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 would 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 a slideshow if you want. Normally, there's a fee, but if you can't afford it,

I'll just send it to you. 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.

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.

That's a controversial thing to say today because John C. Calhoun is primarily known as this great defender of slavery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's so many great ideas, projects, ways to make the world that we actually live in tangibly better.

Those are the things I want to focus on the most. 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.

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.

One of the things that I've never wanted to do with my platform is, number one, take it for granted and cheapen it.

Number two, I've never strived 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.

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. 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. 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 like 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. 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. Of course, that's what is being focused on and clipped and misunderstood to some extent.

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 are 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.

I don't know if people realize what's going on here, totally. There's definitely a left -leaning narrative that since I was an undergrad and took

Middle Eastern foreign policy and did a project on Zionism way back then. 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, 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.

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. 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, okay? 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.

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. You've 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. 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, I think it was 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 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 Baptist, 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.

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. We think that sometimes maybe of ourselves, but maybe not as much.

I see sin that I'm like, okay, well, do I really deserve that? But 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. The 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. Greener pastors 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. This is 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

McRaney 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 McLean Bible Church of the SBC? Do we still have an answer to this? McLean Bible Church, David Platt, pastor, right?

There is a new motion, a lawsuit contesting the 2021 elder selection under 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 described 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.

Okay. 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.

Okay. 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 there.

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 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?

There's so many things I want to say right now I'm not going to say though. Leave it at that, okay? 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 have opinions 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.

And 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.

Still, 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 Stempniak 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.

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? I mean, some people just want narrative. 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, and 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, and 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, and he may lead me to believe things that just aren't true, and so I think that is important to point out, and 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 was like, I don't really care how he's pushing it. I do need trustworthy sources, so 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.

He's consistently pushing stuff out there that is odd, kooky, hard to verify, passive -aggressive.

It's just 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?

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.

Then what else was I going to say? Then there's the biblical slash prophetic way to look at this.

What is Israel? Is it a fulfillment? Is it the in -gathering? 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? 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.

If you haven't watched it, maybe don't because you're really into this stuff.

I have watched it. I was like, man, that's like, I don't know. That's like two hours, two and a half hours.

I can't get back. It just wasn't worth it to me, especially if you're reading good books on these topics or you're keeping up with the news on it.

You're probably not learning that much. You might have learned some ways some people out there are thinking about this with DNA tests and all the rest.

I think in general, it's not the best way to get your news. Again, I don't know if it's the medium.

I'm trying to think because I like interviews. It's just, I just didn't find it to be a good interview.

I guess this is what I like. You know me for my interview style. I like to ask questions and I like to let people talk.

If I'm doing an interview, it's like you're a guest in my house. I might challenge here and there, but I'm not interrupting you constantly.

I'm not just changing the subject constantly. I'm really trying to keep focused and develop something and really mine for those nuggets that other people have so that we can learn.

Now, maybe you think Tucker did that. I don't see that. I see this as an attempted gotcha that didn't work out so well for him.

He came off looking like a jerk. He got maybe two clips out of Huckabee that he could edit that were clunky.

I haven't listened to any podcast today on this, but I am like 99 % certain the takeaway is

Huckabee said that Israel can take all the land that God promised

Abraham. This is a kooky dispensational eschatology. It's the basis upon which

Christians support Israel. This is why we should just not go with those kooks.

That's probably what you heard out there. I'm guessing if you listen to any of the other analyses of this, that's not going to be my analyses because that's not what happened in my mind at all.

Like at all. Sorry. It's my Tucker impression. Not the best, but all right.

Where do I want to start here? We're on the article. I was trying to buy time while it loaded here.

It froze my computer up. Six moments. Oh, I can't start at three.

I got to start at one. If this doesn't work out, I'm just going to ad -lib because Christian Post has a lot of ads on it.

It talks about US Ambassador Mike Huckabee sits down with Tucker Carlson. They have a three -hour discussion.

It was really long, guys. I'm not going to lie. And it reminded me of actually tense church meetings where you're not sure what to make of the person who's sitting across from you.

Are they a friendly? What are they doing? So, Tucker comes to Israel.

He goes to a special gate they have for rich people, essentially, and he complains that they delayed him.

But initially, it was that they detained him. And I made a joke because it was true though.

Everything I said, I was like, I was just recently in Israel and I actually was also questioned at the airport.

And I did have an Arab guy, Muslim parents.

He looked like he would have been more of a threat to someone who's potentially

Jewish and looking for, I don't know, someone who looks Arab. And here I am, you know how

I look. And they do more profiling. Their security actually makes more sense, I think, in some ways than everyone, grandma getting patted down forever.

I mean, grandma still gets patted down in some ways, but they're just extra sensitive to what looks strange and what doesn't.

And I'm like, why do I look strange? So, I spent like an extra 20 minutes and they upgraded my whatever security to have more vetting.

So, it took me a little more time, but I was like, okay, like they brought me to a separate area and questioned me apart from my friend.

And all right. So, I threw that out there because I was just like, I was just at the airport.

Is that what we're talking about? And sure enough, that's basically what we were talking about. Like, okay, you're just being questioned.

This is, I think, likely pretty standard procedure stuff. But Tucker seemed to embellish that.

And then when the video camera stuff came out, you're like, what is going on? He's taking pictures and hugging the guy that's making him sign something and asking questions.

So, it was just weird to begin with. He doesn't leave the airport. He has all these reasons he gives for it.

Yoram Hazony comes out. It's like, I don't want to get into all the details, but it's like one big he said, she said.

And it's the common factor is Tucker is saying something and then all these other sources are showing something that isn't quite what he's saying.

And I don't know. I thought it was funny a little bit. So, he does this interview with Mike Huckabee and that's how it all developed.

Mike Huckabee had tweeted out something like, hey, let's talk to each other, not at each other. And Tucker's done this big

Middle Eastern tour where he's talking about Israel and talking about other countries in the

Middle East. And it's been fairly anti -Israel. And so, he has this opportunity.

He comes and does it. Number one, says Christian Post, top six moments.

Huckabee on land promises. Genesis 15, it would be fine if they took it all.

And it looks like my web. Okay, there we go. So, that would be the

Levant. So, that would be Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. It would also be big parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Carlson said to which Huckabee replied, not sure we'd go that far. I mean, it would be a big piece of land. Talking about Genesis 15, 18, where God promises territory to Abram's descendants that would stretch from the river of Egypt to the great river

Euphrates. And this is the largest extent of the ancient Israel under King Solomon before the kingdom split and were later conquered according to 2

Chronicles 9 .26. Now, if you're measuring that by 2 Chronicles 9 .26,

I'm pretty sure you have to include tribute areas into that. Israel controls this area, but I don't think they occupied all that area.

So, I don't know that that's actually a fulfillment of it, and it just froze.

Okay, so that's the first issue, and let's start there.

We'll just talk about that for a moment. I want to read for you just a representative example of some theologians throughout time who have believed that this promise to Abram, Abraham really, because it comes through Isaac.

That's one of the things, if you watch the interview, you notice Tucker clarifies Abram, right, because this is before Isaac, and after Ishmael's born, he's renamed

Abraham, and the promise is transferred to Isaac. Ishmael has his own promises that are different.

Tucker, though, seems to be possibly taking the Muslim line of like, this was given to Abram previous, and that was

Ishmael and Isaac. So, that's, by the way, goes without saying, that's not a

Christian interpretation. Christian interpretation and also the Jewish interpretation, really the biblical interpretation, is that these promises go through Isaac.

Remember, it's a land, it's a nation, and it's a blessing to the nations.

Let me give you just a few statements on the land aspect of this.

William Perkins, 1558 to 1602, the Lord saith, all the nations shall be blessed in Abraham.

Hence, I gather that the nation of the Jews shall be called and converted to the participation of this blessing, when and how

God knows, but that it shall be done before the end of the world we know. All right, well, before the end,

God's going to gather the Jews. Jonathan Edwards, it is more evident that the Jews will return to their own land again, because they never yet possessed one quarter of that land.

So, Jonathan Edwards is saying, hey, like, they never actually got that land. Which so often promised them from the red sea to the river

Euphrates, Exodus 23, 31, Genesis 15, 18, Deuteronomy 11, 24, Joshua 1, 4.

The Jews, in all their dispersions, shall cast away their old infidelity, and shall have their hearts wonderfully changed, and abhor themselves for their past unbelief and obstinacy.

They shall flow together to the blessed Jesus, penitently, humbly, and joyfully, owning him as their glorious King and only

Savior. Now, what do you notice about this? Jonathan Edwards is post -millennial. He's saying,

Jews are going to come back to the land. God's going to gather them, and there's going to be revival. Revival in the sense of, they are actually going to look on the one that their ancestors pierced, and they are going to repent.

They are going to realize who their true Messiah is. Christian theology here, but it's specific streams of Christian theology.

It's not dispensational. It's not unique to dispensational or anything like that. These all come before that, at least as a system.

Charles Hodge, the second great event which, according to common faith or the church, is to precede the second advent of Christ, is the national conversion of the

Jews. The restoration of the Jews to the privilege of God's people is included in the ancient predictions and promises made respecting them.

The future restoration of the Jews, in itself, a more probable event than the introduction of the Gentiles into the church of God.

Wow. Man, what a guy. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, there is no illusion made by Ezekiel to the resurrection.

The meaning of our text is opened up by the context is most evidently, first, that there shall be a political restoration of the

Jews to their own land and to their own nationality. Then, secondly, that there is in the text and in the context a most plain declaration that there shall be a spiritual restoration, a conversion, in fact, of the tribes of Israel.

Israel is now blotted out of the map of nations. Her sons are scattered far and wide. Her daughters mourn, but she is to be restored.

She is to be restored as from the dead. Her land shall be called Beulah. I mean, this is

Charles Spurgeon. Again, none of these people are, by the way, are dispensationalists. J .C. Ryle, I don't think he is either.

I believe that Jews shall ultimately be gathered again as a separate nation restored to their own land and converted to the faith of Christ after going through great tribulation.

Martin Lloyd Jones, to me, 1967. Okay, now we're in modern Israel. The year that the Jews occupied all of Jerusalem was very crucial.

Luke 21, 43 is one of the most significant prophetic verses. Jerusalem, it reads, shall be trodden down of the

Gentiles until the time of Gentiles be fulfilled, and it seems to me that took place in 1967.

Crucially important that that had not occurred in the 2000 years. I'm equally impressed by the

Romans 11, which speaks of a great spiritual return among the Jews before the end time. Now, let me tell you why I told you all of that, or at least paint the picture for you here.

A promise from God is different than a right. We need to understand this.

There's a lot of rights language, expectations that nations should be secular and multicultural to some extent, and we shouldn't be looking at things like ethnicity.

We should really just be judging people as individuals and no group punishment. This is one of Tucker Carlson's things he talks about a lot.

It's not conservative. I'm just telling you. I think one of the confusing things about this conversation is that because I think mostly

Tucker wasn't doing a good interview, he was just throwing stuff out there trying to, it seemed like, destabilize

Mike Huckabee, get him to say something that would be, I don't know, make him look bad or something.

Now, I don't know. I kind of do. You watch the interview for yourself and come to your own conclusion. That's how it was conducted, at least.

I don't know of another paradigm that makes sense of it. It was confusing because the subjects kept changing. But one of the things that happened in that interview is

Mike Huckabee is talking about the land promises. In the context, the whole context is what gives

Jews the right to this place? I mean, is it ethnicity? What is it? He's saying, look, they have an ancestral connection.

They have a spiritual or religious connection. It goes back 3 ,800 years. We know that by archeology.

We know that because of what the Bible says. And then Tucker latches onto that and says, wait a minute. That's a big piece of land,

I read. So they're not in all of that. Are they just going to go take that then? Is that what you're saying?

Mike Huckabee does what he calls hyperbole, and that's exactly what he said. If you didn't see the whole clip, if you don't watch the interview, right after that, he says,

I'm not saying that, Tucker. I'm not saying they should go do this. No one's asking to do this. I'm saying it hyperbolically because he's trying to point out that that's ridiculous to do that.

The reason it's ridiculous to do that is because that's not the mechanism for fulfilling the promise.

Just because there's a promise that this land will be inherited and that various points in time in history,

Jews have been in that land. It is their native homeland to some extent, you could say. Now that gets into a whole nother discussion about why chromosomes and Ashkenazis and all the rest, which

I'm happy to have that at another point. But Mike Huckabee defines it as, look, it's traditions, it's holistic thing, it's ancestral connection, and there's already

Jews in the land. Like Mark Twain says, this is basically a barren land, and the

British had it. There was a mechanism for going in there and settling. The British want to give the land, part of it, to Jews as a homeland after the

Holocaust in Palestine. I mean, it was the Balfour Declaration long before the Holocaust, that is essentially the guarantor of this.

Then you have Jews coming in from the Russian pogroms and other places, they're moving into the land to join the

Jews already there, and also a lot of Muslims there, and Christians. Fast forward through the history, you basically have a violence, mostly

Muslims killing the British and Jews and stuff, and then the white papers come out.

The white papers limit Jewish immigration, which Jews see as a betrayal. There's certain

Jewish groups like Haganah and Ergun that decide, we're going to start targeting

British railways and hotels and things, and certain acts of terrorism even, to try to take this land ourselves.

Were they representative? Were they not? Some of them were somewhat representative.

There's, it's kind of a checkered complex history because some of them wind up in the IDF, some of the first president of Israel, first prime minister,

I should say, of Israel, ends up basically cutting off.

It's a whole complicated history, but there's bad things that those groups did. The British basically say, you know what, we're going to wash our hands of this.

We're in debt. We need to get out of there. You ever heard of an empire saying, we're in debt.

We can't afford this anymore. Yeah. So the British say that, and if you read their statements, they're saying, we can't satisfy the

Muslims. The Muslims are never going to, they're not going to peacefully live with the

Jews. They don't admit the claim, and the Jews are, they're causing us problems.

The ones in these groups, these terrorists and paramilitary groups, basically.

So let's just leave. And they leave. The United States, United Nations recognizes

Israel. The rest is history. Now in that whole lead up, there's a lot organic settlement happening.

People going, buying farms, irrigating, planting, Jewish people from other places.

And this is the story of basically a lot of colonialism with maybe the added benefit that they at least had other

Jews and an ancestral connection. Think of English settlers coming to the United States.

We came, the justification is a lot of barren land out there, a lot of howling wilderness.

We can go settle. We're settlers. We can make deals with the Indians and different groups did different things.

But now we're being told we need to do land claims all over the place. And that is an anti -colonial, anti -Western sort of pro third world thing that's happening across the

West where Westerners feel that they have to do this. And it's kind of ridiculous.

It's like, by the way, we're on stolen land, but I'm not leaving. It's the most hypocritical thing. So you either have to go one direction or the other.

You have to say, well, we have the land now. It was through conquest.

That's usually like the, I don't know. I feel like that's the more imperialistic, like it was conquest.

Some of it was, or you can just say it was gradual. It was organic. We settled here and people didn't have a problem with it.

Or if they did, there was wars. They were defeated through circumstances of history.

Here we are. And before God, we do have responsibilities. That's what our rights are tethered to, to protect our children, protect our homes, protect the region that we're around.

And so that's what we're going to do. And we'll look at all the available arrangements.

If we're really going to be kicked out from a superior force, then we need to look at our options. But hey, I can defend this land.

I'm going to defend it. Now, if someone came up to you and said, well, how do you know you should be in that house?

Well, you've got a piece of paper that says a deed. Does the bank give you the right? Some bank, someone somewhere else, were their ancestors here?

How did they give you the right? You could throw up any of those things and say, well, it's recognized over here.

Look at the bank. Or my people have been here for a long time. I have a connection to this land.

Or there's a spiritual connection. Look, that's where I got baptized. That's where great -grandfather this or that or whatever.

If I went to the Archbishop of Canterbury, if I went to England and to the main church there,

I might feel like an ancestral connection. Even a spiritual, like, oh, this man, many important things happened here that have significance for my family.

There's part of me that belongs, even though it's not even my country. But it's sort of like I'm downstream from those headwaters.

I understand what that's like. I understand what going back to the old farm in Mississippi is like.

And you feel that. I didn't grow up here, but my grandfather did. And, oh, there's the cemetery. And you feel something.

I think that matters. I think that matters. And those things in and of themselves, though, don't really constitute rights.

I don't have a right because some...

I might have a legal right, but an abstract, universal, moral right to be in a place because a bank gave me a note.

You see the dilemma, right? We're going to throw up all those things because they are getting at something, but it's an organic reality.

It's the fact that through time and circumstance and providence, you are where you are and that's where you live and you're going to feel responsibilities where you live.

It's really that simple. So, that's, I think, why there was a tug of war over this.

Because Huckabee's throwing up all these things. And then Tucker really wants to get them on, oh, you're just a theocrat who wants to take over, take the

Muslim's land all away from them. That's what you're trying to do. And that's how Israel was formed. And that's what you're going to keep doing.

It's that narrative that this is why people are mad at Huckabee right now. But Huckabee immediately said, that's,

I'm using hyperbole. I'm not saying this. I don't think it would give them a right to take their land.

He said the only possibility he could think of, hypothetically, was they could take that land in a defensive action if they were attacked, which is something that we've done in the

United States. We've used that pretext in like the Mexican -American War, the Spanish -American War. Hey, we were attacked whether you think we were or not, but we were attacked and now your stuff's ours.

We just want it. We have the moral justification for it. I mean, this is how most of history has worked, at least when it comes to war.

You lose the war, you lose a lot more than just the war. So Huckabee says,

I mean, I could see that mechanism, but no one's wanting that. They just want to live here. The point is they're not asking for much.

If this is the land that God promised Abraham, they're not asking for all of that. They're asking for this little portion, and this little portion is they have an ancestral and a spiritual connection to, and yes, in part because of the connection to Abraham.

Now, the question is what mechanism would be appropriate for that land becoming part of a restored

Israel where the Messiah is worshipped? I'm glad you asked, and the answer to that is varied depending on what theologians you talk to and what their perspectives are.

This is both in Christian and Jewish circles. In fact, many Jewish people oppose Zionism because they thought the

Messiah has got to be the one to do this, not us. But it organically happens that Jews end up back in the land, the nation of Israel, the modern state is formed, and ultimately the theologians that I just read expected it to happen in the providence of God somehow.

No one that I have ever read or know of, maybe there's some kooks out there, but I don't know of anyone, not one person, not one dispensationalist that I know of, no one.

Now, it's limited to my information, but I think I have a pretty broad sweep of this. I don't know of anyone who's saying the

Jews need to go conquer all that land because that's the mechanism

God wants them to use to obtain the promise. I just don't know of anyone, and how come he didn't say that?

So I think we have to make a distinction between what a promise is and what a right is.

If we start doing this universal rights language and picking apart every little validation or authentication, recognition really would be a better word, of someone's right, if you will, to live in a land, then we're going to do land claims all over the place in the

United States. We're going to pick apart our own right, quote unquote, to be here.

Our right to be here is that we're here and that we have kids and we're raising them and we have connections to the land and we've made it ours and we've cultivated it.

We've bound ourselves to it through blood, sweat, and tears. Through providence, the Lord has allowed us to have this particular land and we can defend it.

There you go. There you go. It's really not more complicated than that. I spent way more time on that, but I hope that was helpful.

At least that's my perspective on it. I don't know if we'll spend much more time on this.

This article is really not loading well. I don't think

I have enough time to go through all of this. I think I've said my piece. I'll just say this about Tucker Carlson.

I'll be brief. I don't want to focus on Tucker too much. But I don't think Tucker's a journalist really.

He's more of a podcast host, but I think people treat him like a journalist. Even in a podcast host,

I guess I do expect some journalistic integrity standards. Tucker, last year,

I didn't follow him closely after he became independent. I was kind of excited because I thought he was going to really cover some stuff that needed to be covered.

But when he said that the missile strikes would almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths, right?

Then obviously that didn't happen. He was just with Huckabee and Huckabee said that you said this and he denies it.

He said, no, I said it could. He didn't say that. He said it almost certainly would. That's a little thing.

You might think that's a nitpick, but that was sort of the beginning of my, I don't know.

Is this the best source? The Christians in Nigeria thing was my last straw.

When he got so many things wrong on the situation in Nigeria, things that you could have just looked up so easily, and I've already covered it on the podcast.

I was like, I can't trust him. This is information sources. That's the bottom line. He doesn't retract really.

The Egyptian planes following Erica Kirk around, remember he said Candace Owens was very right that there was these

Egyptians planes following Erica Kirk and it was wrong. The Israel bombing of the

Al -Hali hospital in Gaza, he says it happened eight times. It did not.

Their church at the hospital, near the hospital was not targeted by Israel.

There's no evidence. President Isaac Herzog visited Epstein Island. Then Tucker issues a retraction on that, deletes the podcast, re -uploads it.

The retraction though misrepresents what he first said. He's saying that he didn't know and he's backing off.

This is one of the things that frustrates me I think about him is he does this thing where he's like, I'm just asking questions.

I'm a, I don't know. I'm really just a truth seeker. Then he will go to all of a sudden really aggressive attack mode on something that he's so certain of and he shouldn't be because he doesn't know what he's talking about sometimes.

That really frustrates me. Pick one. You don't know about the subject. If you do know something, then you know it.

This back and forth Jekyll Hyde thing, I just, I can't do it.

Don't pretend to know more than you know. As a podcaster, I guess that's something I try to do.

I try to qualify things if I don't or if I assume something. I say, look, I'm assuming this and I'm not going to hold it too tightly.

Tom Aleksandrovich is standing charges currently. He didn't just, he's not evading justice in Israel, at least not now.

Maybe that'll happen, but it's not happening now. Tucker made it out like he was. Tony Aguilar was shown to be lying.

I'm sorry. He had the picture of the kid and he put the kid in harm's way by saying he died and that created an incentive for Hermas to make it true and then they had to rescue him and he's alive.

I'm sorry. This stuff is all, this was documented months ago. You can look up and that's just scratching the surface.

There's so many things that he says that I'm like, I can't trust it.

You don't have to be where I'm at, but I would just encourage you if you're going to keep watching Tucker, then make sure that you're double checking things.

Don't just believe everything he's saying. One other thing, actually, no,

I'm going to end the podcast. I could go on forever. That's what I want to avoid. I don't want to go too far on these things.

I hope that was helpful a little bit to clarify at least some of those issues. We couldn't get to all of them and it's just a three hour podcast we're not going to.

All right. Let's end on some good notes here. Let's talk about, oh, this isn't really a good note.

I don't think. Senate candidate James Tallarico claims abortion, gay marriage aren't mentioned in the

Bible. This guy's becoming a rock star on the left and he's doing the whole, I'm a Christian thing.

He's from Texas. He's a Christian and he's just trying to give the left -leaning

Jesus perspective on all this stuff. He said, the religious right is a political movement that references spirituality, but they want to use religion as a tool of political power.

That's what you're doing, dude. What do you mean? The religious right has made an idol of political power.

To a lot of fellow Christians, the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage. Two issues that aren't mentioned in the Bible, two issues that Jesus never talked about.

Well, that's a theological claim that says Jesus didn't really believe the law because the law says there's a penalty if you kill a mother and her child, if she is with child, and you treat that as a person.

Jesus believed the sexual ethics of the Old Testament. He did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill. You're reading in a theology that just...

Is it anti -Jewish? Are you taking out the Old Testament because it's

Jewish? I don't know. I don't know if there's a way to weaponize the left against these things, but it's just absurd.

The thing about guys like this that annoy me is that he is using religion, too, to gain political points.

He thinks his religion teaches secularism. That's the thing. It's like love, these broad categories in the

Bible, they teach secularism. That's the religion of the New Testament. Because we're going to enforce our own theocracy, and our own theocracy is secular because God wants it secular.

He wants multicultural. It's like you're just doing it with steps. So, just don't give me that. Attacks on Christians.

Human rights group responds to Turkey's defense of missionary expulsions. I went to Turkey a few years ago, and it was a great trip.

Boy, was it different than Israel, going to all the Christian sites and stuff. Boy, was it a contrast.

Turkey was kind of testy then, and people didn't want to – you weren't supposed to say the word missionary, right?

It's just gotten worse. I was in the Hagia Sophia when it wasn't a mosque. It's a mosque now. It's just sad to me that this is happening.

Turkey's getting more – I guess if you're in Istanbul, hopefully you're okay, but there's bad stuff happening in other places.

Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, let's see, they had a resolution. So, European lawmakers are concerned about limited judicial – no, where did

I want to go in this? The ADF international condemned Turkey's rejection of European Parliament resolution on the expulsion of foreign

Christians, with critics calling the policy an attack on Christians and urging authorities to respect due process.

They focused on – there's 300 foreign Christian pastors and missionaries and their families who were deported or denied re -entry under administrative measures known as the

N82 and G87 security codes. So, there you go. They don't want the

Christians there. In the Middle East, such – I was actually just talking to a friend of mine in another Middle Eastern country that is one of the most mild, more mild ones for Christians.

It's one of the better ones to be in, and it's still super anti -Christian. You can't – because women can't own property, a lot of them,

Christian women will marry Muslims. So, this is something that's – and I learned, too, this is happening in places like the

West Bank. Marriage is a lot of the ways that they convert Christians to be

Muslim. Okay, you could say, though, that's more choice, but there's social pressures that go into this.

There's actual policy that says things like, in this particular country, you can't build a church.

You can't have a church on your own private land. Can't do it. Now, if it's grandfathered in, then there's special exceptions and stuff, but they really don't like Christians, and they suppress

Christianity in many of those places. It is very different in a place like Israel, I'm just telling you.

Doesn't mean everything they do is right or anything, but what you heard from my guest last week is true about the region he's in, at least, in Israel proper.

All right, no more Israel. Last story. A win for kids. Manhattan Hospital ends transgender youth clinic.

This is a great win. This is in my backyard. The Trump administration's commitment to stopping so -called sex reassignment procedures from being inflicted on minors is bearing fruit.

February 18th, a Manhattan hospital called NYU Langone Health announced that it has discontinued sex reassignment procedures.

Given the recent departure of our medical director, coupled with the current regulatory environment, we made the difficult decision to discontinue.

Guys, that's a win, and you can thank the Trump administration. Not everything is bad right now, okay?

There's some good things happening, too, out there. I hope this was a helpful podcast for you, and more coming later this week, but like I said,

I won't be around as much, but next week I'll be back to do live episodes, and yeah, so just appreciate the prayers.