News Roundup: Huckabee, Talarico, McRaney, SBC

Conversations, That Matter podcast, where we are forging a bold Christian vision for.

America.

I'm your host, John Harris. We have a lot to get to today, but before we get to it, I want to let you know that I could use your prayer the next week. I am kind of burnt out, and so is my wife. So we decided we would take a trip for a few days, and I looked at my air miles to see where could I go.

That's free and cheap once I get there. And I've accumulated enough air miles to fly to Mexico City, and I thought, well, that.

Will be fun.

We need some vitamin D. We actually just had a blizzard here in New York. And wouldn't you know, the day before the violence breaks out is when we schedule it. So my wife is nervous. Just pray for us.

I think it'll be fine. Mexico City's far away from the violence happening currently, but they did upgrade the caution level to a two, and I guess it's normally a one. So I'm hoping for a relaxing time and not a time of being nervous that there's going to be a cartel that breaks into where we're staying and finds out we're American and then, I don't know, wants to use that somehow.

I don't think that's going to happen. My wife's more concerned about it than I am, but would appreciate the prayer. I have recorded a bunch of podcasts for you this week, so you can look forward to that.

I have a podcast with C .R. Wiley on AI that's going to drop soon. I've got one on whether or not we should think of our problems as external, internal or both. That's kind of outside the box, kind of an original thought.

So that'll come out, I think, Thursday or Friday. There's one on Gen Z men and whether or not Gen Z men are actually in a period of revival and moving towards Christianity. You hear a lot about this, but is it true?

What does the information say? The data is not complete, but I have, I think, a pretty good idea of what's going on. We are also going to talk about John C. Calhoun, finally. The Calhoun episode is done.

It's almost two hours long. Full episode is available on Patreon and Substack. You can just, I guess, message me and I'll send it to you along with the slideshow if you want. Normally, there's a fee, but if you can't afford it, I'll just send it to you.

And it's some work to do these episodes, but they are really, I think, rewarding. I want to go back and recover what we've lost from the past or sometimes it's not even what we've lost, it's what we've reframed, we've applied a revisionist modern lens to in some kind of a way where we just only focus on certain things and cartoonize these figures from the past that should inspire us.

So we're going to talk about John C. Calhoun and some of the positive things he contributed to political theory and policy and honestly, just virtue. And that's a controversial thing to say today because John C. Calhoun is primarily known as this great defender of slavery.

So I'll get into that a bit and just give you my two cents on how to look at his particular speech that's famous, I think it's 1837 speech, where he's responding to the abolitionist petitions that have come before Congress.

But there's so much more to him. In fact, that's not even the greatest issue to focus on when you're looking at Calhoun. And so we have a lot to look back on in our Anglo-American conservative past. And also, I think in a spiritual past, we have so much great men that have come before us that we need to gain inspiration from.

And so there are other projects I'd like to do when we complete this, which will probably be a while because there's so many books, honestly, to get to if we want to retrace a positive vision for ourselves politically.

But there's so many great ideas, projects, ways to make the world that we actually live in tangibly better. And those are the things I want to focus on the most. And so with that, I want to say one thing before we get into the topics for discussion today, which will include the Southern Baptist Convention and also the Huckabee Carlson interview stuff.

I have been noodling on what to do concerning the shiny new object. And I've been thinking about this for at least two years. I've known that this potential existed for longer than that. But the 24 -7 focus in some quarters of the Internet on Israel and Jews more broadly is something you could really build a platform on.

And one of the things that I've never wanted to do with my platform is, number one, take it for granted and cheapen it. And number two, I've never strived, strove, strived, striven, I've never tried to make this podcast a wave riding podcast where I'm looking at whatever is popular and trying to cash in on it.

I think some people thought that at one time because I just happened to be at the right place in the right time to talk about social justice. But I didn't actually know I was in the right place at the right time.

I did not know 2020 would happen. I was podcasting on social justice in January of 2019, and it wasn't even a great interest of mine. I just wanted to help people because there weren't many resources.

And this had been something I had been thinking about since 2014, at least, because I saw it developing at Southeastern. And so it was a long process to get to the point of looking at guys, some of whom I had respected and saying, you know what, they're wrong and they need to be called out.

And so this latest craze, and there's obviously a lot of fads and crazes, and I don't even know if this is quite a craze. I think it's actually more than that. I think we are in the middle of a development that is quite monumental in some ways.

And there's so much packed into what I just said that I'm not going to unpack for you right now. But what I think I'd like to do is give you resources every once in a while. Yeah, we'll talk about Israel.

I'll even make some, especially if it's related to prophecy or biblical, I don't know, ethics on just war and land and things like that. We will look at some of those things. We'll look at what it means to have an America First foreign policy.

But I'm not going to let that become the driving force of this podcast. I really just can't. I can't do it. Someone's got to not do it. Right. And I know it's tempting in some ways, even though I don't really want to talk about it, but that's where all the action is.

Right. In my circles right now, it seems like my algorithm, at least on social media, is 24 -7 anti-Israel. That's most of what I see. I'm starting to get some pushback on the other side, but I was talking to a pastor today.

We had an interesting conversation. He's like, I don't see any of that stuff. I just saw a few clips that were negative on Mike Huckabee and that was it. I didn't see anything else. And I had watched the interview because I knew it would be a topic of discussion.

I don't generally watch Tucker anymore. I never really did. But his MSNBC days, I did because I thought it was funny. But at this point, I just can't really. And but that podcast, I knew that was going to be a point of discussion.

So I wanted to watch it. And after I was done, I went on social media and I was like, there you go. That's of course, that's what is being focused on and clipped and misunderstood to some extent. And so I do want to give some guidance if I can, if it's helpful on this.

We're going to talk about the difference between a promise and a right. There's a lot of liberal assumptions in this whole discussion about universal rights and the template being secular democracies as if they are the standard and anything that deviates is just really bad.

And I don't know if people realize what's going on here. Totally. Like there's definitely a left leaning narrative that I've since I was an undergrad and took Middle Eastern foreign policy and did a project on Zionism way back then.

I mean, I've been hearing these similar things since then, because if you're in higher ed at all and you have any exposure to social justice guys, I mean, this is definitely one of their main things. It's been that way for a while.

So the narrative is not new. It's just coming out of, I think, circles that weren't previously exposed to much of it. And I think I do think there are threats in certain places. And so I'll try to point those things out at the same time.

We do need to have our thinking right about Israel and what the relationship between the United States and Israel looks like and what the relationship between the church and Israel looks like and how far we should or should not go regarding prophecy and whether we ought to put effort into fulfilling prophecy.

These are all open questions that I think do merit discussion at times. And so I guess to put a cap on all of that, I will be talking about it here and there, but it's not going to be a main focus. We still got to focus on some really important things.

We got to keep our eyes on the prize. OK, and let me tell you what the prize is. We've got domestic issues. We've got real life, tangible, right in front of us stuff that needs to be focused on. And the oxygen has been taken out of the room by other discussions that, I mean, I see guys who used to really be interested in reforming the church, building new institutions that are going to be better and replace the old ones.

And I don't see as much of that anymore. And we need to see that. We need to focus on the church. The purity of the church really is the future of our country. If you want a country, you've got to have a few things.

You've got to have a border, got to have a strong church, especially if it's the moral basis that we've lived on for now in our Western civilization, in our Anglo-Protestant civilization. We're talking centuries.

If we want our society to continue, we've got to focus on those things. We've got to be men of virtue or women of virtue, as the case may be. We've got to support real leaders. We need to make sure that we're holding people accountable.

And if we're building new institutions, we're doing it well. These are all the things that I'm invested in, and I'm not leaving any of those things. I can't. Those are the important things for my children and your children.

So we will be judicious about this as much as possible. I know I'll disappoint some of you with that. Others of you don't want me to talk about it all, but sorry, that's the decision I've made. And since I'll be in Mexico over the next few days, if you send me an astrogram, I won't even see it.

Sorry. But let's start with the Southern Baptist Convention, shall we? I think that would be a good place to start here. So we have from Protestia today a report, David Morrill, good friend David Morrill.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the McCraney versus North American Mission Board, leaving the Fifth Circuit rulings intact. Let me explain to you what this is. Will McCraney has come on this podcast in the past to explain this particular issue.

Long story short, in 2015, he is fired from not the North American Mission Board, which is an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country. He is let go from a different organization, which is the Maryland Delaware Baptist Convention.

I think so. Anyway, they have joint projects with the Southern Baptist Convention, with the North American Mission Board, but they are not the same thing. And what happened was Kevin Eazell, who is the director, president, director of the North American Mission Board, he decided to say some bad things that prevented Will McCraney from getting a job or potentially that they did harm his ability to get a job.

We'll put it that way. And this became a lawsuit over the interference of an outside group on his employment. And what gives you the right to interfere with Will McCraney's employment? He doesn't work for you.

Well, the argument that the North American Mission Board and the ERLC, which is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptists, put out there was, well, actually, he kind of does work for us because we're a denomination and this is a church-related matter.

And as a church-related matter, it's internal. You can't touch this without violating the autonomy of the church and the ecclesiastical matters that the church rules on that the courts should not have any access to.

So this has been in the courts for a while now, and the hope was that the circuit court that heard it, it was a circuit court which ruled in favor of the North American Mission Board, that it would be overturned by going to the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has decided not to take the case. And so this is very discouraging. Please pray for Will McCraney. This is just kind of heartbreaking. He's been giving his heart and soul to this case.

And just he's a good man. There are times I'm just like, why is it, Lord, that the guys that just seem to be good and virtuous and kind of always keeping a stiff upper lip, bearing with it and doing the right thing.

But why doesn't it always work out for them? We always have that, right? We think that sometimes maybe of ourselves, but maybe not as much, right? I see sin that I'm like, okay, well, do I really deserve that?

But like, Will McCraney, come on, that guy, he's done nothing wrong. And it's a discouraging thing. It's not good for the Southern Baptist Convention either, though. And I can illustrate this for you very easily.

David Morrill posted a statement regarding the U .S. Supreme Court on February 23rd, 2026, and it says, the North American Mission Board says, the opinion of the Fifth Circuit now stands as a landmark protection of religious liberty for all Southern Baptists and peoples of other faiths.

Oh, that's great. Well, the Southern Baptist Convention is an association of autonomous churches, so that means that the Fifth Circuit court said, actually, you're not an association of.

Autonomous churches.

You are a denomination in the sense of having a hierarchy that controls those underneath you. So if you have someone employed at an entity that is not actually part of the Southern Baptist Convention, it is a local or regional entity, they just do some joint mission work together or church planning work.

Now, the scary thing about this is you can be treated by the North American Mission Board as if you work for them and are in their employment when you're not. And they can smear your reputation and it's protected now as an ecclesiastical rule that the courts can interfere with.

So this is just crazy to me, but this is what's going on. And so beware, guys. I mean, this is like David says, I think rightly, notice carefully what's being done. NAM won at the grave expense of churches and their pastors.

We now have a situation in which a church will effectively be treated as a legally combined ministry with any parachurch ministry it partners with, and any dispute will be considered an internal ministry matter.

Not good. Center for Baptist Leadership on February 11th had posted an article. John White had talked about the case. That's a little bit of water under the bridge now, but there's another case John White had talked about that I want to highlight here, the Preston Garner case.

We've talked about this before, but I'm going to remind you about it. Tennessee worship pastor, and in 2022, he had resigned from one church to accept a pastor in another. This happens all the time, right?

You ever heard of the pastor leaving one church? Things didn't work out. The greener pastor is somewhere else, maybe a promotion. Maybe it's back home where they want to be, and usually it works out, at least temporarily.

They're able to do that without being inhibited by their previous employer too much, as long as there's no character issues or the rest of it. I mean, their denomination certainly is not going to step in and stop them if they're Southern Baptist, right?

That's not in the purview of the Southern Baptist Convention. That's Association of Local Autonomous Churches. Well, the SBC Credentials Committee sent letters to multiple Baptist bodies asking why Garner's church employed him as an individual with an alleged history of sexual abuse.

And they said the accusations were credible. The letter reached Garner's new church. They withdrew their offer. So now this guy, he can't get a job at the church he wants to get a job at because he's been accused of this, but there's no legal filing.

There's no police report. It's just Southern Baptist Convention ruling on a case that's not, I mean, who should they be calling? The police? You see, this is the problem with all the sexual abuse stuff.

They open themselves up to so much liability when they take it upon themselves to police outside the law all of these things as an autonomous church network. The letter reached Garner's new church. Garner denies sexually abusing anyone.

He says the SBC relied on an anonymous, unsubstantiated report and its letters and facts showing he was not credibly accused. Similar case, SBC wants to meddle in affairs it didn't or shouldn't be meddling in.

And this is what you get. So let's keep an eye on that. Let's see where that goes. I mean, it's going to take probably a few years given as long as the McCraney case took, but we'll see if that gets to the Supreme Court and maybe there'll be an overturning or something.

More SBC stuff, sort of, right? Is McClain Bible Church of the SBC? Do we still have an answer to this? McClain Bible Church, David Platt, pastor, right? There is a new motion, a lawsuit contesting the 2021 elder selection or David Platt oral arguments scheduled for March 25th at the Virginia Court of Appeals in Fredericksburg.

Now, you may be familiar with the documentary that I helped produce on this. David Platt, that particular documentary used a lot of discovery from another case, but that case was about more so membership and stripping people of membership without due process.

This particular case is about the elders, elder election under David Platt, so that they did not follow their own constitution in the election of elders back in 2021. The oral arguments are finally going to be heard in 2026, so it tells you how slow our courts are, but we'll see what happens here.

We need some good news coming out of Virginia, I'll tell you what. Virginia, I got to focus on the BMI stuff soon. I'm just so heartbroken that they want to defund BMI. This new story caught my attention.

I do not generally go to TMZ. In fact, I'm trying right now to figure out, okay, I'm going to try to block some of these pictures so you don't see them. Mar-a-Lago armed gunman fixated on Epstein files week before shooting.

Now, this might be the first time I've ever shown you a TMZ article. The only reason I do is because I guess, I don't even guess. A primary source in the case, in the story, they were the ones who acquired it.

So I guess credit where credit's due. Austin Tucker, I think is the guy's name. I don't know if you read up on the Epstein files, but evil is real and unmistakable. The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have.

Tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is doing about it. Raise awareness. The assumption being, I think that the government's doing nothing. Now, he's gone, unfortunately.

He sent this message on February 15th and it was, was it the next day?

Let's see.

It was right after that. He tried to sneak into Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club.

Let's see.

Oh, no, sorry.

That's where he worked. He tried to sneak into Mar-a-Lago. He was an outspoken Christian. He was outspoken about his Christian faith and political views. Young man, young Zoomer. We're told he regularly expressed support for Trump, telling colleagues as recently as late last year, he believed Trump was a strong leader.

People close to Martin describe him as a well-meaning, but increasingly frustrated, particularly about the economy. So I want you to listen to this. We're told he often complained that young people need two jobs or roommates to afford moving out.

Our sources say he still lived with his parents. Austin also tried to start a union at work to push for higher wages, but no one signed.

On.

Outside of his job, he was a sketch artist attempting to sell drawings for guys trying to get ahead. He was shot and killed after breaching the secure perimeter at Mar-a-Lago. Now, I don't think we have a firm motive.

I think this is just telling us, look, this guy was possibly going in there because of some Epstein-Files connection. And I am just, I don't know, I normally wouldn't highlight this. My heart just goes out to the family and to him.

I mean, I hope he's in heaven. I mean, it sounds like he is if he's an outspoken Christian, if he loved the Lord and he was someone who repented and was born again. I just have a burden because I see a lot of this.

I see the blackpilling.

It's real.

There are guys, young guys who just, they feel trapped. Life's not going their way, you know, and I don't want to make this universal.

It's not.

There's plenty of young guys that are working hard. They are making progress. They are getting married. This is happening, but there's a lot of young men that it's not happening for. And he just fits the template.

He just fits like the kind of person that I expect to see go down a dark path, frustrated. And I guess my message is this. If you know someone that's like this, if you know someone who's getting too dark, where they're adopting hopeless narratives, they're spending copious amounts of time researching things, at least in their minds, they think they're researching things that cannot, they can't do much about.

If you know people, especially in this age demographic who are adopting narratives that are closed, like they're so strong and so rigid that there's really no agency that we have because everything is a foregone conclusion.

It's just, there's so much evil that we don't have any recourse. Just be their friend, okay? That's what I'm asking. Just be their friend. Encourage them to focus their mind on more productive things.

That's really it, I guess. I mean, you may have to get into the weeds on some of this stuff. And I mean, look, I know now a lot more about the Epstein files than I would even care to talk about on the podcast.

And it's more than I need to know, I think. There's just people who are really, really into it and so much of what you see online.

Is just slop.

Not all of it, but so much of it is. You start looking into it and you're like, that's okay. That's not a tip. I mean, Tucker just got in trouble for that. He had to take his latest podcast down and re-upload because he got something wrong in the Epstein files.

This is being treated in ways that it should. I feel like I'm living through QAnon a little bit again. And Q posts, all the Q people, they don't like it when you say QAnon, which is part of the reason I say it.

But I remember guys who got so deep into that, you couldn't even talk to them anymore. And it's like, all right, we got to touch grass now, okay? Look, if we want to start going through this systematically, if you want to talk about it, if you're open to talking about it, we can do that.

But if you look at anonymous tips in the Epstein files and you're taking that as Trump definitely did this or that, you got to be very, very careful, very judicious. It's like going into a cave. You got to make sure you know what you're doing.

Spelunking gear, a light, if you don't have equipment, if you don't know what you're doing when you're doing quote unquote research, you're just kind of like knocking around in there, you will mess yourself up, I really think.

You do have to have some tools of analysis to be able to go into that and recover anything meaningful from it. And if you're just looking at social media feeds on Epstein stuff, then you don't know what you're getting, right?

It's there's so many things I want to say right now. I'm not going to say it, though. It's just it's leave it at that, OK? I'm not saying that none of it's important, but I'm just saying like in proportion and don't outsource your thinking to anyone who just says they know the files and don't get too wrapped up in them where it's just consuming all your time and all of that.

All right.

Yes, I do. I do have opinions on on some of that, but we'll save that maybe for another day. SBC President Clint Presley endorsed. Oh, you know what? This is out of sequence. I should have had this early.

He's a Southern Baptist president. He endorses the Tennessee bill allowing death penalty for abortion. And I just got to say, Clint Presley, I have had my critiques in the past, but good for.

You.

This is not something I could have seen happen a few years ago. There is something happening in the Southern Baptist Convention. I'm actually more optimistic this year than I've ever been. I'm telling you, I don't know why exactly.

I mean, I do sort of, but I think there's something beyond just what I know. There's something I also feel. And the main thing we're up against is guys who were there before in the fight are not in the fight.

Some of them are just focusing on some of the narratives I talked about before. There's an assumption, and I'm not blaming anyone for this in particular, but I have seen it come across comments on my stuff where it's like, John, you're not going after the real enemy.

You're talking about Russell Moore. Come on, get into those Epstein files. What about the Jews, man? And it does take away resources from actual fights that we could possibly win. And this year is a fight.

If you are still in the Southern Baptist Convention, you have a shot at winning. I have not seen conditions like this ever since I've been paying attention. The platform is pretty lackluster as far as like, they're not like super left or anything like that.

They are probably going to give conservatives more of an opening. You actually have a good conservative candidate that's running, Willie Rice. You've got the ERLC in disarray, and you've got the female pastor issue going on.

Oh, by the way, speaking of that, here's the last two videos that I dropped regarding female pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention. First Baptist Church of Albemarle, North Carolina, is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Yet for the past few years, they have employed Rebecca Stepniak as their associate pastor of family ministries. She regularly preaches during the Lord's Day services.

By my second year in seminary, I began to posture myself better to receive this wonderful gift of Sabbath.

She signed Baptist Women in Ministry statement claiming that Jesus did not place any limits on women's roles, as did FBC's other pastors, Kendall Cameron and Aza Hudson. The Bible says no women pastors.

The Baptist faith and message says no women pastors. But First Baptist Church of Albemarle says no. The SBC lists Abingdon Baptist Church on their website as a member of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Abingdon Baptist Church also says they cooperate with the SBC on their website. Yet they do not follow Southern Baptist doctrine on the subject of female pastors. In 2017, Abingdon Baptist Church advertised they were looking to fill a pastor position on the Baptist Women in Ministry website.

Lisa Wolfe became a minister there in 2022. She is listed in ABC's bulletin as a reverend and was first ordained at Main Street Baptist Church in Emporia, Virginia, which, according to the SBC website, is also a member of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Lisa preaches periodically to a mixed audience during the Sunday morning service.

We are reminded that we stand in a long line of believers who have followed God's call to love others, to show mercy and compassion, and work for justice in the world. A long line that includes Moses, Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, Harriet Tubman, William Wilberforce, Sojourner Truth, Horry Ten Boom, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Oscar Romero, Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa.

She is also not the only female to preach during this time at ABC.

In his book, God Has a Dream, Desmond Tutu wrote, I have a dream, God says. Please help me realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness, squalor, and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts.

When there will be more laughter, joy, peace. Before beginning an intimate meal with his disciples, Jesus taught them a lesson about humility. Normally, slaves perform the act of washing the feet of dinner guests.

Here Jesus, the guest of honor, dressed himself like a slave and insisted on washing the feet of his disciples.

Both she and ABC senior pastor Bill Bryan signed Baptist Women in Ministry's statement claiming Jesus did not place any limits on women's roles and that females have the right to be seen as made in God's image, not as a secondary afterthought God designed to always be under the authority of men.

The Bible says no women pastors. The Baptist faith and message says no women pastors. But some SBC churches say no. So, that's still a problem, and I'm going to be using that bullhorn up until the convention.

You can depend on that. We just need the laborers, right? People are burnt out, the few people who are still trying to really push in the Southern Baptist Convention. We need reinforcements, and that means, look, when I post something like what you just saw on social media, go and share it.

Share it with your pastor if you're in the Southern Baptist Convention. Say, hey, why are we putting up with this? Let's go to the convention. Let's vote for Willie Rice. Vote for Willie Rice. You're going to get some conservatives on these panels or these trustees at these institutions, and that'll be a really good thing.

The Mike Huckabee and Tucker Carlson Interview

All right, switching gears to top six moments, if it'll load on me. Mike Huckabee, tense interview with Tucker Carlson, frankly confusing. I have so many thoughts, and I can probably only give you about 10 of them.

Let me just divide the issues up here for you, okay? In my mind, the main issues. One is journalistic integrity and who we allow ourselves to listen to and trust, especially. Trust is a big thing. Trust is a sacred bond.

It's one of the bonds I have with you as an audience that I don't ever intend on breaking, and one of the things I have to do is if I get something wrong and I'm called out for it, I know I'm called out for it, I have to retract and I have to do so humbly, and it shouldn't be something that happens very often, or else you lose that trust.

At least you should lose trust, right? Some people just want narrative. They don't really tell me what I want to hear. They don't care about truth, but we should be people of truth. We should really care if someone's being honest with us, and I determined a while ago that Tucker's just not a reliable source.

This might offend some people. I don't have a comprehensive list or anything like that of things Tucker said. I wrote down a few things. I took 30 seconds, wrote down just a few things that I could point to that I'm like, these are reasons I don't really listen to him.

But it was manifestly clear in the interview, if you know anything about the subjects that were being discussed, that Tucker's bringing in some just super online narratives that are not accurate. This is a problem.

I'm not saying every single thing he said is wrong. I'm saying though, enough of it was that I wouldn't want to listen to the guy because I can't trust what he's going to say. He may lead me to believe things that just aren't true.

I think that is important to point out. I know some people get upset at that because they're like, well, he's pushing the Overton window the way we want it or whatever. I don't really care how he's pushing it.

I do need trustworthy sources. He's not one. And it's not even like, oh, every once in a while, like, oh, he's nine out of 10 right.

No.

He's consistently pushing stuff out there that is odd, kooky, hard to verify, passive aggressive. It's just, it's not my thing. And I don't want to devote too much time to it at this point. And pray for Tucker, I guess.

I don't know.

Or pray for me.

I don't know.

Whichever way you want to pray. But that's one of the things. The other thing is the big issue, big issue to look at in this whole thing is, or question is, what gives Israel a basis for which they can claim to continue living in the land that they currently possess and live in safety without being attacked from outside forces?

Why should they view themselves as possessing this access and maintaining this access and not just giving it up because it's unjustly taken or something like that, right? So that's another issue that comes up.

Of course, the America First stuff also comes up. Is this in our interest? I thought actually Huckabee did a really good job on that. And those clips are not on my social media algorithm very much. But if you actually watch the interview, Tucker had to frame it, I think, the way he framed it, because of Huckabee doing a very good job on many of those answers.

And then what else was I going to say? Okay, then there's the biblical slash prophetic way to look at this. What is Israel? Is it a fulfillment? Is it the ingathering? Is it the restoration of the Davidic kingdom?

What exactly is it? Is it just a secular state that we gain some advantages from, or maybe they just gain advantages.

From us?

Whatever the relationship is, how should we view it? So I will just give you John Harris commentary here. I'm not going to play clips. This is really for those who have watched it. And if you haven't watched it, maybe don't.