henchmen. They are evil. They will kill all 0.98

00:22:28.100 of Jews if we let them. And the Jewish people, one Holocaust is enough. Oh, see, the Pope doesn't 1.00

00:22:35.940 really get that Nazism is evil. Catholics just somehow missed that memo. Hitler bad. They just 0.93

00:22:42.620 didn't. It's been 80 years, but they just they never really bought into the proposition that

00:22:48.080 the Holocaust was bad, that murdering Jews was bad. They're probably kind of for it, actually. 1.00

00:22:52.580 now it's interesting because a year ago no republican member of congress would have

00:23:02.140 dared say anything like that first of all that's insane it's a slander against catholics

00:23:06.280 saying this is a birthright lifelong protestant but it's just not true

00:23:10.300 it's a horrible thing to say about anybody but as a political matter it would have been crazy to say

00:23:17.960 that because catholics sincere church-going catholics vote republican in fact the more

00:23:26.420 often you go to mass the more likely you are to vote republican and that's true across races by

00:23:31.960 the way so you see all these you know hispanics are voting for trump and he got more hispanics

00:23:38.220 to vote for him it is true in 2024 than any republican maybe ever more than jeb bush speaking

00:23:45.340 Spanish, married to a Mexican lady. How did he do that? Well, one of the reasons he did that

00:23:50.880 is because a lot of Hispanics are very Catholic. They're Christian. They're religious. They go to

00:23:56.440 mass a lot. And because they do, because their faith, for some of them, their faith is at the

00:24:04.040 center of their lives, they voted for the candidate who seemed most predisposed to their religious

00:24:12.700 fuse maybe he's not a christian or a fervent christian but he seemed like a man who would

00:24:17.920 protect christians catholic christians included and so they voted for him so a year ago no and

00:24:23.760 every republican knows this because there's lots of polling on it because politicians think in

00:24:27.720 terms of coalitions and who's going to vote for me and why and they know this very well so a year

00:24:32.640 ago no republican would ever get up on tv and say you know think about catholics is they're kind of 0.73

00:24:39.220 Nazis. But there's Lindsey Graham doing it right there. This is a profound break, and it's a very 0.99

00:24:47.100 clear window into what the actual faith is. Israel is the deal killer. Anyone who doesn't support the 0.99

00:24:55.860 military aims of the modern Israeli government cannot be part of the MAGA coalition, and Lindsey

00:25:03.420 graham has just told us can't be a christian it's amazing but it's not just lindsey graham this is

00:25:09.700 everywhere today in case you haven't seen it here's patrick bet david on his podcast a day or

00:25:16.580 two ago watch this i don't know why catholics uh you know have this issue with jews i don't know 0.76

00:25:23.440 what it is they have this this this you know i don't listen i get the jews have issues with 0.60

00:25:30.080 christians and they'll make fun and they'll say stuff like oh your jesus is gonna do you know

00:25:34.640 they'll say well he was a jew anyways right but then catholics have that issue with jews and they 0.89

00:25:42.660 act like you know they're all innocent and everything and when you look at catholics the 0.81

00:25:46.400 amount of centralized power they have centralized if you know what the total catholic population is 0.96

00:25:52.820 worldwide it's like one two one three billion jews are 15 million 15 million but jews are 0.84

00:25:59.840 decentralized meaning catholic jews don't have somebody they listen to that says hey you better 0.54

00:26:05.980 do this catholics god forbid you say something about the pope they're like hey man listen yeah

00:26:11.360 who is that pope figure in the christian community we don't have one if i ask you right now who's the 0.91

00:26:16.300 pope in the christian community you don't have somebody to look at who is a witch pastor yeah 0.96

00:26:20.500 Exactly. 0.64

00:26:21.120 No, they don't.

00:26:21.660 We don't have one.

00:26:22.180 It's not in the book.

00:26:23.060 It's just the Bible.

00:26:24.340 So if you look at only Catholics and Muslims have somebody that they look at as their supreme leader, 0.69

00:26:31.920 like, you know, you got to go to somebody.

00:26:33.660 But even more, it's Catholic. 0.88

00:26:35.540 Well, there's only two theocracies in the world. 0.77

00:26:38.420 Catholicism? 1.00

00:26:39.220 Islam. 1.00

00:26:40.260 I'm sorry, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Vatican. 0.98

00:26:45.660 Yeah.

00:26:45.940 Those are the two major theocracies. 0.80

00:26:47.520 so actually the Vatican is very much like the Nazi Iranian government the theocratic government

00:26:58.160 the mullahs it's all basically the same they've got the complicated dress they hate the Jews as

00:27:03.120 Patrick but David just said there's Catholics have a problem with the Jews a problem with the Jews

00:27:07.460 it's slander it's an attack on the world's largest and oldest christian denomination and

00:27:21.120 it's taking place openly and it's all coming from the same source which is israel the issue

00:27:32.400 is israel anyone who supports the netanyahu government not israel as a concept not all jews

00:27:38.200 no the netanyahu government anyone who ratifies every decision no matter how violent or grotesque 0.77

00:27:46.000 or genocidal of the netanyahu government those are the good people and anyone who doesn't is a nazi

00:27:52.300 and by the way their religion itself is a nazi religion it's inherently anti-semitic religion

00:27:57.900 that's what they're telling you out in the open and the kind of casual dismissal the mockery

00:28:05.560 the loathing of the oldest and largest christian church it's just remarkable now again trump is

00:28:16.120 someone who you know has a lot of problems showing respect to other powerful figures and this is it's

00:28:24.620 not just trump most men like trump are that way they get along well with women because they're

00:28:30.960 not threatened by women woman's probably not trying to like kill you and become king

00:28:36.400 they're kind of loyal and but other men every other man to a certain male personality type

00:28:43.760 is a potential threat that's why kings kill their sons every man is a potential threat

00:28:48.500 and so Trump is not on a gut level instinctively respectful of anything or anybody and that's one

00:28:57.460 of the reasons he was a much needed transformative political figure for so long in the United States

00:29:02.220 because he was willing to ask questions that most people in Washington had never even thought of

00:29:08.640 out of deference to the existing system like why do we have NATO is it really good idea

00:29:14.140 to offshore manufacturing is our immigration actually our system helping the united states

00:29:19.020 are hurting etc etc etc all famously the questions that trump asked about the way we were doing

00:29:23.500 things were made possible he was able to ask those things because he doesn't have reflective

00:29:28.100 respect for anybody got it and so when trump mocks jesus and the pope and christians and

00:29:38.100 tweets out the effort on Easter morning, kind of like, well, this is awful, but it's also kind of

00:29:45.120 consistent with the Trump we know. This is just Trump turned up to 11. But what's interesting

00:29:53.500 is there are certain circumstances where Trump shows sincere reverence. There are the outlines

00:30:00.600 of an actual religious faith here.

00:30:04.680 And they're not what you would expect.

00:30:08.140 So here, for example, is Donald Trump the month before the last election,

00:30:13.740 this is October 2024, visiting the grave of a man called Rebbe Schneerson,

00:30:20.180 Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who was, he's since passed away,

00:30:26.360 the leader of a large Orthodox sect.

00:30:29.620 eastern european by birth came with many of his followers to new york to brooklyn and built a

00:30:37.180 very successful the relatively speaking very small uh center of religious thought and political power

00:30:43.540 actually he died some years ago there's the now president standing there um looks like maybe ben

00:30:52.240 Shapiro there, Howard Lutnick, wearing a kippah on his head. As you look at that, ask, is it

00:30:59.060 possible to imagine Donald Trump ever mocking Rebbe Schneerson, who, by the way, and this is

00:31:06.420 kind of the point, is considered by some of his followers to be the Messiah? And to be completely

00:31:13.060 clear, every American is allowed to decide for himself who the Messiah is, so that is not mockery

00:31:18.620 of that belief. I don't personally believe it, but one of the reasons we've been able to live

00:31:25.940 with people of different faiths in this country for 250 years is we don't mock other people's

00:31:32.860 religious faith unless they're absolutely forced to, unless you're trying to make me

00:31:36.420 attend your religious rituals or bow down before a God I don't consider God. Unless it comes to that,

00:31:43.500 we kind of let each other have our own religious views. And that has worked. That's changing very,

00:31:48.900 very fast, however. But ask yourself, can you imagine Donald Trump sending out a meme

00:31:54.380 mocking Rebbe Schneerson? And of course, under no circumstances could you imagine that,

00:31:59.760 because under no circumstances would that ever happen. Trump would not be allowed to do that,

00:32:04.160 and Trump would never even consider doing it. But sending out multiple images mocking Jesus?

00:32:09.640 no problem at all so that gives you a more precise sense of what our civic religion

00:32:17.920 actually is a civic religion by the way is not a conventional religion civic religion is a series

00:32:24.700 of customs some enshrined in law not all that a society civilization and its government observe

00:32:31.520 and it doesn't necessarily mean there's a god at the center of it that's why it's a civic religion

00:32:36.620 rather than a conventional religion but our civic religion is if you again takes three steps back

00:32:43.300 and just assess the country with the eyes of a visitor a modern Tocqueville you can see it really

00:32:48.860 clearly what are the events who are the people who we treat with reverence what are you actually

00:32:57.180 not allowed to make fun of what is blasphemy in modern America those are the questions you ask if

00:33:06.500 you are trying to understand what our operative religion is. What's the religion of our leaders?

00:33:12.080 Again, it's not a conventional religion necessarily. It's not Torah Judaism or

00:33:16.820 rabbinic Judaism or evangelical Christianity or Catholic Christianity.

00:33:22.480 It's the actual religion, the real religion, the set of beliefs that we treat with reverence.

00:33:31.700 well it just so happens there was a religious ceremony ongoing today in the united states

00:33:39.160 capital complete with very recognizable religious iconography symbolism you may not even have known

00:33:47.360 this was happening but it was happening today as part of an eight-day celebration of remembrance

00:33:53.840 of the holocaust the period in the 1930s and 40s where the german government the nazi government

00:34:01.260 murdered in addition to a lot of other people a whole bunch of jews and that ended in part 0.52

00:34:09.080 because the united states sent troops to europe millions of troops to europe to defeat the german

00:34:16.320 government and with the help of the soviets our allies at the time we did that and in the process

00:34:21.860 of doing that over a quarter million americans american men were killed trying to stop the nazi

00:34:30.820 government from doing the evil things that it was doing. A quarter million more than American men

00:34:36.660 died fighting the Nazis. But in today's ceremony in the Congress, there was no mention of them.

00:34:44.880 There was instead this. Watch. Ladies and gentlemen, a museum leadership program has

00:34:51.760 included more than 72,000 U.S. military members. Through examination of the Holocaust, they gain

00:35:00.340 insight into their own professional and individual responsibilities.

00:35:06.340 The Candlelighters are members of the United States Army, 3rd Infantry Regiment, the Old Guard.

00:35:15.340 I am Sergeant Ethan Aughton.

00:35:26.620 I remember.

00:35:28.060 that is a current uniformed u.s military member from the old guard the third infantry regiment

00:35:53.340 which is you know ever present at our public events in washington saying lighting a candle

00:36:01.440 at the menorah and saying i remember no explanation of i remember i remember what

00:36:07.700 what are we remembering here and we do have a sense that it's we're not remembering

00:36:13.120 the american soldiers who liberated dachau for example we're not remembering the quarter million

00:36:20.320 American men who joined a war they had nothing to do with inherently it wasn't taking place in

00:36:25.720 North America was taking place in Europe and the dispute was over Poland and Czechoslovakia

00:36:29.860 and they sacrificed their lives to defeat the Nazi government that was murdering Jews and a lot of

00:36:35.400 other people Poles and Russians and gypsies and Czechs and lots lots of people a lot of Jews

00:36:39.920 as well but they gave their lives to stop that but we're not remembering them we're remembering

00:36:45.960 only the victims of one specific ethnicity during these eight days of remembrance as distinct from

00:36:53.300 the day of remembrance that we also have that's also enshrined in american law in january so there's

00:36:58.980 a total of nine days of remembrance of one group of victims in a war that killed tens of millions

00:37:06.680 of people globally tens and tens and tens of millions the numbers are actually not even clear

00:37:11.040 so many people died we're not exactly sure how many died but many tens of millions died

00:37:14.520 including close to a half million americans over a quarter million in europe fighting this nazi

00:37:20.680 regime not remembered so that is not to disrespect the jewish victims of the holocaust or the second

00:37:28.820 world war of course not merely to note that in this country only one group gets to be remembered

00:37:36.600 and remembered with grave solemnity

00:37:39.840 by uniformed members of our military 0.94

00:37:43.840 who take no credit for ending this Holocaust. 0.86

00:37:48.240 So that doesn't make any sense. 0.83

00:37:50.520 I mean, if you didn't know the backstory in any of this

00:37:53.300 and someone wrote that down and told you,

00:37:54.840 you'd be like, well, what if that doesn't, what?

00:37:57.220 And it almost seems like

00:37:58.720 there's a kind of guilt implied in this,

00:38:03.080 which is a little weird.

00:38:04.340 There are countries where, you know,

00:38:05.600 that might be appropriate.

00:38:06.380 This is not one of them because, again, this was the country that helped liberate people from those camps and fought the government that built those camps.

00:38:15.420 We're the good guys.

00:38:17.560 What is this?

00:38:18.680 It doesn't make any sense except when you see it in the only terms in which it makes sense, which is as a civic religion, which is what it is. 0.88

00:38:29.400 And it comes complete with blasphemy laws.

00:38:32.540 once again if you want to know what religion matters it's the religion that can't be mocked

00:38:41.160 so clearly that's not christianity i'm jesus today no i didn't do that oh he's your god okay i'll

00:38:48.400 send a meme out with me posing as your god with a demon over my shoulders nothing you can do about

00:38:53.160 it i'm not even going to explain what that was i don't need to because i don't care about your faith

00:38:59.300 at all but there are certain things that are blasphemy and at the very top of that list is

00:39:08.440 something called anti-semitism now what exactly is anti-semitism it's one of those crimes that's a

00:39:16.280 it's a true crime in the united states and actual anti-semitism hating people because of their blood

00:39:21.680 is a crime certainly in christianity that is a crime that is wrong you're not allowed to do that

00:39:27.420 But that is a universal crime. It applies to all people. Whites, blacks, Asians, Jews, everybody has a right to be treated as an individual because everyone was created by God as an individual. That's the Christian understanding. It's a universalist understanding of rights.

00:39:43.460 and that's the old civic religion we had the civic religion of civil rights now there was

00:39:52.040 a civil rights movement which was you know fraudulent maybe at its core maybe its aims

00:39:56.200 were not advertised honestly maybe there was another point to that just possible but conceptually

00:40:03.880 it's kind of hard to argue with the fact that the assumptions behind civil rights are christian

00:40:12.340 assumptions. They're Western assumptions. They're the assumptions upon which our whole civilization

00:40:16.700 is built. And the core assumption is that standards, rules, apply to everyone because

00:40:22.660 every human being possesses a soul given to him by God at creation, which is not an act that men

00:40:29.900 brought about, but that only God can bring about. God creates life. He endows each human being with

00:40:34.140 a soul. That soul is eternal. Therefore, each individual possesses rights granted him by God,

00:40:39.740 not government and a good government protects those rights and in so doing upholds god's law

00:40:47.040 that's western civilization right there and in a kind of deluded silly way the civil rights

00:40:54.800 movement was upholding those ideas the term civil rights the term human rights reflect

00:41:01.680 that understanding the rights apply to you because you're a human as they do all human

00:41:06.100 beings. But that's over. That civic religion has died. And we know that. It's probably been dying

00:41:12.400 for a long time. Identity politics is a refutation of that. The idea that some groups have more

00:41:17.880 rights than others, that's the opposite of civil rights. That's the opposite of human rights. Those

00:41:23.520 aren't human rights. Those are group rights. They apply to certain groups. One bloodline is superior 0.66

00:41:28.300 to another bloodline. Well, that's not what we thought we were for. That's the opposite of what

00:41:33.620 we thought we were for all of a sudden you wake up and you realize not only are we for it the

00:41:36.500 government's for it and that's why they're able to arrest people not who commit genocide but people

00:41:43.100 who complain about genocide some of us thought stupidly like the cattle we are that the real

00:41:49.640 lessons of world war ii were every person has inalienable rights that's what we were taught

00:41:55.900 that was a pretty common understanding and say the 1970s and 80s nazis are bad because they

00:42:01.320 redlined one group and said these people don't have the same rights as everyone else by virtue

00:42:05.780 of their blood and they were really interested in eugenics and they were interested in people's 0.76

00:42:12.940 bloodline who are you related to we're going to find out if you're a secret jew 0.93

00:42:16.980 well that's disgusting that's we used to say that's nazi behavior 0.97

00:42:20.580 and then the next thing you know every other federal form you get

00:42:25.220 asks you what your race is and you're thinking well why does that matter

00:42:29.400 I thought you told me it didn't matter.

00:42:30.920 I thought you told me it was evil to care about that.

00:42:36.660 But you wake up in 2026,

00:42:39.920 and our closest ally is using our weapons

00:42:43.280 to kill and displace people

00:42:45.520 because of how they were born,

00:42:47.700 and not only is that okay,

00:42:49.380 the only real crime is complaining about it.

00:42:52.380 Well, that tells you,

00:42:53.340 well, it tells you a lot of things,

00:42:54.820 but it tells you we've got a whole new set of rules.

00:42:57.280 we have a whole new civic religion and that civic religion once again is called israelism

00:43:04.920 and it means that any criticism of israel is by definition bad and any praise of israel is by

00:43:11.300 definition virtuous because the only truly good thing is israel and we know that by the actual

00:43:19.580 definition and there is one of anti-semitism so what is anti-semitism and if you've been called 0.76

00:43:26.360 it or if someone's ever implied it you you have a problem with the jews you're kind of obsessed

00:43:29.280 with the jews say people who are completely obsessed with the jews you probably wonder like

00:43:34.320 what are they accusing me of well here it is this is the i h r a international holocaust remembrance

00:43:43.020 alliance i h r a you may hear this the i h r a definition of anti-semitism do you know what it

00:43:47.720 is it's on their website it's worth looking at spent the morning reading it fascinating so here's

00:43:52.000 the actual definition of anti-Semitism. And by the way, this is a now globally recognized

00:43:58.960 definition enshrined in law around the world in more than 40 countries. This is the definition,

00:44:04.240 and I'm quoting. Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed

00:44:11.560 as hatred towards Jews. Huh? So anti-Semitism is a perception, it's a feeling. Okay. I thought

00:44:20.240 allowed to have any feeling or perception you wanted. You could look at facts and come to any

00:44:23.540 conclusion you wanted. No, no, no, no. Certain perceptions are inherently immoral, they're

00:44:30.060 quote, anti-Semitic, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Oh, so you don't have to

00:44:36.080 hate the Jews to be anti-Semitic? No. Well, that answers the question for those of us who don't

00:44:41.500 hate Jews at all. How could you be anti-Semitic if you don't hate Jews? Well, you can be according

00:44:47.000 to the official definition of it continuing the quote rhetorical rhetorical meaning talking

00:44:53.600 words speech formerly protected no longer rhetorical and physical manifestations of

00:44:59.980 antisemitism are directed toward jewish or non-jewish individuals and or their property

00:45:06.120 toward jewish community institutions and religious facilities wait a second so antisemitism is not

00:45:12.540 necessarily hatred of jews and it can be expressed toward non-jews so you don't have to hate jews

00:45:18.700 and you don't have to express or have these perceptions these feelings toward jews you can

00:45:23.680 be non-jews too what is this well the people who wrote it at the ihra probably anticipated this

00:45:33.920 would be confusing to you so they gave 11 examples of what anti-semitism is just so you know like

00:45:40.660 how do i know if i'm being anti-semitic well here are 11 examples of those 11 examples and we did

00:45:46.140 the math two-thirds are criticism of israel the state of israel the nation with the prime minister

00:45:55.560 benjamin netanyahu bb criticism of israel in two-thirds of the examples that the ihra gave

00:46:04.020 that's anti-semitism including here we go drawing quote drawing comparisons of contemporary

00:46:11.600 israeli policy to that of the nazis oh in other words if you think what's happening in gaza is

00:46:18.840 genocide well nazis committed genocide now the state of israel is committing genocide in gaza

00:46:23.760 meaning they're trying to eliminate people on the basis of their blood you were an anti-semite

00:46:29.880 Oh, okay. You're an anti-Semite if you think that. It also tells us that the suggestion that Jews

00:46:37.820 killed Jesus is, quote, classic anti-Semitism. Classic anti-Semitism. So there goes the New

00:46:44.240 Testament. The whole New Testament is anti-Semitic too. Read the Gospels and see if they fall under

00:46:50.780 that definition they do why does this matter well because about 40 u.s states and the district of

00:47:00.500 columbia and our biggest cities miami los angeles have adopted this this is their standard that

00:47:07.040 they voted on and adopted it's in the law this standard the one that tells you that criticism

00:47:13.780 of the secular state of israel or portions of the new testament are quote anti-semitism

00:47:19.440 the government of almost 40 states in the united i think 39 states 40 countries around the world

00:47:26.220 but not just countries ngos sports teams the british soccer league chelsea united all of them

00:47:34.500 have adopted this standard now why would a sports team adopt this well who knows why

00:47:39.520 think about it for a minute why why would you declare something illegal oh because you want

00:47:46.520 to punish people who violate it that's why this happened today ukraine that beacon of democracy

00:47:53.760 and freedom that we've sent hundreds of billions of dollars to just made it law today that

00:47:59.400 anti-semitism in other words criticism of israel is a felony punishable by up to eight years in

00:48:04.200 prison eight years in prison how could a rational person understand that well a rational person

00:48:12.920 could not understand that why would a citizen citizen of one country be sent to prison for

00:48:18.900 criticizing the leadership of another country a country not his own why would a citizen of one

00:48:24.820 country be sent to prison for having opinions about historical events that he did not participate in

00:48:31.260 and that were almost a century ago does that make any sense

00:48:35.320 no except in religious terms those are blasphemy laws same as the old blasphemy laws and for all

00:48:45.260 the talk of how the mullahs are bad the mullahs are bad well the mullahs probably are bad not

00:48:49.800 defending the mullahs but why are we told the mullahs are but the mullahs are bad because

00:48:53.040 they're religious extremists they have blasphemy laws they'll hurt you if you say certain things

00:48:59.460 okay well that looks a lot like what we're seeing here almost 40 states now it's interesting

00:49:09.500 the president has been all of a sudden it makes sense this may this may be the Rosetta Stone

00:49:15.780 that helps us interpret events we're watching now that are very confusing and those would

00:49:21.440 include the president advocating for re-upping FISA. Now, FISA, without getting too boring about

00:49:30.900 it, is the law, which has to be voted on periodically by Congress, that allows the US

00:49:35.860 government to spy on Americans, to spy on them. Now, the whole point of it is supposed to be

00:49:41.440 to spy on foreigners who are threatening us, but the nature of the technology being what it is, 0.80

00:49:45.500 there are cases where we pick up communications from Americans, and in order to make that legal

00:49:51.100 we need this thing called FISA. Now what's interesting is that the president himself

00:49:57.120 was a victim of the misuse of these laws in his first term. They were used against him

00:50:02.980 in what became a kind of bureaucratic attempted coup against him that we call Russiagate.

00:50:10.880 And so the president was personally very sensitive on this question. He'd been the victim of the

00:50:15.740 misuse of these laws. And so he said many times, I'm not for that. I don't think Americans should

00:50:20.900 be spied on by their own government i don't think you pay your taxes today's tax day by the way in

00:50:24.520 order to be spied on by your government when you've done nothing wrong but we are everyone

00:50:29.140 knows that and this allows it to be legal all of a sudden the president is advocating for this new

00:50:39.340 law he wants the congress to allow the u.s government to spy on americans why could that

00:50:45.060 possibly be? Well, there are a couple of clues. One comes from the documents unearthed and made

00:50:52.620 public, God bless him, by Ed Snowden some years ago that showed that NSA, the National Security

00:50:58.340 Agency, the largest of all of our spy agencies, turned over raw data to, can you guess, of the

00:51:04.740 Israeli government that included private information about Americans. So they sweep up all this

00:51:08.940 information, the communications of American citizens, and they just turn it all over without

00:51:14.520 taking private information about americans our citizens is turn all over to a foreign government

00:51:20.100 and its intel service to be used god knows how that's one two is a very revealing moment

00:51:28.800 in the congress two and a half years ago with a man a congressman from ohio called mike turner

00:51:35.680 who at the time was the chairman of the house intelligence committee and he was arguing as

00:51:40.780 chairman of the house intel committee always do for more spying on americans so the house and

00:51:46.700 senate intel committees was to provide oversight of the intelligence agencies because you don't

00:51:51.540 really know what they're doing you don't know what their budget is the whole thing is secret

00:51:54.540 you can't know so your representatives on these committees oversee just to make sure that they're

00:51:58.820 not violating the u.s constitution or your human rights given to you by god and protected by the

00:52:03.140 u.s government that's the whole point but for my lifetime those committees have worked in concert

00:52:09.420 with the intel agencies to violate the civil rights of americans and they've almost always

00:52:14.500 been run by some of the most dishonest and personally screwed up people in the entire

00:52:20.240 congress so maybe it's not always true but certainly in the case of mike turner it is true

00:52:25.980 you know the guy publicly accused of corruption with a chaotic personal life that guy winds up

00:52:32.540 as the chairman of an intel committee i wonder why someone who's vulnerable to control

00:52:39.200 winds up in charge of oversight of the intel agencies okay that's definitely mike turner so

00:52:43.420 anyway mike turner is running this and he's making the case to about 200 staffers on the hill

00:52:47.380 and he said we got to do this we got to do this and he has a bunch of slides behind him

00:52:50.960 and one of the slides he puts up shows people protesting the murder of civilians by the

00:52:57.120 israeli government in gaza those gaza protests and he says we need this because these people

00:53:05.480 clearly taking orders from Hamas these are like college kids who were mad about babies being

00:53:11.520 murdered by the IDF but because Mike Turner and a lot of people like Mike Turner because look at

00:53:18.560 them and say you've got foreign connections you can't have come to this conclusion on your own

00:53:22.360 you didn't just choose apostasy you clearly were corrupted by some outside force some foreign power

00:53:29.340 we get to spy on you he made that case in the congress so how does this connect to blasphemy

00:53:36.980 laws as outlined and adopted by almost 40 states by ihra really simple if having these quote

00:53:43.920 perceptions is a crime then that gives the u.s government pretext to spy on you and then punish

00:53:52.420 you another way of thinking about it is almost no human action or now perception thought crime

00:53:59.540 is ever encoded by any legislative body without an eye toward punishing people who violate it

00:54:05.660 why would you why would you vote on it if you didn't intend to punish people who go against

00:54:12.000 the standard you set well you wouldn't and so the point is this new civic religion is very much the

00:54:19.740 opposite of the old civic religion in that it doesn't protect civil rights human inherent

00:54:26.620 rights it is the enemy of those rights it is the enemy of universalism the belief that all of us

00:54:32.980 were created by god and have equal moral worth it is the enemy of that and it's the enemy of

00:54:39.440 the understanding of people that led to the bill of rights which is we have these rights given to

00:54:45.660 us by god it does not believe that and you know that because its first command is that you shut

00:54:52.360 up and not just shut up but change your quote perceptions change the thoughts in your head

00:54:56.420 change your feelings your perceptions your conclusions you must change those it is a 0.68

00:55:02.940 totalitarian worldview it is a totalitarian worldview in that it seeks to control the

00:55:10.940 totality of a person not just your actions you can't punch someone in the face because you don't

00:55:15.660 Like his ethnicity, fair, fair.

00:55:18.280 Everyone's for upholding that law.

00:55:21.300 You can't have a certain perception of another person.

00:55:26.460 If there's a better definition of a totalitarian aim,

00:55:30.120 hard to think of what it might be.

00:55:32.540 So that's our new religion. 0.98

00:55:34.560 That's where Israelism gets us.

00:55:39.160 I want to end with probably the most mocked 0.97

00:55:45.240 and yet clearest evangelist of this new faith, this Israelism. 0.95

00:55:50.680 You could say it's Christianity without the New Testament.

00:55:54.600 And that would be someone, again, who's often made fun of for being dumb,

00:55:58.540 or he doesn't know what he's talking about.

00:56:01.440 But it's sometimes people like that that give you the clearest picture

00:56:04.020 of what the people in power really are talking about.

00:56:08.600 And that person would be Sean Hannity over at Fox News.

00:56:12.340 Not a bad guy, not a mean guy, lifelong Catholic.

00:56:15.240 If you asked him, are you a Catholic?

00:56:16.360 Absolutely.

00:56:17.060 Yeah, I'm a Catholic, and I think he is.

00:56:20.580 Not an attack or even a claim to understand his personal religious faith.

00:56:27.540 But watch Sean Hannity, cradle Catholic, describe the Pope.

00:56:33.300 This is his reaction to the President of the United States attacking the Pope,

00:56:39.960 head of the Catholic Church.

00:56:41.940 And here's Sean Hannity's response as a Catholic to that.

00:56:45.240 watch he doesn't want any conflict anywhere and he was talking about violence and i'm like have

00:56:50.800 you even read the bible have you read the conflicts the wars that were that the israeli people that

00:56:57.980 were they were empowered by god to defeat their enemies uh did you never did you ever hear the

00:57:03.900 story about david slaying goliath uh through the power of god with a slingshot against this massive

00:57:11.360 giant or the conflicts and the wars of king saul and and so on and so forth and and frankly all

00:57:18.160 throughout israel's history they've been you know surrounded by enemies but as god's chosen people

00:57:24.100 they they against all odds keep winning pretty amazing so it does take a kind of cable news

00:57:32.460 mentality to say of the pope hey you ever read the bible it's hilarious on the ones hey thing

00:57:40.600 about the pope is this guy's never read the bible he's just the pope so there's that okay it's funny

00:57:46.500 but listen to the content which is actually more interesting and less funny and and little

00:57:52.540 meatier than it seems at first so the pope is saying look i'm a christian leader the christian

00:57:58.720 gospel which i represent however imperfectly this pope may represent it from my perspective

00:58:03.280 imperfectly but whatever all christian leaders have a duty to consult the gospel as they think

00:58:09.680 about their positions on things that's the whole point is the gospel and as a christian leader the

00:58:15.880 leader of the biggest christian denomination like i'm i'm not for war and maybe some wars are

00:58:21.560 possibly defensible under just war theory which no one ever really explains

00:58:26.340 but you can imagine a war of self-defense that most christians would feel comfortable with being

00:58:33.280 a christian probably doesn't necessarily mean you oppose all violence in all circumstances

00:58:38.500 Maybe it should, but in practice it doesn't.

00:58:43.300 But this Pope is just saying something pretty conventional like that.

00:58:45.820 Nothing crazy, actually.

00:58:47.720 No name-calling.

00:58:49.320 No great departure from Christian theology or ethics as people have understood it for thousands of years.

00:58:56.040 And the response is, hey, you haven't read the Bible?

00:58:58.840 There's a ton of killing in the Bible. 1.00

00:59:00.400 Israel is constantly under attack by its neighbors the Amalekites the Philistines 1.00

00:59:07.440 you name it and they fight back with God's blessing and they kill and that's what they're 1.00

00:59:13.380 supposed to be doing which is true by the way that is all in there but it's not in the New 0.87

00:59:20.300 Testament and for Christians that's the difference it's not a matter of the Old Testament being

00:59:25.860 irrelevant it's certainly not and christians understand it as one long story and as jesus

00:59:31.600 famously said i came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it to bring it to its intended

00:59:36.900 conclusion i'm here so the law will have its desired effect on you

00:59:43.060 but jesus never offers a single order to kill or hurt anybody and there's no place in the entire

00:59:53.520 New Testament, the four Gospels, the letters that follow, mostly from Paul, and the vision at the

01:00:00.620 end by St. John called Revelation, there's not one page or sentence in the entire New Testament in

01:00:07.100 which Jesus is recorded saying, they're very annoying, or they're a threat, or they disagree

01:00:11.980 with us, or they're of another faith, kill them. Not once. In fact, it's the opposite of that.

01:00:18.360 In fact, it's so clearly the opposite of that that you have to wonder who's reading the Bible

01:00:23.460 and who isn't in jesus's very first sermon in the very first gospel matthew matthew 5 the famous

01:00:33.440 sermon on the mount he addresses this really clearly and i think anybody reading it for the

01:00:40.700 first or hundredth time comes away thinking well a lot of things but among them would be jesus is

01:00:45.400 really down on violence and he's really down on greed very much opposed to both because he says

01:00:51.620 it really, really clearly. And not just down on violence and greed, but taking the prescriptions

01:00:59.000 against those things in the Old Testament and accelerating them to a point that—shocking,

01:01:05.960 really, to modern ears, to ancient ears, to any human being. The demands that Jesus makes on

01:01:11.200 people are shocking. He says, for example, all in Matthew 5 worth reading, amazing, really, radical,

01:01:16.840 not really of this world at all which is kind of the whole point he says you've been told

01:01:24.800 not to kill don't commit murder moses told you that i'm telling you don't be angry

01:01:30.780 if you curse somebody you risk going to hell that's what he says

01:01:38.860 so you can debate what that means is it possible to apply that standard can you

01:01:44.960 actually live up to that pretty hard but what you can't conclude is that jesus is in favor of

01:01:53.680 dropping bombs on kids blowing up entire apartment buildings raping people in prisons you can't

01:02:02.360 conclude that because it's the opposite of that and so if you have concluded that by reference to

01:02:09.960 old testament texts the book of ruth you're espousing the tenets of religion

01:02:17.120 but it's not christianity it's our new religion israelism that's just what it is call it that

01:02:26.160 call it that just be honest about what you're saying outline it for us give us the creed think

01:02:33.060 of a new name for it give us 10 points we can all recite them people who don't can be punished

01:02:36.880 but tell us what the religion is be straightforward with us stop playing this head trip on us and

01:02:44.620 telling us that something that's clearly anti-christian is in fact the real christianity

01:02:48.920 because that's just not true and this kind of deception is making everybody crazy spring is the

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01:03:52.940 So with that in mind, it seemed like a really good time to get a little grounding on what Christians should be thinking right now as the President of the United States is weighing in on theological matters, and the world seems to be moving towards some great unknown, and everybody feels within him the weight of this period in history.

01:04:15.340 everyone feels it. Father Josiah Trenum is an Orthodox priest and a pastor in Southern California

01:04:24.380 who we've spoken to before, who, though we're not Orthodox, seems like a really clear voice

01:04:28.720 on matters of Christian faith and what the Gospels actually say. And so we're really happy to have

01:04:34.220 him back. Father, thank you very much for joining us. You know, I'm a puddle on the ground having

01:04:43.860 listened to you for the last 45 minutes. I just am a puddle on the ground. I have behind

01:04:49.920 me an icon that I keep. It's an icon of Jesus, our Savior, after the resurrection from the

01:04:59.580 dead. And he's gathered his disciples. It's called the Great Commission icon. This is

01:05:05.020 when he gathered his disciples and gave them the charge to go into all the world and to

01:05:10.600 preach the good news to the whole creation,

01:05:13.220 baptizing everyone in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

01:05:17.520 and promising to be with them,

01:05:19.580 asking the disciples to teach the whole world His sacred commandments

01:05:24.080 and promising His presence.

01:05:26.680 I think anyone listening to you right now

01:05:28.820 is going to be massively tempted to great discouragement by the truth,

01:05:35.480 the many truths you just articulated.

01:05:38.080 I'm just saying this.

01:05:39.220 It's Easter right now.

01:05:41.200 Christ is risen.

01:05:42.740 Yes.

01:05:43.540 We celebrate this and the conquering of death.

01:05:48.880 Jesus is not just a great teacher.

01:05:52.760 Jesus is the Son of God who became a man in order to face our greatest enemies,

01:06:02.500 sin, death, Satan, and to defeat them, not just a little bit,

01:06:09.220 literally to crush them and to offer us a life without fear a life rooted in his presence now

01:06:19.220 and with a great hope that we say in the creed we're looking for we're looking for the resurrection

01:06:24.280 of the dead and the life of the world to come this is uh why we can be happy even in

01:06:32.540 a complete mess national mess that we're in is that christ is with us christ is calling us

01:06:40.940 he's awakening so many people across our land i've been a priest for 33 years i've never seen

01:06:47.040 what's going on right now in america the number of people sincerely engaging jesus and his teaching

01:06:55.840 and his life and choosing to make radical alterations in their life and to put god where

01:07:01.480 he belongs in their life, which is number one. Number one, not loyalty to the nation. Loyalty

01:07:08.840 to the nation is a Christian virtue in its proper place. But the loyalty that Christ asks is loyalty

01:07:14.880 to the kingdom of God, to seek that first above everything else and to receive our life from him.

01:07:21.340 He's alive now at the right hand of God the Father, governing the whole world into all his

01:07:26.360 enemies. All the demons are made of footstool for his feet. And then the end will come, St. Paul

01:07:31.760 says. So attaching yourself to him by faith, becoming his, making his kingdom your chief

01:07:38.340 ambition. This is the way to peace. This is the way not to be destroyed when you see a country

01:07:43.900 that you love in such chaos as we have now. We can look at what's going on honestly.

01:07:51.840 and even though it's so sorrowful, we can still be confident in his presence and try to serve him

01:08:00.520 and do good to our land and to benefit our land. And we don't know the future. Who knows

01:08:05.860 what's going to happen? We've had three years of unbelievable renewal, Christian renewal in this

01:08:12.080 land that has blown away every other movement of faith in my lifetime. I was born in 1967, 0.98

01:08:20.160 I think about three or four years before you, I've never seen anything like this.

01:08:25.020 So I'm just, I want to lob a bomb of hope, a hope bomb, after listening to your powerful,

01:08:32.880 but very, very discouraging words.

01:08:35.440 Sorry, it's my dark Scandinavian soul raising its ugly head once again. 0.56

01:08:40.200 I am prone to that, and I love your response to it.

01:08:43.940 So can you just, can you give me an outline?

01:08:46.400 and you say this is, in 33 years of ministry, this is the most powerful moment for God among

01:08:54.440 people you've seen. This is, it seems like a revival. What are you seeing that leads you to

01:08:59.400 that? It has always been, I've always, as a priest, been very interested in people who are outside

01:09:09.320 my parish, in my local community, we priests and pastors are always trying to build connections

01:09:16.540 in our, where we are in the dirt that God gave us to make his. And the normal year to have maybe 25

01:09:26.220 people who were signing up for a year-long catechism program to prepare themselves for

01:09:32.300 baptism. That was a good year for much of my priesthood. This year, I catechized 350 people.

01:09:42.660 Wow. And I just, it's actually such a fantastic problem because our parish is large. We have

01:09:52.640 maybe about 1,300 active parishioners, and I can't fit them all in the church. We've had to

01:09:59.860 really suck in. And I just baptized 115 people. Orthodox Easter was this last Sunday. And I'm

01:10:10.080 used to baptizing, you know, 20, 25, something like that. So we're talking a five-fold increase

01:10:16.380 in those that I received by baptism this year. And the numbers that are lining up for next year

01:10:22.100 are more than double that. And, you know, I can't project that everywhere and say that's

01:10:27.620 happening everywhere. But I've been looking at stats. I've been looking at stats coming not

01:10:32.020 just from America, but even from Western Europe, which I, previous to this, had pretty much

01:10:38.140 completely written off. Western Europe has just been dying, spiritually dying for a long time.

01:10:45.260 I'm a fourth generation Southern Californian, but my family's heritage is England. I was educated

01:10:50.500 there. And I've gone back to England every year for the last 30 years. And always it's been

01:10:56.860 well religiously discouraging spiritually discouraging uh but this last few years even

01:11:03.200 in places in western europe that um we're not doing well and have not been doing well for

01:11:09.060 decades really post world war ii and on there are massive numbers massive numbers of people being

01:11:16.500 baptized and entering into catechism it's uh it can't be denied that's that's just wonderful to

01:11:24.140 hear and really the only answer so you must get people who come to you as a priest and say

01:11:29.660 i'm looking at everything around me and i see the beginning of the end of history and the return of

01:11:35.540 jesus the end times and as noted i mean those famous verses from daniel and second letter

01:11:43.320 the thessalonians etc and there's a lot more it's it's you could certainly fit events into those

01:11:49.120 structures what do you think of that generations have for the last 20 centuries so if you read

01:11:55.940 the church fathers uh we we have been trying to read our history through that eschatological lens

01:12:02.240 for a very long time that should give us some uh measure of discretion not to uh make a one-to-one

01:12:10.180 too too too closely too intimately you know talker the new testament the apostles are very clear that

01:12:17.500 the end of the world happened already. The end time started as soon as Jesus dethroned the devil.

01:12:25.200 As soon as he conquered death and plundered hell and opened, he gutted. He was crucified on Holy

01:12:33.340 Friday, atoning for the sins of the whole world. He descended into hell on Holy Saturday. And when

01:12:41.480 he went there he had already really shaken hell because just you know a week or so previously

01:12:47.460 he had raised his good friend Lazarus from the dead Lazarus had been dead for four days

01:12:53.780 his sister said he already smelled and Jesus intentionally took his time to come back to

01:13:01.340 Bethany and then to gather the Mary and Martha and the large community there around Lazarus's tomb

01:13:09.280 And then he spoke, and he said, Lazarus, come forth.

01:13:15.680 And his words went through his mouth, through the earth, into the heart of hell,

01:13:23.440 and empowered Lazarus and crushed Satan and the devils.

01:13:28.060 They couldn't hold his soul anymore.

01:13:30.560 And his soul came back into his body.

01:13:33.660 He was vivified, and the Lord asked him to come out.

01:13:38.080 The Lord didn't run in there and undo his grave clothes himself.

01:13:42.960 He wanted it to be seen by everyone.

01:13:44.520 So he said, Lazarus, come out.

01:13:46.040 And Lazarus came walking out.

01:13:48.560 And everyone recognized right then the ultimate power change,

01:13:53.480 the ultimate structural revolution had taken place.

01:13:57.920 Death no longer was in charge.

01:14:02.360 Before that, every single person, no matter how great they were,

01:14:06.740 Moses Abraham the Buddha Confucius everyone that got into the ring with

01:14:16.700 death was KO'd every single one didn't matter how much they how wise they were 0.54

01:14:21.920 how righteous they were everyone was slaughtered when Jesus came and started

01:14:29.540 raising the dead and especially when he did Lazarus no one had ever raised a man

01:14:34.160 four days dead and then when he himself voluntarily submitted to death and he was clear that death had

01:14:42.400 no power over him he said i have power to lay my life down and i have power to take my life up again

01:14:49.040 he went knowingly into death offered himself our liturgical hymns in the orthodox church for

01:14:56.080 holy friday say that death and satan ate christ because they thought that they had in their jaws

01:15:02.160 a man and they found themselves face to face with god you called him the man god right that is

01:15:09.540 the actual theological terms that we use in the church in greek it's called theanthropos

01:15:15.660 theos meaning god anthropos meaning man the church fathers put those together to describe christ he is

01:15:21.580 the god man he became what he was not a human being without ceasing to be what he was the

01:15:28.340 co-eternal son of God, and he exists since then and forever as the God-man. And when death ate

01:15:35.440 Christ, Christ ate death, and he crushed it, and he rose again on the third day, and he asked that

01:15:42.180 that message be proclaimed by his disciples all over the world. And people who are being,

01:15:49.140 responding to this good news and are coming into the church, this is the ultimate solution

01:15:54.580 for their terror. It's a legitimate terror. When you look around and you see so much darkness

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01:16:24.600 holy communion is it's participating in the divine life christ's very body and blood sustaining us

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01:18:10.480 what do you make of self-described christian leaders glorifying the violence around us

01:18:21.760 endorsing the violence saying that god wants this violence how should we feel about that

01:18:27.040 you were very articulate brother you were very articulate but let me give it a little

01:18:34.960 larger theological context thank you when violence began not on earth it began in the heavens amongst

01:18:46.180 the angelic orders the first after violence and rebellion was satan's himself and he was cast out

01:18:55.180 together with all those angels that were in league with him and they became what we know as demons

01:19:01.240 And then they took their scheme of rebellion to the first human beings, right?

01:19:10.560 This is described in the early chapters of Genesis in our patriarchal histories.

01:19:14.920 The Satan, the great Satan, approached Adam and Eve and tempted them viciously, and they fell.

01:19:23.940 And they immediately became estranged, not just from God, but from each other.

01:19:28.380 The seeds of violence erupted and they began to blame one another.

01:19:35.220 Well, the woman you gave me, Adam says.

01:19:39.220 Then they have their children, Cain and Abel, and the first act of fratricide takes place.

01:19:47.800 Cain is shamed by his brother's devotion to God and his beautiful sacrifice.

01:19:53.460 Cain's sacrifice to God is very cheap.

01:19:55.960 The Lord tried to correct Cain.

01:19:58.100 Cain was hard-hearted and uncorrectable and killed his brother.

01:20:04.840 This is the first act of violence.

01:20:06.960 And the scripture says that God approached Cain graciously, trying to help Cain to repent,

01:20:13.020 and asked him what he did.

01:20:16.000 And God said, your brother's blood is crying out to heaven.

01:20:22.060 That's one innocent person's blood.

01:20:26.020 Can you imagine what tens of thousands of innocent blood, what kind of thunderous noise that makes in paradise?

01:20:37.480 The scriptures then go and describe the development of Cain's line.

01:20:43.440 Cain's line produces all the leaders of earthly technologies.

01:20:50.760 Abel's dead. They have another child. Adam and Eve have another child, Seth.

01:20:54.540 And Seth's line is also described by Moses.

01:20:57.860 And Seth's line is all about virtue and spiritual technology, I would describe.

01:21:03.400 How to have a relationship with God in the world that's correct.

01:21:07.920 And the line of Cain is all about power.

01:21:13.960 So, for instance, one of Cain's descendants, Tubal Cain is his name.

01:21:17.560 He was a great master of all metalwork and metallurgy, from which come all of the weapons.

01:21:25.280 And earthly technology, especially for the development of weapons, has driven technology throughout the entire history of the human race.

01:21:35.360 Look at our budget.

01:21:36.260 President Trump wants a larger and larger budget so that we can develop more and more vicious weapons to dominate our enemies.

01:21:48.580 We've done this with nuclear weaponry.

01:21:52.260 In the world wars, we were developing more and more dangerous gases to kill the largest amount of people possible.

01:22:01.580 This is technology.

01:22:03.620 This is that kind of technology.

01:22:05.840 And then the next thing that Moses describes in Genesis is the flood.

01:22:08.900 God just can't take it anymore.

01:22:11.100 It's enough.

01:22:12.300 And he decides that he's going to start over.

01:22:15.780 And he makes Noah, a righteous man of faith, into a new Adam.

01:22:20.420 And the thing that he said to Adam at the very beginning, 0.66

01:22:23.260 be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, rule it and subdue it.

01:22:25.920 He said the exact same thing to Noah after the flood

01:22:29.140 to make him the beginning of the human race.

01:22:31.840 and moses moses in writing this says there's one reason god flooded the earth i often have asked

01:22:37.680 people this that they could guess what was the one the singular sin mentioned by moses that caused

01:22:45.760 the lord to literally flood the earth and to restart the human race i know murder violence

01:22:55.600 violence it's unique amongst evils 0.98

01:23:01.840 So how could a Christian pastor glorify it? 0.97

01:23:15.640 You know, Tucker, that there are many who say one thing and do another, right? 0.88

01:23:25.940 This is a disease that we all have.

01:23:27.800 Yes, it's true.

01:23:28.560 It's a terrible disease. And I always tell people, look, never say that you don't want to go to church because there's a lot of hypocrites there. I said that's true, though. It's absolutely true. I mean, if there are people there, then you have hypocrites.

01:23:48.500 And forgive me, every single one of us is.

01:23:52.360 Yeah.

01:23:52.780 The only division is not between the hypocrites and the non-hypocrites.

01:23:56.640 The division is between those who know they're hypocrites and that it's a terrible sin and disease.

01:24:02.400 And they go to church to work against their hypocrisy so that they can become people of integrity and live before the face of God and other people in love.

01:24:10.260 And then there are people who have no hope and are just resigned to it and are very happy to talk about other people's sins, but don't want to look at themselves.

01:24:19.740 That's a very dangerous place to be.

01:24:22.780 So hypocrisy is certainly a chief cause in answer to your question.

01:24:29.400 So is false teaching.

01:24:31.140 So is false teaching.

01:24:32.120 There is a lot of made up theology began in the middle of the 19th century.

01:24:37.580 It got really going in the beginning of the 20th century, particularly in America, that has created this very strange theology of what unbelieving Jewish people are, non-Christian Jewish people, and their special relationship with God.

01:24:57.240 It's very strange. Zionism has no history in the Christian faith.

01:25:05.940 It's not as though it's just a matter of denominational preference.

01:25:09.560 No, you will see in vain for 18 and a half centuries to ever hear of such things.

01:25:15.480 It doesn't exist.

01:25:17.600 The church is very conscious of being the fulfillment of everything that took place in the Old Testament.

01:25:22.760 The church is the people of God.

01:25:24.820 Paul calls the church directly the new Israel. That's who we are. We are God's people. And we're

01:25:30.340 made up both of Jewish people and Gentile people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

01:25:36.320 It's not about ethnicity at all. We don't care. If you came to my parish on a typical Sunday

01:25:40.360 morning, I mean, you would need a big piece of paper just to write the number of ethnicities

01:25:45.140 that are there. I've always told our people, look, our goal should be that the ethnic distribution

01:25:51.680 of our county, we're in Riverside County, about 3 million people. I said, the ethnic diversity

01:25:57.220 there should be exactly represented in our parish. If the church is for everyone and we want everyone,

01:26:03.420 which means in my county, that's 57% Hispanic, 11% African-American, about 30% Anglo. I said,

01:26:10.800 that's what it should be. If a church has been there and has been successful in preaching the

01:26:15.920 gospel and helping people to love God. That's what it should look like. This is normal. This is our

01:26:22.580 way of looking at things. We don't think that somehow the Old Testament is continuing and never

01:26:29.580 came to fruition and that somehow a temple has to be rebuilt or the Old Testament sacrifices have to

01:26:35.400 begin again, which is impossible, or the Aaronic priests have to come back. We're going to start

01:26:39.400 slaying animals. All of that was a picture of Jesus himself. He says it himself. He told the

01:26:46.440 Pharisees, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have life. It's these

01:26:52.680 that bear witness to me. Everything in the Old Testament is a type of Christ. It's all about him.

01:27:01.200 And if you don't see that, if you think it's a standalone thing, then you're still living in types

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01:28:03.980 How does the—well, I'll just say one of the most challenging themes in the Gospels for me as an American are Jesus' prescriptions against greed, because I think that's the one thing American Christians never face.

01:28:20.100 Like, money is not inherently bad, but the love of it is bad, famously the root of all evil.

01:28:27.520 what does the gospel tell us about greed and how does that how is that reflected in the preaching

01:28:34.020 you hear uh from the pulpit you know one of the most beautiful things that jesus accomplished when

01:28:41.920 he conquered death was that he replanted uh on the earth the original relationship of man and woman

01:28:49.580 to god that had disappeared at the fall and that that was a life of complete consecration where

01:28:57.260 the happiness of Adam and Eve was to be called God's friend.

01:29:01.780 That was their greatest honor, the church fathers say, is to be called God's friend.

01:29:05.080 And I just note that Jesus said that to his disciples at the end of his ministry.

01:29:10.300 He said, I no longer call you my disciples, you're my friends.

01:29:14.900 That was an incredible honor.

01:29:16.900 Abraham, the great patriarch, was called the friend of God.

01:29:20.900 In the New Testament, as soon as Jesus sent the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost,

01:29:25.680 Remember, he was crucified, he plundered hell, he rose again on the third day.

01:29:29.460 He spent 40 days teaching us how to live in the new resurrection life

01:29:34.500 and how to love people and evangelize the world.

01:29:37.320 And then he ascended to heaven, right, from the Mount of Olives.

01:29:40.380 I've stood on the spot in the Holy Land.

01:29:44.280 And in front of his eyes, the eyes of his disciples,

01:29:46.400 and he sat down at the right hand of God.

01:29:48.060 And then as a coronation gift of his enthronement,

01:29:51.200 he sent forth the Holy Spirit 10 days later on the day of Pentecost.

01:29:54.740 and the whole community of Christians, 120 at that time in the upper room, became spirit bearers,

01:30:01.920 something that in the Old Testament only kings were. Now this is the common patrimony of all

01:30:10.120 believers, is to be able to be indwelt by the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit,

01:30:15.440 to have the Spirit of God guiding you, such that we don't, as Christians, look for God out there.

01:30:20.360 we experience God in here. He takes up his residence in baptism in the deep heart.

01:30:26.560 St. Paul even says that the Holy Spirit is in us following baptism, and that he helps us to pray

01:30:32.800 to God from the inside with groans that surpass words, trying to help us really relate to God

01:30:40.300 as a father. This is our life, and it was only seen in the Old Testament in little glimpses.

01:30:51.580 This was so radical for people that some people gave, and not a few, by the way. Some people

01:30:57.060 decided that their chief ambition was going to be to serve God 100%. Not on Sundays only,

01:31:06.540 right but completely saint paul describes this in his uh epistle to the first to corinthians

01:31:12.520 first corinthians chapter 7 he says that there's two kinds of life he says i wish everyone was even

01:31:18.640 as i myself am unmarried and completely devoted to god he said nevertheless every person has his

01:31:25.120 own calling from god one in this manner and another in that and then he goes on to describe

01:31:30.360 marriage and monastic life. These are the two ways of life for Christians since Jesus conquered

01:31:36.440 our enemies and gave us the Holy Spirit. That life of complete consecration for monks and nuns

01:31:42.120 was so popular in the early centuries. But by the time of St. Athanasius the Great,

01:31:47.080 this is 350 or so, right? This is one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church.

01:31:52.020 his life is just uh absolutely you read it and weep for its beauty he said at that time he was

01:32:00.800 the spiritual son of the father of the desert saint anthony the great and he said that at his

01:32:05.460 time he was also the patriarch of alexandria he said at his time half of all christians lived in

01:32:12.180 the deserts and so that they could pray eight hours a day serve people host people who are

01:32:20.780 coming to see the people would constantly leave the cities and go see the monks and the nuns

01:32:24.540 for spiritual encouragement, for prayer, etc. That's how powerful that life is. And that life,

01:32:30.920 the church fathers say, that life of complete consecration, which of course is just an exact

01:32:35.500 imitation of Jesus's life. This is how our Lord Jesus lived, right? He didn't get married physically,

01:32:41.460 he got married spiritually to the church. He's the bridegroom of the church, and we're all his

01:32:46.040 beloved. And we live in that union, right? And especially guides Christian marriage, right? The

01:32:50.700 husband tries to love his wife as Christ loves the church. The wife tries to respect her husband as

01:32:55.200 the church respects Christ, et cetera. But you see this enthroned at the heart of the church, 0.68

01:33:00.860 a certain contempt for earthly wealth. If the models are completely dispossessed for the sake

01:33:10.200 of the kingdom of God, which is a wealth that can't be taken away, modeled by the Lord Jesus

01:33:15.000 himself who owned nothing at the time of his crucifixion except his garment that's it and

01:33:21.600 the monks and nuns have have imitated him to this day where i live in southern california we have a

01:33:27.320 number of monasteries around us and our people go constantly they go in groups they visit just for

01:33:34.220 like a what can i say a little boost a little boost and there's a beautiful symbiosis between

01:33:40.080 the christian family uh that are represented in the parishes all over the world and churches

01:33:44.760 all over the world. And then our monks and nuns who have given themselves, sometimes in the cities,

01:33:49.480 I mean, all the great cities of the Roman Empire for the first thousand years were packed with

01:33:53.380 monasteries. Sometimes people think monasteries and they think, oh, only in the desert. Well,

01:33:57.740 I mean, there are a lot of monasteries in the desert. And I was just quoting St. Athanasius

01:34:00.840 about the Egyptian desert, which was kind of a spiritual guide for the whole Christian world

01:34:04.780 in the fourth century. But there are also lots of monasteries in cities to this day. If you go to

01:34:11.480 any traditionally Christian city in Europe, you're going to find maybe they aren't occupied

01:34:15.980 anymore, especially in the West, but in Central Europe and in Eastern Europe, still packed with

01:34:19.720 monks and nuns. This tells you our attitude towards money. Greed is a tremendous temptation.

01:34:26.540 The model for us is dispossession. St. John Chrysostom, one of the great church fathers,

01:34:30.480 says for married people, possessions are justified by use. He says, if you want to

01:34:37.960 be a good Christian with regards to money and greed, then make sure that you're using your

01:34:43.260 money in a beneficial way, such that it's not, he says, if you own a home, make it fit your life

01:34:51.640 like a good shoe. And you don't want your shoe to be too tight, too small, unless it crush your toes,

01:34:58.020 or too big, so that you're always tripping on it and falling down, right? Possessions are justified

01:35:03.680 by use. Now, forgive me, that's not much of a popular message in America. You know, we have

01:35:11.800 been famous. We have been famous for at least since the middle of the 19th century when Alexis

01:35:20.440 de Tocqueville came here and he said he had never seen a people in the history of his travels so

01:35:25.640 obsessed with money as Americans. There are, of course, some virtues to that if we use our money

01:35:31.380 to advance the cause of beauty

01:35:32.820 and to help people who are in need.

01:35:35.880 But money not justified by usage

01:35:38.600 will be a testimony against us

01:35:40.840 on the Day of Judgment.

01:35:43.540 I agree with that.

01:35:44.520 I agree with that completely.

01:35:47.280 Just a quick sidebar,

01:35:48.860 because I can't control myself.

01:35:51.280 St. John Chrysostomom,

01:35:53.140 if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

01:35:54.480 It's Chrysostomom.

01:35:55.480 In Greek, it's Chrysostomos.

01:35:57.140 Chryse means gold,

01:35:58.420 and stoma means mouth.

01:35:59.880 So it's actually not his surname. People think that that's his surname, but it was an appellation that was given to him by Pope Vigilius in 553.

01:36:09.100 Chrysostom died in 407, patriarch of Constantinople, driven into exile by conflict with the emperor.

01:36:16.920 You know, here it is again, right? Religious conflict.

01:36:19.420 And I hope in a second that we could talk a little bit about the important connection between prophets and political power.

01:36:26.180 because those two in the scriptures always have to go together if you're going to succeed,

01:36:29.980 and we terribly need that right now.

01:36:32.140 But go ahead with your question.

01:36:33.660 Well, I just read—someone sent me a collection of his sermons,

01:36:37.900 and I knew nothing about orthodoxy, I knew nothing about him,

01:36:40.600 and I was just so shocked by how good they were

01:36:45.060 and how resonant to the modern ear they were.

01:36:48.880 I mean, I just could hardly believe it.

01:36:50.440 Can you—for anyone who's made it this far,

01:36:52.360 can you recommend a collection of his sermons or an introduction to him? Because what a talented

01:36:59.500 preacher. Yes, he's not just a talented preacher, he's the most famous preacher in the history of

01:37:06.040 the Church, 2,000 years. No one is more famous than him. His collection of sermons in the Greek

01:37:10.740 language is the largest in Christian history, comparable only to St. Augustine in Latin.

01:37:17.100 So these are the predominant influences, East and West.

01:37:21.140 I, in fact, did my PhD on St. John Chrysostom at the University of Durham in Northern England.

01:37:25.840 I finished it in 2003.

01:37:27.720 And I did my work and published a text called Marriage and Virginity, according to St. John Chrysostom.

01:37:33.620 That was my focus.

01:37:35.000 There are many excellent books.

01:37:37.880 Almost all of his works are translated into English.

01:37:40.300 for someone who's just approaching him, I would say to read his most famous book,

01:37:47.680 which is called On the Priesthood. And it's basically his description of what Christian

01:37:53.040 worship is, what a priest is, what a pastor is. It's absolutely magnificent. He wrote it when he

01:37:59.300 was a young man trying to escape ordination. He didn't want to be ordained because he had such

01:38:04.500 respect for being ordained. And he's like, he literally duped one of his good friends named

01:38:09.740 basil uh who was also being courted by the local bishop to be ordained so he said no you're totally

01:38:15.100 worthy and i'll do it after you but you go first so his friend got ordained and then john disappeared

01:38:21.660 literally disappeared he ended up going he lived in ancient antioch right which is the primary

01:38:28.140 uh city of the roman empire in the east all the emperors would launch their campaigns against

01:38:32.700 the persians from there that's kind of relevant today isn't it um and he out just outside of the

01:38:39.820 city i visited it in 2010 it's in turkey southern turkey now yep uh it was destroyed that the city

01:38:47.100 was very damaged by the terrible earthquake three years ago just horrible but there was a mountain

01:38:51.900 there's a mountain about a mile outside of town very walkable for people like john who lived in

01:38:57.820 the city. And it's called Mount Silpios. And during his lifetime, about 300 monks lived in

01:39:05.140 holes and caves on that mountain. And that's where he, after he escaped ordination, he went

01:39:10.440 and lived there for six years. And he spent, he describes later in his famous book on the priesthood

01:39:15.280 that how he spent his time there. He said, when the sun was out, he studied the scriptures and

01:39:21.100 he memorized them. There's something like 11,000 direct quotations in his sermons from the New

01:39:26.160 Testament and something like 6,000 from the Old Testament, all from memory. He didn't preach with

01:39:31.420 notes. And his sermons were usually between 30 minutes and an hour, which is very long,

01:39:36.300 traditionally, for a priest of the church to be preaching. And when he would conclude,

01:39:41.580 the people would boo. And yeah, please don't stop. Please don't stop. That's how great a preacher

01:39:48.440 he was. But he spent the day studying scripture and memorizing it, and he kept vigil at night.

01:39:53.420 he never laid down for six years he tied a rope around his waist to a hook in the wall

01:39:57.900 and so that he could try to keep praying at night and take the minimum sleep he needed he needed

01:40:04.180 well you know sometimes youthful enthusiasm goes a little too far he broke his stomach basically and

01:40:10.180 his buddy who would come once a week and leave bread and water at his door up on the mountain

01:40:15.060 found him completely ill picked him up took him back to the city in Antioch and the bishop grabbed

01:40:21.340 him and never let him go. Ordained him. He ended up becoming the cathedral preacher for 12 years

01:40:25.980 in Antioch. And then they kidnapped him and went to the capital of the Roman Empire in 397 and made

01:40:31.020 him Patriarch of Constantinople. And he engaged in the most incredible revival there. He converted.

01:40:37.620 The Easter in which he was sent into exile, he was preparing 3,000 people for baptism. 0.98

01:40:45.160 Awesome. Yeah. So that makes my 350, you know, that's nothing. It's nothing compared to what

01:40:51.720 he was doing. So he is, you can read his, you can hear his life. His life, we know in great detail.

01:41:00.040 He's been a cherished saint of the church for a very long time. We have an app. It's called

01:41:05.480 the Patristic Nectar app. It's on the app store. And in there are the lives of the saints. And you

01:41:11.680 can go there and listen for free to about an hour recording of his life you'll just be absolutely

01:41:19.000 amazed by this man thank you for telling me that so what what is the connection you said you wanted

01:41:24.880 to explain the connection between prophets and political figures you know in the scriptures

01:41:30.680 god would send the prophets to the kings and the king's futures the success of a reign

01:41:38.720 depended upon whether the king would listen to the prophets or not.

01:41:43.260 David had his Nathan.

01:41:45.840 My patron saint, the great king Josiah of Israel, 0.60

01:41:49.700 had the prophet Jeremiah and the prophetess Holda.

01:41:53.260 And they would consult.

01:41:54.200 Good kings would consult.

01:41:55.320 So there was a shackling of power, which we know is exceedingly dangerous.

01:42:01.860 Power is exceedingly dangerous.

01:42:03.260 So I feel very sympathetic listening to you describe these trials that our nation is facing,

01:42:10.300 and our leaders, including our president, is suffering so badly, and we're also suffering so badly. 1.00

01:42:16.060 Power is extremely dangerous, and Christians learn from the prophetic influence to use it kind of like this. 0.61

01:42:23.880 You've got one hand on power, but you're being very careful, because it can do terrible things to you. 0.99

01:42:29.140 If you don't have someone helping remind you who you are to keep your feet on the ground, that you're humble, when everybody around you is saying, yes, sir, yes, sir, what do you want to do, sir? You're the greatest thing that's ever happened to America. That's poison of the highest level. In our tradition, priests and bishops who are praised by the people, we consider it hatred.

01:42:51.540 good for you i love that we consider it hated that doesn't mean we always succeed

01:42:56.900 in hating it and the people mean well most of the time they mean well but we don't accept it

01:43:01.880 as something nice we consider it a temptation it's a temptation no one is great everyone is a

01:43:07.620 sinner only christ is our salvation the best of people only live by grace and by the love of god

01:43:13.960 and forgiveness that's it so to start thinking ideas because you're really successful or because

01:43:18.860 you have 6 million followers, or I have a big church. Come on. Come on. We're nothing. We're

01:43:25.320 nothing. So to have a profit in your life is extremely important, and to obey that profit.

01:43:30.580 You know, I was very hopeful when President Trump established, he took the Department of Faith,

01:43:37.720 which I think used to be under the vice president's office, and it had a relatively small

01:43:41.300 budget. And then he made it an executive office, right? He put it on directly under him, and I

01:43:46.580 think he increased the budget massively. And I have a few friends who work on different committees

01:43:53.440 for him, like Archbishop Salvador Cordilione, who's the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco,

01:43:58.760 and is a dear friend of mine and an incredible person who I deeply respect. I've taken heart

01:44:04.700 from that. I'm hoping that that paradigm can serve our country and that that Department of Faith can

01:44:10.780 not just be a genesis for ideas, but our presidents and our vice presidents, and forgive me,

01:44:17.180 our Congress, they need their pastors in their life. They need their pastors in their life.

01:44:22.240 I mean, we have a chaplain of the Senate, right? We have a chaplain, but that's not sufficient. I

01:44:28.000 mean, he can't take care of everybody. You need someone who can tell you the truth, and your

01:44:32.900 priest is the one who's going to tell you the truth. You need a priest. This is my prayer,

01:44:37.500 Really, I make my cross asking God to please help our president and our vice president and all of those in power to recognize what a dangerous position they're in, to have so much power.

01:44:48.940 You know, America used to be very humble about our influence and our founding fathers considered virtue to be absolutely essential to political leadership.

01:44:59.960 And we got this, of course, from George Washington, who was such an exceedingly excellent example of this himself.

01:45:06.040 The idea, though, that we are now the empire of the world and we police people and we engage in conflicts all over the world and we have 200 military bases.

01:45:14.120 Forgive me, Tucker.

01:45:14.780 This is so pompous.

01:45:16.360 Yes, I agree.

01:45:17.140 This is so pompous and it's so unfortunate.

01:45:20.920 There's every excuse in the world to justify it, but there's nothing humble.

01:45:25.040 And I'm often called an isolationist because I say this opinion.

01:45:30.900 I'm an American and our founding fathers believed this.

01:45:33.940 this is how they looked at the world they did not think america was responsible

01:45:38.600 for the world that is so arrogant i can't tell you

01:45:42.580 how is arrogance treated in the bible and what's the result of it

01:45:49.420 you know this lesson uh the lesson for political leaders to

01:45:57.720 to learn this it's very hard for them it's something else for me to learn it's something

01:46:01.680 else for you to learn it. But for these people who are in this kind of position to learn it,

01:46:07.120 this is much harder. Let me give you some examples. We have a certain type of saint in

01:46:11.300 the history of the church that are called righteous kings, righteous kings and queens.

01:46:16.800 So they're saintly political rulers. Now, let me say just out of the gate that almost all of the

01:46:24.320 political rulers in the history of christianity were awful i'm sorry i just no i believe you

01:46:33.260 almost all were awful um and so when i say when i'm going to list i'll list some saints now

01:46:40.400 uh and then let me qualify it so emperor constantine is a saint of the church

01:46:45.360 emperor theodosius the great this is 379 or so he actually formally constantine legalized

01:46:52.660 Christianity. Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire. He's called the

01:46:58.360 great. He was a spiritual son of St. Ambrose of Milan, the famous story where power met priesthood

01:47:05.240 when he had ordered the slaughter of 7,000 citizens in anger in Thessaloniki, Greece, and

01:47:14.000 Ambrose put him out of communion. And he was angry, and he went to the church, and Ambrose met

01:47:18.780 at the door and wouldn't let him in the church that was a definitive moment in christian history

01:47:23.020 because up to that time no priest could do that to an emperor he was considered all-powerful and

01:47:32.060 but he didn't he actually did penance he accepted not entering the church being put out of communion

01:47:38.140 and he did penance and that established a new relationship between the clergy in christian

01:47:44.220 history and the power structure and the politicians. That is a very important power

01:47:49.700 structure. The clergy govern eternal life, right? This is a matter of the sacraments,

01:47:56.160 and we don't give sacraments to people who are disrespectful of and are doing great sins. It

01:48:01.760 would be a terrible thing to do. And St. Ambrose stopped him. There's St. the incredible Justinian

01:48:09.480 the Great. He ruled from 527 to 565. An incredible man, incredibly talented. He actually wrote parts

01:48:16.160 of the Eastern liturgy, parts of the Orthodox liturgy, which we still sing, come from his pen.

01:48:20.880 St. Boris of Bulgaria. This is 800s, early 800s. St. Vladimir of the Slavic lands. St. Stephen of

01:48:28.760 Hungary. St. Alfred the Great, who, forgive me, as an Englishman, he's the best. He is absolutely

01:48:35.820 the best. You know, Winston Churchill was once asked, was called, he was called the greatest

01:48:41.400 Englishman. And Churchill stopped him. He said, no, no, no. Alfred is the greatest Englishman who

01:48:45.900 has ever lived. And I say 100% yes. St. Edward the Confessor, right? This is, he died in 1066.

01:48:53.420 These are all incredible saints who were in positions of power. And there's a commonality

01:48:59.480 between them all. All of them submitted their agendas, their policies to their spiritual

01:49:07.760 fathers. They respected the guidance of the church. They respected the word of God. And the

01:49:13.520 priests and the bishops are responsible for preaching the word of God. And it's very important

01:49:18.120 to believe that. That is your safety net when you're exercising power. You need that blessing

01:49:24.140 to be able not be destroyed by it. Yes. As most people were. And so to have that kind of

01:49:30.760 relationship is important. And I would say if I could just move it from the power that the

01:49:36.000 executive holds to the power of the military, because those two are very combined right now

01:49:41.040 in our country and are each other's biggest fans. We have also in the history of the church a type

01:49:52.160 of saint that are called military saints. These are men who were, the church is not pacifist.

01:49:59.700 The church has never been pacifist. We set standards for the proper use of force.

01:50:05.660 It has to be a moral use of force. And we have incredible saints like St. George,

01:50:11.800 St. Theodore. These are incredible warriors. We have whole lists of them. I mean,

01:50:16.440 there's hundreds of military saints. What they have in common is that they conducted themselves

01:50:21.200 in a military capacity, not just with skill, but with morality, with virtue. And that kind of

01:50:30.140 example is very, very important for America, both in the executive, in the role of president or king,

01:50:37.040 and in the role of exerciser of power, which is what our military is. And wow, do we need it more

01:50:44.040 than ever right now can you just uh and by you often hear the the phrase just just war

01:50:51.880 doctrine um without and without getting in maybe the specifics of that

01:50:58.420 but in more broadly what does it mean to act as a christian in war

01:51:03.600 this is a very important subject and the church has articulated we did this within the first

01:51:15.000 five centuries in a very complex way uh standards uh for blessing this means if the military does

01:51:25.380 not pursue their objectives in a way that's respectable to the eyes of the church to

01:51:30.640 respectable in Jesus's eyes, they don't get blessed. And this has become what we call the

01:51:37.540 justifiable war dogma. So we have important precedences. One, it can't be an offensive war.

01:51:45.200 It has to be a matter of defense. Number two, it can't involve civilians. You cannot fail to make

01:51:52.080 a distinction. I find this extremely relevant today. You cannot fail to make a distinction

01:51:57.400 between combatants and civilians.

01:52:00.540 Now, we know this, and the whole decimation of Gaza,

01:52:04.760 which has completely violated these norms, by the way,

01:52:07.600 top to bottom, completely violated them.

01:52:09.960 But always, they try to find a way,

01:52:12.860 the justifiers of that slaughter try to find a way

01:52:15.640 to say somehow that it wasn't a violation

01:52:18.620 of the principles of justifiable warfare

01:52:20.440 because they were really militants after all.

01:52:25.320 They're giving shelter to the militants, to the terrorists.

01:52:30.380 Certainly some were giving shelter to terrorists, no doubt.

01:52:34.520 But that does not justify the raising of Gaza to the ground

01:52:38.080 and treating everyone as though they are a combatant.

01:52:41.380 That's just completely unheard of in the history of Christianity.

01:52:44.520 Now, you know, there's an incredible book, and I'd love to recommend it to you.

01:52:48.520 It's by one of the greatest saints of the 20th century,

01:52:51.100 a man who lived through both World War I and World War II, actually got sent to Dachau.

01:53:00.920 His name is Saint Nikolai Velomirovich. He was a Serbian bishop, monk, and an incredible scholar.

01:53:07.960 He had two PhDs, an Oxford PhD, a PhD from Bern. He preached in World War I and then again in

01:53:15.400 between the wars at peace conferences

01:53:17.480 and then through World War II.

01:53:19.460 He preached in all of the cathedrals of Europe and America.

01:53:23.320 He was very well known,

01:53:24.720 one of the most famous clerics alive.

01:53:28.200 He spent his last 10 years, 0.99

01:53:30.040 unfortunately because of the creation of Yugoslavia 0.90

01:53:32.160 post-World War II and the communists,

01:53:34.600 he couldn't return to his home country.

01:53:36.940 So we, as we often do in America, welcomed here

01:53:40.080 and he loved us and he spent his last 10 years

01:53:42.140 in Pennsylvania traveling around preaching.

01:53:44.860 He preached in Harlem. He preached at St. John Cathedral in New York.

01:53:48.040 He preached everywhere in America. He's an unbelievable person.

01:53:50.880 He wrote a book called War and the Bible.

01:53:53.620 I find it particularly excellent, not just because he's an incredibly saintly man

01:53:58.840 and an incredible scholar, but he also is a person who lived through World War I and II

01:54:07.640 and is able to speak.

01:54:11.000 he basically said that the 20th century was the triumph of satan in the christian west

01:54:18.160 and that jesus was asked by us to leave by our behavior and that he did

01:54:25.460 and i think a lot of what we can see since 1950 the late 1950s is the manifestation of that

01:54:33.420 departure i think he's right uh i'm hoping what's going on right now is our asking jesus to come

01:54:39.920 back. I want him to come back. And I want him to forgive us for what we've done. Christians

01:54:47.320 killing Christians, World War I and II. The 20th century was the greatest slaughter of people in 0.94

01:54:53.960 the history of the human race. And it was done mostly by Christians on other Christians. 1.00

01:54:58.280 And I think the Lord left. And I think St. Nikolai's right. And he will come back because 1.00

01:55:04.040 he loves all men and he's trying to redeem and save every one of us. But let's ask him to come

01:55:09.260 back. Let's ask him to come back and ask for some rebuilding. We have to dig the wells like

01:55:17.180 Abraham did in the past. He dug all these incredible wells, and then they got taken

01:55:23.700 over by enemies and filled up, and then his sons had to go back and re-dig them. And we need to

01:55:28.820 re-dig the wells of a more glorious history in the United States of America, where we were more

01:55:34.360 humble, more reasonable, and more Christian. You know, listening to your monologue earlier

01:55:39.560 about the inescapability of religion in any culture, our nation was very comfortable,

01:55:47.900 Tucker, for the first 150 years of our nationhood, calling ourselves a Christian nation.

01:55:53.320 Official people, presidents, Supreme Court justices, we referenced the New Testament

01:55:58.300 in our Supreme Court documents for a very long time.

01:56:02.660 So this idea that somehow this secular monster that has eaten us alive

01:56:08.100 and has decimated our children through the horror of abortion, 0.89

01:56:12.260 destroyed our families by no-fault divorce,

01:56:14.900 and has left our people addicted to technology and sad and grieved

01:56:20.160 that somehow this is America, I don't accept that at all.

01:56:24.240 I agree.

01:56:25.500 I want the Lord to come back.

01:56:27.040 I want us to hold on, to love each other again, and to become a more humble, traditional America.

01:56:34.560 Amen. Well, that is definitely my most fervent prayer at this point.

01:56:38.480 Father Trem, thank you so much for spending all this time and for your wisdom. I appreciate it.

01:56:43.720 God be with you, brother.

01:56:45.060 Amen.

01:56:46.960 And thank you for joining us. We'll be back next Wednesday. See you then.

01:56:57.040 You

The Tucker Carlson Show - April 16, 2026

Tucker on the New Religion of Trump’s America and His Mockery of Jesus Christ

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