Weekly Roundup: The UFC Presidency: Election Lies, Blood Sport Politics, and Hegseth’s D-Day Disgrace

Brad Onishi Hey y'all, by now you've heard me talk about the next chapter of Axis Mundi Media. We are expanding our live offerings, going live on Fridays with the weekly roundup, and on Tuesdays, starting this Tuesday, June 16, with me and Matt Taylor at 1:30 Eastern on Axis Live. Every Tuesday we'll break down the headlines from the weekend and early part of the week about religion and politics, everything that the mainstream media missed when it comes to the most important stories about Christian nationalism, Christian supremacy, fundamentalism, high control religion, and everything else infecting our politics.

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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi. We are live on YouTube. We've been trying to be live on YouTube because we've had catastrophic technical difficulties. So, I'm the founder of Axis Mundi Media, author of American Caesar, co-host of this show, here today live, trying to be live, doing our best to be live, Dan, despite all of our efforts. Who are you?

Dan Miller: I'm Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College, and glad to be here, and super happy with the technological issues that we don't understand today.

Brad: We want to talk about the claims of voter fraud coming out of the GOP, especially Donald Trump and Mike Johnson, and why that matters. We want to talk about the ways that the UFC extravaganza at the White House this weekend exemplifies so much about the Trump presidency and so much about what is wrong with our current moment. Then we'll get into Pete Hegseth's xenophobic, Western supremacist speech commemorating D-Day in Normandy. So lots to cover. Let's go.

Dan, last weekend Trump said this on Meet the Press:

Trump [Clip]: The election was rigged, it was a dirty election. It is happening again right now in California. Happening right now in California, right now. It's — look at what's happening in California. It's four days in California. It's — no, they're not. They're dropping fast because it's a rigged election. Let me tell you, it's four days and they aren't even close, because they're cheating on the election.

Interviewer [Clip]: What evidence do you have to support that?

Trump [Clip]: All I have to do is look.

Brad: All I have to do is look. Now I want to get into Mike Johnson, and I think Mike Johnson, Dan, is actually the person I want to hone in on, but I just want to get your reaction to this. I'm not sure you could distill Trumpism in five seconds more than: "Do you have evidence?" "All I have to do is look." And there you go. That's my proof. That is how I know it's true. That's how I know they're cheating. That's how I know it's rigged. All I have to do is look. Thoughts on this?

Dan: He also plays his standard "a lot of people are saying" kind of thing, where he's like, "I just listen to people. People say this." Like — nobody says this, because if we step back and try to look at this with a little bit of rationality, it's not hard, right? I talked to people about this. I'm not an NBA person, Brad, I know that you are. I know, as a non-NBA person, there might have been people that turned off the game between the Spurs and the Knicks the other night at halftime, being like, "Okay" — delicately dropping the NBA knowledge — they turned it off. Game's over, it's over, right? And you know what happens when they turn it back on and find out that there was the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history? They don't say the game was rigged, like, "Oh, there was another half to play, right?" Or your team's up big three quarters into a game — there's still another quarter. It's all it is. It's just vote counting. Some states have things where votes are still coming in if they're postmarked on time, whatever. It's not complicated. The idea that all the votes haven't been counted yet — I do wish California would just maybe count faster and take away some of the fuel from the fire, but it's nonsense. It's easily explainable, and the reason I highlight that is just because that's not what this is about, right? Trump isn't claiming that it's rigged because he thinks it's rigged. He's claiming it because he wants to rig the election. He wants to sow doubt. He wants to make it so that any time anybody but the GOP wins, it has to have been illegitimate — with the irony, of course, that he's trying to illegitimately sow distrust in how elections come out. I'll just refer people back to 2020 and all the claims of election fraud. We can remember attorneys — Rudy Giuliani in particular — people like that saying, "We have the evidence, it's going to come out, we're going to go to court, we're going to present all the evidence," and it never happened. There isn't any. There never has been any. It's just a well that Trump, and now the entire GOP, keeps going to — to try to sow distrust, and to try to explain away losses. He just cannot, as a person, deal with the fact that he might lose. So let's try to win at any and all cost — to us, the voters, and to the people who cast their votes in these elections.

Brad: I want to segue to Mike Johnson, and what you just said actually sets that up perfectly, because who was one of the lawyers that did everything possible — somebody who did the most when it came to trying to prove that there was fraud, irregularities, etc. in the 2020 election? It was Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson, at the time, was a lawyer. He is acting in his role as a lawyer now. What do lawyers do, Dan? Let's just think about it really quickly. Lawyers are supposed to mount evidence. Lawyers are supposed to make a case. Lawyers are supposed to deliver arguments, right? Closing arguments, opening statements — these are the things we all associate with lawyers. If you've watched any television or film ever, or you know a lawyer, whatever. What's the point? The point is you're supposed to give evidence for your claims in a court of law. When the President of the United States was asked, "Do you have any evidence?" — he walked out of the interview. I didn't play that part of the clip, but he smashes the microphone with his foot and he walks out. Do you have evidence? I quit. What that does — and I don't think we need to explain this to people because I think they know this after ten years — is it gives everybody downstream, everybody who is a backbench person in Congress, everybody who is a state legislator, anyone who's running for mayor or is on city council or part of a school board, anyone who wants to follow the lead of Trump — when challenged about evidence, when challenged about data, when challenged about any of that, it's like: "You're a fraud, you hate America, you hate me, you're rigged, you're dirty," and I'm done. And strangely enough, this plays into UFC, and I want to talk about why — and people are going to think I'm crazy, but it does. Let's look at what Mike Johnson had to say.

Mike Johnson [Clip]: I'm not saying it's rigged, I'm saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that. Let's — let's have — what a concept — let's have votes on an election day on the day of the election. That's what many states are able to do. I think California is playing around with us.

Interviewer [Clip]: But what evidence is there to prove that there was anything wrong?

Mike Johnson [Clip]: Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here, and that's a concern. We need people to believe in the integrity of our election system.

Brad: "So diabolical, so far upstream, it is impossible to prove." You're a lawyer, Mike. You tried to prove this in 2020 in dozens of cases and you got nowhere as a lawyer. You were the person who was supposed to present the evidence, and the evidence was not there. It did not exist. So now you resort to intuition, instinct. And I want to talk about Mike Johnson as a spiritual warfare monger, somebody who holds to a Christian nationalist worldview in which there are battles between good and evil, angels and demons, God and Satan, all around us, and I think that plays into this. He's echoing Trump. "I don't have evidence, I just know." When you saw Mike Johnson say this — thoughts? First, to that point about evidence: this is Conspiracism 101, right? Conspiracism works where the lack of evidence is evidence. If you're told: "You have no evidence for this," the response is: "Well, of course I don't. They're trying to hide it. This just shows how good they are at hiding what's going on." So there's literally no way you can disprove it if somebody's evidence is that there isn't any evidence. To your point, another thing that I picked up on — and I think this might be where you're headed — is the language of it being "diabolical," right?

Dan: We use that word, and that word just means "really bad or evil," but it literally means "devilish" or "caused by the devil," right. And so I think this is where you're headed, given Mike Johnson's history, given who he is spiritually, politically, socially. He's going to go down that route — that this is spiritual warfare. The people who are supposedly doing this voter fraud, they're not just people who want to win elections, they're not just people who hate MAGA. They are agents of Satan. They are demonic forces. They're the principalities and powers that Paul tells us we need to fight against. So you've got these themes that come together — the conspiracism piece together with the spiritual warfare piece that just amps up the energy of this. I'm not going to say it makes it immune to fact-checking, because it was never about fact-checking. But I think when you start untangling these pieces, you realize this is feeding on emotion. This is feeding on — you said intuition, and I think, for lots of people, just that sense of denial, that something just can't be happening. It cannot be the case that this is happening. And it turns that sense of denial into its own kind of evidence. Our deep-set feelings about something become the measure of whether or not it's true. And I don't think Mike Johnson thinks it's true. I don't think Donald Trump thinks it's true. But I think there are millions of Americans who feel that it has to be true — it just cannot be as simple as "we got outvoted," or "fewer people in my community believe this than me," or whatever. And so it operates on so many different levels.

Brad: I want to take us way back, and then bring us all the way forward into what this means. The birther conspiracy was the same thing. "Oh, I just feel like Barack Obama's not an American. I just feel like he's a Muslim. I just feel like he wasn't born here." And Barack Obama can release his birth certificate, and Donald Trump and everyone else is like: "Yeah, still don't feel it. Still don't feel it. I just don't feel like people like you were born here, so there — you weren't. Sorry, no matter what documents you give, data, evidence, all that stuff, I'm not going to believe it." That's there to me too.

Now, on the religious front — I want to remind everyone of who Mike Johnson is. Mike Johnson is technically a Southern Baptist. However, if you've listened to Charismatic Revival Fury, if you've read The Violent Take It by Force by Matthew Taylor, if you've read the Rolling Stone piece I published with Matthew Taylor about the Appeal to Heaven flag — Mike Johnson is someone who, while Southern Baptist by affiliation, hangs out with and associates with New Apostolic Reformation apostles and prophets like Dutch Sheets and others. He visits NAR-based churches in his district in Louisiana. He is somebody who takes part in a Christian worldview based on spiritual warfare, based on the idea that there are constantly around us these forces that we can't see, we can't prove, we can't empirically test, we can't actually have any evidence of — but they are there, and they are determining the most important things in every domain. Every mountain of the Seven Mountains — business, entertainment, education, government — they are there, and it is an ever-present battle between good and evil. So when he says "diabolical," and he says "unprovable," it's not only playing on that classic conspiracism you talked about — the lack of evidence showing that it must be true — it's playing right into the proclivities of a Christian nationalist worldview based on spiritual warfare, one that is accustomed to working without evidence, accustomed to working on direct feeling. This is not me condemning every aspect of religious experience. But it is, to me, part of the violent Christian supremacist New Apostolic Reformation movement that was at the forefront of January 6th, and it informs Mike Johnson's theology and lived Christianity in deep, deep ways.

Let me say one more thing before we move on. He said, "This goes so far upstream it's unprovable." Not only did he say he doesn't have evidence — he foreclosed the possibility of there ever being evidence, because this somehow goes so far — like, what is so far upstream, Dan? Is that George Soros just sitting in a recliner in an office somewhere pressing buttons? What does that mean — "so far upstream"? Is that Barack Obama sitting there with Michelle Obama and whoever they think is running the world? It's nonsensical. You're telling me that the largest state in this union in terms of population, the fourth biggest economy in the world, a place where one out of ten Americans live — the vote is rigged based on no evidence, and we will never know how it's rigged because it goes so far to the top that even the Speaker of the House, the President of the United States, the CIA, the FBI — nobody can prove it. I want to get to one piece on this from the Cato Institute — I think it's instructive, but other thoughts from you first.

Dan: You highlight the religious piece, I highlight the conspiracism piece, but that's where they flow together, I think. If somebody believes that there are hidden forces circulating in the world, acting in unison to harm us, to hinder us — somebody's already primed for conspiracy. What is a conspiracy theory? It's usually the belief that there's a cabal of malevolent actors acting concertedly and in a hidden fashion to bring about terrible aims of some sort. And I think this notion of spiritual forces can predispose somebody to easily fall into this line of thinking. The other thing is the ambiguity of saying "it's upstream" — of making a vague innuendo and leaving that question open, so that if you ever do prove that, I don't know, George Soros wasn't there that day — they can always say, "Well, I never said that. I just said upstream. I didn't say it was that specific thing." You can always have that deniability. And he tries to sidestep the language of "rigged" — it's like, "I'm not saying it's rigged, I'm just saying it smells to high heaven." He says the same thing, but can later say, "I didn't say it was rigged, that's you, fake news, terrible media" — he'll downplay it. That's what those ambiguities and that sidestepping accomplish: after-the-fact deniability, which is also part of conspiracism. The big conspiracies that stick around have enough ambiguity built in that people can say, "Oh, that's not what I said."

Brad: So, why does this matter? Well, somebody in our Discord this week made this great point: attacking California — which is, and has been for decades, a very democratically leaning state, a place where Democrats have dominated statewide races for a long time — why attack this place rather than a more purple state? A place like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Georgia. Well, because — do you remember when the Trump administration attacked the Southern Poverty Law Center? That's one of the biggest and most important left-wing think tanks, one that watches for supremacy, bigotry, prejudice, xenophobia, racism in our public square, and profiles people who peddle those ideologies. By attacking it, they're attacking the top of the pile. It's the same thing with California. You start by sowing doubt in the place where the politics have been so dominated by the other party.

Let me give you some statistics from the LA Times. Even before President Trump's latest baseless fraud claims, 41% of California voters lacked confidence that this year's elections would be free of federal meddling. So, four out of ten Californians are already afraid the Trump administration is going to get involved in the midterms come November. The survey exposes a sharp partisan divide in trust of local vote counting. 79% of Democrats express confidence in election officials. What is it for Republicans? 55%. Only about half of Republicans are confident in election officials — the people who run the vote counting, who count the votes at county and state levels — amid years of false fraud narratives and new voting restrictions. 74% of Californians want 2028 presidential contenders to prioritize defending democracy and ballot access.

This matters a lot, because very soon it's going to be full midterm season. And any time there is a loss — and the numbers look bleak for the GOP right now, a ten or twelve point difference in the generic polls between Democrats and Republicans, setting up what some pollsters and politicos and operatives are calling a wave election — they are going to cast doubt on every one of those results. The more you weaken faith in our elections, what do you get? We know the answer. Every January 6th defendant has been pardoned. Every person who attacked our Capitol is now set up, according to Trump's slush fund, to get a payout, because quote-unquote they were "treated badly." That is what happens when you weaken faith in democratic institutions. Your peaceful transfer of power is interrupted. You have people try to violently overthrow the certification of an election, and then those people are freed and rewarded. That's what happens.

Let me take you to the Cato Institute, Dan. This is from Steven Richer. The Cato Institute, for those who don't know, is a conservative think tank. The quote: "Many Americans will be confused about the delay and suspicious about its cause. Normal Americans don't understand why most states know who won the races within hours of the polls closing, but not California." A simple explanation: there's one out of ten Americans who is Californian. It's a lot of people. There's more people in LA County than in twenty American states.

Dan: There are more people in LA, San Bernardino, Orange, and Riverside counties than in about thirty American states.

Brad: Exactly. So you can explain this. There's also mail-in voting. There's a lot of things to consider. Richer says: "That's not just an inconvenience for impatient people — it's the origin of distrust in the electoral system. Political scientists have found that longer-than-expected vote counting time induces a large, significant decrease in trust in the election. The concerns of normal Americans will, of course, be inflamed by liars, grifters, conflict merchants, and MAGA politicians." And that's the part where I get really frustrated with this article — to say that the origin of distrust is in the delay between the vote and the results. Here's my argument: longer-than-expected vote counting times will lead to a significant decrease in trust. But the wait times in California are not unexpected. If you told me California was going to have these done the day after the election and it was not done until a month later, then sure — but every time there's an election in California we know it won't have results for three weeks. That is the expected timing. Normal Americans can be told that pretty easily. If you are, I don't know, maybe like the President and the Speaker of the House, you could probably just tell people: "Yeah, it takes about a month over there. Lot of people, lot of mail-in votes, lot of stuff to consider." It's not longer than expected. It's absolutely expected, and we should not think anything is wrong. The source of the distrust is not that they take a couple of weeks — it's that the president and the speaker of the house are liars who are saying, with no evidence, that these elections are rigged. That's the problem. What do you think?

Dan: I agree. Here's the analogy: say you order something online. I had to order some prom shoes for my kid the other day. It's from Macy's, and it says five to seven business days. She's excited — "Are they here yet? Are they here yet?" And I'm like, "Well, let's go look online. It's only been three business days. We still got a couple days." If you get to ten or twelve, and it's been like twelve days — then you've got an issue. But they told you how long it was going to take. You've got that window. So there's nothing weird about it — and that's why they tell us ahead of time. The Cato Institute is trying to sound sort of even-handed here, but I think putting the blame for the lack of trust on anybody but the GOP and their claims of election fraud is disingenuous at best, and just par for the course on the right at worst.

Brad: All right, let's get into something I think is really important: the UFC fight at the White House.

Dan: Did you ever think that's a sentence you would say? "The UFC fight at the White House."

Brad: I did not. From the AP: President Donald Trump's planned UFC fight on the White House South Lawn has required a monumental effort from more than seven federal agencies, hundreds of staff working on site daily, and at least $60 million, according to a legal filing that offers a glimpse into the preparations. The event is part of the 250th anniversary of America's founding, scheduled for this weekend, as we speak. Some of you are probably listening as this is happening — seven mixed martial arts matches on Sunday. There's a chance this is going to get halted by a judge; we don't know yet and we're live, so we don't know the outcome just yet.

A couple of things folks should know. This comes at a time when the State Department and UFC CEO Dana White have reached an agreement to use cage fights for diplomacy. There is an agreement signed between the UFC and the State Department to somehow use UFC in the State Department's diplomacy efforts. We will see what that looks like in the coming months. As an American-founded organization, the UFC has grown into a major global sports platform. It's unclear what the partnership will entail, but we will see.

This is not a one-off. This is supposed to be something the Trump administration will use in its diplomacy efforts going forward. This comes amidst Trump's endless gesturing at a deal with Iran, saying a deal is imminent — according to one tally I saw, this is the 39th time he has said a deal is close. The markets continue to react, and there's speculation that he's juicing the markets and manipulating them for his gain. This is a war that everyone's aware is now costing us a billion dollars a day, has caused inflation to go through the roof, gas prices as summer hits, and so on. And yet we have a spectacle at the White House. I'm looking at a picture of it now — a massive UFC octagon erected outside of the White House, which just had its East Wing demolished. Infrastructure week, if you remember that from the first Trump administration, is going great. We never got infrastructure across the country, but we did get the East Wing demolished and a giant wrestling match on the people's lawn. Tons to say about this. Let me throw it to you. What do you think?

Dan: The ultimate theater of the absurd. The diplomacy thing — I can't think of more of an illustration of the reduction of diplomacy to marketing, the complete collapse of statecraft into mass culture capitalism. Literally, who in the world is going to care? What international crisis is going to come up that'll be like, "You know what'll fix this? Cage matches." People have said for years, "We want a president who runs the country like a corporation," and well, you got it. This is all about Trump's ego. Trump hatched this plan months and months ago — back when he had just been elected, was talking about a landslide and a mandate, and had all the relatively young men who helped propel him into office, who are into the UFC. But it's now an inopportune moment as his popularity is plummeting. He's stuck in Iran. The Epstein files are still hanging over him. Members of Congress are starting to defect. The polling numbers for the midterms are bleak. This is a very different time. And number one — he says it's not about his birthday, but it's about his birthday. The fact that his birthday falls around the 250th anniversary is, I think, solid gold for him. And I was looking — it's supposed to be 90 degrees in Washington, DC on Sunday, heat index of 94, 62% chance of thunderstorms. It's a safety hazard for these athletes — competing in 94-degree heat — all so that this octogenarian president can sit back and feel like a king at his castle watching blood sport. It's just everything about it is embarrassing and maddening and infuriating and illuminating all at the same time.

Brad: Yeah, but let's take this "king in his castle" thing — it's on his birthday. This is already a guy who had a military parade that was an embarrassing, absurdist spectacle. And there's a timeline where the agreement with Iran was going to be signed on Sunday, and he says from the Oval, "Well, I can't make it on Sunday." And to me that was a little moment — there's this little moment where the Trump lenses got taken off. I think everybody now, even if they don't want to, watches Trump through Trump glasses. He gets a frame that no one else gets. When Mike Johnson says, "You can't prove voter fraud," there's an immediate: "What did he just say?" But when Trump walks out of an interview, you're like: "That's Trump. That's what he does." Even as somebody who hates that and thinks it's ridiculous, what's my point? When he says, "I can't make it Sunday to sign the peace agreement" — was he ever going to go to Iran anyway? Probably not. But I just want everyone to zero in on something. This guy is so busy hosting a wrestling match in his backyard — at the tune of $60 million, seven federal agencies, and however many sponsors have given money to Trump, who invested in UFC, the public company that owns it, and is now hosting the event. Lot of conflict of interest there. But zero in on this with me. This is a man who's too busy golfing once every five days to be in the office. Too busy golfing to go to church on Easter Sunday. Too busy doing backyard wrestling to attend to the war he started — a war that is having global catastrophic effects, destroying our economy, blazing through our stockpiles of weapons and our money, a billion dollars a day. Can you imagine any leader of any organization saying, "I cannot attend to our most important, vital, pressing matters because I need to host a backyard wrestling match"?

The diplomacy thing — let me throw an idea at you. We can laugh at the State Department getting an agreement going with the UFC for diplomacy. Do I think there's corruption there? Yes. Do I think investing in the UFC parent company and then signing an agreement with it as the State Department seems like a problem? I do. But as scholars, Dan, let's take the symbology of it, the aesthetics. If Trump diplomacy is UFC, then what does that mean? It means: we don't talk, we don't negotiate, we don't have any meaningful good-faith dialogue. We don't try to work through our differences, our priorities, our values — whether that is with communities in the United States or in foreign policy. We do not do what you have to do in a democracy, which is take competing interests and values, worldviews, frameworks, and say: we live together.

We live together in Queens, where there are how many different ethnicities in this borough. We've got to find a way to have functioning schools and a public square. We live together in the Twin Cities, where the largest Somali populations outside of Somalia live, and the largest Hmong populations outside of Asia live. We've got folks from everywhere — white people, Asian people, Black people, immigrants. We've got to work together to create a public square, school system, roads, infrastructure that work. That's democracy. Democracy is talk. It's us finding a way to — we don't have to like each other, but we have to find a way to work together, negotiate, dialogue, figure out where each other are coming from, and determine how to create a system where we share power and can live. And let me just give you the point of democracy: one of them is freedom and equality. One is the fact that everyone gets a vote. Another is peace — we don't want to fight over who's in charge, we don't want to have wars over who gets to be the military commander or the king. We want to have systems where we vote, and then there is no violence when the next leader takes over. That's democracy in its essence. UFC is Trump diplomacy. Do you remember when UFC started, Dan? Around twenty-five, thirty years ago?

Dan: Yeah.

Brad: I remember back then being in my teens and early twenties and thinking: "There's no more boxing, there's just no rules — it's UFC, you get to kick and punch, choke, wrestle, whatever. This is more fun than boxing." And those predictions were kind of right. UFC is much more popular among young people than boxing is these days. There's no rules — it's just who can get the other person to submit. That's also Trump diplomacy. Who will submit first? That's not democracy. That is not effective when you want to live in a world order not based on violence. It's submit or be submitted. That's the least democratic thing I've ever heard. But that's part of why they are so invested in the aesthetics of UFC — of strong aggressive men fighting until one submits. That's the public square they want. Not one where we vote and share power. What do you think of my UFC symbology?

Dan: I think it's right. I can't even imagine what a full analysis of the violent rhetoric of the Trump administration would uncover. If you looked at all the domains of that — we're going to talk about Pete Hegseth coming up. He talks all the time about military lethality and force and warriors and war imagery. And Trump and spiritual warfare imagery. It's just an ethos of conflict, a valorization of conflict. And to your point, it's built around submission — but also, we see what happens when it's ineffective. That's what's happening with Iran. Trump, at this point, is this empty windbag who just keeps threatening things and then backing off. "We're gonna take — we're gonna do it tonight. Oh, no, we're not." Number 39 — "We're close to a deal." The all-or-nothing logic of submission: when you can't force your opponent to submit, when it's going to take some real discussion, real diplomacy, real compromises where you don't get everything you want but maybe you get something better or more stable or safer — that avenue is completely closed off. When it doesn't work, the consequences are catastrophic, because you're stuck in this cycle of valorizing conflict. Anything less than full submission doesn't work, and then you've got nowhere to go. And I think that's what we see with the Trump administration on Iran — they are completely stuck, they have no idea how to move forward when somebody doesn't cave to the rhetoric, and there's no full capitulation. That's what any kind of deliberative democratic process is supposed to help avoid — that kind of all-or-nothing statecraft.

Brad: So, if you go back to the early UFC archives — and I'm not somebody who knows anything about UFC, but for some reason I have watched these clips, you know, late at night when I'm supposed to be going to bed, scrolling Instagram or whatever — I've seen this clip. Dan, you can laugh at me if you want. I just want to see what your algorithm brings you after watching these clips.

Dan: Just want to see what else is coming up on your algorithm. Yeah.

Brad: There were these early UFC events before there were weight classes. So there's this one clip I'm thinking of — there's a guy who's like 268 pounds, six foot four, and he's fighting one of the members of the Gracie family, the jiu-jitsu family, who's like 5'9", 170 or whatever. And what happens is the 5'9", 170-pound guy submits the massive 260-pound dude. Like, if you saw these two approaching to fight each other in a back alley, you would never have thought it. But why? What was he able to do? He submitted his opponent through a chokehold — that 260-pound behemoth of lethality and strength couldn't do anything, and actually had to give up.

The Strait of Hormuz is that: a country far less lethal in terms of its military, far less affluent, far less developed in terms of military arms, has submitted the Trump administration using a chokehold called the Strait of Hormuz — such that the Trump administration keeps saying, "We're going to open it. It'll be open soon. It is open, but it's not open yet, but it will be. We're gonna accompany them through. We're gonna take the oil. We'll take the oil when they're not looking."

But who's the wide receiver like DK Metcalf? He's, like, 6'4", 225, and when DK Metcalf has no shirt on — he is something else, right?

Dan: 6'4", 225s are not all equal. They are not all the same.

Brad: But supposedly DK Metcalf and Donald Trump are the same height and weight. Anyway, whatever. Who cares? Doesn't matter. Let's go to Pete.

Dan: So, many people will know that Pete Hegseth went to Normandy to commemorate D-Day. Typical thing — happens every year, you know. Representatives of the Allied forces come and do this. And of course, Pete Hegseth managed to make it into a disaster. Typically, it's a solemn remembrance of the Allied invasion of Europe and the ultimate defeat of fascism, but Hegseth decided this was the time to use the commemoration as an opportunity to launch a U.S. attack on European immigration policy. Do we have a clip?

Hegseth [Clip]: Sadly, today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria — boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.

Brad: Does Pete — does Pete think the fascists stormed — does he know that we stormed — it doesn't matter. I know he's —

Dan: — got a strangely Germanic orientation in his D-Day speech. Does he know that it was us who arrived on the beaches of Normandy? I don't know. Anyway, pretty catastrophic metaphor failure there. But he is — and we've seen this, right? We've seen Donald Trump, and especially JD Vance, and now Pete Hegseth, with this whole "European civilization falling because of immigration" thing. It feeds into the European far right and all of those kinds of things. And maybe that's not surprising — that's what the Trump administration thinks, that's where Pete Hegseth is, that's where JD Vance is. The bigot spigot is open full force with them all the time. The xenophobia. But what really stood out to me was the way these comments were condemned by virtually everyone — the overreach of it, which I think illustrates not just that it was a bridge too far for even a lot of people in the GOP when it comes to what they saw as really desecrating a D-Day commemoration, but also the weakened hand of the Trump administration when it comes to this kind of thing.

There were a lot of groups that were critical. Historians were one. British historian Simon Schama said this — and I thought this was a great quote. He said: "As if the little people's rage against immigration is somehow superior to the war against the Third Reich, and it entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the central heroes." Just lit into Pete Hegseth. I think it really gives a window into what the world thinks of Pete Hegseth — this person who was not qualified for the position he holds, who still acts like he's a TV personality rather than a serious cabinet member. They see that.

NATO observers — people who observe NATO and the alliance — noted that it was a lecture given by what is essentially NATO's least reliable ally. The U.S. is no longer speaking as the leader of NATO and the leader of the free world. The country that is the least reliable NATO member is sort of lecturing everybody else once again. Even GOP members of Congress were critical, to say nothing of Democrats, progressives, and immigrant rights advocates. I think everybody was offended, and I think what it shows us is a couple things. One is, of course, the pervasiveness of this white nationalist perspective — that the greatest threat to Europe is not the far right, not fascism, but immigration. That the greatest victory in Europe means the maintenance of white European culture and keeping immigrants out. But I think it also revealed, in really stark fashion, the U.S.'s loss of status on the European and global scene. The Trump administration — we've been talking about this for years, going back to the first Trump administration — their America First thing, their whole "we're going to quit funding NATO, quit doing this, quit doing that, pull out of all of these different organizations," somehow thinking that was going to give them leverage. It's just made them irrelevant. The rest of the world is no longer waiting on the Americans. They're not looking to America for leadership or guidance. Trump and the Trump administration, two administrations now, has forfeited that. And I feel like that was really on display here with how this was received on both sides of the Atlantic.

Brad: Just to back up what you're saying — there's a new survey, I'm reading from a Reuters piece from yesterday or two days ago, that says only 11% of Europeans across fifteen countries view the United States as an ally. 11%? So 89% don't. And 1989 was — you remember 1989 as this sort of apotheosis of post-World War Two American capitalist democracy spreading across the globe. 1989 is when the Berlin Wall falls. It's when the Soviet Union is a year or two from really disintegrating. That was the height of the American gospel of spreading democracy and capitalism across the world. Now, there are problems with all that — but now we're at a place where 89% of Europeans are like: "Yeah, you're not an ally of ours." Not just, "Oh, positive feelings," but: "The United States is not an ally" — meaning the United States may be something as bad as an enemy, or somewhere between not-quite-enemy and not-an-ally. Nonetheless, that's not good.

Okay, we're going to run out of time. Let me give you some high-level thoughts. I think a lot of people are sometimes confused when Pete Hegseth and JD Vance appeal to "European civilization" — "I pray that they'll save their civilizations and their cultures." JD Vance was saying this actually last week about the UK. What I argue in American Caesar — my forthcoming book, out in a couple of months — is that there is a Western civilizationalism, a Western civilizational chauvinism, where what they're saying is: "We are allies of Europe. We are both part of Western civilization, both part of Western Christendom. But you are not acting like it. We will support you when you start acting like it — when you start expelling the non-Europeans, the non-Western Christians, when you actually protect Christendom. Then we'll totally be your ally. But for now, we see you as allowing for the absolute desecration of your societies and of what remains of Christian life in the West." When you hear JD Vance and Hegseth talk, they are always rife with this kind of chauvinism, and I think that's important to know.

All right, I'm now having a camera issue, which is great, Dan. We're gonna run out of time here. Should we go to reasons for hope?

Dan: Reasons for hope? I've already kind of touched on mine. There were UK poll results that came out this week showing that, ahead of elections there, ahead of the midterms, the same kind of anti-incumbent sentiment that pushed Biden out of the White House — and we talked about this in 2024, that there were elections on both sides of the Atlantic and just widespread anti-incumbent sentiment — it is still alive and well and building. And it continues to give hope that many of the same forces that brought Trump back into office in 2024 could well push the GOP out in 2026 and continue to put some brakes on the Trump administration. That's my reason for hope as we come into the summer and very soon enter full midterm season.

Brad: We got a couple in our Discord that are really good. For the first time, solar generates more energy in the United States than coal — that's good. The $100,000 fee for H-1B visas — a judge just ruled it is unlawful. And then, of course, you mentioned the NBA Finals — Donald Trump was booed heavily at the Knicks-Spurs game, Game Four, at Madison Square Garden. And New York really showed out in a lot of ways we could go into.

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