Transcripts For CSPAN3 American 20240703

So tim alberta is the author is an author staff writer, the atlantic. Tim frequently appears as a commentator on television. His previous book, american carnage on the frontlines of the republican civil war and the rise of President Trump in 2019. Tim is the son of a preacher. He grew in an Evangelical Church in this most recent book, he describes evangelical ism as both polarizing and the least understood movement. He also answers the question how do evangel come to support donald trump . Tim lives in southeast with his wife and three sons and a German Shepherd who i suppose does not quite secret service agents. So his latest book is, the kingdom the power and the glory american evangelicals in an age of extremism. Our next panelists is tina nguyen. Not to confused with the tina nguyen actress and producer who worked with recording artist michael bolton. Although maybe thats a desire. I googled all your names. Youre also sportswriter on fox in chicago. Apparently a bodybuilder. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So shes the Founding Partner in nashville, correspondent for covering the american right. Puck calls her their maga expert an insider. Previously tina has served as a White House Reporter for politico, a Staff Reporter for vanity fair. And before that, she was a journalist for a number of right wing publications like the daily caller, where she her start in journalism and in her earlier was mentored by tucker carlson. So its its okay. Shes survived. Wow. All right. She is a graduate of Claremont College and her book, the maga diaries chronicles her personal experiences within the right Wing Movement and media media enterprises. We welcome tina is the author maga diaries. My surreal inside the right wing and how i got out out. Is that except for getting out or right. Well get to that. Well get that. So our third panelist this morning is Stephen Vladeck who is the Charles Allen wright chair in federal courts at the university of texas law school, a nationally that i know. Thats okay. Okay. Texas longhorn. Well, this is going to take long time. So hes nationally recognized expert on federal courts, constitutional Law National Security law and military justice and is currently hosting a podcast on National Security law. But hidden from his public. And i talked to him this morning about, this is one of my favorite podcasts that he and his wife cohosted in loco parentis, which only ran for two seasons during the pandemic about parenting and the law and parenting comes first and you can go and look at past or listen to past sessions of this podcast. I also i asked if steve would you know reprise this podcast because their repartee in the podcast is fabulous interviewing with different people about parenting and and being lawyers and whatnot. Its just fantastic. Anyway, he lives in austin with his wife karen, and two daughters and their ten year old pug, who also has not bidden any secret service yet. Yes so he is the author of the docket how the Supreme Court uses rulings to amass power and undermine the republic. So i actually had a controversial beginning for the questions i have but im going to start a little with one of my favorite other authors besides the three of you i know yuval noah harari, the author of sapiens, the history of humankind mind and 21 lessons for the 21st century, both in his books and also in recent interviews, talks about story and how there is a difference between fact and story and that the stories are the things where we our our values and our values then are outcomes. So just briefly, for the three of you, you all brought three stories to this audience today and to all of your readers, you know, what are the values that arise from, your writing these particular stories. Wow. All right, tim, im going to start with you because youre right here. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you, rabbi tom, for the thomas fine no title. Okay. No titles for the for the totally specific and easy question to off with. Yeah. Why a story. And thank you all for being here. So you know where my mind goes when you say that. Is that maybe the primary difference in this political age, this cultural age, this american age, this moment that were living through between fact and story, is that stories are often what we tell ourselves as sort of a exercise. You know, if you go to 2016, i think there were a lot of folks who told themselves the story that donald trump could never win the republican primary. Many of the people telling themselves that story were republicans who controlled party folks in the republican national, republican members of congress, governors, donors and the like. And then once he won the nomination, i think, millions of americans told themselves we could never win the presidency. And then after he lost in 2020, and particularly after he greenlit a riot, the u. S. Capitol and sat by for hours eating cheeseburgers, watching on and was you know well was a week later and not quite removed by the senate. I think you know just about everyone said well okay now, hes hes never coming back right. And here are in spring of 2024. And im betting that an awful lot of folks in this room are telling a similar story, which is, well, sure, he still controls the Republican Party because hes created this sort of cult following and he has the base under his. But he cant possibly win a general. Right. Yeah. So, you know, i think its i would just say this part of the reason i wanted to write this book, it nothing to do with donald trump and at least when i conceived of it and set out to take on this project had very little to do with donald trump. Think trump is best understood as sort of a symptom of a much greater in this country and specifically the faith tradition that i come from. The faith tradition that i still call home. And to try to understand the ways in which so many otherwise is good and decent and caring and compassionate americans have reconciled themselves to not just voting for donald trump as the lesser of two evils, as so many said they did in 2016. Not just sort of considering this a pragmatic, prudential, political judgment that they made in a sort of binary re election, but actually giving themselves over to being disciples of donald trump to following him on unwaveringly and to almost pledging allegiance to him in ways that really have eclipsed their allegiances to other things in their. That is a question that i think many of us in this room, regardless of your faith tradition, regardless of where you come from, that you have also had to grapple with. And so ive done that in a way that attempts to in my book sort of cut through those selfsoothing exercises of the stories we tell ourselves about whats whats gone on here and really get to just the facts and try to understand it a way that is raw and unvarnished and frankly pretty uncomfortable at times. But if if youre if youre not being uncomfortable, if youre not willing to be uncomfortable at this point, then i think, you know, youre not to to really see this for what it is. Thank you. Tina. Yeah. Sorry. Oh, the story. Yeah, i like thank you for going first, because i think that put a really good framework about what im about to explain with my story and my book. So when i when donald trump became president in 2016 and throughout 2017 and 18 and 19, everyone asking me why it was i knew so much about the world that donald trump was now inhabiting and all of the new players that came in like steve bannon and zeb gorka, matt gates, all of these like random institutes and extremist figures who just suddenly had power and said, well, i kind of grew up with those guys in these activist networks as a child. And they went wait, you i mean, look, youre like a woman color. Your parents were immigrants. You grew up in boston. Like, how did you end there . And the narratives that they started putting me as a way to explain what happening just started seeming so like, wait, that that wasnt who i was. Thats not how i into that world. Thats not how i got out of that world. Was i actually really a nazi . Was i actually like a hateful bigot . The entire time i was a child and it took me a really long time to even start writing this book. I think i only fully conceived it as what . As a story of both myself and of the conservative activist movement. After january six. And i was at politico at the time and what i was doing was covering the rise of the stop the steal movement and exactly how it had connections into the white house, whether it was organic, whether was just coincidental and it came from that activist that i knew and the tenuous relationship it had with trump still made it potent. And when i saw that, i was like, oh my god, thats it. So its a link between who was as a child, why it was that this movement appealed to and what happened once a populist demagogue celebrity took control of that movement. And as dug deeper into the book and my editor kept pushing to be like, no, explain what you were feeling as a like 19 year old who got invited this party with john bolton and Andrew Breitbart. And the more i thought about this, wasnt michael bolton. It was john bolton. John bolton. John bolton. Oh, my. I wish it were michael. Maybe my life would have turned out much more differently. But the more you pushed me to remember what i was doing in those early days when i started getting wooed by right wing Interest Groups more, i was thinking, oh, wait, no. This is not necessarily a story of someone who, like, bred to be hateful. This was a person who was looking for a place in her and this world and met a whole bunch of other like 19, 20, 21 year olds who were searching for that same to and it happened be at these essentially right wing summer camps funded by conservative billionaires to breed the next generation of republican leaders. And these are groups over that i started realizing over time have their roots in the sixties and the fifties theyve created it. People like Mitch Mcconnell who was one of the first young people graduate out of the Leadership Institute in the sixties, is now old. But the group that but the people that made him just created this massive societal like infrastructure sugar industry, society, like whatever you want to call, its its the thing that kind of makes itself in more oil because it keeps investing in its youth. The youth grow up and become adults and become powerful adults. And they just remember what it was like to sit in a room being like drinking free beer and talking about civil rights at 11 p. M. At night. Its really powerful. Bond thank you. So steve, before you talk, i have to apologize and maybe cspan can edit this out. I, i use your last name as a pickle, and i, i called you vlasic of vladeck, so i apologize that maybe that can be edited out. Ive been called. So. So its interesting because when i first saw the lineup for this panel, i was trying to figure out who got hit on the head and put me on it because im the Supreme Court nerd. But it strikes me that actually theres a real sort of resonance across all books, which is that, you know, both tim and tina are, i think, doing really powerful jobs of bringing to larger audiences as stories about peace of contemporary discourse and culture that we see. But maybe dont understand. Well, just change. You know, there stuff to the us Supreme Court and youve got me. So my book is basically a similar effort, although i think with a little bit less of the of the going to parties which bolton part of it its to basically try to explain to folks exactly why everywhere we look the supreme is messing things up. And you know i think part the problem is that there is a common view that the real with the Current Court is whos on it or the real issue with the Current Court is the bottom lines of the rulings is handed down. And if you actually anything at all about the Supreme Courts history, its not exactly rife with, amazingly wonderful decisions and amazingly justices. Right. And so the question is like, you know, is that really different . The answer is no. Instead, the goal of the book is to try to explain. It came to be that the Supreme Court has occupied such place in all of our contemporary political, cultural, social divides, and to try to basically explain to everyone why thats not how it was until really that long ago. So, you know, i wrote this book really to change how talk about the Supreme Court, how we about the Supreme Court and really how we can properly understand what, in my view, is wrong with current Supreme Court. And theres some stuff. Right. By starting with the sort of the notion that youve all been the wrong things about the Supreme Court and that, you know, when we about the Supreme Court in the media, were reading the wrong things about the Supreme Court. So what do i mean by that . Right i mean, so look at sort of some of the big things that have happened with the supreme in the last couple of years. You might have noticed there have been some ethical questions about behavior. Some of the justices, many of the most sincere issues that have arisen related behavior that was in some cases, 15 or 20 years ago. Why are we only learning about it now . Because theres an entire press corps that covers the Supreme Court that never thought this was part of their job. Right. To actually look at the justices personal behavior and that it took propublica and its reporting. When we look at sort of the supreme decisions. I suspect you guys have been following some of them lately. This is a its relatively new for the court to be in the headlines every. Right. And yet is. How did that happen . Well, that actually happened because quietly. But gradually over the 20th century, Congress Gave and the court took more and more power over stuff no one cares about outside of the Supreme Court and law schools. The courts docket. Right. So it might you to learn that the us Supreme Court today is actually deciding fewer than any point since the civil war. Thats not the court youre reading in the newspapers like, you know, how can it be in the every week and doing less . But this is all a function, the same underlying disease and, the real disease based on the current supreme was really best captured by my best friend, justice alito. Who gave a quote last summer to the wall street journal, where he said, you know, this may be a controversial view. This is always a good place to start if youre a public figure. Right. This may be a controversial view, but im willing to say it. It says no provision of the constitution gives congress the power to regulate the Supreme Court period. The period is really the masterstroke. There. So, listen, i mean, hes wrong. Right. Article three section two, for those of you who have your constitutions memorized, literally gives congress the power to make regulate missions to the Supreme Courts appellate docket details. Justice alito holds the Seat Congress created in 1837. I dont think he thinks hes unconstitutional. Right. The point is not that hes wrong. The the point is that this is in the zeitgeist. But the point is that we have court today that believes it is not accountable to the other branches of government and believes it ought not to be accountable to the other branches of government and Everything Else that we see in the news flows from that. Right. The court is not worried about congress, so its perfectly to rip the heart out of statutory. Right. The court is not worried about. So the justices dont care that much about ethics. Right. I mean, theres just every single flash point for the Supreme Court. The court doesnt feel beholden to us. So they issue major rulings where they actually provide zero explanation. For in january, where you had a54 ruling allowing the Biden Administration to remove razor wire that greg abbott had placed along the usmexico border in texas. When theres nary a word from, the majority or the dissent about, why, theres no rationale. So democrats were accusing Governor Abbott of defying the ruling. Republicans were calling on him to defy the ruling and everyone was wrong because. The ruling didnt say anything. So i wrote this book to explain how we got here, which is a little bit of us. Its a story unto itself, a series of stories, one in which the real sort of hero or antihero from a tale or swift perspective, is actually William Howard taft, who you might remember as a middling president , who once apocryphal he got stuck a bathtub, but actually did much more to shape our contemporary political life. Through his reforms to the Supreme Court, he was chief justice under all of those stories, understanding how we got here is to me critical not just to understand and what is uniquely problematic about current Supreme Court, but also how we fix it and to change the from the court is right its getting cases right or the is wrong its getting cases wrong to any court that is not accountable. The other institutions of government is dangerous. No matter what the hell its doing. And thats i wrote the book. So, steve, i dont want you to rest. Youre on a roll. So one of the one of the issues in our tripartite governmental system is that even though the Supreme Court can make a ruling about the wiring in texas, enforcement falls in another branch, and you can see the struggle with the executive branch dealing with that particular issue. So its one thing for the court to rule a particular way. Another enforcement we saw eisenhower did that brown, the board of education was able to bring an enforcement element from the executive branch. But but for anyone who hasnt the book, please read his book. Read all books. Theyre amazing and theyre good reads. You wont stop reading them. I. My wife hasnt seen me since i started reading these books. Theyre great. Its very important. For those who havent read the book, steve, for for you to help us understand the difference between the merit doctor docket and the the quote unquote shadow docket. And, you know, you talk about a disconnect between the the americ american and the Supreme Court. Theres also a disconnect you talk about in your book between the shadow docket and what happens in the lower courts when decisions are made or rulings are made without any writing, because they cant use anything as precedent. So can you briefly talk about merit docket shadow . I know this is to summarize the whole book. Yes, sir. Oh, so im a lot of good stuff to read. Yes. So i mean, let me try to put this in context and hopefully a way that actually, i think dovetails with some the work that that tim and tina have done. So for 102 years, basically, the Supreme Court had zero control over its docket. What that meant was every single case the court had the power to hear. It had hear. John marshall in 1821 says it would be treason to the constitution if we had other if we had discretion. Well, the court in the late 19th century, early 20th century, has way too many cases hear. And so they said, no, we need discretion. And so Congress Starts giving them the Court Discretion through this crazy term that lawyers cant even agree how many syllables it has, 33, which everyone just calls cert. And my students had never heard of certs. The breath mints, apparently they were discontinued in 2018, but i learned this the hard way. What . What i think a lot of folks dont understand about the court is that most of the courts, by volume actually is not in these written opinions that we get in cases that are argued. Its in how the deals with cert. Its in how the court deals with which cases its going to hear, when its going to hear them like trumps appeal. What questions going to decide if seen the order the court issued in trumps immunity appeal, you might have noticed the court wrote for itself. What the question. Right. So what it say about the Supreme Courts role when the court pick not just the cases it wants to hear, but the questions it wants to decide on the time it wants to decide them. Right. It says that that shapes our narrative. So how many of you guys have seen stories that say, hey, the Supreme Court was unanimous in 26 of its cases. Right. Or justices sotomayor and gorsuch agreed. And like 18 . Okay. No one ever points out the selection bias that these are the cases they chose to hear. Right. The shadow docket is part of this like what the court does when it decides which cases are going to hear which cases. Its not to hear comes through this incredibly opaque, you might say shadowy process. Right. Where the court doesnt tell us anything about what its doing, where folks who are not veterans Supreme Court practitioners dont understand. All of the tactical and strategic behavior. And this has the last five or ten years seeped out of the sort of the long process of picking and choosing what cases. The court hears and into this other subset of cases is where the court is stepping in, even before the case comes to the Supreme Court to adjust the status. And it used be that the court principally did in Death Penalty cases. You know, joe smith is going to be executed tomorrow unless theres a stay of execution. Those are a big deal, but not for all of us. Right. Those tend not to have statewide or federal implications. The last ten years, weve seen these kinds of unsigned, unexplained orders shaping everything from blocking obamas Clean Power Plan to allowing a whole bunch of trump immigration policies that lower courts had blocked to go into effect to allowing sb eight. Texas a six week abortion ban to go into effect to block in a whole of state covid mitigation to allow alabama and louisiana to use Congressional District maps in the 2022 midterm cycle that violated the Voting Rights act. Right. These are all massively consequential decisions with no explanation. And the problem this creates is twofold. One per toms right. You have lower courts are like what the hell am i supposed to do . Like the Supreme Court has rule but not given me any instructions. So do i. Just put on my psychic hat and use my ouija board. But two more fundamentally, guys. The Supreme Courts power. I mean, this goes back to your point about president eisenhower, the supreme power is soft power. The court has no enforcement arm. Right. The court depends upon the executive branch to enforce decisions depends upon us. If we dont understand what court is doing, how are we supposed to have faith that the court is act in response ably . And historically this has been the courts principal defense of its legitimacy that it has the ability to explain not necessarily that were going to agree with the principles that the justices are espousing, but hopefully we will at least agree that they are principles. And the problem is, is that the court is acting in ways where there are no principles. It looks very much like its just playing political favorites. And at that point it really starts to raise the question of why weve given all of this power to these unelected judges if theyre not going to use it judiciously. And i mean that in both senses. The term, if theyre not going to use it in ways that are what we expect courts to do, even if theyre getting it wrong when we when they act a court. So its a lot know sort of i mean theres a whole book right and its actually even past the book but the short version is like the Supreme Court has become so powerful because no one has checked it as it has claimed and arrogate added and, you know, sort of usurped all this power as its behavior has changed. And the reason for that, again, go back to your first question is just because we, the public, we the people, i think, havent understood this shift and havent really been educated as much as we ought to have been about these shifts. And there are consequences. And just the last and ill say and ill shut up because ive been talking too much. The real problem at the end of the day, right, is that none this has to do with the bottom lines the court is reaching. You convinced the courts guarantees, right. You can get them wrong either way. Right. What theyre doing is theyre doing this all in the dark and a court that operates in the dark from a financial perspective, from a legal perspective, procedural perspective is just not a court thats going to be able to build public faith in the way that we need it to. So she didnt tim, i want you to pick up on this this idea of principles, because its its a misused idea or misunderstood idea. You in the evangelical movement, in the Maga Movement, there are there principles that entices civil use that that in entices and then in. Midst of both of your books, there seems to be a disconnect from from what those principles that enticed you. Origen only and where you are now. So can you talk about this idea of of like tina for you principles of maga that that drew you in that was important for you and then at some point you saw the people the ideas not even principle anymore. So what was that that connect disconnect so a very important point to note when im answering that question is when i entered the conservative world, it was 2008 and maga as we currently it as like a nativist populist kind of like punch scream at other liberal entity did not exist yet of 28 was Tea Party Liberty and is everyone leave us. Iraq is bad also. We dont like the way obama wants tackle that issue. But that was the movement i entered into and. I was a really big nerd about the Founding Fathers back in high school and in when i went to cmc. Part of it was because i was attracted to this research institute. They had called the center for the study of individual freedom in the modern world, which had a connection to the larger conservative tank universe literally, i think my first or second month at cmc working at this institute, i invited to a gala black tie gala at the Claremont Institute where john bolton was speaking and. Afterwards, the organizers, the Research Fellows up to this president ial suite where were able to like smoke cigars and drink wine with like appellate judges, famous diplomats and Andrew Breitbart was there and i was like, hey, psa, attention to me. Id like a job. But the entire premise of the conservative network was, we are going be enforcing these ideals that you these ideals, the like life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the ability to, the federalism system of the states being able to determine own laws versus the federal government, you know, as a rebellious teenager, this who was a nerd that sounded great and the that they tried to drag me into conservative world period through journalism in 2009 i got an internship through this group called the institute for humane and it was a paid internship at a publication that was allied with their mission. And in order to accept the internship, i had to go to these seminars where all of these journalists would come in and talk about, oh heres how you get a job in. The news industry, by the way, isnt it weird that the Mainstream Media covers, the obamacare debate like this, why dont they, like, bring these questions up . And that message was a more subliminal to the reason everyone in that seminar was there, which was we kind of like liberty, but we really want to have a job in journalism. Im. So but they dont invest in those programs anymore and i believe it was was that they realized they were getting too people who wanted to be journalists. And the moment that they tried to start placing us in conservative publications or in my case like conservative publications that were posing neutral news publications and. The people who theyd invested in were going, wait, no, we this is against journalistic integrity. Why are you doing this . It suddenly became unpopular for these programs to exist. But that was where my disconnect was going back. That question, the mentor who ran this program, who was literally called my mentor officially was his title, was placing me at places like the daily caller and these other publications in madison, wisconsin and in colorado, where their editors were asking me specifically to ignore facts in order to report on something that would make the left or the democrats look bad and occasionally lead it would be a worthwhile question. But most of the time the justification for the story was, well, no ones paying to the democrat we have to attack the democrat and if i brought up something saying, look, the republicans doing the same thing, the i literally got from one editor was no, the point is hypocrisy. We need to attack the democrat just leave the republican attack the democrat. And then when you start that, these editors actually dont have experience in journalism at all. And are actually former coke out of coke network employees. You start realizing, wait, no, what the point of this network, why did i enter this world . I thought i was going be a journalist. It turns out that am now a chess piece in someone elses game and whatever those beliefs that i had that let me in here to begin with, they clearly dont apply. And i wanted to be a journalist and tell the truth and. This was not a place that would let me do that. Thank you. Coincidence . Yeah. So, so so this this question is so that it could sound reductive. I hope that it doesnt. So bear with me. But i have, since a pretty young age, been able to draw a distinction in my mind between christiane and christ. And what i mean by that is growing up in the evangel local church and i mean, like being raised physically, literally inside the church. Dad was the senior pastor. My mom worked staff running the Womens Ministry most of my first dates were at church. My homework was done in the office wing. I worked as a janitor there when i was going to Community College for a year, my life revolved around our community and the church and from a pretty young age, maybe i was just an especially precocious and or skeptical and or cynical child. But what i was able to observe early on was that there was something of a fundamental disconnect between the teachings of jesus christ, whom i was enamored with, and sort of the practical application, what we saw from institution of organized christianity. And that was becoming more and more apparent to me as i grew older, and particularly when i became an adult went into journalism as a young adult and ventured into the world of politics and began to see outside my little White Conservative bubble back in the suburbs of detroit, where i grew up, i was able to see at sort of a National Scale at that intersection of sort of professional evangelical or political activism, Republican Party politics, and to see how this sort of unholy alliance was always demanding concessions. Principle from one side, right. And, you know, to be clear it wasnt the republicans who were conceding their to the evangelicals. Right. And what what ive especially seen and become really i think disillusioned discu bridged by disgusted by at times in the process of reporting this particular was to understand at a baseline level, the teachings throughout the new testament that are so unambiguous so explicit about the ways in which we as followers of jesus are taught to with our enemies. Right now, its interesting because so much of our of sort of popular understanding of christianity. Well you know do good love your right be nice. Sure. But like actually much of the new testament message revolves around this idea of who are your perceived in the culture. Very famously in the sermon on the mount, you know, says youve been told to love your neighbor, hate your enemy. I tell you, love your and pray for those who persecute you. Now, in the First Century roman context, when when when the jewish people were living under a brutal and dehumanizing roman occupation, that was a bit of an interesting message for this vagrant preacher from the ghettos of nazareth to be delivering people when especially in the context of these times, the jewish people had been waiting for hundreds and of years for their promised messiah. King from the line of david to come and to rescue them. And do you know what, they were all expecting they were expecting a military strongman, a political leader, someone to ride in on a chariot with a sword and and slay romans and make israel great again. Right. That was the deal that is and im not being im giving a little cute when i say that but that was the expectation that was the deal right and along comes this poor son of a carpenter, her traveling around this these areas for four, three years, delivering the exact opposite message. Right. Emphasizing that the least among you will be emphasizing that in order to gain your in a in order to gain power in the kingdom of god, you must lose your life. You must lay down your power here, earth. And that created a countercultural that changed the world. Right. I mean, i cant emphasize enough. Its sunday morning, so let me preach at you for a minute here, if i can. It is impossible to overstate the ways in which if you were to study at a secular historical level, if you were to study world history, the ways in which the Jesus Movement that grew out of the Century Church completely the world in terms caring for the poor, caring the widow, caring for the sick, the first medical establishment, the first hospitals, the first orphanages, all built for a and third centuries at a scale by these early christians who were simultaneously very much ostracized marginalized, persecuted, pushed to the margins of society. Yet that disc stink liveness, that that counterculture or identity that they had is. What made that grow and spread like wildfire. People saw something in them that they didnt see anywhere in the culture and they wanted to know what it was and yet here we are. You know 2000 years later and we have effectively abandoned the core teachings so often in terms of how relate to those who may disagree with us, who may belong to a different political tribe, who may have a different Sexual Orientation and who may hold views that we find to be abhorrent. I want just, if i may for a minute again im sorry, but you know, most of you didnt go to church this morning. And this is my its not your sabbath. Its my sabbath. So we support you. Thank you you. One of one of the most poignant and beautiful passage of the new testament comes from arguably the most important letter ever in human history, which was the Apostle Pauls letter to the romans, which, if youve never had an opportunity to read it, whether your faith tradition may be, i would highly it, because you will learn a great deal about what christians are called to be and more importantly, what christians not called to be and when you think about the routine and were talking about about this sort ethos of owning the libs right, if you if youre a conservative, owning the libs, dominating your opponents, subjugate and your enemy. Right. Heres what the apostle paul had to say, if may quickly do not repay evil for. Evil, be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone, if it is possible as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends. But leave room gods wrath only for it is it is mine to avenge i will repay on the contrary if your enemy is hungry feed him if is thirsty give him something to drink in doing this you will heap burning coals on head do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good now that passage is borrowed from the very end. Romans chapter 12 do you know what follows in romans 13 . Paul admonishing the early christians to submit themselves to the governing authorities of rome, even when those authorities were persecuting, treating them terribly, stripping away their religious liberties. So youll have to forgive me as a practicing christian in the most powerful empire the world has ever seen, to smirk. Roll my eyes a little bit when Maga Movement and particularly the the evangelical that drives much of the Maga Movement tells you that desperate times call for Desperate Measures and that they to do these things because being persecuted they need push back against the government and against the left and against the deep state because. Well, didnt you see how they shut down our churches for a couple of months during covid 19 . Havent you havent you seen the ways in which that in 2019, a 1919 as well. Yes. Which a lot of people forget. We havent much. Yes, we havent learned much. And my fear is that when you create this permission structure built out of this idea that the ends justify, the means and that desperate times call for Desperate Measures, you are a setting aside the gospel of jesus christ. You are aside the doctrine of the new testament and you are instead pledging allegiance to religion. That is not christianity is not at all what jesus calls you to be, but you have decided consciously or subconsciously, that as as as Donald Trump Jr famously said a couple of years ago, he said, you know, turning the other cheek like ive heard the biblical argument, but like is that ever gotten us right . And i would humbly submit to don jr he were watching that christians believe that where its gotten us is salvation and eternal life with jesus and that to my call me call me humble call me simplistic but to my mind that is more important than winning the next election. Thank you so so so so do i get a religious rebuttal . Its not really a rebuttal. So its one we have 15 minutes left. So those who have questions why dont you make yourselves the you know, come up to the microphones, your questions. Let me just something i talked to steve about before we get started today was the crossroads between politics and religion. And it was made to me so evident by the alabama Supreme Court decision regarding ivf. And i just want to share with you and while people are coming to the mike just briefly, if you want to talk about this. You can i was very taken. I read almost the entirety of the Supreme Court decision. I dont recommend it, but i do recommend reading chief justice parker, special concurrence that he wrote at the end, which was me. Quite amazing. He talked about quote unquote, the sanctity of life in supporting his decision. And then he quoted for some aris and steve the british common law, quoting sir william blackstone, why we in america are british common law . I have no idea. He does talk. Life is the immediate of god, which is inherent in every human being from blackstone. And then he goes on to the declaration and again supporting its decision, the line from the declaration that were endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights among these are life. In order to substantiate that an embryo has has got life equivalent to you and me. And then finally, which i find most and i find most abhorrent with politicians who misuse our scripture, both from the new testament and from the hebrew scriptures, when steve sessions got up and substantiated position about the border. I he spoke from corinthians misunderstood what that was all about. But parker talks about genesis 127 that were all creating image of god. I hate to inform him, but adam and eve were not embryos you know, they theyre only part of our human tree were created as human beings to begin with. So to suggest that that line from my indicates that human life is equivalent to what adam and eve were as full grown individuals is abhorrent to me. Okay. So just any if anyone has a quick thoughts about those really. So the the sort of theres always a problem with judges using the bible the way that the scottish writer Andrew Landes said drunks use lampposts. Which is which to say for support, not for illumination, but if i could try to sort of tie this, tie that thread together, i mean the larger point. So, you know, not that long ago, the Supreme Court handed down a major ruling where it basically tried to get out of the business of micromanaging religion. And there was an opinion in 1990 by a crazy liberal Justice Antonin Scalia called employment versus smith and the to that in both a of states and at the federal level were statutes to protect religion. The religious freedom restoration act. A direct response to that decision thats. The way its supposed to work, right. The way its supposed work, is the Supreme Court sort of you lets the democratically elected branches sort out the messy stuff and the court sits back. In the last few years, weve seen a u. S. Supreme court not quite yet the level of the alabama Supreme Court being much more aggressive in its constant personalization of religion. Again, in a way that i think it would not be if was a Supreme Court that thought part of the system if it was a Supreme Court thought itself in conversation with us and with the other branches versus a Supreme Court that is out there on island where it cant be touched, where it doesnt have to worry about how its actions affect everyone else. So, you know, i think like you can pick almost any major topic and find symptom of the same disease which is a court not that long ago doing that made a ton of sense from an institutional relationship and today just doing whatever heck it wants whenever the heck it wants. All right. So our time is really running short. Are do you want. Start this right into the microphone as loud as you can just a on on in general we about and try democracy in terms this next election but im im scared that were not talking enough about anti theocracy the Christian Nationalist Movement and particularly new apostolic reformation which clearly wants to get rid of the separation of church, state and, you know, has organized to through. Well, let me jump in. Ill address it before it, because i know we were going i know exactly where youre going with it. But there needs to be a Movement Like that to say antidemocrat anti, you know that we dont want a separate church. Yeah no no no. Its a great, you know. Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it. So, first of all, i agree you i think there i think this falls under the category of stories we tell once again, that the separation of church and state and that the First Amendment and the freedom of, religion, religion and freedom from state religion, and that the establishment clause, that those things are our permanent because, well, theyre in our founding texts, there are people close to the former president people who would be intimately involved in a second trump administration, who are very much invested in the idea of away with the separation of church and state. I, for one, have spent last few months talking about this many venues with many different people, and they are sort of a network of us, of academics, of of pastors, of pretty prominent, high profile, accomplished christian leaders who are actually really at the tip of the spear here. In other words, its not the secularists who are really doing the legwork here. Its actually, i think a lot very serious, committed, mature bible believing christians who understand what the First Amendment says, what it doesnt say, understand what our texts were intended to do, and frankly, can go straight to the source of the Founding Fathers and see that they wanted nothing to do with state, religion, with theocracy. I think the problem is that we as a country continue to be complacent about these things and we and we frankly just dont want to believe that there could some sort of a fundamental. But when donald trump has said on numerous occasions in the last few months said on the stump at campaign rallies, that he is openly toying with the idea of revamping our immigration system. So as to not allow anyone in the country unless are a christian, unless they are part of our as he says, which are two different talk, because im not what our religion means in the context of trump. But yeah, yeah. Well be back here at 4 00 talking about that. But but i think its important to recognize that this is not some fringe thing its not happening way out at the margins of republican thought. This is something that is being in the in that in the highest echelons of the current conservative Movement Current Republican Party. And its a very real threat you know yeah. To sort of elaborate it on the framework that the threat the theocratic side is working with and how it could get purges within the larger Republican Party. There is a Massive School thought within the right of a book that can basically say, hey, look, we understand what the Founding Fathers actually because we understand all the context in which they operated. At one point in my book, i actually end up like talking to a man whos a pastor with the church and he Josh Morrissey and im not sure if you are familiar with him patriot yep. Yeah, this is the thing. He showed up at january six. Hes close with mike lindell. Theres an entire movement of people who kind of exist in that world, but the way he made the argument to me was the Founding Fathers in this world where religion and christianity ruled every section, every segment of their life, they would open their legislative sessions with hours, hours of prayer. The Founding Fathers clearly religion to be part of public life. And now that weve said this, we can do everything that we want in order to protect that and that is a very powerful argue meant for someone who does think that there is some sort of cultural war happen in and that they and who does want the government to step in and their own sense of safety and security so you do have to understand, even when tim, the people in his community are this framework together, there will be an framework that says, no, we actually understand what our Founding Fathers wanted. And just like do not estimate exactly how that could be. Thank you. All right. Last question for tina. Do you know the satirists, jordan kepler . Yes. Okay. So he basically puts people on from the magnet movement asks them questions and they come out sounding not very educated. And so question to you being immersed in that group is, im sure there are people there who are not looking, who are not stupid and who are very educated and who who still take an attitude that is contrary to the education they that theyve grown up with. And i was wondering if you could speak to that in terms of, you know, hes showing people of one on one side of the story. Hes not showing that there are people on the other side of the story when you so the way that ive explain and trying to reconcile the thought process of a smart person who is in the maga world versus like someone in the Democratic Party or in the media trying to understand it is that its like trying to explain aerodynamics to fish . Well, like the fish like there is a completely different universe of like first assumption things, arguments, political understanding of how the how rights should work, how the founders and what they believed that conservatives and republicans operate in and have learned since they first entered college. And if you follow chain of logic throughout like anything that they may be bombarded with from the outside, the best way you could describe it is no. The entire point of being conserve is to prevent change from happening because. Change is very bad. And here is edmund burke us why it is. I think its the easiest way to do so. So moment to understand it. So the moment that someone else comes in and says like here is something that could challenge your assumptions, you have to understand that way to process it will not go. This is like, heres the thing, believe its wrong. Oh, maybe thing i believe is wrong. Its youre telling me that this is wrong. Have an agenda. Im not going to believe im going to kind of figure out my way around it and i think that makes it for me as a journalist to engage like republicans and, maga, maga folks just i can follow that chain and, not like push back. And im just like, all right, take me to crazytown. Lets go. All right, so were going have to leave it with that is the last comment. Thank you, tina. So i want to thank i want to thank our authors today for their ill remind you, the book sales. They were the authors signing will be at the sale signing area and also Martin Luther king jr who said we live together as brothers or sisters or we perish as fools. Thank you very