Weekly Roundup: Talarico and the Pope vs. MAGA Christianity

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi, author of American Caesar, founder of Axis Mundi Media, co-host of this show, here today with my co-host.

Dan Miller: I am Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College. Glad to be with you, Brad. Dismissing the passive-aggressive hair comments you were making earlier, talking about haircuts. I see how it is. I'm still here, you know. I'm still here.

Brad: Before we recorded, I just mentioned I hadn't had a haircut, and you somehow took that as something about you, and that's not — that's your issue, not mine. Friends, this week we're going to talk about what I think emblematizes the discussion and the narrative around American Christianity in the now-set race between Ken Paxton and James Talarico in Texas. We will cover the disgusting ways that the GOP and the Trump administration are talking about Talarico, and set up what this means for not only Texas but for the country and the narrative surrounding the Christian religion here in these United States. We'll then get into the prosecution — persecution — of E. Jean Carroll, and what that tells us about this Trump administration, about its hatred for women, and the fact that revenge is really the only governing policy they have. Finally, we'll dig into the papal encyclical that dropped earlier this week, and there's a lot there — subtle Easter eggs, digs at MAGA and digs at Silicon Valley — that we will uncover. Lots to do. Let's go.

You're right, Dan, we have now a huge race in Texas that I think could swing American politics in ways that we have not seen in a generation — having a Democratic senator in Texas. But I think more than that, as scholars of religion, you and I see in this a showdown between MAGA Christianity and a candidate in Ken Paxton who cheated on his wife repeatedly, humiliated her, has gone to great lengths to provide leniency and pardon and exoneration for child molesters, who is convicted of fraud, all kinds of stuff — and James Talarico, a liberal mainline Christian who makes his faith the center of everything he does. Take us through what you got for this. I got a lot of thoughts too. Let's see what's here.

Dan: Yeah, so a little bit of background, and then I think multiple dimensions to this — the religion dimension, as well as some of the politics of it. So again, after months of not making an endorsement — folks can remember this, right, that Trump for just weeks and months held off endorsing either Cornyn or Paxton — Trump finally bucked the GOP Senate. I think this is another important issue as we go forward as well. Cornyn is a sitting senator in the Senate. That was a redundant statement, but he's in the Senate. He's a sitting senator in the Senate, Brad.

Brad: Dan Miller, Oxford graduate. I'm calling Oxford right now, get you in the newsletter. All right, go ahead.

Dan: Yeah, but the point is that the GOP Senate was pulling for Cornyn. They wanted Trump to endorse Cornyn. He bucked them, went with Paxton, because Paxton's a Trump loyalist and Cornyn is another perceived Trump enemy. And I've read analyses that say it might have helped Paxton. Paxton won in a landslide — and it looked a lot closer than that. So I think the conventional wisdom is correct here, that Trump's endorsement of Paxton fed the flames in a Republican primary and he cruised to victory. So it sets up, as you say, Paxton versus Talarico. The takeaways about this — I think one, just a general thing, is that once again, and this is a theme that's going to come up again: Trump's all about retaliation, Trump is about Trump, he's about whatever feels good to Trump. He was going to back Paxton. He does not care about the GOP. He doesn't care about holding a majority in Congress, except insofar as it'll serve his interests. By all analyses, he hurt the GOP's chances. You mentioned a minute ago the possibility of a kind of first-time-in-a-generation possibility of having a Democratic senator from the state of Texas. This is what Democrats wanted. They wanted Paxton. They think that he's toxic, even in Texas. A lot of Texas Republicans don't like him. Most Texas independents don't like him, and on and on. It also sets up the Senate increasingly opposing Trump. Lots of analyses about this — that Trump, on this retribution tour he has had, basically primarying his own party sitting in power, you've had a lot of Republican senators who are now lame ducks, and so they're like, "You know what, I don't have to toe the MAGA line anymore." And so there are now analysts saying Trump might already have lost the Senate effectively. Cornyn is one of them. So that's going on.

But to get to the religion piece: Diana Butler Bass, in an article — she's a scholar of religion, for those who don't know — said something that Brad Onishi in particular has been saying for a really long time. I don't know if Diana reached out to you, Brad, and said thanks for saying this, but this is what she said. She said, "Talarico v. Paxton is going to be a straight-up religious argument between Christianity as a religion of love for neighbor and Christian authoritarianism. There's not been a public theological contest like this since the Scopes Monkey Trial." That was her statement, just trying to highlight the significance of this. So I'll throw it over to you first. If you want to walk us through — again, as you've said — this kind of competing vision of two kinds of publicly engaged, politically engaged visions of Christianity, two different visions of what it means to be a committed Christian participating in politics. I don't think — I'll throw this out there now — I don't think that these are two rival Christian nationalist visions. We've talked about that view, the kind that says every Christian everywhere running for office is a Christian nationalist. I don't think that they are. I don't think Talarico is a Christian nationalist. I think he's a Christian who, as you say, has foregrounded his vision of the faith, and it is very much in contrast to the MAGA vision of Christianity. I think that's why you have this almost apoplectic response to him on the right.

Brad: I agree with that. So let's dig in. I think for me, what the central question is here — and I want to dig through details about Paxton, I want to give people an indication of all his scandals, I want people to understand who he is — but let me ask the question this way, and maybe it'll set up what I'm going to say, and maybe some of what you want to respond to. What does it mean to be a Christian?

Dan: We're starting with 101, right?

Brad: What does it mean? You gave me a hard time about being an Oxford grad and a PhD, so yes, let's just start at the beginning. Adolf von Harnack, the kernel of Christianity. Okay.

Is Christianity about imposing social order and maintaining control over the social square? Is Christianity about power? Is it about having top-down power to regulate how people act in the bedroom, act at the kitchen table, act when they go to the school bus stop, what we teach at the school — and so on and so forth? Is that what Christianity is? Is Christianity about enforcement? Is it about making sure that if you don't fit into the vision of the national body — if you don't have a straight white American-born body, a body where your tongue speaks English as its first language — then you're not a Christian, and you're not American? Is that what Christianity is? Because I think if you dig into Ken Paxton and what he represents, in terms of MAGA Christianity and a long march from the religious right to where we are today, that is what Christianity is. Gorski and Perry, The Flag and the Cross — Christian nationalism is about order, it's about social order. Paxton represents that. Talarico says Christianity is about love, it's about neighbors, it's about forgiveness, and it's about extending a kingdom of God based on mercy, compassion, and inclusion based on human dignity, regardless of who you are. It's just two diametrically opposed visions of what it means to be a Christian person.

And if you've been listening to the show, if you've read what we've done, if you've followed us, you know we've played so many clips from James Talarico over the years, and I don't actually want to do that today. What I want to do is show you how they're attacking Talarico, in order to make the case that they think Christianity is about enforcement and order along heteronormative, native-born, English-speaking lines, and that Talarico threatens them precisely because his faith is the foundation of his candidacy. Buttigieg, so many others have made Christianity part of who they are — I'm not denying that, that is there. Whether that's Stacey Abrams, whether that's Hillary Clinton, or whoever. For Talarico, he's like, "No, I'm here because I'm a Christian. I'm going to speak Christian language to explain to you why you should vote for me, even if you're not a Christian, even if you don't have any interest in church or faith or whatever." That is why he threatens them.

So here's Paul Waldman writing at MSN. Here is Paxton: 2015, indicted for securities fraud. 2020, attorneys who worked in Paxton's office as attorney general reported him to the FBI — so his own people reported him to the FBI because he was engaging in bribery and abuse of office. Department of Justice eventually closed the investigation, but several of the whistleblowers successfully sued Paxton for close to $7 million. He was then impeached by the Republican-dominated Texas House. Do you know what it takes to get impeached as a Republican by Republicans in the Texas legislature? He did it, though. And then Angela Paxton announced in 2025 that "after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds," and we have talked about what "biblical grounds" means. We've decoded it. It means adultery. It means he was sleeping with other people, and therefore she is justified in divorcing him. That is the evangelical code for "biblical grounds." This is who he is.

Now, some of you are like, "Well, I know that already. He is corrupt. He's as corrupt as Trump." And yet he is sort of a mini Trump. He's trying to be a MAGA mini-me of Donald Trump. Well, let's then look at how he's attacking Talarico. "This campaign is not about red versus blue," writes Ken Paxton. "It's about so much more. My opponent is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated." Now they say that every time, every time out. I mean, we could revive Mitt Romney over here, have him run for Senate, and they'd be like, "Extreme radical Mitt Romney — look at that hair, whoo, too much gel." Right?

Here — this is where it gets really good, Dan, and I'm just thrilled that I went to graduate school for as long as I did to be able to read this sentence to you out loud on a podcast. "He's even running a vegan campaign. Whatever that is." Yeah, Ken Paxton, whatever that is, bro. No idea what you're talking about. What — he's not a vegan? You think that's just a word that people will hate in Texas? A lot of people in Texas will hate that word, fine, but I don't know what a vegan campaign is. Whatever that is. Yeah, bro, whatever that is. Okay. He goes by a few names that some of you may all have heard of. Now this is where he's trying to be Trump — he's doing some name-calling. "Some people know him as Tofu Talarico."

Dan: Who are those people? I want to know who the people are. It's like — it's the exact, from a lot of people are saying — a lot of people are saying.

Brad: Just give me an example of who in the history of the world has ever referred to him as Tofu Talarico. I've even heard some people call him James Talafreco, which is not a bad DJ name. James Talafreco — if you're ever going to be a DJ after you get done in the Senate, James Talafreco, not terrible. I don't hate it. Others simply refer to him as "Low T Talarico." Now this last part is the one that I want to dig in on, because this is where they're saying: James Talarico is not man enough, not enough testosterone, not enough manliness, not enough toughness, not enough backbone, whatever the good, hard, sweaty, gritty, you know, American man is supposed to be — he's not that. And if you don't believe me, let's listen to Stephen Miller talk about him with Jesse Watters on Fox News recently. And I want to warn you, this is an extremely, overwhelmingly disgusting clip that involves making fun of people who are women and trans. So, with that said, here it is.

Stephen Miller: When Talarico goes in for a blood test, when he gets a physical, blood doesn't come out — instead, soy milk comes out. This man has less testosterone than Jasmine Crockett. It is a mind-boggling choice. They would choose a person to run for that office who looks like he doesn't belong in the Senate, but in a cabaret show. At the end of the day, I have a hard time believing that the people of Texas — some of the toughest, roughest, strongest men and women, the pioneer heritage, the frontier history from the Mexican-American War through all of it and everything else — are going to choose somebody with that much soy to be a U.S. senator, compared to a real conservative, patriotic, God-fearing, and truly beloved statewide figure in Ken Paxton.

Brad: Now — the clip I didn't play is the part where Miller says, and these are words from Stephen Miller's mouth, that the Democrats are running the first transgender candidate. "Talarico is transitioning from a man to a woman." I didn't play that part, but that is what he says in this interview.

There's a lot to say here, Dan. I'm gonna just pass you the mic. I'm sure you texted me some choice words for Stephen Miller earlier today. So I'm gonna ask you to try to — you know — be a professional, honor the status of your office and your place in the world as a respected scholar of religion. An Oxford graduate, might I remind you, for the second time today. But yes, your thoughts on this.

Dan: Yeah, so I mean, the most obvious, right, is that the attack of being effeminate, of being in some sense — as they would understand trans identity — as being some sort of deviant form of effeminacy, as a weakness. That's the epithet, basically. You're being like, "Oh, you're a girl, you know, you fight like a girl, you politic like a girl." So that's the first piece, right? For those who want to somehow argue that MAGA nation and the contemporary right is not patriarchal and misogynistic — if you can use femininity as an insult, sorry, that's misogyny, like straight up, right from the start.

I think there's that piece to it. But we've also seen this pattern that equates fitness for office with a certain vision of masculinity, right? We saw the same thing with Mamdani — that, you know, he can't bench press enough, and so he shouldn't be — he's not fit for office, he's too effeminate. And so this idea, within a sort of patriarchal world where politics is supposed to be the domain of the masculine, society is supposed to be run by men — and men of a certain kind, a certain vision of masculinity — what you're doing is attacking that and saying, "You're too effeminate, you're not strong enough, you are literally not man enough to be able to hold office or to do these kinds of things." And it's a standard part of the Republican playbook at this point. We can go all the way back to, like, the stupid middle-school insults when Trump was running for office the first time — during the debates — when you had comments about hand size and innuendos about penis size and virility and all this sort of stuff. It's just more of that, I think.

It also helps to explain why not just Paxton, but all misbehaving men — especially when it's some sort of sexual misbehavior toward women — if it's same-sex misbehavior, then that can bring some real judgment down upon you on the right. But if you are a man who abuses women, if you are a man who misuses women, if you are a man who — as you say, sort of Paxton — humiliates his wife and undergoes this, you get a free pass. And why? I'd invite people, you can go back to listen to one of the first episodes we ever did, where we talked about this. It is because within that sort of masculinist framework: yeah, maybe they went a little too far, but they're just doing what men do, right? It's manly. It's an alpha kind of thing to have as many women as possible. It's an alpha thing to assert yourself sexually. And so there's always this free pass for men who prey upon others, or who violate others, or violate their trust when it relates to sex, because that's what masculinity is — it's an authentic expression of masculinity.

So just a lot of layers to this. And obviously there's the Stephen Miller effort to just, at this point, say really bad things to try to appeal to a mass of voters in Texas who he's hoping this will resonate with. The last point — I just can't resist it. If you're gonna have the alpha masculine thing, like, maybe put somebody beside Stephen Miller forward to do that, you know? Stephen Miller is not the guy who's bench pressing with the Marines like Hegseth, or doing his pull-ups in the airport, or whatever. So it also, to me, shows the double standard of this, right.

Brad: That alpha masculinity — as long as you're in the MAGA camp, you can appeal to this masculinity, even if you don't actually embody it, right? And so it's this very, I think, surprisingly complex and selective appeal to masculinity that we've seen before, and so it's not surprising to see this leveled against Talarico.

If you watch this clip, two things are apparent. One is Jesse Watters wears more makeup than Donald Trump. Now, I don't care — this is not me being like, "Oh, I'm making fun of you, Jesse Watters, for wearing makeup." Could not care less. Don't care. I'm just glad you have access to gender-affirming care to be the kind of man you want to be on camera. You use makeup to appear as the man you want to be — that's great for you. Anyone who wants to wear makeup, you should wear makeup. That sounds great, good for you. But we have this weird sense of masculinity, as you just said, Dan, where the president of the United States wears makeup every day — it's very clear, like he is more done up than anyone. Jesse Watters, if you look at this, he just looks older and older every time you see him on camera, and therefore he seems to have more and more makeup on. That's fine. Great. I'm old, Dan. I'm on this show every week, and every time I see myself on camera, I'm like, "Ooh boy, look at those wrinkles and stuff." If people want to wear makeup, that's great, good for them.

But the masculinist version is weird — to say that Talarico is soft, Talarico is tofu, Talarico is this — when all those factors are present. The other thing that's present here is that they are trying to make Talarico — somebody who has supported trans people, supported the LGBTQIA community, somebody who is an open and affirming Christian, somebody who does not come down on their masculine, retrograde understanding of sexuality and gender — as a pedophile. So there's a picture of James Talarico, he's smiling, and the Republicans on Twitter tweeted, "Hide your kids." That's a very clear suggestion he's a pedophile. And where does that suggestion come from? It comes from the campaign to make people believe that anyone who is gay or lesbian or queer in any way is somehow a pedophile. That has been a trope that's been present in the United States for a long time, but it has only been escalated and ramped up in the Trump years.

We don't have time to keep going here forever. I just want to say that, to me, if you wanted to distill one lineage of Christianity that in some ways runs through Jimmy Carter in terms of elected office — in some ways runs through other figures we could name — Talarico represents that. He shows up every day and is like, "I'm here because I'm a Christian." He doesn't talk about it when asked. He makes it the thing you have to ask about. Paxton — what did Miller say about him? "Oh, he's a God-fearing patriot." What makes him a God-fearing patriot? He hates gay people, he hates trans people, he cheats on his wife, he commits bribery and fraud. That is what people are seeing now. That is what they're going to decide — is that what it means to be God-fearing? Or is what Talarico is offering what it means to be God-fearing? And the people of Texas will decide. We'll see what happens here.

Final thoughts before we move on to some other ways that the Trump administration seems to hate women, and especially those who challenge Donald Trump?

Dan: Just to pick up on the theme that you did: if we wanted to get all theoretical about it, one of the things that the right loves to rail against is the idea that gender is malleable, fluid — and that's exactly what you're highlighting. They appeal to this masculinity, and yet it's this very malleable form of masculinity. If we want to call frail, weak Trump hyper-masculine, we can. If we want to put on makeup to hide it, we can. If we want to be a little skinny guy and claim to be hyper-masculine, we can. If we want to critique somebody for not being masculine enough, we can. Their whole argument depends upon the notion that masculinity itself is in fact a construct and is malleable, and they can shape it and stretch it to fit the different men that they want to affirm in different positions of power and authority. And I think it's really on display in the way that this actually plays out.

Brad: But it comes down to something you've said a lot on this show, and especially in your work on Josh Hawley, which is: their god becomes simply a stand-in for power and imposition and domination. Their god is the god of domination and power. It's not the god of the gospel. Your painstaking analysis of Josh Hawley's book that our listeners have done with you reveals that Josh Hawley, when it comes to masculinity, has no interest in the Jesus of the Gospels, or even, for the most part, the Paul of the New Testament. It's really only the book of Joshua and the other war books, where men impose themselves as powerful, as the representative of God on earth. That's it. So yes, it could be RFK with no shirt on. It could be MMA fighters, you know, fighting on the White House lawn, which we have now. It could be Stephen Miller, who does not appear to be Mr. Bodybuilding tough guy — whatever RFK is trying to be. But Stephen Miller can be the emblem of MAGA masculinity, because it's about power and domination. It's about imposition. It's not about anything else. It's about: Can I impose myself on you without consequence and without hindrance, and with the legitimacy of the divine behind me? That is what this is about.

All right, folks. Take a break. Be right back.

All right, we're going to talk about E. Jean Carroll, and then we're going to talk about the Pope. But guess what? We need to talk about a couple of big announcements and changes coming to this show and to Axis Mundi.

I'm going to tease these today. You're going to be hearing more about them in the coming weeks, but starting very soon, we're going to be doing the weekly roundup live, and we'll do it every Friday. You'll be able to join us on YouTube and other places and take part in the live show. You'll be able to catch this later on YouTube or anywhere else as the live show, and of course it'll be on the podcast feed as it always has been. That's part of a bigger transformation for us at Axis Mundi Media, where we really want to develop what we're doing into more live programming and the ability to respond rapidly to whatever's happening in the religion and politics realm on any given day. I'm setting up a Tuesday show for this summer, and that Tuesday show will be live as well. And if everything goes right and we get all the details worked out, we're going to have Matt Taylor with me most of the summer doing a live show. So we're transitioning Axis Mundi and this show to something that will include more live programming and more daily briefs for you on the most important religion and politics stories coming out of this country and the globe.

So if this show has been something that's helped you, if this has been a place where you've learned, where you've grown, where you've been able to decipher all of the different things coming your way in our political sphere — in the coming weeks, we're going to be asking for your support so that we can do this expansion and become the only religion-politics media outlet that is doing this kind of rapid-response live programming in a time when we desperately need it. So, Dan — I'm hoping you're excited about being live with the people every day. Your people are going to be able to see your haircut and other things. Does that sound good as we go live with the weekly roundup? Are you excited about this?

Dan: I'm excited, I'm nervous — because it's weird. It's like when you meet people who listen — like, we do this, we want people to listen — when I meet people who listen, I'm suddenly self-conscious about it.

Brad: I know.

Dan: And people can kind of watch it as it happens. No, I'm really excited about it. We're hoping to take It's in the Code live as well. I want to re-emphasize what you just said: it doesn't mean you have to watch it live to catch it. We're still going to be recorded, still going to be available, but for people who are free and want to literally sit in as we do it, that opportunity will be there. As we work out some of the kinks with It's in the Code, I'm hoping as well, as we move forward, that there may be episodes where people can chime in and pose questions and have some sort of in-real-time decoding of things as we go along. So it'll be cool to explore that and have listeners help us with that.

Brad: Yeah, we really feel like this is the next chapter for us, and we're going to be expanding our team — I'm not going to announce those names yet. You'll have to stay tuned, but look forward to that as we go into next week and into the summer.

All right, Dan, what happened with E. Jean Carroll this week, and how does that represent everything we just talked about — gender, family, men, power, dominance, imposition, revenge?

Dan: And it also relates to Trump's slush fund and the weaponization of the Department of Justice. Because this week — I think CNN is the outlet that sort of broke the story — the Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. For those who don't remember, I think it's worth recalling who that is. Trump was found liable for sexual assault against Carroll in 2023. He was later found liable for defamation because of comments that he made about E. Jean Carroll, and that suit brought about a total of $88.3 million in damages assigned to be paid to E. Jean Carroll. So with that as a background — Trump, the sexual predator that he is, has been found reliably and credibly to be weaponizing the Department of Justice. We know that he has aimed to make the Department of Justice his mechanism for punishing political opponents. And so this week it was revealed that a criminal investigation is being opened into Carroll on charges of perjury. The claim is that in a 2022 deposition she perjured herself when she said that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit. The claim is she later revealed that some of her legal fees were paid by billionaire Reid Hoffman. Analysts I've read have said this is a really small, flimsy thing to hang on. But that's what Trump's Department of Justice has done.

Now, there's a little bit of ambiguity here. Andrew Boutros, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, has denied this. He would be the person sort of in charge of this. He has said that there has not been an investigation, and that there never has been a criminal investigation opened. However, CNN, who covered this, said that officials continue to reaffirm the investigation. Other outlets have found the same thing — that people in the Department of Justice are continuing to say that there is an investigation, even though the U.S. Attorney says there isn't. My takeaway from that, just to be clear: I think this is Washington circumventing normal routes. I think the Department of Justice is trying to go after E. Jean Carroll, and I wouldn't be surprised if they find some way to have it happen somewhere else — some hand-selected person who pursues this.

I think what it illustrates broadly is just the continuing corruption in the open of the Trump administration — Trump calling for his opponents to be penalized. And all the ironies — I know I use the phrase "Orwellian" a lot when I talk about the Trump administration, but it fits — of one week announcing this big slush fund to defend people against whom the Department of Justice has weaponized, and then the next week weaponizing the department to continue going after his opponents. But I think the larger tie-in with what we're talking about is the gendered piece here. Not only was Trump found liable, but I think part of the reason why she is the object of so much animosity from Trump, and therefore MAGA, is she's a woman who won. He assaulted her — and I say that he assaulted her because he was found liable for having assaulted her, a jury found him liable. He assaults her, and I think that, aside from the monetary damages and everything else, he simply cannot allow that a woman has bested him legally, has proven charges against him. And I think that this just sits with him in a way that few other political opponents even do. I think his ire toward her is more personal and more visceral than it is toward, say, James Comey or other people that he's gone after.

So I think the fact that she is a woman who won, a woman who fought back, a woman who stood by her claims, a woman who was vindicated in court — we see Trump going to extremes to try to, very effectively, put her in her place. And I think for Trump this effort at DOJ weaponization, it's an assertion of his masculinity, it's an assertion of his power, it's an assertion of his authority as the man at the top to put a woman in her place.

Brad: I want to come back to the question I asked a couple minutes ago — a very groundbreaking question, just really insightful and complex: What does it mean to be a Christian? And the reason I bring that up is because if you take everything we said about Paxton and Talarico, about who Paxton is, about the way he cheated on his wife, the way he's committed fraud and bribery, the way he's used his position to be held without account and to have no recourse for his actions — we see now it magnified in Donald Trump.

And the reason I ask, "What does it mean to be a Christian?" is this: we live in the Epstein age, we live in the age of the Epstein files. We live in an age where we have women who were trafficked — allegedly, I have to say, for legal reasons — women who stood behind Pam Bondi in a hearing, women who have bravely shared their testimony, who were mistreated, and the files have not really been released. The cover-up continues. The Iran war seems to be something we got into, at least in part, to take attention away from the Epstein files. In the age of the Epstein files, we have the president actively pursuing revenge against somebody who he was found in court to have, as you just said, liably assaulted. Let me give you a headline: July 19, 2023 — Aaron Blake writing at the Washington Post. What is the headline? "Judge clarifies: yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll." That is the headline from the Washington Post two years ago.

So, in the age of Epstein, what does it mean to be a Christian? Well, it means to be all the stuff we just talked about — a dominating, imposing, powerful man who acts with impunity, who is virile, and so aggressive and savage that he can't control his sexual urges. That's what you're sold, not only by Trump and Paxton, but by Pete Hegseth and Doug Wilson, by RFK. This idea that James Talarico is the opposite of a man — he's tofu. Well, what is tofu? Tofu is soft, it's not meat. To me, this represents everything they see in God. If you go to Ezekiel, chapter 1, chapter 3, chapter 38, you have a God who takes revenge on a woman — the nation of Israel — for supposedly cheating on him. He disrobes her in public, he abuses her, he humiliates her. You can find that in the Bible. Now, if you're a person of faith listening, if you're a Christian person, a Jewish person — this is not me saying that the entire Bible is this, this is not me saying Christianity bad, or I hate it. What is Christianity? Is Christianity the Sermon on the Mount? Is Christianity the kingdom of God based on compassion, forgiveness — "whoever has not sinned, throw the first stone"? Is Christianity based on the golden rule? Is Christianity based on the idea that God himself became incarnate and therefore understands the suffering of every human person who has ever lived? Or is Christianity about the worst, most violent, vengeful episodes in the Hebrew Bible, where God disrobes the nation of Israel, calls her a whore, and says, "This is what you deserve" — because this is what you get when your Christianity is that? You get a president who pursues this kind of action. Other thoughts, Dan?

Dan: Yeah, so to tie into the point you're making right now — it opens up questions not just of what is a Christian, but how do we read the Bible? How do we use that? What is that? And I think that that's an important question, broader than we're going to explore here, but it's a question that people need to know is operating there.

But another thing that it reminds me of — I don't remember where I heard this, so a lot of people are saying, Brad — no, people who study Christian doctrine would know this, a lot of people might not: debates about the relation of divinity and power. What does it mean to say, within a Christian context, that God is omnipotent, or all-powerful? These go back centuries — centuries of debate about what that means. But I remember the first time as a grad student I read — and this is what I don't remember, who said this — it was a theologian who said, and I think there's probably more than one, but you're probably going to have their name right on the tip of your tongue: if you define divinity in terms of power, then you make power divine. It was the first time I'd ever read anybody who sort of questioned that equation — that to say God is all-powerful, omnipotent, should mean something other than "whatever God wills is good simply because God wills it," or that because God is all-powerful, that makes anything God does with that power good. God's power is unconstrained. Whatever the whole range of philosophical and theological issues that open up there.

But that stands with me, because that's what we have on the right. Not "we are called to exercise power because we're godly, or because we inhabit the teachings of Jesus, or because we read the Bible." Because we exercise power, divinity is power, and therefore we are divine. We are the agents of the divine. And the only marker you need of that is that we exercise power and authority. That's the pattern we see whether we're talking about Paxton, or we're talking about Trump, or we're talking about Pete Hegseth talking about Iran and warriors and decimating people — over and over and over. I think the theological subtext is that vision of what divinity is, which has the ironic effect of allowing us to just do away with divinity entirely and just elevate a human will to power as divine.

Brad: That's what we have. We have a will to power as God in this country, according to MAGA, and the men who get to act as the representative of that divine power. Power as divinity means there's men here who represent that God, and they just get power, and they don't get punished, they get to do whatever they want. And so I think we see that in this case.

All right, we're going to take another break, and then come back and talk about the Pope. But before we do that, let me just say again, Dan — what does it mean to be a Christian? We're going to ask the Pope here in a minute, not live, through his encyclical. I did ask him to be on the show and did not get a response, so I don't know if he's busy or what he's up to. But one of the things I just want to say again is: we're so excited to expand the show and expand our network — more live programming, and basically stepping into a role where we feel like we're going to hopefully build the newsroom that mainstream media never could. We want to appear in your inbox, on your feed, daily, with information and analysis coming from experts like me and Dan, but also other folks that you see all the time on this channel, on this show, and make that something you can look forward to — to break down important stories like the papal encyclical that dropped this Monday in real time. The religious right has a deep and wide media infrastructure, Dan, and they have dominated for years using media. And we feel like, in a small way, we can step up and be a bigger part of the media ecosystem. So can't wait to do the show live, can't wait to do Tuesdays live with Matt this summer, and also just expand our offering. More info coming. All right — break, and then we'll go to the Pope. Be right back.

Okay. This week, Dan, Pope Leo's first encyclical dropped, and it was one of those moments where it's like, "Honey, wake up, new papal encyclical dropped. Get out of bed. We gotta read it."

Dan: Those are real conversations that people have, Brad.

Brad: Dan, there are people we know — is there a chance, at least, that they said that to each other?

Dan: There is a chance. Yes. There are some people we know.

Brad: We won't say their names. But this is all about humanity, human dignity, and it is framed as human dignity in the face of AI, and there are so many Easter eggs here. You might have read pieces about this, you might have seen some coverage — MSNBC and other places — and they did a good job. But to me, there are some Easter eggs in here that need to be uncovered and explained, and so I want to just do that quickly and get your thoughts.

So I've got about three hours' worth of notes. We'll just try to do this in 15 minutes. But he starts with this question about human dignity, and he uses two biblical images. The story of the Tower of Babel is the first one. The story of Babel appears in the book of Genesis, at the origins of humanity, immediately after the genealogies of Noah's sons. And the Holy Father goes on to talk about how humans were fearful they would be scattered across the earth, so they "sought to guarantee stability and power for themselves, and above all, to make a name for themselves — a single language, a single technology, a single direction. However, that project concealed a profound danger. It was a project conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity, and that chose homogenization over communion."

Now, a lot of you listening will not like the part about, "Any project without reference to God doesn't work," and I hear you, and that makes total sense to me. However, I do want to hold up what the Pope is doing. He is saying: look, if you have a technology that reduces humanity to a single direction through uniformity, and that eliminates diversity in favor of homogenization, you are in grave danger. He goes on to say, "When a city is built on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency, communication breaks down, languages are confused, and people no longer understand each other. The result is not unity, but dispersion. Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency, and aspires to reach heaven without God's blessing." Some of you are like, "I don't need the God's blessing stuff." And I hear you, and that's fine. But the Pope is saying: if you sacrifice human dignity for efficiency, that is a recipe for dehumanization. And I think that's something a lot of us can agree with, even if we don't share his theology.

Now we have a reference to Babel, which I think is a reference not only to AI, but to these dreams of Peter Thiel and others to build network cities, monarchies, little patchwork islands — according to Curtis Yarvin — where there is just ultimate self-sufficiency and efficiency. I argue in American Caesar that the theology and political vision coming out of Silicon Valley thinks that civilization-building is based on efficiency and a frictionless environment — nothing else. There's no sense of human flourishing beyond efficiency. And if you've read any 20th-century philosophy, any 20th-century theology, you know that efficiency is seen as one of the things that paved the way for Auschwitz and what happened in World War II. Thoughts on the Babel part here, Dan, or do you want me to go to Nehemiah?

Dan: Just briefly — I think another piece of this, related to the sacrifice of dignity for efficiency, the reduction of human existence to efficiency: another line in there that stood out to me was talking about prioritizing homogenization over communion. It's interesting — and I'm with you, I'm not Catholic, I don't, you know — if you don't have to agree with everything the Pope thinks or the theology behind it, or whatever — but I find it interesting that there's another contrast here within the MAGA movement, and I think within this sort of tech-bro piece of the MAGA movement that you have been living and breathing and having to swim around in for a while now. You have the notion that the precondition for communion, the precondition for community, is homogenization. We have to all be the same, we have to all believe the same things, we have to walk in the same direction, all of that. And this is an interesting contrast that says: no, the precondition for communion, the value of communion and community, is precisely that everybody is not the same. It is not a homogenized society where everybody is the same and has to believe the same things and do the same things and play the same role, like cogs in a machine, and so forth. So I think that's a really significant piece of this that stood out to me as well.

Brad: I want to illustrate this by reminding everybody that a couple months ago, Peter Thiel did an interview with Ross Douthat at the New York Times, and Douthat asked him, "Do you want humanity to survive?" — which, in many ways, is the question that the Pope is asking too. Like, we want humanity to survive and flourish. And so when Douthat asked Thiel that, here is the response that he got.

Ross Douthat: You would prefer the human race to endure, right? You're hesitant.

Peter Thiel: Well, I — I would — this is a long hesitation. There's so many questions implicit in this.

Ross Douthat: Should the human race survive?

Peter Thiel: Yes.

Ross Douthat: Okay.

Peter Thiel: But I also would — I also would like us to radically solve these problems.

Brad: The problems he's talking about are problems of inefficiency. They're like what tech bros think of as bugs in the human condition. And that could be death, right? They want to solve death. But the problems he's talking about are problems that largely arise from inefficiency — not having a tech stack and a workflow that work perfectly, having friction in your project management. There are two visions here of humans, and one thing the Pope is arguing for is that you cannot prioritize efficiency over everything, otherwise you're going to eliminate the human condition in general.

He then goes — and I can't wait for your thoughts on this, Dan — to the book of Nehemiah. "The book of Nehemiah, in turn, opens at a time of great vulnerability in the history of ancient Israel, after the Babylonian exile. A portion of the people returned to Jerusalem, but the city was still in ruins. The walls collapsed, and the gates burned. Nehemiah, a Jew in the service of the Persian king Artaxerxes, received news of the disastrous state of his ancestral city." Now, what did he do? I'll just summarize: Nehemiah leads the charge to build back Jerusalem and the wall around Jerusalem and the temple, and so on and so forth. "The narrative shows how the city is reborn, not through the initiative of one man, but through the shared responsibility of all — men, women, priests, artisans, heads of households, and young people, all play a part. Men and women. It is an undertaking with God at the center, which rebuilds the relationships before rebuilding with stones. This is the rediscovery of a common language, not one of uniformity, but one of communion — the harmony that arises when all persons assume their role and recognize their strength comes from the Lord."

Now again, you may not need that "from the Lord" stuff, you may not want that, but the Easter egg here is that MAGA loves Nehemiah. Robert Jeffress has a famous sermon — and I could not find the clip this morning, Dan, so unfortunately I can't play it for you — but he has a famous sermon and a famous interview where he says, when people ask him, "Is building a wall Christian? Is building the MAGA wall Christian?" he says, "President Trump, it's biblical. The book of Nehemiah is all about building walls. Build that wall, President Trump. That is what God wants. That's what's in the Bible." The Pope provides a drastically different interpretation of the book of Nehemiah and the rebuilding of Jerusalem than MAGA wants. Most people probably didn't catch that, but that's there. It stood out to me. Thoughts on the Nehemiah thing? Or do you want to pick another part of this encyclical, Dan?

Dan: I mean, we could live with the Nehemiah thing, because it is — it's like a stock trope. If you want walls and nationalism — and I would argue I'm a little less sanguine on Nehemiah than the Pope is, and that's okay, right? The book of Nehemiah does a couple of things: one is they rebuild, they build the wall, and so forth. But it's also on a certain reading a really nationalistic, xenophobic text. There's this concern of the Hebrew people to rebuild their national identity, and so there's a lot of exclusion and marginalization of the alien, and all of this — so much so that there are other books in the Hebrew Bible that push back on that and kind of give these alternative visions. My point is to echo your point: MAGA loves this stuff.

Christian nationalists love this stuff. I keep referencing Josh Hawley and his book — he's got a whole chapter on "the builder." I thought it was going to be Nehemiah. I was waiting for Nehemiah. I'm like, "Oh, I know you know, Josh is not even a good Christian nationalist, as it turns out."

Brad: He doesn't know the Bible.

Dan: He only reads two chapters, so it's fine. Like, it's just so predictable. I think that's the point. If somebody knows or is familiar with the Bible — and even we, even pre-super-high-tide of Christian nationalism growing up in the evangelical circles we did — anytime you needed to talk about building stuff, you go to Nehemiah. Every time your church needed to raise money for the new gym they're trying to build, you're going to suffer through like 27 weeks of Nehemiah sermons or whatever. It's this stock book about building. And so as you say, it's gotten new life in MAGA. Anytime somebody's like, "Is a wall Christian? I thought we were supposed to care for others and invite them in" — "Nope, we build walls. Look what Nehemiah did." And so I think it is refreshing and telling, as you say — for those maybe not conversant in that — it's a real shot across the bow by the Pope to choose this interpretation of this book. It's a direct shot at MAGA and xenophobia and that kind of nationalism.

Brad: All right, let me make two more points about this that I'm really excited about. One: there's a heading called "The Dignity of Work at a Time of Digital Transition," and I think the Pope outlines a diametrically opposed understanding of work than you get coming from Bezos, from Thiel, from Silicon Valley, and so on. He says that work is not simply an instrument — it expresses and enhances the dignity of our lives. It is a normal path toward maturity, development, and personal fulfillment. Work is for expression, relationships, and contributing to community. Okay, this is so different than what Jeff Bezos said last week in his Rocket Factory interview. Let's take a look at that.

Jeff Bezos: So there's so many smart people, and they are smart, and they are saying, "Oh my god, you know, they're gonna be no more radiologists, because the AI can read X-rays better than a radiologist can, and there are gonna be no more software engineers, because AI can program better than a software engineer can." These people are wrong. So what's really going to happen is that it's going to elevate all of these people. It's like — it's like if you're a software engineer, let's say you've been digging out a basement for your house with a shovel, and somebody's about to hand you a bulldozer. You should be so happy. If you're digging the basement to your house and somebody says, "Hey, I have a tool here," what's really going to happen is we're going to have so much productivity in our economy that, for example — just one effect — a lot of people who have two-earner income households, one of the people is going to drop out of the workforce. That's why we're going to have a labor shortage.

Brad: Okay, so I just want to recognize that, Dan, I think you and I both agree that there are times when work is exploitative. There are times when work really takes you away from the essence of who you are. And I'm sure many people listening have workdays and do jobs that they're like, "Yeah, this does not feel like art, does not feel like expression." I do not want to ignore that at all. I do want to recognize, though, that I think Silicon Valley has this idea of work — and this is what the Pope clicked for me — that the only kind of work that has value comes from Silicon Valley. If you are building AI, if you are building efficiency, if you are building productivity, your work is valuable. You should think about your work nonstop — like Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir. He's on record saying, "I think about Palantir 24 hours a day, except when I'm sleeping or having sex." That's what he says. Thank you so much for that.

So if you're on the grind, if you're on your grind set, if you're in grind mode, if you're in your grind era — like tech bros talk about work — it's valuable, it's worth it. But everyone else's work, Dan, is worthless. "Oh, you're gonna have so much time, you won't need to work." And I know, on one hand, for some people that sounds good, because my job is not one that I feel like is part of community or expression. But for a lot of us, work is a part of the fulfillment, the maturity, the relationships, the community, the achieving something together, building something together. To go back to Nehemiah — the idea that we don't need daily tasks and stimuli, as the Pope says, that this is somehow the way toward human utopia: I think he's basically saying no. We need certain kinds of work, with certain kinds of conditions that are not exploitative — but work is not the enemy of being human. And that's something I agree with. I just think that's true. Any thoughts on that? And then I got one more thing.

Dan: So I also want to — all right, I got to touch on the Bezos out-of-touch element here, right? Last time, remember, we talked about him being like, "I get letters from new mothers all the time." Bulldozers don't dig, Jeff. Like, I just — it drives me nuts. I'm sorry, it's like a minor thing, but he's like somebody handed him an analogy, and it was "if you build a basement with a bulldozer" — I'm like, dude, bulldozers don't dig, Jeff. Like, he's never seen heavy machinery in his life, when he was a kid he never walked around and watched the workers at the construction site, or whatever. He's heard of shovels, I guess — that's good, I'm sure he's never held one. But anyway, just out of touch.

Jeff Bezos, the sort of utopian mythos of this is insane. I agree with what you're saying about work and value. The other one is: productivity is not the same thing as flourishing. If you talk about dignity and human flourishing — and I think that's where your points about work would come together — the idea of being able to do something that you value, that you feel you're putting yourself into, right. And I'm with you, I realize a lot of people don't have that opportunity, and that's a thing to be dealt with. But you get — whether it's Musk or Bezos or whomever — these people, these utopian visions: "Nobody's going to have to work anymore." You're kind of like, "Yeah, so how's anybody going to live?" Because all of you in your capitalist vision of the world have reduced people's value to their productivity. So now you talk about efficiency, which is just going to downsize. And that's how this works on the spreadsheet or the data table of the Jeff Bezos or the Elon Musk — it's just cutting costs. That's what efficiency is about. He's not wanting people to step out of the workforce so that they can go live a fuller life. He's wanting to do it so he doesn't have to pay them anything. So whether it's him or Musk, there's the dark side of this utopian vision that's basically: if you're at the top of the economic capitalist world, it's going to be great — you're going to have bulldozers that magically dig, it's going to be amazing — but if you're everybody else, you don't even factor in for us. We're just going to tell you that it's going to be good. For some reason you're not going to work, you're not going to have any money or a way of living or a way of supporting yourself, because we're opposed to things like a standardized income or something like that. We oppose all of those things, but magically it's going to be good for you. Why? Because the only people who matter for them are what they view as the masters of the universe, the producers. This is the supply-side economics of the last half-century that says the only people of value are the people at the top of these companies. Yeah, Jeff Bezos is going to make a ton off AI, Musk is going to make a ton off AI. Those people are going to make a lot of money off AI. All the people that they're going to just downsize and do away with and throw into the trash heap of society — they don't care. And I think that comes through in this as well.

Brad: I'd like to announce a new podcast by Dan Miller called Bull Digger, which is going to be all about using construction metaphors to tear apart bad arguments. Bull Digger — which could go a lot of bad ways — but we're just going to go with it. Bull Digger.

All right, let me read you a quote here from the encyclical that I think is pretty fire. I'm a sucker for a good sermon, you know. If someone can really preach it, I'm in — even if I don't want to hear anything dehumanizing in a sermon, but if someone can really preach it — give it to me, right? "Whereas those who use the name of God to legitimize terrorism, violence, or war betray his true nature. For to fight in the name of religion means attacking religion itself." To fight in the name of religion means attacking religion itself. Go ahead — this is me in the audience, in the pews. Amen. "Let us have it. The spirit of Assisi, evoked by Saint John Paul the Second and carried forward by Pope Francis — for example, through his dialogue with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar — shows that believers can draw upon the most authentic sources of their particular spiritual traditions, where there is no room for sanctified hatred. No room for sanctified hatred."

This is a long way from calling James Talarico names, dehumanizing trans people by making fun of Talarico, all of that we started with today. We're a long way from that in this version of Christianity.

And he then goes to Tolkien — and this is another Easter egg that most people probably did catch, but I'll just touch on it. I'll get your thoughts and we'll close. "The 20th-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility this way: 'It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.'" The civilization of love, the Pope writes, will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization.

A — I just love this, I think it's beautiful. B — do you know who loves J.R.R. Tolkien? Theo bros and tech bros. They think of themselves as fighting orcs. Peter Thiel quotes J.R.R. Tolkien endlessly. The quote from Peter Thiel's senior year in high school was a Lord of the Rings quote, okay? They think of themselves as saving the Shire, but they think of themselves as doing it as superheroes, the masters of the universe. Everything you just said, Dan, and the Pope says it's not going to come from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts. I love this. Any final thoughts? And then we'll go to reasons for hope. I think there's a reason for hope too.

Dan: As you're highlighting the appropriation of Tolkien in a different way — the same as the Nehemiah: picking a favorite MAGA source and using it a different way. I think that's really important here.

I do also think, just to highlight: that theme about religion and war — we've heard that, the Pope has come out on this before. We remember Vance being all upset when the Pope didn't name it by name but was critiquing the Trump administration and the Iran conflict. And JD Vance is like, "I'm surprised he doesn't know about just war theory." I think it's interesting that this is a theme he chose to put in this encyclical again, despite all that sort of sparring with Trump and Vance. For me, this is something I want to watch going forward — that theme of violence and conflict as it relates to the Christian tradition.

So I think a lot of really interesting things in this. My reason for hope is kind of homegrown for me. A federal judge dismissed this week a DOJ lawsuit against Boston because of its so-called sanctuary city law, upheld that law, said that local police don't even have the authority to enforce federal law because they're not federal law enforcement officers. Fairly simple finding, but significant — that it was one of the cities the Department of Justice was going after because of its so-called sanctuary city laws, and that was thrown out. I took hope in that, not just for Boston and Massachusetts, but for cities that actually care about people more broadly.

Brad: Got a couple from our Discord. Semi-scattered talks about a bill in Hawaii that will prevent corporations from spending on political campaigns in Hawaii. So it basically says: if you're a corporation, you're not allowed to spend on politics, and this is a way to circumvent Citizens United. So it's a really good start and interesting. Nathan put in that an appeals court blocked the government from re-detaining or deporting Mahmoud Khalil, who was part of what happened at Columbia. That's really good news on that front. Judge drops criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia — Dawson puts in the Discord — also really good news.

All right, here's a bonus, Dan: the "Rededicate 250" was supposed to have a national state fair on the Mall, and they announced their music lineup this week — and I'm not being funny, and a lot of you've seen this already, Dan, I'm not being funny — it included the Commodores, Martina McBride, Milli Vanilli, Vanilla Ice, and a host of others. Oh, Young MC was in there — "Bust a Move," do you remember that song? "Bust a Move." Okay. Now a bunch of them have already pulled out due to the backlash. How do you ask Milli Vanilli — one of the people in Milli Vanilli is now deceased, and I'm pretty sure Milli Vanilli is German, I don't even think they're American — how do you ask Milli Vanilli, you know, Vanilla Ice and Young MC, and all of them say yes, and then people are like, "You guys are traitors," and they're like, "Yeah, we're good, we're not doing it."

So here's my freebie for you: I believe Kevin Sorbo and Scott Baio have a rap-core band, and I think it's called Sorbeo. And at this point, I think they will be headlining. Dad joke of the week — that one was free, people. Not gonna charge. There you go.

Dan: I don't know how much you'd make off of that. But oh — there we go.

Brad: We're done. Thanks for listening, people. We love you. Look forward to changes and expansion from us and more of our team. Can't wait for that. But for now, we'll say thanks for being here. We'll catch you next time.

Dan: Thanks, Brad. Bye.