Three Pastors With Different Perspectives on Voting for Trump

Opening Remarks and the Question of Voting for Trump

Hey, welcome once again to the conversation. A very special conversation. I've been looking forward to this for the last week. We have three guests with us who have been on the podcast actually numerous times.

We have Pastor Kerry Gordon, who is the pastor at Cornerstone World Outreach in Sioux City, Iowa. We have Pastor Andrew Iskar, who is at 4th Street Evangelical Church in Waseca, Minnesota. And then we have Pastor Joel Webbin, who's in Georgetown, Texas at Covenant Bible Church.

And all three of these men love the Lord. They pastor, which they are deserving of honor for that, because let me tell you today, pastoring is difficult and it's hard to find pastors, and they're willing to do it.

They have the courage. But the thing that makes them different, one of the things, I'm sure there's others, they all have different perspectives when it comes to Donald Trump and the election. And now that Trump is the presumptive nominee, I thought it'd be really good to get their perspectives for you out there, determining how you're going to vote.

And not just for Trump, but also for down ticket people. Maybe the county seat is open and you have a Democrat running who wants to transfer kids, and you have a Republican who's immoral. What do you do?

So we're going to get into that a little bit. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you so much. We're going to start with Pastor Kerry Gordon, if that's okay. And Pastor Gordon, I know that you did not care for Trump in 2016.

And maybe if you could explain what you're going to do this time around, whether you're voting for Trump or not, and then why? Sure. Well, the first thing that I would say is the way that I approach politics, you know, on any average ballot where I live, there's 48 different people for 48 different offices that are on the table, asking me to select someone for leadership from the top to the bottom.

And I don't make my decisions based on who I like, or who I don't like. And it's easy to characterize it that way. But the truth is, I'm a staunch, mean Pharisee. That's what I get called. Because I follow the Bible very, very thoughtfully.

I didn't always do that. I used to vote using something called situational ethics, which is pretty complex to explain and understand. But I came to the conviction that I was doing wrong. I meant well, I didn't want to displease God in any way.

I thought it was perfectly fine. And most of the church teaches, in fact, that we should use situational ethics. I came to a point in my convictions where I was convicted that it was a sin. And I asked God to forgive me.

And the last time that I did it, I voted for John McCain. And I didn't like John McCain, but I still voted for him. And the reason I did that was not because I had a solidly unwavering biblical standard, but it was because I knew he was the lesser of two evils, or at least I assumed he was.

And I voted for John McCain, and I felt terrible about it. In fact, that night, I didn't sleep well. And I studied the scriptures very, very heavily over the next several months, and I had a series of epiphanies that changed my life forever in the arena of politics.

So I don't characterize who I do or don't vote for based on the liking. For example, I actually care about Donald Trump. I find him at times very funny. And he's certainly the most entertaining person that's ever run for president.

So to suggest I just don't like him, and that's why I won't vote for him, I think would be a misnomer and mislead people. I vote for people. The simplest, fastest way to explain it, I would break out the Ten Commandments and go to the second table of the law.

It's much more sophisticated, but that would take half an hour. So Exodus 18 .21 is a truncated, very quick way of understanding what we're authorized and transversely what we're not authorized to do when it comes to selecting leaders within, especially, a republic.

And Jethro said to Moses in Exodus 18 .21, essentially, Moses, you can't do all this by yourself. You've got to get help. So here's what you need to do. Search out from among the people someone, number one, who fears our God.

And I say our God because it's implied Jethro was a monotheistic high priest of Midian, and his religion was basically expressing the theological views of Noah, his great, great, great, great grandfather, based on the best research that we have.

And by the way, I was just in Midian last week, and I stood at Jethro's tomb. So I've traveled there. He's a pretty astounding figure of history. Jethro said, let's get people who fear our God. Number one, they have to fear God.

Now, you can have a lot of in-depth research about what kind of a man fears God and what kind of a man doesn't. It's actually not that hard to determine if someone fears God. So they have to fear God.

Number two, they need to be able to do the job for which you're choosing them. I make the argument that Exodus 18 .21 should apply to even the guy flipping burgers at McDonald's because, you know, you might say, well, he doesn't have to fear God to be a good cook, and that's probably true.

But the second tenet, he has to be able to do the job. I don't want somebody cooking my food that's not a good cook. So they need to fear God and be able to do the job. The third is they need to not be given to filthy lucre or be a money monger or someone who could potentially be bribed or would be motivated by the reward of finances in some way, whether it was an illegal bribe or not.

And one of the words that's used in some translations is they're not to be covetous. So fears God, able to do the job, is not given to covetousness concerning money. And then finally, is known and has a reputation of being a truth speaker, someone who tells the truth.

And this is essentially what Jethro gave as advice to Moses launching the first republic, which, according to Deuteronomy chapter four, was to set an example for all the nations of the world that they would emulate and copy them.

And God says that very plainly in Deuteronomy four. So, you know, I think I need to say that because it's popular to say, well, that was just for if right. No, it wasn't. It was for all of us. It's wisdom.

And so that's how I choose candidates. Now, occasionally someone who meets the Exodus 1824 qualifications, those four minimum plumb line issues, I actually don't like them. Right. So that's happened locally.

There's someone I know them. I know them and I don't like them. I don't like their attitude. I don't really care for where they go to church because it's a user friendly church and I don't think they faithfully preach the gospel, et cetera, et cetera.

But they meet these minimum qualifications. And so I feel like, you know, it would be better for me to vote for them, even though I don't personally like them than to vote for this horrible Democrat. Right.

So I want to say that up front. I try very hard to go by the standard of the Bible, whether I like them or not. And just because I don't vote for someone doesn't mean I hate them. And I think I have to say that, too.

It is true. I've never voted for Donald Trump, but it's not really based on liking. It's based on a conviction that I did the wrong thing when I voted for Don McCain. I felt terrible about it. I use situational ethics.

I didn't have the understanding that I have now about how God's law should be applied to something as important as voting. So what do I do? Well, there's 48 people running for office and, you know, on an average ballot where I live.

And I if I study all these different offices and I look at the people that are running, I try to find a grouping of people who meet those minimum plumb line qualifications. And once I find them, like, for example, in this previous presidential election, I was able early on to narrow the field of the men running for the Republican ticket to four people.

And then so now these guys meet minimum qualifications where I can feel like I'm obeying the Bible if I vote for them. Now, my next step is which one of these four is going to do the greatest good? That's a whole different paradigm than choosing lesser evils.

And it doesn't seem pragmatic. And I understand that. And that's why I created and I would encourage everyone to give me a hearing. I created, I think, one of the clearest articulations of this view of how to obey God when you vote in a way that's not tribalistic and quintessentially just American, but really an ancient principle.

And I did it at steps to political epiphany dot com. And it's five whiteboarding cartoons where I walk you through the Ten Commandments and through the scriptures to create a way of being very engaged in the political world, representing as an ambassador of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ in this world, what we believe and what we expect.

If you're going to represent me and I am in affinity with the Lord Jesus Christ, there are certain minimum standards that you have to meet. And Exodus 18, 21 is not a call to perfection. It's a fallacy.

Moses had to find leaders among that rabble of Israel. Most of them were married to their sisters. These were horrible people. They were stiff necked people got into killing all of them, by the way, because they would not comply.

But Moses had to get this really imperfect group of people and find someone that could at least be trusted with some power and death row by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit told him how to do it. So here we are in 2024 and we're in a similar situation.

We have a lot of horribly imperfect people and we have to have a minimum standard or else our opinion becomes the standard. And to me, that's humanism and it's very, very dangerous. And I would argue, and I could give you the quotes if I dug them out.

Most of our founding fathers warned us not to disobey Exodus 18, 21. I have quotes from Benjamin Franklin, who didn't even believe in Jesus deity, but he at least saw the wisdom of Exodus 18, 21. And Noah Webster, Brian Webster's dictionary, the father of the American education system.

These people all warned us explicitly, if America ever stops obeying Exodus 18, 21, we're toast. And I've got their quotes, and I think they were pretty brilliant guys. They understood our Republic. They helped create it and they warned us to follow that.

So I would say in a fast summary, what happened to America? I can tell you what happened to America is we abandoned strict obedience to Exodus 18, 21. We chucked it out the window of pragmatism and we started justifying subtle disobediences to what we are or are not authorized to do when we vote.

And that's how we destroyed the country. So my argument is, if we're going to fix it, if there's any path to returning to the former greatness we used to be and used to have, maximum liberty, then we have to start by obeying the thing that we refuse to obey for the last 50 years.

And so I'm just one of those crazy lunatics that's willing to obey that. And will it be painful? Does it mean we'll lose elections? Yes, we will lose elections. If Christians say, I will only obey the Bible and forget the consequences, I'm doing the right thing, even if it hurts.

That's what I think we have to do. That's my conviction. I fully understand everyone else approaching it differently because I used to do that. And so I actually give my personal testimony at steps to political epiphany and I pick on myself and say, I was ignorant and I committed sin and here's how I did it.

Here's what I did. This is why I repented. And then I invite everyone else to join me on that journey to repent for doing voting wrong. That's what I stand for in a nutshell. It's not about who I like.

It's about, I just want to obey the scriptures as best as I can and please the Lord. Very, very well stated. And so you're just saying you don't like Trump. So I got it. No, I'm just kidding. No, that was very, very good.

And so I think it goes without saying, you didn't say this in what you said, Pastor Kerry, but Trump doesn't meet the exodus 1821 in your mind. So, okay. I think people picked up on that. So Joel, I want to go to you next because you in 2016 didn't want Trump.

I don't know if you, I think you said you didn't even vote for him in the general, but in 2020 you did. So maybe explain whether he changed, you changed, the country changed, what persuaded you that that was the right thing in 2020 when it wasn't in 2016?

Trump, the Regime, and the Lesser-of-Two-Evils Vote

Yeah. Well, I mean, part of it is I've grown and developed in my views. So I certainly would concede that I have changed. But in addition to that, I would just say the simplest explanation is in 2016, just to be clear, I didn't vote for Hillary.

I'm a Christian. I threw my vote away. I had, you know, I could throw, basically I had two choices. I could throw my vote away by voting third party, or I could throw my vote away by voting Trump, but from the state of California, which is where I was living at the time, just like the 6 million thrown away votes for Trump in 2020 that came from California.

Whereas if we had like 48 ,000 of them respectively spread out between, you know, four different states that were contested, he would have won the electoral college and the world would be a different place.

So anyways, my point is that I, you know, I was ignorant with a lot of my views, but then also just the, you know, where I was, you know, living in California and the situation of, so I just wasn't thinking about these things.

So I definitely have changed. But then also in terms of Trump, I don't know, you know, if he changed, I think he did, but it's more so, it's not so much like he was one way and now he's another. It was more so just, you know, him actually being in office gave, you know, evidence to some of his claims to be able to say, okay, like now I've actually seen what he would do.

And for the record, I think Trump's, you know, his fourth year in office, I'm not a fan. I think, you know, we have to remind ourselves, you know, what actually happened as much as, you know, as Christians, we don't want to abide in an office.

You know, I think we still have to admit that like, all right, forced vaccines and those kinds of things. Yeah, that's true. But Operation Warp Speed was, that was Trump. He still has, you know, Trump doesn't, you know, he just never admits that he's wrong, you know?

So, you know, so he still touts the vaccine as it was, you know, his doing and a great idea, you know, and he's shooting himself in the foot with a lot of his base with that. And then, you know, DeSantis comes on the scene and Trump, you know, he behaves like Trump.

So, you know, naturally he, you know, Ron DeSanctimonious and starts, you know, running to the left, you know, of Ron on abortion and on, you know, other issues, you know, and, you know, just to, just, you know, to, because he has to get in his quips with, you know, DeSantis.

So anyway, so my point is his campaigning, I think has been worse, his campaigning this go around than it was back in 2015. His final year in office, I thought was lousy. I'm a little bit sympathetic.

I know there's a lot of pressure on a lot of people with COVID and all the propaganda coming out with that. But still, I think he did poorly and he's never owned it and never been willing to walk it back and admit that he, you know, that he set the groundwork for a lot of the tyranny that ended up happening with Biden in 2021, 22 and 23.

So anyways, all that being said, I would say I didn't vote for him in 2016 because I didn't, I didn't believe him. So it's not so much that like he changed, although again, I think he probably did. But I didn't believe him.

You know, as you know, my only knowledge of Trump at the time was that he's posed for pictures, you know, with Hugh Hefner, that he's a serial adulterer, that, you know, Hollywood entertainment, The Apprentice, you're fired.

You know, I just didn't have any basis for thinking this guy's going to be a good president. Again, definitely didn't vote for Hillary. I'm a Christian, let the record state. Christians don't vote for Hillary.

And they don't vote for Biden. I feel, you know, I think that that is explicit. Like you cannot vote for a Democrat today, maybe once upon a time, but today you can't vote for a Democrat as a Christian.

I just, I see that as an absolute contradiction. So 2020, I voted for him, but I was still in California at the time. I was one of the 6 million that, you know, took our vote. We needed 48 ,000. We had 6 million.

But California, you know, the weather's nice. And so, you know, that's where I was. And I did that thing. And I ended up writing a whole book about that, you know, for multiple reasons, you know, Christians getting out of places like California, but political strategy being one of them.

And then, yeah, he'll have my vote in 2024. No question, no apology. Absolutely will vote for Trump. If DeSantis was, you know, the Republican nominee, he'd have my vote. And that would be fine too. And I don't know, I've got a lot of thoughts, you know, part of it is lesser of two evils.

But, you know, voting for Trump is my vote against Biden, against the Democrats. And then part of it also is if there was a little, you know, if the ballot was for president, it was Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Ron DeSantis and Trump and Nikki Haley, and we had all these options.

And then at the bottom, it said, a literal wrecking ball. I would probably vote for the wrecking ball. I would vote for, you know, or a backhoe, you know, or a flamethrower, you know, a flamethrower would for sure have my vote.

You know, anything that would, I just think that America is so compromised, so rebellious. Democracy, every example in the scripture of democracy is negative, right? We want a king, the people want a king or, you know, like, crucify him, you know, what are the people want?

Let's take a vote. Well, let's let's kill Jesus. That's the vote. So I think, you know, our, our republic and our constitution, as it's been said, you know, by our founders and many times repeated, it's, it's fit for a particular type of people that we don't possess.

We possess a nation of degenerates. That's just, that's where we are. We are, we are a pathetic nation. And we're a pathetic nation, not just because of our leaders. We have pathetic leaders because we're pathetic people.

And we just have to admit that we are degenerates. And, and so, so yeah, so the constitution, it's not, it's not that I'm against the constitution. I like, you know, a little bit more of authorial intent on the first amendment that it's not, you know, Satan statues in the Iowa state Capitol, you know, but, but it's common religions, you know, multiple denominations of our common Lord, right?

So you can have different expressions of Christianity, Anglicanism, Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism. But I don't think that the founders were saying, yeah, multiculturalism, culture, you know, cultists, the Latin word, worship, multiple different expressions of worship of false gods is a great idea.

Diversity is our strength. No, it's not. No, it's not. Diversity has destroyed the nation. And so I would just say that the constitution is great. And maybe one day, maybe one day we'll deserve a republic again.

Maybe one day we'll be able to be a constitutional representative republic with a light expression of democracy, which was the original intent, never a raw democracy. But right now it doesn't work because the people, the people are lousy.

And, and so I would like to see, by God's grace, us get back on track. And I think returning to the 1990s won't happen. I don't think that'll cut it. And so, yeah, so I, I'm going to, you know, whatever guy is going to kill less babies, whatever guy is going to chop off less genitals of children, whatever guy is, you know, going to do those things, you know, and also function as a wrecking ball in some extent, maybe, you know, change the political landscape.

And then the last thing is, honestly, I want to be careful on how I say this. I think abortion is, is, you know, has been for, for decades, the number one issue. And I think that's right. I think that the scripture absolutely supports that.

I, I'm an abolitionist. I think, you know, incrementalism in theory, sure. But in practice, every politician I've talked to, and as I've witnessed it, all, all that ends up happening is they just split the penny a million times.

There's actually no, there's no desire. When you really get down to it, there's no desire to actually abolish abortion. And just to be abundantly clear, when I say abolish abortion, I think that what that essentially means, because a lot of guys, you know, they're not always clear about what that means.

What, what that means is essentially what it means is equal protection. It can't mean anything less than equal protection and equal protection, that what I, what I always tell guys, it's a really simple formula, because they're like, you want to punish women, or you want to execute women, or, no, I want to save babies.

And I think a nation can do one of two things. You can, you can save babies, or you can worship women, but you can't do both. We've opted for decades for worshiping women. We are given into the divine feminine.

We are, we, yeah, we, we hate men, we hate children, we hate babies, because we, we don't love women, we worship women, we idolize them. And so we have to stop doing that. And so in order to, the formula is three steps.

If we believe that life begins at conception, a full life, that, you know, that Jesus was fully God and fully man in the womb. I mean, it messes up your, your doctrine of the hypostatic union, the two natures of Christ, the Trinity.

You have to believe that Jesus was fully God and fully man, not from the moment of birth, but from the moment of conception. So if Jesus was fully human, and image bearers of the living God are fully human in the womb, from the point of conception, then they have equal dignity and equal value and equal, equal worth to the person who is already born.

If they have equal dignity, then they deserve equal protection. You can't have purge open season, you know, on a particular class of people. You can go in one day, one day a week, you can shoot black people.

No, you can't. You can't, you can't do that. And then say, and black people are equal. No, it's one or the other. So right now we have impunity for the murder of a particular class of people. It's not black people, it's not minorities, it's not women, it's the unborn.

So to have, to actually back up our claim as Christians, that it's a full life, full image bearer of the living God, full dignity, then you have to have the equal full protection and equal protection.

Well, what is that protection? The protection is the penalty for, for harming or killing that baby. So if a mother, if a mother can, take her five-year-old child into the back alley and, and shoot him in the head, whatever, whatever the penalty would be for that, that same penalty has to be in place, not only for the abortion doctor, but also for the mother.

And if the mother was coerced by a father or a man or a husband, of course for him, him as well. And if she was coerced beyond her will, then she's actually innocent. And it's the father that's guilty, but he gets this, it's the penalty for murder.

So all that being said, my point is, you know, with abolition, those kinds of things, my point is just to say that incrementalism and pragmatism, I, I hear what Corey is saying. I think that what he's saying is wise.

It's solid. I just, I'm at the point, I am at the point where I, I think, you know, all these things matter. Abortion, I said all that to give my credentials that I do believe abortion is one of the single most important issues.

But diversity is, is quickly becoming to me up there. I'm not saying necessarily equal, but if we, we, we have to believe that the West is suicidal. The superpower of the world turns out all you had to do to beat them was, was called them racist.

And the final analysis, that's, that's what it took. It didn't take an army of millions of people. It didn't take certain nuclear weapons. It didn't take all, you know, it wasn't the communist, you know what I mean?

It was kind of was, you know, but the point is, you know, but the point is like in the final analysis, what did it take to destroy the West? You just needed to call them a mean name. And so that would be one more reason why I would vote for Trump is we have to, we have to be allowed to have a country.

And there's no such thing as a country without borders. God sets nations. He causes them to rise and fall. He sets their times. He sets their borders. We've have 10 million immigrants, about two thirds of them, illegal, third of them legal.

And that's just what we've counted. That's just what we know. It could be far more than that. And I'm talking about the last three years. So you're talking about 3 of the country's total population.

So you're saying within a decade at that rate, you, especially with all the numbers, you know, people who pass through that we don't even have record of, you're talking over 10%, which means in a hundred years at that rate, and we know it would increase unless we do something, you know, significant to stop it.

You're talking about over the current population coming in, you know, and most of that illegal, most of that unaccounted for, even those who are legal still doesn't necessarily mean that they should be here.

And so, yeah, so for me, I think, you know, I want to have a country. I want my children to not be murdered by an illegal immigrant in a park. I want a wall. I want a country. And I'm not going to commit suicide.

I'm just, I'm not going to do it. It doesn't matter what name you call me or what revisionist history propaganda you try to pull. I think the West is awesome. I'm proud of my heritage. I'm proud to be an American.

I would like America to continue. Trump, his character is not great. I would not, I would not hire Trump to babysit my kids. He would not be an elder in my church. I don't even know if he could pass a membership interview.

He might, in the sense that man looks at the outward appearance, God alone sees the heart. My job is not to definitively know whether or not he's regenerate. If he had, you know, a credible profession of faith and, you know, some measure of tangible fruit, then, you know, then maybe he could be a member.

But my point is just to say, Trump is not, you know, my position is not that Trump is this great guy. But I don't know, this sounds, Corey won't like that, but I don't know if we need a great guy right now.

I think we need an iron fist. We need someone to deport every single illegal immigrant out of the country. We need someone to burn down the regime. We, I just don't think Americans know what time it is.

I don't think Christians, I'll be frank. I don't think evangelicals understand what time it is. I think they think that there's still a lot to be salvaged. They don't think it's as bad as it actually is.

They think democracy, what if we try democracy even harder? What if we try democracy even harder? So anyways, those are my thoughts. I'll stop talking.

The Case for Voting as a Biblical Qualification Test

Yeah, no, thanks, Joel. No, that's good. With today's positive, encouraging word on conversations that matter. Everything's bad. Well, so we were actually almost half an hour in, and I do want to do some time for questions.

So we're not even going to talk to Andrew. No, I'm just kidding. Maybe you could give the encouraging words, since you're so, you know, happy that Trump, you voted for him in the primary in 2016. So I got to hear this.

Yeah. I think, I mean, just even going back to 2008, you know, Kerry brought up the 2008 election with John McCain. I didn't vote for him, John McCain that is, in 2008. I kind of came to the, you know, similar convictions as Kerry at that point.

And I knew that, you know, the American, I probably was as blackpilled on the American Republic and democracy as Joel is, you know, just expressed just now back in 2008. And I realized, okay, there's this extremely powerful regime that runs the country.

It is, they're looting everything that isn't, you know, bolted down. And so I knew like, you know, John McCain, yeah, he doesn't pass that, you know, Exodus 18 threshold, right? Is a covetous man, is a man that his entire career was looting our country, you know, taking bribes, you know, even if they weren't explicitly like handing over cash, right?

He's clearly reaping benefits from the destruction of our country, opening the borders. I mean, that's, he was a Senator from Arizona for decades. And that the one issue Arizonans cared about was immigration.

And he did everything he could to sabotage that effort. And so I knew he was bad. I knew he was terrible. I felt the same way in 2012 with Mitt Romney. It was the same, you know, the same exact thing.

And so in 2015, I was more or less content to just like never vote for president again. And then, you know, a funny thing happened where I saw a political candidate who, as Joel described, you know, Joel's like, if you have this whole list and I'm voting for this giant meteor of death or a wrecking ball or a flamethrower or whatever, well, I saw that in 2015, that here is a guy who is going to upset the entire system.

And not necessarily, I didn't have any illusions about, okay, if he gets in office, he's going to positively be able to do anything because I knew the entire system is going to sabotage every single thing he ever does, right?

So it's more about the system destroying itself than it is anything the guy himself does. I knew that in 2015, like I saw, you know, his statements about immigration. It was astounding to me because it was the first time, you know, a major candidate actually vocalized something that was clearly within the interest of the actual American people and not ginormous corporations or the regime itself.

So that was huge. And then when he said, I think it was like August of 2015, where he's talking about like, why are we in NATO? We should get out of NATO. This is not benefiting us at all. And the freak out over that was so massive.

And it's because, you know, war is the health of the state that the entire regime, that's what sustains it is, you know, being in Iraq or Afghanistan or Ukraine now is that's how these guys get rich, right?

That's how this all happens. This is what empowers the entire regime is it's foreign policy. And so I saw someone who is so distinct, so set apart in all of these things that he could actually begin to bring about the downfall of this horrible regime that rules over us.

And, you know, on the question of immigration, I think that is the biggest one. Like I agree with Joel wholeheartedly on everything he said about abortion, a hundred percent. And I look at it and I think none of those things are ever going to come to pass if we allow them to import, you know, millions of people into our country.

And so it is really bad, right? If you bring in, like Joel said, you know, 10 population change in the country. And the point is you're going to have people that are not American, right? And they're replacing the American people.

Well, that's by design. They want to replace the population. Like Joel brings up his state of California. California was the most conservative state in America in the middle of the 20th century. And now it's maybe the worst one in the whole country.

And it was entirely because of population change. And so California is the model for what they want to do the entire United States. So any designs that we have for, you know, fixing our country and the most important thing is on the issue of abortion.

That's the thing that's bringing the wrath of God against us. Well, we're never going to be able to do that if they just completely replace the country. And so, you know, Trump making that an issue for the first time in my lifetime was, was, you know, the thing that opened my eyes.

And I think, I remember, you know, going back to like 2015 and I was generally supportive of Trump, even though I was like, I don't think I'm going to vote for him. But I remember in, right before Super Tuesday, you know, we were in Missouri at the time.

I remember telling my wife the day before, I had just read in National Review, a writer in Kevin Williamson had said, written this piece against Trump saying the white working class needs to die because those are the people that supported Trump the most wholeheartedly.

And I remember thinking like, wait, that's where I'm from. Those are my people, right? This guy hates us. And because here's a guy representing our interests, we have to go vote for him. And so we went that day and went and voted for Trump in the primary in Missouri.

And he won handily as he did in all the other states that voted that day. And it, I basically realized that, you know, I started to have this view of politics that was, you know, essentially, you know, recognizing it as, you know, not in necessarily idealistic terms where I kind of had been, where instead it was more so that politics essentially is warfare.

And it's warfare between, you know, you and your people versus existential threats, right? Things that are going to threaten their very existence. And viewing it in those terms, right, that started to change things.

I started to see, all right, politics is not just, you know, oh, I want this ideal guy, and if I don't get him, I'm not, I'm just going to stay out of it. It's, all right, we have enemies that want to destroy us.

They want to, you know, to murder babies. They want to trans kids. They want to completely overturn our country. They want to import, you know, tens of millions of people from anywhere else that they can rule over more easily.

We have to pursue things to stop this and pursue and empower whoever will get that job done. And so that drove things more than anything else, because I, yeah, I never for one second, you know, viewed Trump as this moral man or good man, or even necessarily anyone that would pass, you know, what Jethro tells Moses in Exodus 18.