Catholics in the Trump Administration

[00:00:17] Okay, so we're back and hopefully we're back. So we'll see here. Yeah, I think that's what it was. Okay, again, let me know if things are not working out right now and we'll get started here. So smash that, like, button, subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. Great start to the day. I think the devil doesn't want me to give this one or something. I'm not sure what the problem is. [00:00:39] Okay, so let's get back in here. [00:00:44] There we go. [00:00:47] You know what the problem was? I realized it's a USA Today website that I was going to share an article with from it, but the USA Today website just bogged down my computer so much that it was causing all these problems. That's what the problem was. I just realized. Okay, so this is fun. [00:01:07] So I'm not going to share that USA Today article. So anyway, we're going to talk today about Catholics in the Trump administration, what this means. So I was thinking about talking about this anyway. Then I saw an article in USA Today which I will not share here because of the fact that it literally crash my computer almost because I had so many ads and videos and everything popping up that I think it was bogging down my computer. [00:01:30] So. But the point of it was the article, the USA Today article was the fact that it was like a hit piece on Catholic vote, really. And the point of it was basically to say that, that there's Catholics are a new type of Catholics are kind of becoming more and more powerful within the Trump administration, and it's having a big influence and they name a number of people. And so that's. I was thinking the exact same thing. It's funny, I saw the article after I'd already thought about this, but this is something interesting. Catholics have obviously been very much a part of the American political system for a long time, particularly since JFK was elected president, 1960. They've become more and more powerful within the government. They've obviously been very influential in the Supreme Court. [00:02:17] Joe Biden was Catholic. You know, our last president was Catholic. [00:02:23] Nancy Pelosi, prominent Catholic, very powerful politician. These different people, Catholics have been always involved. Cuomo was a big Catholic in my day, in the 80s, the governor of New York, and of course his son became governor as well. [00:02:38] And so Catholics have always been influential. The thing is, though, the vast majority of Catholics who have been involved in the political arena over the past, let's say 50 years have been very much Vatican II Catholics, whatever you want to call them, they've been mostly progressive Catholics. And so what they did was they typically used Catholicism as veneer to basically say, look, I'm a good person. [00:03:06] All these programs I'm supporting are all basically part of my Catholicism, to help the poor, the needy, things like that. But of course, it was all just basically a show because it was just liberal programs that they would slap on the name of Jesus on and say, look, Jesus told us to help the poor. This program helps the poor. Of course, most of these programs, government programs, don't actually help the poor. They harm the poor. A lot of the money, of course, goes to corrupt rich people. And so. But still, it was like, okay, if you're really Catholic, you're going to support all these government programs. It was very much a big government, progressive, Catholic attitude towards government. That's who dominated the Catholics in Congress and in the White House for a very long time. [00:03:53] In the judiciary system, like the Supreme Court, it was different. But think about, when you think about who are the Catholics in Congress, the first people you think about is somebody like Nancy Pelosi. Or you think about Joe Biden before he became vice president and president, the Kennedys, people like that. Those are people you think about, and that's who dominated. But to put it bluntly, they're all dying out. Think about it. Nancy Pelosi right now is 84 years old, Joe Biden 82. Tim Kaine, another one, a senator. He's 66, so a little bit younger, but still he's getting older, and he's more the baby boomer generation. [00:04:31] And so they're kind of leaving just by demographics. They're dying out. They're becoming older, and they're clinging on the power as long as they can. But then a new generation of Catholics are taking over. So right now, who do we have? We have J.D. vance, who's only 40 years old. We have Marco Rubio, who's 53 years old. We have Sean Duffy, the new Secretary of Transportation, Devout Catholic with nine kids, who's 53 years old. We have Brian Burch, the head of Catholic Vote, who has been nominated to become the ambassador to the Vatican, who's 48 years old. [00:05:06] So what we see is there's a changing of the guard from the old progressive Catholics to the new, more conservative Catholics. And this is something I think all of us recognize in the Catholic Church is happening. The most progressive members of the Catholic Church are over the age of 60, often over the age of 70. [00:05:25] They still dominate in parishes and in chanceries and, you know, and in the Church in the institutional church, because lots of bishops are that age and the biggest donors are that age. Because here's the difference between their generation and younger generations. Their generation kept going to Mass, kept being involved with the church and wanted to change the church to become more like their progressive vision they had. Whereas younger Catholics, if they didn't like what the church taught, didn't like the church, they just left. They weren't like, I'm not going to change the church. Church is the way it is. I'm just going to leave. And so the people who are left younger, and by younger, I mean basically anybody under 60, I know somebody like my age isn't exactly young. I'm the same age, basically, as Marco Rubio and Sean Duffy. But we're younger than the progressive. We're post Vatican ii. [00:06:19] We're not bound by, oh, we have to protect the 1960s and 1970s Catholicism at all costs. And so what we see here is we see this transformation and you even see it in an exception. The exception kind of proves the rule here, because look at, for example, RFK, RFK Jr. He is in that older generation, and his Catholicism is more like theirs in a lot of ways. He looks at big government as a solution. [00:06:50] He's not really pro life, things like that. Now, I'm a huge supporter of rfk as the head of hhs. He was just this morning, they voted him in from the committee to the full Senate. So hopefully he'll get confirmed and become the director of hhs, secretary of hhs. I fully support him, love rfk, what he's doing in that arena. But let's be honest, he is a boomer Catholic, and so he's kind of the exception that proves the rule. The other Catholics, most of the Catholics involved in Trump's administration are this younger type of Catholic, and so more likely to be orthodox. [00:07:26] Also, less apologetic, less embarrassed about their faith. The one thing you notice about Catholics like a Nancy Pelosi, people like that, they love saying they're Catholic, but only to promote their own politics. And they're embarrassed about. They're not going to talk about what the church teaches on anything that doesn't promote them and their progressive policies. They're not going to, of course, support the church on her teachings on abortion. They're not going to really talk about theology or anything of that nature. They're much more apologetic. Like I said, they're much more embarrassed. Kind of be Catholic when it comes to anything beyond social justice. When it comes to social justice, boy, they'll tell you, they're Catholic 15 different ways in the first two minutes you're talking to them. But anything outside of social justice as they conceive it, Catholicism has nothing to do with it. They don't care. [00:08:20] This new generation of Catholics, the younger Catholics, they're much more likely to say, Catholicism is part of who I am. I'm not going to hide from it. I'm not going to be embarrassed about it. I'm going to try to integrate it in my entire life. [00:08:33] And so it really is. This is a microcosm. What's happening in the political realm is a microcosm was happening in the church, particularly in America. I can't speak for other countries, I don't live in those countries. But we see this, that Catholics are becoming practice. Those who are in the Church are becoming more orthodox. It's not that individuals are necessarily becoming more orthodox. Hopefully, God willing, that's true. But it's more a matter of the fact that the older Catholics are dying off. And so the new Catholics, the younger Catholics, the new converts, they're much more likely to be like this case in point. There was never better case in point than J.D. vance. Last week you probably. I wrote an article about it at Crisis, where you can. In the editor's desk, you can look at that. And people are talking about on social media this whole idea of the Ordo Amoris, the Order of Charity that Vance brought up, that just caused such a firestorm online on social media. And really though, it was just a perfect example of somebody says something that's just common sense and people freak out. Like he just, I don't know, grew an extra head out of his neck and is saying. And just babbling insane insanities when the fact is what JD Vance said was simply common sense. So basically, the Order of Charity, the Order of Love, the idea is that we have a certain duty as Catholics. We have a certain order in our love. We're called to love. Everybody love your neighbor. There's nobody. We are not called to love. We love our enemies. That is fundamental Christianity. But there is an order. Just like there's a divine order in the universe, there's a hierarchy in the universe. There's a hierarchy even in the God, God himself, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Obviously they're co. Equal. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, they're all equally God. One's not more God than the other one. However, there is a hierarchy within the. [00:10:33] With. Within the Holy Trinity because the Father generates the Son, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Sorry, orthodox. But, like, the point is, there's a hierarchy even there. There's a hierarchy in all of creation, and there's also, therefore, hierarchy in love. [00:10:53] So, for example, I have more obligations towards my wife and my children than I do to a stranger across the world. Doesn't mean I shouldn't love them. I shouldn't wish harm on them. But simply put, I'm a limited human being. I cannot help them, and I can't help them and everybody else in the world. [00:11:16] I can't help and assist my own wife and my children. And then it goes beyond, of course, your family. It goes to your neighborhood, to your parish, to your community, to your city, to your state, to your country and into the world. I have more of an obligation to my neighbor who lives next door to me than I do, for example, somebody in Iowa. [00:11:37] I have more obligation to somebody in Iowa than I do somebody in Mexico. [00:11:42] This is just simply the reality of the world we live in. Now, if I'm walking by a house and that guy from Mexico happens to be in the area and he's. He's being beat up by robbers. Yeah. I need to do something to try to help him, even though I don't have an obligation to him like I do to my wife and my kids, I call the police or whatever the case may be. That would be. I would not be loving him if I didn't do something like that. [00:12:08] But J.D. vance laid out this very. This is from St. Thomas Aquinas, from St. Augustine. It's from the sacred scriptures. This is just Catholic Theology 101. It's Catholic Morality 101. And it's simply common sense. Obviously, I cannot help every single person in the world. It's just not possible. I have to have priorities, and proximity determines those priorities. So my wife, who's most proximate to me, has more of an. I have more of an obligation to her. Obviously. This is like. It's so much common sense. I feel a little bit silly explaining it. I feel like I'm talking to kindergarteners or something. And I know all my people listening to this. They're all. They're smart. They know all this. You guys all know this. You're not dummies. Unfortunately, there's a lot of dummies out there. I mean, Father James Martin was going off on this about how this is so wrong. You saw online all these people talking about, like, oh, what about the Good Samaritan? And. And this is not Christianity, what JD Vance is saying, yet. It is. It's fundamental Christianity. Now I will forgive our Protestant brothers and sisters who were kind of railing this because they don't have the tradition we do. They tend to have a very. [00:13:13] What's the best word? A very surface understanding of Catholicism. And so they're not going to necessarily understand exactly all the things that, that, you know, that Catholics are going to, they don't have this tradition of understanding Aquinas and Augustine, things like that. But Catholics should know better, Catholics should know better that basically we have a hierarchy of love. My point of all this is that JD Vance is the perfect epitome of this new type of younger Catholic who's willing to talk about his faith like he's willing to say this on, because he said this in an interview with Fox News or something like that. And he's willing to talk in categories that Catholics have always talked in traditional Catholic moral categories. That's what he's willing to engage in that. Why? Because he's engaged it himself. He has studied it, he has tried to learn it, he understands it. And so he now that's how he thinks. It's part of who he is. It's not like Nancy Pelosi who puts the Catholicism badge on her shoulder when she had, when it suits her political purposes. For JD Vance, it really is who he is. And I'd say the same is probably true of a Marco Rubio, a Sean Duffy, a Brian Birch, people like that. [00:14:34] And so I think this, this is an important point. By the way, a quick aside about Marco Rubio. I will admit I've never really liked Marco Rubio. I didn't trust him. [00:14:44] Also, I did not think he'd be, I did not want him to be Secretary of State because I assumed he was like a neocon and he would just, just not be good at the job. But I will say two weeks in, I'm very encouraged by what I see with Marco Rubio. Very, very good signs. He's saying all the right things, he's doing all the right things. So I want to give him, I want to just say that I'm impressed so far and I'm not going to just hold it again. Because I didn't like him before doesn't mean I'm going to assume he's always going to be terrible. So far he's been very good and he's of course another practicing Catholic in the, in the Trump administration. [00:15:20] So I think this is all to say if you're black pilling still Catholics, you need to get a life, you need to get out, touch some grass, whatever the Saying is, I'm not saying you have to be in a full white pill mode, but the fact is, this is very encouraging. Not only is Trump doing so many good things over the past couple weeks as president, but we're seeing Catholics who really take seriously their faith and understand their faith being an influential part of that. And that is a microcosm, like I said, of the entire church in America. This is the direction we're going. I know there's reasons to be pessimistic. We see things like McElroy being appointed as the Bishop of Washington, D.C. and we think, oh, my gosh, things are terrible. Things are just going, you know, they're going into the crap or all that. [00:16:05] Think big picture. Think big picture. Big picture is is that the typical Catholic, younger Catholic under 60, is much more likely to be orthodox, much more likely to be really serious about his faith than the Catholic over 60. So just demographically, that's good. That's good for the church. That's good for us. [00:16:25] Yes, it will be less people. It's. It's less people. I get that. I get a lot of people have left the church. I've talked about that before. But overall, the people who are left are much more likely to be faithful Catholics. And so that is a basis for change. We're seeing it in the government. We can see it in the church as well, where all of a sudden, the J.D. vance types of Catholics are infiltrating the church and becoming more and more prominent. We've already seen it for years, but we're seeing it more and more. I think that's something we just need to be very thankful for and understand that this is a good thing. [00:17:02] Okay, so next topic I want to talk about is Trump's tariffs. So this has been. [00:17:09] I mean, I feel like, first of all, I'm going to have content for my podcast for the next four years without a problem. It's not going to be hard to think of things to talk about with Trump as presidency. I don't want this to be a podcast where all I talk about is what Trump's administration is doing, but my goodness, he is starting off so strong with so many things going on, it's kind of hard not to address them. And so the tariffs have become a big thing. He announced. He's announced a few different tariffs, but most recently this past weekend, I think it was Trump announced that he would levy a 25% tariff on all goods from Mexico and Canada and 10% on China. [00:17:47] Now, before I talk about, like, kind of why he does that. And kind of. What are some of the responses and things like that? Let's make sure we're very clear on tariffs and what they are and what they do. I just want to say, first and foremost, I am not a fan of tariffs. Why? Because I'm not a fan of taxes. And a tariff is just a tax. I get that it's a tax on goods from other countries. [00:18:11] And so in some ways you could say it's better than a tax on us. It's a tax on goods from other countries, but the reality is it's still a tax on us. So a straight sales tax, for example, means everything in the store I have to pay 5% extra that I would pay because of the fact that there's a tax on it. So if something's a hundred dollars, I now have to pay $105. That's bad for me. That changes, you know, the, the economy. It puts things into the economy that are not good. [00:18:40] A tariff basically does the same thing. What it says is, anything that comes from China, let's say Instead of being $100, it's now $110 because there's a 10% tariff on it. Who's paying the $110? I'm paying the $110 where I would have paid $100 before. So there's no question that the cost of the tariff goes on the consumer, on people like you and me. And in general, I just don't like tariffs because I don't like taxes. I think, you know, the vast majority of taxes should be abolished, including tariffs. Now, one thing to note is that some people talk about, well, we should have tariffs instead of income taxes. And there are rumors that that Trump is considering ending the income tax, the federal income tax. And that would be a huge deal. And obviously that would be. I put him on. Don't put him on Mount Rushmore if he ends it sales. So the income tax, create a new mountain for him. Just call it Mount Trump and put his face on if he does that. So I'm totally support of that. But some people think that you replace the income tax with tariffs. [00:19:44] That's not gonna work. First of all, we don't get anywhere near as much. The government should then get near as much income on tariffs as they would on income taxes. So it's not like a one to one rel relationship. [00:19:55] But the thing is, is, like, tariffs is not something that as conservatives, we should be supportive of in the sense of, like, economically. And we should understand some of the Issues with it. Now, that's not to say tariffs are just. I'm just talking about the economic issues. There are other reasons why somebody like Trump imposes tariffs. Another thing to note is there's tariffs on tons of stuff right now. There's, this is not like Trump all of a sudden is the first guy to think of tariffs. There's tariffs on products coming in and out of the country all the time. [00:20:29] Now Trump seems to think, like I said, he can almost replace the income tax with tariffs. He can't. [00:20:34] Another thing people say is, okay, it helps businesses in America at the expense of businesses in other countries. Perhaps that's true, but again, you're paying for that. You're paying for that. Maybe it's worth it, but you're paying for it. The fact is what it's really doing is just rearranging things. It's not like adding employment. It's not adding. It's not creating more jobs or creating more overall or anything like that. It's also like this idea of a trade deficit and a trade surplus. People act like a trade deficit is the worst thing in the world. The reality is trade globally is always balanced. I mean, just obviously everything that's sold is also bought. Everything bought is also sold. It's always equilibrium. The question is, is it okay that we buy more things from China than China buys from us? I would argue that's not something we need to worry about. I don't think that's a necessarily a bad thing for China or UK or Canada or whatever, because what matters is, are we getting the products that we want that we need at a reasonable cost. Now, again, I'm just talking economically. There are issues from the fact that, for example, if China is using slave labor and that's why they're out competing America, okay, there's moral issues there. Now we should be willing to pay more for non slave labor goods, obviously. So what I'm saying here is there's lots of different factors involved with these tariffs and you know, go domestic and foreign imports and exports and budget surpluses, I'm sorry, trade surpluses and trade deficits, things like that. But just in itself, I'm not a big fan of terrorists, okay? Now that all being said, the fact is Trump is using tariffs as a weapon, as a geopolitical weapon, a way to negotiate. It's obvious that's what he's doing with these terrorists. In fact, most of the stuff he's doing is. Most of the stuff he says and does is simply negotiation. Like when he's Talking about Canada becoming the 51st state. This is all negotiation. He wants something from Canada. So he's going to do everything he can to kind of demean them, knock them down, make them come to him and say, okay, what, what, what can we do to make you happy? And that's what these terrorists are. And in fact, already less than 24 hours, I think it was in both cases, both Mexico and Canada caved and basically gave Trump what he wanted, which was essentially better increase border patrol. [00:23:04] And so ultimately, and Trump said he's going to pause the tariffs for 30 days to see if they're really serious and they can come to agreement and stuff like that. And so he did the same thing with Colombia. When Colombia said, oh, we're not going to accept the criminals that you send back to Colombia, he's like, okay, slap a tariff on them right now. So for Trump, I do think he believes in tariffs economically, which I disagree with him on. But Trump, I think, sees terrorists more as a weapon, as a geopolitical weapon. And that I understand. And that, I mean, clearly it's working. It's hard to criticize him for it. It's working. He's getting what he wants. And this is something that Americans are not used to in our culture. Over the past 50 years, something like that. We've been told to basically hate America. We've been told that we're the cause of all the problems in the world. You know, we've been beat down. We have no self confidence. Reagan tried to, of course, combat that to some success. But since Reagan, no president has really been able to look, you know, treat America as what it is, which is the most powerful country in the world. Trump sees it as that. And he's like, I don't have to do what these other countries say. I can just tell them what I want and we're going to do that. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. Honestly, it's the actions of an empire which makes me nervous. And I don't act like I don't. I'm not nervous about that. But ultimately, though, I mean, what he's doing is working. He's getting, I mean, obviously better border control, things like that. And if it means we have to pay more for some goods, if I had to pay more for Canadian maple syrup or whatever they, they send down here, but it helps to prevent fentanyl from coming over the border, okay, I think that's a good trade off. I mean, I think that that could be worth it. Same thing with Mexico. If we have to pay more for whatever Mexico sends us. [00:24:53] But the, but the border is more secure. I mean, that that's okay. I mean, that that's. I think ultimately what matters is it's the whole picture. So when, when I say that tariffs, I'm not a fan of tariffs. I'm talking economically. I don't think people understand. They do hurt us economically as consumers. But I understand in the greater picture of things, tariffs can be used as a weapon, and they can be good tools for, you know, for our country. So so far, it's working out great. I mean, Trump is the master negotiator. If nothing else, he doesn't know how to negotiate because he knows he's got all the power. When you're negotiating, if you have all the leverage, if you lose, you're an idiot. And the problem is Joe Biden lost all the time because he's an idiot. Even though he had all the power, he never acted like it. Trump knows it, and so he acts like it. [00:25:45] Okay, next topic I want to talk about is. Okay, there's some. There, there's been some debate about transferring holy days of obligation. Complete shift in topic here. [00:25:57] For the, for a long time in America, when a holy day of obligation, like the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, falls on a Sunday, is transferred to the next day, the Monday, December 9th. Same thing for, like, the feast, the assumption. [00:26:12] And when that happens, what has happened in the past is that the obligation does not transfer. So you're not obligated to go to Mass on that feast on the transfer date of the feast this past year. I think I talked about this on a podcast this past year, what happened was, is that some bishops said, no, actually, the obligation does transfer. You need to go to Mass on the, on the transfer day. So in the case of American conception on December 9, there was tons of confusion about this. USCCB saying one thing, Bishop saying one thing, other bishops saying other things. Ultimately, it was a big mess. [00:26:49] The Vatican just came out and said that when a holy day of obligation is transferred to another day, the obligation does not transfer. [00:26:59] So, like what happened last December, if the Immaculate Conception is celebrated on December 9 rather than December 8, because December 8 falls on a Sunday, then you're not obligated to go to mass on the 9th for the Immaculate Conception. Now, here's the thing. First of all, obviously, this is a mess. How this has been handled. It's like, it is. It isn't, you know, whatever. They don't even know. They don't seem to know. Terrible administration and leadership from the bishops, from the Vatican on this. [00:27:26] That being said, there's a simple solution to all this. [00:27:29] Don't transfer feast days. [00:27:33] I'll say it again. Don't transfer feast days. Immaculate conception is December 8th. It should always be December 8th, no matter what the feast assumption is August 15th. It should always be August 15th, no matter what. I don't care if it falls on a Sunday. It's not going to kill us as Catholics if on some Sunday we don't get the 13th Sunday in ordinary time readings or whatever. Instead, we're celebrating the Feast of the Assumption. [00:28:02] By the way, if you want to know the origin of why they do this, because in the old Mass, they didn't do this. If the Assumption fell on Sunday, you know what you celebrated on that Sunday, the Assumption, because it was such a big deal. It's a Holy day obligation. It's a big deal. It's okay to trump a Sunday, a regular Sunday, for that. [00:28:17] This all comes back to the false view. The false view back in the 1940s and 50s when it really became popular, this idea that somehow devotions and devotions to the Saints and to the Blessed Mother somehow took away from devotion and worship of our Lord. That somehow by honoring Our lady, you don't completely honor Our Lord, or by honoring the saints, you somehow take away from Christ. It's a completely Protestant mindset, to be honest, but it infiltrated and infected Catholic leaders in Catholic liturgical movement and other places. You even see it somewhat in the Vatican II document on the Divine Liturgy, which worship, which isn't that bad. Sacrosanct, concilium. They get that, right? Yeah, it's not a bad document, but it does suggest that. And so this whole movement of like anything that takes that, that kind of doesn't focus on Christ is somehow taking away from him, which is ludicrous. When you honor his mother, you are honoring him. [00:29:18] If somebody came to me and said great things about my mom, I wouldn't feel diminished. I'd be happy. I'd be overjoyed. So the whole thing is kind of a stupid idea. And so what happened, part of that whole movement was Sunday is the day of the Resurrection. We always have to celebrate the Lord's Day, the Sunday. We can't have it trunk by a feast day of like Our lady or something like that. And that's why they dropped. That's why they started transferring holy days like Immaculate Conception and the Assumption to other days. [00:29:50] So the whole thing is ridiculous. You just simply have everything on the date that it should be. And of course, this is also true of something like the epiphany. When the epiphany January 6th, it should stay on January 6th no matter what. It shouldn't get transferred to Sunday. So the problem on the one hand is you have feast days like the Assumption and Immaculate Conception, they're getting bumped from a Sunday to another day. Then you have another problem with feasts like the epiphany, which are being moved to Sunday from their actual day, and of course the feast, the Ascension, the same way they move from the Thursday to the next Sunday. Also, more people will be able to celebrate blah, blah, blah, what it is. It's a concession to the world. And it's saying, we need to have God, we need to revolve our lives. We need to have the liturgy revolve it's itself around us, rather than us revolve ourselves around the liturgy. [00:30:43] Our lives as Catholics should really revolve around the liturgical calendar. It should be core to who you are every day of the year. You know, okay, it's Friday, it's a day of penance, it's Sunday, It's. It's the Resurrection. I'm an Advent now, so I'm in a Spirit of penance, I'm an Eastern, I'm a spirit of celebration, whatever the case may be, you know what time of the year it is in liturgical terms. [00:31:06] And so when the Ascension comes up and it's on a Thursday, you find a way to go to Mass. Some people, I understand, can't. They have jobs such that they can't or they're sick or whatever. The Church has never said that person is obligated to go to Mass if they just can't make it for whatever reasons. [00:31:23] I mean, if it's a real good reason. And so I really feel like this is just another case of like they're trying to fix a problem that they caused. [00:31:36] If they just went back and didn't cause the problem, they wouldn't have to fix it around the edges. Instead, just go back to the way it was. When December 8th falls on a Sunday, it's the Immaculate Conception. We can miss those readings of the second Sunday in Advent. [00:31:51] If the Assumption falls on Sunday, it's fine. Celebrate is the Assumption. So I think that's. That's something I wish they would get. But it's a perfect example of how too many people who help run the Church don't really see the big picture. They're just looking at, okay, we've got this problem. How can we. How can we tweak it to fix it. But I'm saying, wait a minute, how do we get to this problem in the first place? I think that's what they need to do. [00:32:17] Okay, that's my rant for the, for the day. Now we're to the white pill of the week. Elon Musk is dismantling the bureaucracy. I mean, if you can't white pill over this, I don't know what would make you white pill. So essentially what's happening is they're going full scorched earth on the bureaucracy, the deep state, everything going on in the federal government. They're just going scorched earth on it. And I just love to see it. [00:32:42] The current target is usaid, which is supposedly foreign aid to other countries. But we know what it really is. It's a CIA front. It's for the global homosexual agenda. I mean, it basically. I'm not saying it does nothing good. I'm sure there's some decent things it does, but that's a cover for all the terrible things it does. It's what's promoting homosexuality around the world. Who's basically saying, if you don't promote homosexuality in your country, you're not going to get foreign aid. It's doing all these problems. Gut the thing. Cut it out completely. There's really no reason that we need to give any, you know, have any of our taxes going to this. And the rumor is the next thing on the chopping block is the Department of Education, which would be a beautiful thing because it's just such a corrupt institution that just, I mean, the funny thing I saw somebody say, they said something effect of, you know, how terrible our students are doing right now. They're so, you know, they're so illiterate. They're so not good in math, stuff like that. And you're going to get rid of the Department of Education. [00:33:42] Do you realize what you just said? The Department of Education has been around for almost 50 years and all these things are true. Our educational system is terrible. So why should we continue? The Department of Education, obviously we need to get rid of it because it's not working. I'm not claiming I know exactly what the solution is, but I know the Department of Education is not it because it's had 50 years and it's failed miserably. It's the same thing with like, what, what RFK is going to have to deal with hhs. We've got declining health around the country. Why would we keep doing what we've been doing? That's the definition of insanity. [00:34:13] Now what you see is, you see the progressive Catholics coming out and saying, oh, this is awful what they're doing, cutting out usaid, it's going to harm the poor. Jesus would never want this. He loved the poor. He wanted us to support the poor. So we have to support usaid. [00:34:28] I mean, it's just, it's a kindergarten level argument, frankly. And I feel bad for insulting kindergartners by saying that, because the reality is that these things are corrupt, they're inefficient, they do not help people overall, they're a net negative for the world. And the more important point is nothing in Christ's teaching said that charity is based upon the government dole and paying taxes. [00:34:59] There's nothing that says, okay, the way you perform charities is you pay your taxes and let them do it. Even if, let's say USAID was a perfectly run organization, that all it did was help people, I still would want to gut it because it's not the role of government, it's our role as Catholics to help the poor, to help others. And if you're not doing that, you know, you're in danger of going to hell. You need to do that. [00:35:21] But the government, that's not its job. Its job is to protect our borders, to protect us, to basically make sure we have a stable and orderly society, not to go help everybody. And basically, again, we're not actually helping them. What we're doing is we're saying, you go along with our agenda, are very progressive, pro homosexual, pro trans, pro abortion agenda. And we'll give you a few crumbs. Most of the money will go to rich, corrupt politicians in those countries. It will not go to the actual people. In fact, what's interesting is all this move to get rid of USAID is other leaders of other countries are saying, yeah, get rid of it. People in other countries like, yeah, this has been awful. President El Salvador said, yeah, this is a completely corrupt organization. I hope you get rid of it. So I think this is something we need to note and let's not be like kindergarten level understanding of these things. And they go, oh, usaid, their mission is so good, we can't get rid of them. Trump's so mean, Musk is evil, blah, blah, blah. Let's look at what they're actually doing and see that, yeah, what this is doing is it's harming. [00:36:23] You know, it's a terrible thing to, to that the government is doing to others. So, okay, okay, so that's it. That's All I'm going to talk about with that, I'm going to go now to the live chat. This has been a disjointed podcast a bit. I got flustered at the beginning with our technical problems, but hopefully I made some sense today. Okay, so the live chat. I appreciate everybody who's in the live chat talking while you know who's chatting while during the podcast I like to bring out a few of them at the end to address them, to comment on them, let other people see them. So I appreciate when you do that. Always feel free to join in. Okay. Sadie Picante says Eric Samuels is stealing my talking points, probably because we both watch Mises. That is true. Mises Institute is a great institution and it really does help us to understand things like tariffs, like free trade, taxes, government intervention, stuff like that. So I highly recommend Mises Institute for understanding these type of things. Okay. Drew Black. Yes, but they have gone unchecked for decades. Their bishops refused to correct their errors. Unfortunately, I don't know the context for this. [00:37:29] Their bishops views correct. Their heirs. Yeah, I mean. Oh, oh, okay, sorry. I understand now from the. All the people. Like the Nancy Pelosi's. Exactly. I mean think about it. Nancy Pelosi has been in public life for what, 50 years, something like that, and she's been awful for all 50 of them. It wasn't until, what was it, four, three years ago, something like that, that Archbishop Cordleone finally said, okay, you can't receive communion. Which then the rest of the bishops said no, it's okay that you can. And so that's exactly right. It's because the bishops have not said anything about this that we've gotten that this has happened. But again, this is good news. Things do self correct sometimes. [00:38:08] Although the bishop should have been doing this years ago to it now we're having a new crop of Catholics who are in political life who are saying actually Catholic things. And so that's. I mean we didn't. The bishop should have corrected the Nancy Pelosi's a long time ago, but now we're getting the JD Vances to correct her. [00:38:26] Drew Black also says these tariffs are leverage tools. Yeah, and that's essentially. I agree, I agree. [00:38:32] My problem with terrorists is don't argue them for them as there's some type of economic benefit because they're not, if you're looking at them just strictly as an economic tool, they're not an economic benefit. All other things being equal, the truth is they can be used, as Drew said, as leverage tools. And that I can understand why you'd be supportive of them. [00:38:52] Joel says manufacturing must return to our country. The junk we pay for from China borders on sinful. This is a good point. I mean, I struggle with this one because on the one hand, in theory, it's good when we pay, when we get to pay less for things, because that helps the poor. I know everybody hates Walmart and I hate Walmart, but the fact is, if Walmart does things and all of a sudden a poor person can afford clothes and food that they couldn't afford before, I have a hard time getting too upset about it now. The problem with China is that you have a situation where they're doing immoral things over there to make this happen, to make these things cheaper. And so what kind of obligation do we have to avoid buying things from China to move manufacturing over here, which will make it more expensive, potentially, because we're not doing these practices. [00:39:48] But at the same time, what's our moral connection to them? And I don't have an answer to that. I do think that Drew brings up a very good point that we need to realize that the way things are done in China is not good. It's immoral. And so buying a lot of stuff from China is not a good thing for our country. Not economically. Again, not just economically. It's better for our country because we're buying cheaper things. We're getting things cheaper than we would have before. That's a good thing. The problem is, are we selling our soul to do it? And so that's why we have to look beyond just the strict economics to the whole picture. And so hopefully, maybe the tariffs will end up causing a, you know, a rethinking of making our own things in a moral way and maybe being willing to pay a little bit more. The fact is, prices are so getting so high already from inflation. [00:40:39] I mean, that's the problem. You have all these things combined. You have the money printing, the income taxes, the tariffs. It's all hurting us economically. [00:40:47] And if you just do one thing like say, okay, the terror and tariffs by itself, that just makes things worse economically because you're not addressing the money printing, the inflation, you're not addressing the high taxes and all that stuff. So until we really do more whole scale, which Trump seems to be starting to do, we're not really going to solve those problems. So, okay, I'm going to wrap it up there. I apologize for the technical problems at the beginning. Hopefully everybody was able to hear after. After the beginning. But until next time, everybody God love.