Weekly Roundup: Epstein, ICE & the Super Bowl Culture War: What MAGA Prioritizes

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi, author of American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America Into a Monarchy, founder of Axis Mundi Media, here today with my co-host—

Dan Miller: Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College. Glad to be with you, Brad.

Brad: Glad to be with you too, Dan. We're reaching — it's the day before Valentine's Day, and there's a lot to talk about. So we're gonna get into Pam Bondi's fiery appearance before a congressional committee, and her back and forth with various congressional members, and what that reveals about the administration's approach to the Epstein files, to protecting vulnerable people, and her role — not only as Attorney General, but as one of the key players in the anti-Christian bias Task Force. We'll then head back to the Twin Cities, where clergy and faith leaders are really leading the charge and putting their faith and bodies in the streets between their neighbors and ICE. Finally, we'll go to the fallout from Bad Bunny's epic performance at the Super Bowl, check in with White Santa, aka Megyn Kelly, and some of the others that had a hard time, along with a white nationalist who was nominated to a top post at the State Department and his really revealing and sad explanation as to why we need to defend what he calls white culture. Lots to talk about. Let's go.

Brad: All right, Dan. I always tell my students, February is one of the hardest months, because most months of the year it's like summer or spring, or there's a holiday — there's a Thanksgiving, a Halloween, there's a Hanukkah, there's a Christmas. January, you're still hungover from all that, and you get all these Monday holidays off, we get MLK Day off. And February is that month. It's the worst weather of the year, and the only major holiday is Valentine's, which for some people is fun, and for most people makes them really sad or anxious or lonely or nervous or something. And so to me, February 13 is a pretty apt day to do this weekly roundup on Friday the 13th.

Dan: The good news, Brad — and I don't know if you've thought about this yet — is that there's also going to be a Friday the 13th in March, because February is the month that keeps on giving.

Brad: Yeah, there it is. There you go. See, this is why people turn to Dan Miller for expert commentary. Okay. Pam Bondi, Attorney General, appeared before a congressional committee this week, and the news clips went everywhere. She did appear — I will say — unhinged, volatile. She did a lot of yelling and a lot of trying to basically accuse whatever congressperson was asking her questions of wrongdoing or failure. She called people losers. She called Jerry Nadler a loser. This was kind of her tactic. But I want to play for you to start a campaign ad that Pam Bondi had when she was running for office in Florida, where she promises to do nothing else but protect children from trafficking.

[Clip plays — Pam Bondi campaign ad]

Brad: If you fast forward to this week, some of the Epstein survivors were in the room, and they stood up, and Pam Bondi was asked to turn and acknowledge them. Others acknowledged them, and there was a sense of real heaviness to the moment, because these were people who had been trafficked and hurt and groomed and abused by Jeffrey Epstein. Pam Bondi refused to look back. She did not acknowledge them, and she would not look at them, which seemed to be telling. Here is a clip from one of the exchanges that Bondi had in the committee regarding Howard Lutnick and his involvement with Epstein before he was appointed to Trump's administration.

[Clip plays — congressional exchange with Pam Bondi]

Brad: So Bondi there is asked if the President knew about Lutnick's association with Epstein before he was appointed to his Cabinet position, and she says, "Shame on you. I can't believe you would ask me this." In other moments, when asked questions such as this, she pointed to the fact that the Dow was over 50,000 and — why in the heck are we talking about Epstein and all of this when the economy is so good? You can start to see the hypocrisy here in clear view. I want to play one more clip, and I think this will really highlight what we talk about on this show — which is the religious elements of all of these political phenomena. That is an exchange between Bondi and Jared Moskowitz about Trump and his appearance in the Epstein files.

[Clip plays — Jared Moskowitz and Pam Bondi exchange]

Brad: Moskowitz says — and this is a pretty good line, I have to admit, Dan — Trump appears more in the Epstein files than God does in the book about God. And he holds up the Bible, and it's a Trump Bible. And Bondi does this thing — and if you watch the video, she does look rattled. She does not look like she's on offense. She looks like a person who's had a long day, is tired, is not on her game, and is sort of at the end of her rope. But one of her argumentative, rhetorical things that she grafts on to respond to Moskowitz is: "I don't think there's anything funny about making fun of the Bible. Shame on you."

And there's just something really telling here. So let me give 30 more seconds, I'll throw it to you and see what you think about the Pam Bondi experience this week. Pam Bondi ran in Florida on protecting children. The people who are now adults who were trafficked as children were standing behind her, and she wouldn't acknowledge them. She was asked about Cabinet members who are associated with the man who trafficked children, and she won't answer. And then Moskowitz holds up this Bible, and it is the Trump Bible. And some of you know what that is and some of you don't — back before the election, Trump sold Bibles with his signature and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in them. Yeah. And he sold them for $40. I've talked about this on the show. I went on TV and talked about it. To me, it was so disgusting and blasphemous, but it was also emblematic of Trump. Unlike the Gideons, we're not going to give you the Bible for free. I mean, you could just go — I mean, we always hear about how rich Trump is. If the Bible is so important, go hand out the Trump Bible on the corner. Send out MAGA nation on the corner of every street in America handing out the Bible. That's not what happened. They were $40. They were $60. They were whatever.

Okay, and a man who's willing to sell you a Bible with his name on it — and Moskowitz is holding it up, and Bondi's like, "I don't think it's funny to make fun of the Bible" — I don't think Moskowitz is making fun of the Bible. I think Moskowitz is making two points. I think he's saying: your president has already denigrated the Holy Scripture by turning it into a commodity he could sell alongside his steaks and his shoes and everything else. And you — the head of the anti-Christian bias Task Force, the person who's supposed to stand up for Christian values, Christian morals, Christian ideas in the administration — you won't even look at the women who suffered abuse at the hands of the most notorious sex trafficker in modern memory. And finally, Donald Trump appears in the files of that sex trafficker more times than the name God does in the Bible. That is a really, really illustrating way to look at it. I got more to say — what do you think?

Dan: I'm trying to think of where to even pick it up. There's so many elements. I mean, one — I think the overarching thing is, you talk about Bondi looking tired, unhinged, thrown off — this was like one of many examples you could find of people trying to do what Trump does, and it just doesn't work as well when other people do it. Like, Trump calls everybody losers and all that kind of stuff, and then other people try and it doesn't work. And Bondi is that. But I think we're also seeing Bondi getting pressure from all sides — real pressure from congressional oversight, including in some cases, even Republicans who are starting to ask questions about various things, whether it's Epstein, whether it's the occasional Republican defector on ICE tactics and what have you.

But I think she's also on Trump's hot seat, because everything in Minnesota is blowing up and blowing back on the administration. And I think Trump is never going to say that he made a mistake or that he ordered things or whatever. So I think there's that. And that bears watching — how much pressure is she under from all sides? This isn't limited to Trump, but whenever the President has to come out and tell you that he supports a Cabinet member, it's usually a sign that the Cabinet member is in trouble. And so Trump has had to say this about Bondi. So I think that's just worth watching generally.

We've also seen her look more gathered in these hearings — more sort of prepared, more put together, more ready for these responses. So that was notable.

I think the selling Bibles thing is so emblematic to me of all the Christian Americans who support Trump who — it's an old translation, but there's a translation of a passage that says you can't serve both God and mammon, God and money. And of course that's what Trump does. But think about a Trump-branded Bible — branding the Bible and getting a bunch of free documents you can pay a bunch of money for, like free stuff. If you want to find the Bible, you can read the whole thing online. You don't need to pay for it. You could get copies you don't have to pay for. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are not expensive documents. But as you say, Trump's gonna profit on it. And I just find something so emblematic of him cashing in on Christian faith.

I think it's just this metaphor for MAGA world that has bought into this vision of Christianity as all of these things. And then — as you say — to bring that in around Christian values and the trafficking and whatever. Republicans have loved for a long time, and conservatives too, to talk about protecting kids when it serves their interests, but not when it doesn't. So let's think about QAnon — the QAnon conspiracy was about trafficking at the heart of it. But as long as Democrats and the deep state were the bad guys, it was really popular, and now it's kind of fading. Pizzagate was about conspiracies about Democrats and child trafficking. The Epstein files, when Trump was not in office, were a nice rallying cry that everybody could get behind about protecting the kids. And now that Trump is there, not only is Pam Bondi doing everything she can to minimize the effect of this requirement to release the Epstein files — as you say, she won't look them in the eye, the people she said she was going to defend.

And you could go down the list of policy positions. Essentially eliminating people's insurance — who's that going to hurt? It's going to hurt kids. Taking away different kinds of social safety net programs — who's that going to hurt? It's going to hurt kids. Targeting transgender minors — who's that going to hurt? It's aimed at kids explicitly. So I think that's another piece of this — to recognize that the GOP does not care about kids. They will call for protecting children again when it serves their interests, when it'll get Pam Bondi in office, or when they're not in power and they can say that Democrats are doing bad things. But now that they have the mechanisms of power, as you say, she won't even turn around and look at the people who are right there. She won't even pay lip service to serving the interests of children and protecting them. I think there's a lot of layers of stuff going on with Pam Bondi in these hearings.

Brad: One of the things I was trying to say last week, and I didn't really succeed in the way I wanted to, was that you and I grew up in the heyday of the anti-abortion movement — that was really spearheaded by evangelical Christians, Catholic Christians and so on. That of course continues today. And I think that one of the things we've wrestled with on this show, and that you and I have wrestled with for 20 years now, is all of the rhetoric about saving lives, the sanctity of life, protecting children, protecting the unborn, the most vulnerable. We've tried to bring to the fore on this show, for anyone who would listen, that the rhetoric of protecting the unborn and the most vulnerable doesn't match up with how you treat actual living human beings — as soon as that child is in the world and takes its first breath and is given over to original sin and its fallen nature, the care seems to stop. Whether that is in social safety net programs, whether that's in pre-K, whether that's in ways to help mothers and families, whether economically, whether in terms of education programs, whether that's in terms of health care — we have tried to reckon with that.

The Epstein files and Pam Bondi not being able to look at women who have suffered abuse at the hands of Epstein — to me, that whole conversation and effort to show that the so-called pro-life movement doesn't really care about humans in total is right there. Because Pam Bondi, if you just say the word abortion, will give you 20 fiery minutes of how abortion is murder, abortion is holocaust, it has to stop now, and so on and so forth. We have to protect life. We have to protect the children. And then when you look behind you to women who are grown adults that were trafficked as children, she cannot even acknowledge them. She continues to serve the president who's in the files of that sex trafficker and abuser — to quote Jamie Raskin — one million times.

I'll just say briefly — and I was talking about this with a friend yesterday, Dan — in Europe, you're seeing resignation after resignation of officials who are now known to be in the Epstein files. Elected officials, politicians, corporate leaders. And in this country, that is not happening. Whether that is Elon Musk, whether that is Howard Lutnick, whether that is Peter Thiel, whether that is anybody — we're not seeing that. And it comes directly from the fact that the President is in there more than anyone, and that Christians like Pam Bondi are protecting him at every turn.

So I guess what I'm trying to get at — and I'll be quiet, and then we can take a break and go to Minnesota — is every effort we've made to show that "pro-life" doesn't mean life in total explodes in this collision of Pam Bondi in this hearing, not being able to look in the eye sex-trafficked women who were trafficked as children, while being the anti-Christian bias Task Force spokesperson and one of the figureheads of the anti-abortion movement.

Dan: There's polling showing that Republican voters are starting to not care so much about the Epstein files now that it's their people who are in power, it's their people who are implicated — like, oh, maybe it's not so important to turn them over. You talk about — as you say, not just us, anybody who's a critic of the right has said for decades — don't give me the pro-life stuff, don't give me the sanctity of life stuff, unless you're going to talk about the fullness of life. I can disagree with Catholic social thought at various points, but they're at least consistent. They oppose the death penalty, they support social safety net programs, they oppose abortion — there's a consistency there.

Brad: The death penalty — who's put more people up for execution than anyone? Trump in a second term.

Dan: Exactly. But what is the right really worked up about this week? A guy speaking Spanish at the halftime show. Like, what matters more — the trafficked women, trafficked children who are now grown adults, as you say — or an entertainment event that nobody was forced to watch? If you were to just map the time and energy that the right has spent in the last week or so on this issue, we see where the priorities are. And it is not with Epstein, or bringing people to justice, or trafficked children, or things that matter.

Brad: We're going to come back to all that. Let's take a break. Be right back.

Brad: All right, Dan, let's head to the Twin Cities. And I just want to set this up by saying that what the administration is saying — and what Tom Homan is saying — is that the operations in the Twin Cities are winding down, and there's going to be disengagement. And like a lot of people have said on Bluesky and on social media, we will believe that when the people on the ground say that. When the activists, the neighbors, the clergy, the organizers — when they say ICE is no longer around, we will believe it — not when Tom Homan says it. Because Tom Homan and Donald Trump want you to look away from the Twin Cities while they continue to ravage neighborhoods and kidnap people and destroy communities. So I'll set it up that way and tell us what's happening on the ground there with faith leaders.

Dan: Well, we've talked about this some. We talked about faith leaders being pepper-sprayed and being arrested and being assaulted by ICE, and we've talked for years about faith leaders providing sanctuary in churches and doing all of these kinds of things. But there's an article in Axios this week by Josephine Walker that's worth noting. She summarized it this way: "Christian clergy are deploying spiritual infrastructure — from organizing prayer circles to acting as human shields — to resist the Trump administration's immigration agenda."

The reason this struck me this week is that the people who are talking about this said that for them, they find Christian nationalism incompatible with their faith. So it's a different articulation of Christianity. That's fairly obvious — you've got some Christians who are cheering this on, and you've got other Christians who are on the front lines feeling some of the brunt of the ICE response. But they said in the article that it's about, quote, resisting state-authorized violence. And I think that gets at a fundamentally different Christian worldview from the MAGA Christian nationalists on the right.

The article title said it — for these Christians, Jesus's teachings leave Christians no choice but to resist ICE.

And I think two points come together here. One is a statement I've made before — I made it years and years ago, kind of off the cuff, kind of in jest, but it might be one of the better ideas I've had. When somebody asked, what is the difference between liberal Protestants and conservative Protestants, or mainline Protestants and evangelical Protestants — the person was asking because if you name certain theological doctrines, they may say the same thing. They might all affirm the Nicene Creed, or hold that God exists as a Trinity, or that Jesus is incarnate, or something like that. What I said was: liberal Christians read Jesus, and conservative Christians read Paul. And more and more, I think there's something to that.

The reason I say this is — we talked about Mike Johnson, and remember that Mike Johnson and MAGA Christianity is about defending state-authorized violence. That's what this is. When he cites all the stuff supporting ICE, when he cites law and order, whatever — they're using Christianity to define and authorize state-authored violence. This goes back to the first Trump administration. This is not new with the second Trump administration, but I think it's important to think about how it's constructed.

So if you listen to what Mike Johnson says and what the administration says — I say this all the time, and it's in the code we look at — the people we look at are not unique. Mike Johnson is not special. He's not unique. He doesn't have some special Christian insight. He is saying the same thing that I don't know — thousands of Christian pastors say, that millions of American Christians would say. What are they going to cite? They're going to cite Romans 13. They're going to cite Paul in Romans, who says that all human authorities are put in place by God, and so if you oppose human authorities, you're opposing God. That's what he's going to cite. They're going to go to the Hebrew Bible and cite theocracy. They're going to look at a nation with God. They're going to cite walls — Jerusalem had walls, yeah. So it's a — you know, Jerusalem wasn't a nation, it's not a modern nation state, virtually every city in the ancient world had walls — whatever. The point is, that's what he's going to cite.

But you talked about this last week, Brad — when somebody asked him about Jesus, he said, well, that's personal morality. That's not about the state. That's about how we're supposed to live as just private individuals. Unless you're a clergy member in Minneapolis who's acting as a private individual, in which case you get pepper-sprayed.

The point is, what does he have to do? He has to wall off — I guess there's a terrible pun in there about walling — but he has to take Jesus and set it aside to construct a Christianity that authorizes state violence. And the contrast we see here — and I think it's worth highlighting — is those Christians on the ground whose vision of Christianity says: nope. When it talks about loving your neighbor, these are our neighbors. When it talks about defending the least of these, these are the least of these. If we're going to talk about human dignity and the sanctity of human life, we have to mean all lives. And so we're going to come out here, we're going to do this.

But I think it's important for people to recognize that if you ask those Christians for their rationale, give them the Bible verse — Mike Johnson is going to give you Romans 13 and a bunch of Bible passages about walls, or Joshua taking over the promised land, or something militaristic and theocratic. These are the Christians who are going to quote what Jesus says in the Gospels. And I think we have to understand that notion.

And I think — you get the emails, I get the emails — sometimes people say, you talk a lot about Christian nationalists, you don't say enough about the Christians who are opposing them. They're there. They are there, and they are on the front lines. And MAGA will do everything they can to discredit that as an authentic form of Christianity, despite the fact that they're the ones who are saying — yeah, they reference the red letters. For those who don't know, in a lot of Bible translations, all the words of Jesus are in red letters. The progressive Christians are the ones quoting Jesus. And it's telling when Mike Johnson, self-appointed spokesperson for Christian America, has to basically say: we need to ignore Jesus. If we want to understand ICE and border policy, we just got to leave Jesus out of it. Let's just leave the Jesus out of our Christianity.

That was something that struck me this week, reading this article and hearing these faith people saying, the teachings of Jesus require that we oppose this. And I think that's a real difference. Because Mike Johnson is saying the teachings of Jesus are irrelevant to this. When it says "love your neighbor," it literally means I borrowed my neighbor's lawnmower and I ran over a rock and chipped the blade and I better fix that up, because he's my neighbor, I got to be nice to him. It's not really about helping the oppressed or the marginalized or anything else. Just some thoughts — and I think things that stand out this week as a really useful contrast between these Christian visions of a so-called Christian America.

Brad: You know, sometimes when we do this show, it's Friday, and I've already done like two or three podcasts that week, written a bunch of stuff, taken care of my kids who've been throwing chicken nuggets at my face, and I'm just tired. And I sometimes worry when we go into recording this that I'm like, man, I don't know if I got it today. And then Dan Miller — you know, as the kids say, you spit out a bar — and it's like when you don't want to go to the gym, but halfway into the workout you're feeling great and you're like, why would I ever not come to the gym? That's how I feel right now. Because what you just said is so important and so clarifying.

Conservative Christian nationalists love to quote Paul. Progressive Christians love to quote Jesus. And that doesn't mean — if you're a progressive Christian and you're an Episcopalian priest or a UCC person — we're not saying you don't read Galatians or Romans or Colossians or Ephesians. It just means there's this pattern here, that the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the Beatitudes — these seem to be at the core of the progressive Christian vision of ethics, state, Christian morality. And then every time you turn to someone like Mike Johnson, it's always Paul in Romans 13 without Jesus.

And I'll give you a really good example from this week. Russell Moore — the guy — I don't think either of us feels like we agree with Russell Moore on all things or most things, but Russell Moore did take a stand in the Southern Baptist Convention, he stood up for sex abuse survivors, and he's basically no longer welcome there. He wrote in Christianity Today — again, a publication that I don't think either of us is reading all the time or really sees as where we align politically or theologically. But he wrote there this week about what the Epstein files are really about. And one of the claims he made, Dan, is that Christians use Romans 13 to, quote, wave away state violence, and in doing so they do the opposite of what Paul intended. Now, we can debate what Paul intended — that's a whole other podcast. But there's a piece at a site called Protestia by David Morrill, who really hates this, and he wrote this week: "My charitable response to Russell Moore: Listen, idiot — God-ordained state violence is exactly what Romans 13 is about. It's the point. Why do you think that God's word describes what the governing authorities bear as the sword?"

This is just a whole can of worms that goes right back to what you were saying. You said progressive Christians primarily are quoting Jesus, and Christian nationalists are primarily quoting Paul in opposition to Jesus. And I would take it a step further. I'm wondering what you think. I think the progressive Christian pastors in Minneapolis and St. Paul and around the country — in Chicago and other places — are basically saying: I don't think Jesus wanted there to be state-ordained violence. And as a member of the clergy, my job is to combat state-ordained violence at every turn, over and against empire. That's what I'm supposed to do. Christian nationalists are saying: state-ordained violence is exactly what God wants. That is part of our worldview. And if we have to sideline Jesus and go to Paul and Joshua and Nehemiah to get there, no problem.

Additionally — and I'll take this another step further — the Christian nationalist wants you to think the teachings of Jesus are about the individual, and the teachings of Paul are about the collective. That the teachings of Jesus are about you and your neighbor and that lawnmower, and the teachings of Paul are about statecraft, foreign policy, defending borders. And that is some more of the gymnastics at play here. I'm wondering what you think of those two distinctions — and I'm sure I'm going to get emails.

Dan: I agree with them. And I'm, you know, as long as we're going to be provocative and see where we go — number one, this isn't even provocative: Jesus was executed in an act of state violence. The Roman authorities who executed him did not believe that his teachings were just for individuals, or they would not have executed him. They didn't think he was going to overthrow the Empire or anything — but he went around talking about the Son of God and all of this, and Caesar gets that title. If they had thought he was just talking to a bunch of individuals and telling them to go live good private lives, they would not have had to execute him. They executed him because he formed a mass movement that was viewed as seditious. They killed him.

So there's that. There's the obvious point that always comes up — like, well, who's executing state violence? When it's Joe Biden calling somebody in, I don't hear all the right-wing Christians saying, well, you know, it's the state, it's ordained by God. So there's always that basic hypocrisy.

Critics could also say — and I know some people like Paul, I pretty much don't, but whatever — Paul didn't actually know Jesus, and maybe it would have been better if he did. He's got this whole really suspect story about why he's an apostle. He's like, I heard a voice in the sky, and everybody else was like, we heard thunder, I don't know.

Brad: I can hear the typing. I can hear people typing emails.

Dan: The emails are coming. What I'm saying is, if we want to be critical, we can. But here's the more serious point. It has been for a very long time a Protestant principle that Jesus is the principle of interpretation for the Bible. That was the whole point of being a Christian. The Bible is not self-interpreting. Intelligent Christians have known since the beginning that the Bible doesn't speak with one voice on all things, and you have to make decisions about which passages you're going to prioritize and why, and which ones you're going to use as the interpretive lens for looking at others. And a standard Protestant principle was: Jesus is the principle of interpretation. And so if you're going to start with Paul, that's a mistake. You have to read Paul through the teachings of Jesus. So whatever the hell Paul's talking about in Romans 13 — and following state authority and whatever — you have to read that understanding that this is supposed to be promulgating the teachings of Jesus, and that has to moderate it.

But if some people want a more radical critique of Paul, they can say: Paul's a Roman citizen, and maybe it's pretty nice and easy, if you're a Roman citizen, to say these authorities are instituted by God. Paul has all kinds of interests in doing this, et cetera.

The point is, it's more complicated than just "the Bible supports state violence." And so if they want to come out and quote it, it's fine. I can play the theology game too. I don't play it often, but I can. And it's just pretty bad theology. It's bad Protestant theology, bad Catholic theology. It's just self-serving white nationalists. If the state can serve our interests, we're going to do that. And as I have been saying, as we talk about Josh Hawley's book — we can just feed that into the Bible and pretend to find it there so that we can give biblical sanction to anything that we want to say or do for ourselves.

Brad: All right — for any of you out there who are worried about us talking about the more progressive side of Christianity, the non-Christian-nationalist side of Christianity — might be a better way to talk about it — on Sunday you'll hear me interview Andrew Whitehead, who is a Christian, about ableism and MAHA. And then on Monday you will hear a postlude to American Unexceptionalism with Matt Taylor and Susie Hayward. Reverend Susie Hayward is one of the clergy who has been on the front lines in the Twin Cities — one of the people Dan is talking about, one of the first people there at many of the scenes that have played out tragically in the Twin Cities. So Reverend Hayward will talk to you on Monday directly about everything that's happening in the Twin Cities and what she has seen as a faith leader on the ground — with other Christians, other people of faith, people of no faith, people who are humanist. The neighborly networks of the Twin Cities — Susie will talk about all of that. So you will hear that on Monday.

All right, final thoughts on this before we go to the Super Bowl stuff and Bad Bunny. I just want to touch real quick on the theology point you made — and correct me if I'm wrong, Dan, my theology might be rusty. There's a logocentric hermeneutics, or Jesus-centered hermeneutics, meaning that you've got this book, the Bible — 66 books, 67 if you're using the Catholic Bible — but we've got books that come from disparate places, disparate times, over millennia. The Song of Solomon is an erotic love poem. The first 12 chapters of Genesis are ancient mythology. The Psalms are poetry. We've got the book of Joshua, which is violent to the hilt. Then we've got the Gospels. Then we've got Titus, Philippians, Second Peter — different genres, different books. How do you interpret all that? Well, one of the answers is you take the words of Jesus, and everything else in the Bible has to be interpreted through those words as the hermeneutical key — the decoder ring, the skeleton key, the way that you understand everything else.

And what I think you're saying, Dan, is Mike Johnson is representative of a type of Christianity that says we are going to do everything we can to interpret the Bible despite Jesus. We are not red letter Christians. We are white letter Christians, because we need to use everything we have to make this about white people and defending them. And that means we have to probably cut out Jesus — as you say, the man who was executed as a matter of state-sanctioned violence.

And I'll just throw in one more thing if you want to touch on it. You, along with Jan-Jan Lin and others, know way more about the book of Revelation than I do. But one of the things about the book of Revelation is it is not about the individual. It is about empire and the church standing against the state-sanctioned violence of the empire. If I'm not wildly mistaken.

Dan: Yeah — to your point about Revelation, the New Testament ends with a book that positions Rome — the occupant, the power, the global power that the people in that world knew — positions Rome as the tool of Satan, as this satanic mechanism opposing God and so forth. So yeah, it's just a deep irony when you have Christians who insist that their Christianity is about sidelining Jesus. It's just an interesting phenomenon to say the least.

Let's dive into the Super Bowl. So this week — everybody probably knows — the Super Bowl happened. The Patriots did not perform well, Brad. I'm just stating that as a fact, I'm not going to go any further. But along with that, everybody knows there was the announcement that Bad Bunny would be headlining the Super Bowl halftime show. I think this was back in September or October. Immediately, people on the right were upset. Turning Point USA said they would set up counter-programming, and all the language — he's a fake American, he's this, he's Puerto Rican, he speaks Spanish, performs in Spanish, and these were the issues. He's not white, and he performs in Spanish — ergo, he's not really an American, even though he's Puerto Rican and an American citizen.

So TPUSA, led by Kid Rock, had counter-programming — with Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett — that garnered something like five to six million views live.

Brad: Go ahead. I got things I'm holding my tongue. Go ahead.

Dan: For those who are keeping score, Bad Bunny set a record with like 135 million viewers or something like that. A few notable points. I read a sympathetic account that described the TPUSA event as being like an old-school CMT special. And it was not a bad description. It had all the Christian America notes that you would expect — small-town nostalgia, some Jesus, an anti-trans line in one of the songs, all the rhetoric. There were other issues — did Kid Rock lip sync or not? It was supposed to be streamed on X, and they couldn't get the licensing rights, which I find weird, given it's TPUSA and Elon Musk and whatever. People can chase that down if they want.

So the event happens. And here's what I think is interesting. Number one — Brad, you can walk us through some of the social media stuff and the outcry about this — the level of just apoplectic anger on the right that somebody is singing in Spanish. Donald Trump said, "Nobody understands a word this guy is saying." Some people do, Donald. Number two, it means Donald Trump's watching the halftime show at the Super Bowl, and not the TPUSA counter-programming. Which is its own thing.

There was not widespread anger about Green Day performing before the Super Bowl. Lady Gaga made kind of a surprise appearance and was phenomenal. I don't hear the same level of outrage about Lady Gaga. It's all about a person speaking Spanish who's not white — that's the whole issue. So much so that you have congresspeople saying they need to have hearings about it.

I think also the language of victimization here — you had TPUSA saying "we're giving viewers a choice," "how dare the NFL force us to" — and you're like, dude, it's entertainment. You don't have to watch it. Just turn it off. Go do something else for 20 minutes. Refill the snacks. Do whatever you want. Nobody's making you watch it. The victimization after — when they realized you had six million people versus 135 million — you had people saying, "Well, of course, we couldn't compete with that. It was never a fair playing field anyway." Kid Rock did this weird thing where he like, tried to backhandedly critique the performer by saying, like, oh, he's — "I think it's just bad that they put him in that position. Poor kid just didn't know what he was getting into." Yeah — poor guy, 135 million viewers. That's rough.

I think it just ties in with so many of the anxieties and the cultural anger and the animosity toward this. TPUSA has already announced they're going to do this again next year — this triumphal notion that they're going to dethrone whoever the performer is. I've got more thoughts about how this ties in more broadly with some other things on the MAGA right and the world of art. But your thoughts or reflections on the counter-programming and what this tells us about the MAGA movement and what matters to them?

Brad: All right, let's take a break. Come back and I'll give you my take. I got a lot to say. Be right back.

Brad: All right, y'all. Couple of notes on the halftime show stuff, and I want to go right to Megyn Kelly.

I think that the halftime show is increasingly, in our review, something some of you are done thinking about and I get it. But I think there are a couple things to hover on. So I said earlier — I said this last week — that the hypocrisy around Christian values is just starting to be so visible, the veil is so off, that it's hard not to just stop pretending to play the little game of going along with it — that this is somehow a Christian movement, a family movement, a kid movement.

And here's Bad Bunny performing. Just for the numbers — why would the NFL do this, Dan? You know what? The NFL is really good at making money. Go look up the profits of the National Football League, and you will see how good the NFL is at making money. Bad Bunny was about making money. This is the league that banned Colin Kaepernick. Do you think this league is out here trying to make sure that we all appreciate Latino culture, or that we recognize that Black lives matter? They're not.

Dan: You know that, you know that — you've gone through the looking glass when the accusation is that the NFL is woke. That's just not an accusation anybody's going to credibly make about the NFL.

Brad: I would love Colin Kaepernick to jump in on whether or not the NFL is concerned with social justice. Why did they have Bad Bunny on? He had the number one artist spot on Spotify in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2025 — his 2025 album won Album of the Year at the Grammys. His music generated 19.8 billion streams in 2025. I could go on, but he's basically surpassed Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, and others in terms of popularity.

But then you turn over — and I said this last week, I'll be brief about it — you turn over to Kid Rock. And Dan, I can't wait next year to watch Creed at the halftime show. Not only because I'm sure they will be the headliner of the TPUSA Christian family faith event, but the lead singer of Creed once appeared in a sex tape with Kid Rock, the leader of this year's all-American family-friendly Christian entertainment. So that'll be a nice little bit of symmetry — have both of the male talent from the porno as the halftime talent. That's really a nice way to stitch it together.

And some of Kid Rock's most famous, family-friendly, Christian-values-oriented songs include "Balls in Your Mouth" and "Cadillac Pussy." Did you listen to those at youth group, Dan? Because I never heard those at youth group when we were there.

But more importantly — from all the Kid Rock stuff and his lip-syncing and all of that — is Megyn Kelly's reaction. And I think Megyn Kelly really distilled everything about this halftime show. She says that she was moved to tears by his performance. She claimed she was just blown away by the patriotism and the American pride. She went on Piers Morgan a couple of days later and explained why she was so upset about Bad Bunny being at the halftime show, and I'm just going to play it for you.

[Clip plays — Megyn Kelly on Piers Morgan]

Brad: So, first of all, direct quote: "The whole show in Spanish is a middle finger to the rest of America." It's not. It's not a middle finger. No one is attacking you.

Dan: And the rest of America loves it. That's why everybody listens to it. It's why he won a Grammy. It's why he's the top of Spotify.

Brad: 19.8 billion streams. People like this, Megyn. When they listen to this, even if they don't speak fluent Spanish, they seem to like it. Top performer on Spotify 2020, 2021, 2022, 2025.

She says, "Who gives a damn, we have 40 million Spanish speakers." And if you include people who speak Spanish but that is not the language they speak primarily at home, it gets you closer to 50, or some estimates to 60 million. Okay.

So she then makes a jump: "This is supposed to be a unifying event." No, it's not. No one ever said that. When Shakira performed, was that a unifying event? When Bruno Mars performed with Beyoncé and Chris Martin, was that a unifying event? Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg — not a unifying event. I don't think there are a lot of people not into Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. But she's imposing that on the halftime event in order to make her case as to why somebody who's performing in Spanish should not be there.

And then she really goes. This is as close as you're going to get to someone in mainstream media going on a rant that really tells you what she thinks. "This is supposed to be a unifying event for the country, not for the Latinos, not for one small group, but for the country." Latinos are not a small group, Megyn. Okay? A, it's not supposed to be a unifying event. B, Latinos are not a small group.

Then she says, "We don't need a Black national anthem. We don't need a Spanish-speaking, non-English-performing performer." Why not? How did this hurt you so much that you have to say this?

And Piers Morgan asks her, is there an official language? And she gets all offended. And then she says — and this is where I think she really spills the beans — she tells Piers Morgan that England ceded their country to, quote, "a bunch of radical Muslims." And then she says, "We're not allowing that here, whether it's Hispanic, whether it's Muslim, it's not happening in the United States of America."

And I just hate to say this to you, but this is a multi-pluralist, multi-ethnic, multi-religious place. It always has been, and it always will be. A third of the enslaved people were Muslim. The people that built the railroads, the people that built so many of the institutions in this country, the people that made the culture here — they were white, they were also Latino, they were also Asian, they were also Black, they were Muslim, they were Hindu, they were Catholic, they were Protestant, they were Jewish. That is how this country has been. And you can give me all of your false David Barton history and I will not accept it.

And she just talks about how "this American football event is ours." And that word, Dan — as soon as she said it: ours. When you listen to this clip in total, you see a white woman saying this is ours. You are allowed to be second-tier, Kid Rock. "They put him in that position. The poor kid." He's the top position — you're allowed to be second-tier. You're allowed to be underneath us. You're allowed to perform at your special performance that is not nationwide. You're allowed to perform in your neighborhood or with your audience. But this is ours. Old-fashioned American pie. And then she says there should be meatloaf, some fried chicken, and an English-speaking performer. That's what the Super Bowl should be.

And Dan, this is the extinction-event expression of a white person saying: I am so threatened that there would be different kinds of foods, different kinds of cultures, different kinds of people, that I would not see a blonde lady like me on the TV. That is the equivalent of white erasure. That's the equivalent of you taking away my country and my culture. And this is as close as you're going to get to someone like Megyn Kelly saying the quiet part out loud. Thoughts on this.

Dan: First of all, I think we should just start calling her Karen Kelly at this point. Second of all, who the hell eats meatloaf at a Super Bowl party? Like, seriously. And that actually gets to the point you're talking about. Quote-unquote minorities — it's all fine as long as they're in the right social order. So if we're talking about taquitos that you warm up in the microwave or the oven, yeah, bring it on. Some salsa, chips, some guacamole, absolutely. Nachos. Because that's what that community can give us.

Do I hear Megyn Kelly or all the white people complaining about how many Black people were playing the game? Nope. Why? Because that's a social role. That's okay. We can have Black athletes. We can have athletes of color. We can have entertainers who are not white, as long as they don't have that platform. As you say, out loud, this is a hierarchical society. And anybody who's here who's not white, who isn't this kind of Christian — you are here at our discretion and subject to our approval. And if you step outside of the roles we say it's okay for you to play, watch out. That's what's provoking the response. And we see it on full display with Megyn Kelly.

Brad: All right, let's go to something else that I think drives this home even further. There is a man named Jeremy Carl who has been nominated to a State Department post — a pretty important State Department post. And he's been in front of the Senate this week. It looks like he's not going to make it. There are Republican senators who are going to vote against him and not allow his nomination to go through. But he was questioned by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut this week, and I want to play that for you now. Because I think this is actually what Megyn Kelly wanted to say but didn't. And I don't know what's in Megyn Kelly's mind, so don't sue me. But when I listen to him, I hear the more distilled version of white replacement theory.

[Clip plays — Senator Chris Murphy questioning Jeremy Carl]

Brad: So Murphy asks him: how is white culture being erased? And this is a guy who is part of the Claremont Institute, and he has posted hundreds and hundreds of things. He erased like 500 posts about white replacement theory in hopes of getting confirmed by the Senate. So that tells you something about him. And Murphy's like, tell me how white people are being replaced, tell me how white culture is being erased.

He stumbles so badly here, Dan — for a guy who cannot stop talking about how white people are being erased. He's saying things like, "the Scotch-Irish military culture." Like — what? Okay, cool. And then he goes: "Well, you could have Italians, you could have Irish — those are more distinct, and I'm worried about them." And Murphy's like, dude, that's ethnic identity, that's not white. That's Irish, that's Italian. A hundred years ago — if you knew your history, Jeremy — those people were not considered white because they were Catholic. So you're saying that the people who were not once considered white a hundred years ago, their culture being something something something is the proof that white people are being erased in general? People that were not even considered white when your grandparents were alive?

And then he says, "I would say that the white church is very different than the Black church in terms of its tone and style. On average, foods could often be different. And those — music could be different. And if you look at the halftime show" — he does mention the Super Bowl — and Murphy comes back and is like, "See, you're telling me they're being erased in the sense that we don't have access to white churches or" — I'll just use Megyn Kelly's examples — "we don't have access to meatloaf or fried chicken or apple pie. Is that not available anymore?"

And I guess the point here — and I'll be quiet, Dan, and then we can wrap up — is the claim of white erasure is really the claim that other people would have representation. That they would have a place in the social order, that their culture and food and ideas, their music and garb would be somehow representative of the country. That it would be considered American and not sub-American, not a hyphenated identity. That Bad Bunny is an American. Barack Obama is an American. That the Japanese, the Chinese, the Korean, the Sri Lankan, the Indian, the Black, the Salvadoran, the Mexican — these are Americans. And to me, when Bad Bunny recited every country in North America at the end of the performance, that's part of what he was doing — saying that is America. Thoughts here before we have to go.

Dan: Just again that same sense of — it's not erasure. Like, even the stuff Carl is saying, he's giving examples of like, I don't know, diverse forms of American culture. Cool. I don't know, you don't like going to the Black church? Don't go to the Black church. You don't like spicy Asian food? Don't eat spicy Asian food. You don't want to watch Bad Bunny at the halftime show? Don't. Nobody is threatening America or white culture. It's just that they've got options, and there's other parts of American culture. That's what shows — I think — that the anxiety is not about representation. This is about hegemonic control. American culture should only be white. It's not about erasure, it's about dominance. And I think that's the issue.

Brad: Yeah. There's a whole rant here I'm not going to give, but I'll just reference it — I've given it in previous episodes — that white is a category that means power. And that doesn't mean that Irish means power, or Italian, or Polish, or English. Like Murphy rightly points out, you're talking about ethnic identities. You're talking about people saying, hey, I'm from — my parents or my grandparents came from the Netherlands, and we eat the foods and we have music and songs and fairy tales from the Netherlands, or from England, or from Germany. Okay, yeah, great. That's — but when people start talking about white culture, they're talking about a stitched-together category of those who would be in power.

And you're like, well, what's the difference with Black culture? Well, Black culture is those folks who are unified by the subjugation at the hands of enslavers and hegemonic forces, and a unique cultural synthesis, a unique cultural energy, has arisen from that collective experience. The same goes with Asian American. When I'm at conferences with Asian Americans, we talk all the time about Asian America. The idea of being Asian American is such a weird category, because somebody from Laos and somebody from Japan and somebody from India are coming from way different parts of the world with way different cultures. But Asian American just means that, while we're in this country, the ideas of yellow peril and the Asian horde have captured all of us, and therefore we have shared experiences and shared histories — we find resonances together in terms of our experiences and our place in the United States.

Anyway, there's a lot more to say there. What's your reason for hope?

Dan: Reason for hope this week — I've been watching the Olympics. An Olympic skier, Hunter Hess, at a press conference just made some statements. He said that just because he's wearing the flag doesn't mean he represents everything that's going on in the US, that it's a little hard, there's a lot going on, and he's not the biggest fan of — I think a lot of people aren't. And then said that he's doing this for his family and so forth. He exercised his free speech to say America is a complicated place, and we're all here, we're all wearing the flag and we're all competing, but we have differences.

He was attacked, as one would expect. Donald Trump attacked him, other people in MAGA attacked him — he shouldn't be on the Olympic team, we shouldn't root for him if he doesn't want to be an American. But my real reason for hope was the other athletes who rallied to his defense and just said: you know what, we are a diverse country, and we do have freedom of speech. He said what he said, and that's what it means to be an American. I really felt that this week — watching what he said and the reaction to it and the defense from other athletes.

Brad: I'm going to keep my reason for hope focused on the Twin Cities. I think that when they replaced Bovino with Homan, the media looked away. And I think we've tried to not look away — we've talked about it here today. I will say to you that in addition to those athletes at the Winter Olympics — and there have been others, Chloe Kim talked about it, a number of others — the ordinary people in Minnesota, including the clergy, have made me proud to be an American. And I said that last week, and I'll say it again.

I think it's been hard for a lot of us to find sources of inspiration and pride in the last years. But Matthew Taylor said this on the episode people will hear on Monday: there's a chance you're going to see the Twin Cities in history books as a site of resistance in the ways that we think of other sites of American resistance and protest from throughout our history — whether that's Selma, whether that's Stonewall. And you think, well, Brad, is that an exaggeration? And I would say it is not an exaggeration. If you look at what ordinary Americans are doing in the Twin Cities, the ways that they're standing up for their neighbors, the ways they're standing in between them and state violence, it's not actually an exaggeration. And if you think it's an exaggeration, I would challenge you — go look and investigate exactly what's happening there, and you will walk away realizing it's not. If you want to whisk it away as an exaggeration, it's probably because you don't want to admit how much what's happening there recalls moments from American history that are understood to be watershed times in our resistance to hegemonic forces.

All right, y'all. I want to ask you to do something for me, and that is to subscribe to our newsletter. You can find that in the show notes, you can find it at Substack. We send out something every Sunday now that is full of great stuff — including book lists, things we're reading, things we're studying, YouTube clips of the week, Discord comments, new subscribers, and all of that. If you want to support us, you can subscribe for $3.65 a month, and it really helps us keep the show going. You can come hang out with us in office hours, Discord, bonus episodes, bonus content, ad-free listening, and all of that. And just honestly, it's why we can do this show the way we do it — four times a week, doing the best we can.

Thanks for being here. We hope you enjoy the holiday weekend. Be safe, hug your loved ones, drink water, fight fascism. Until next time. Thanks, Brad.