0:00

So, Erin, I kind of expected that

0:02

the Republicans would come for voting rights.

0:04

Yes. And, you know, civil rights. Yes.

0:06

And abortion rights. Of course. But I

0:08

did not think that they would try

0:10

to overturn the right to get divorced.

0:13

Oh, yeah. And it's not just

0:15

divorce they're targeting. So two pretty

0:17

wild things happened this week. First,

0:20

the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled

0:22

that frozen fertilized embryos, microscopic bunches

0:24

of undifferentiated cells, are legally people.

0:27

Just like me or you or

0:29

Zendaya. In

0:33

vitro fertilization, which helps people conceive, involves

0:35

retrieving and fertilizing several eggs and discarding

0:37

the resulting embryos that are either non-viable

0:40

or not implanted and carried to term.

0:43

At least one IVF clinic in Alabama,

0:45

actually the largest IVF clinic in Alabama,

0:47

has already shut down. Wow. Also

0:49

this week, Politico reported that a think

0:52

tank close to Trump is laying out

0:54

a second term agenda that would include

0:56

enshrining what it calls Christian nationalism. And

0:59

a big figure in crafting that

1:01

agenda has defined this as, among

1:03

other things, banning no-fault divorce, sex

1:05

education in schools, and surrogacy. See?

1:08

Republicans do care about women. I'm

1:13

Max Fisher. And I'm Erin Ryan. And this

1:15

is How We Got Here, a new series

1:17

where Erin and I explore a big question

1:19

behind the week's headlines and tell a story

1:21

that answers that question. Our question this

1:23

week, why does this newly

1:25

dominant faction of the GOP want to

1:27

go to war with surrogate mothers, sex

1:30

ed teachers, fertility clinics, and the concept

1:32

of divorce? So the story I

1:34

want to tell the answer to is

1:37

about that movement that you mentioned, Erin.

1:39

The rise of Christian nationalism from the

1:41

fringes of the religious right to now,

1:44

just in the last couple of years,

1:46

dominance of the Republican Party. Even

1:48

in the most doom and gloom scenarios laid out by

1:51

dejected Hillary Clinton voters on the day after the 2016

1:53

election. Not that

1:55

I would know. Not many people were

1:57

sounding the alarm that Republicans wanted to come for

1:59

divorce. divorce or IVF, but here

2:02

we are. And these are not

2:04

just little culture war flourishes. They are

2:06

part of a big unified movement, a

2:08

movement with a name and with followers

2:10

with the pockets. And if you look

2:12

at what they're proposing, this

2:14

is all just a first step toward what

2:16

they intend to be a radical transformation of

2:18

American family and private life. Okay,

2:21

Max, before we dive in, can you

2:23

just define Christian nationalism for us?

2:25

So generally it's understood to refer

2:27

to the belief that the United

2:29

States should be formally redefined as

2:32

a state of and for Christians.

2:34

There would be no separation of

2:36

church and state. All public institutions

2:38

would exist to further Christian principles.

2:41

And the Bible or interpretations of the

2:43

Bible would prevail over regular secular law.

2:46

Okay, it sounds a lot like something

2:49

that rhymes with spatriarchy, but

2:51

politically where does the movement come from?

2:53

So it's definitely that. But it

2:56

also has these very particular obsessions

2:58

and goals that

3:00

develop gradually over time in reaction to

3:03

a handful of big moments in American

3:05

life. The earliest you could

3:07

probably pin it would be

3:09

this famous speech by Billy Graham.

3:12

That's Billy Graham, the wildly influential

3:15

evangelical leader. Right, a speech by Billy

3:17

Graham that he gave pretty early in his career in

3:19

1952 about the Cold

3:21

War. I believe today that the battle is

3:24

between communism and Christianity. And

3:27

I believe the only way that we're going to

3:29

win that battle is for America

3:31

to turn back to God and back

3:33

to Christ and back to the Bible

3:36

as it are. We need a revival. That

3:38

sounds pretty familiar though. The idea that

3:40

America's enemies are also enemies of Jesus.

3:43

And of course, I remember George W. Bush

3:45

saying that God told him to invade Iraq,

3:48

which God would never do since that's where

3:50

we invented him. Well,

3:53

but this is where all that comes

3:55

from. Billy Graham with this speech convinces

3:57

a big subset of American evangelicals. that

4:00

there is this divine struggle

4:02

between secular politics and Christian

4:04

politics for the future of

4:07

humanity. And it's not a

4:09

far jump to see that struggle as extending

4:11

from the Cold War to the moral enemies

4:13

at home, too. Okay, so who are these

4:15

enemies at home? Okay, so not long after

4:17

Graham's speech, there are these two big radicalizing

4:20

events back to back. The

4:22

first is that in 1962,

4:24

the Supreme Court banned school

4:26

prayer. And this was really

4:28

destabilizing for evangelicals, especially. Well,

4:31

Billy Graham just told them that America was

4:33

God's crusader on earth. And now that same

4:35

America is barring their kids from organized

4:37

prayer in school. Right, it felt

4:39

to them like their identity, America's

4:41

rightful Christian identity, was under

4:44

attack by another godless enemy, the

4:46

federal government. Well, and not

4:48

to jump ahead too much, but this entire

4:50

parental rights movement that you see today mobbing

4:53

school board meetings and trying to defund public

4:55

schools. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's

4:57

all this sense that public institutions have

4:59

been captured by secular liberals who want

5:01

to destroy the quote unquote, real American

5:03

identity of Christian conservatives, which centers around

5:06

the nuclear family, which is always headed

5:08

by a man. In other

5:10

words, they see it as a struggle between

5:12

the state and Christian men over who has

5:14

final authority. Okay, so the end of school

5:16

prayer, what was the other big radicalizing event?

5:19

So for this, I talked to a woman

5:21

named Julie Ingersoll. She's a professor of religious

5:23

studies at the University of North Florida and

5:26

an expert on this movement. And

5:28

what she said surprised me. She said

5:31

it was a reaction against school desegregation

5:33

in the fifties and sixties. There

5:35

were a whole lot of people who wanted

5:37

their kids, their white kids out of the

5:39

context of public schools where there were going

5:41

to be black kids. They didn't

5:43

want to say that. And

5:46

when the whole movement came along with

5:48

a biblical argument that public

5:50

education is actually anti biblical,

5:53

which is what these folks argue that it's

5:55

not within the purview of the authority of

5:57

the state to run education. That's a family.

6:00

responsibility and therefore it's unbiblical.

6:06

They coincided the efforts to desegregate public schools

6:08

and the effort to build an alternative education

6:10

system to replace public schools to

6:12

transform the culture in terms of a

6:14

certain version of Christianity coincided with each

6:16

other in a way that was very

6:18

effective for the critique of public schools

6:20

and the rise of Christian schools. Wow,

6:23

America just cannot quit

6:25

racism. You know, like in

6:28

Forrest Gump, when Forrest Gump is in all

6:30

those historic... I feel like every historic event

6:32

in American history, there's racism. Racism is

6:34

the Forrest Gump. Yes, in the blurry

6:36

in the background or very prominent in the

6:38

foreground, racism is there. Racism is always

6:41

running. Well, so

6:43

all of this, like this backlash and

6:45

the sense of Cold War, crusaded all

6:47

kind of swirls together into this belief

6:49

that white Christian conservatives

6:51

are the real Americans and their

6:54

rightful place on top is under

6:56

attack. And now the great enemy

6:58

of American Christendom isn't global communism

7:00

anymore. It's the state and the

7:03

schools and the courts. Yeah,

7:05

and it's also the people that

7:07

operate outside of the white patriarchal

7:09

nuclear family structure. So LGBTQ people,

7:11

single mothers, women who have sex

7:13

outside of marriage. So

7:16

the state is doing things like passing

7:18

civil rights laws or enabling access to

7:20

contraception that make it easier to live

7:22

outside of that structure. And that's a

7:24

threat to its dominance. Yeah. So

7:26

their new crusade isn't to win the

7:28

Cold War. It's a battle against all

7:30

this social change happening in America and

7:32

against the liberal secular state they

7:35

see as carrying it out. Yes, culture

7:37

wars as holy wars. So then another

7:39

two big Supreme Court rulings deep in

7:41

that sense that the white patriarchal nuclear

7:43

family structure is losing its dominance over

7:46

American life. In Griswold versus Connecticut in

7:48

1964, the Supreme Court ruled that the

7:50

government can't bar women from accessing contraception.

7:53

This marked a huge shift in American

7:55

culture. It brought down the stakes on

7:57

the act of sex. Its

8:00

impact on women's freedom and by extension

8:02

the quote traditional American family Seismic

8:06

and then in 1973 the supreme court

8:08

ruled on rovi wade It didn't become

8:10

a political flashpoint until a few years

8:12

later when reagan and the evangelical right

8:14

rallied against it And ever

8:16

since a driving force behind american conservatism

8:18

has been returning power over the female

8:20

body back to men where it belonged

8:24

Right, but we're trying to understand

8:26

more than just the american right

8:28

broadly here, right? We're looking for

8:30

the genesis of this very specific

8:32

movement within it christian nationalism So

8:34

all of this cultural backlash is

8:36

kind of the petri dish And

8:39

it's around this point in history

8:41

that you start to see the

8:43

first buds of something more than

8:45

just cultural conservatism Or evangelical backlash.

8:47

It's that old billy graham mandate

8:49

for a crusade but now focused

8:51

on all these agents of cultural

8:53

change Yeah, like I still remember the

8:55

first time I saw that pat robertson quote from 1992

8:59

Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands

9:01

kill their children practice witchcraft destroy capitalism

9:03

and become lesbians I've only done like

9:05

three things on that list I

9:08

thought it was a joke. I had to I had to look it

9:10

up. I just sound sick. Honestly, it's super

9:12

fun Uh, so, okay So

9:14

at this point the evangelical

9:17

and christian conservative movements want to

9:19

roll back the clock But for

9:21

the most part the mainstream gop

9:23

is not going like full Theocracy

9:25

the thing we call christian nationalism

9:27

really starts to emerge after

9:29

september 11 There's this

9:31

wave of Islamophobia across the country

9:33

and it gets championed by some

9:35

not all but definitely some evangelical

9:37

leaders Who tell people that christians

9:40

are under like? Imminent

9:42

real physical existential threat from

9:44

within I remember this well Uh

9:47

people really were convinced that liberals

9:49

and muslims were in a league

9:51

to literally bring about sharia law

9:54

It's hard to it's hard to convey to people

9:56

who were not there how crazy america got it

9:58

was literally bah And

10:00

looking back on it now, it's it's

10:02

he. The Trump Era seems nuts and

10:04

it is and will always have been

10:06

nuts. But this. Iraq. War

10:09

era paranoia was a different flavor of

10:11

months later when of flavor that became

10:13

the thing that is now with us.

10:16

So like I know it feels like

10:18

so long ago. But Trump of course

10:20

rose on his promise to fight against

10:23

that made up threat on behalf

10:25

of the you know, white christian real

10:27

Americans. and he basically presents himself as

10:29

whether he realizes doing and are not

10:32

taking up that crusade against secularism, minorities

10:34

in the courts and social progress. The

10:36

increase in nationalists believe they. Have

10:38

been losing for sixty years. There.

10:41

Is a statistic that I think helps explain

10:44

why of all the ideological strains and Trump

10:46

is I'm It's the christian nationalist component. It's

10:48

really asserting itself now. In

10:50

Nineteen Ninety Nine, seventy percent of Americans

10:53

belongs to a house of Worship. By

10:55

Twenty Twenty that had fallen to forty

10:57

seven percent. While I twenty Twenty Three

11:00

pulls on that, thirty percent of Americans

11:02

claim no religious affiliation, which is an

11:04

eight point jump from just two years

11:07

prior to yes, yes. So Christians in

11:09

America are no longer the majority and

11:11

they know their numbers are shrinking snow.

11:14

Obviously, most religiously observant people do not

11:16

respond to their faith becoming less popular

11:18

by becoming the reins. Theocrats rats

11:20

argue about all christians here not talking

11:23

about are really hashtag, not all crysis

11:25

letting. Her. White conservative who already believe

11:27

the your country is being taken away

11:29

the this feels like the godless settlers,

11:31

the women, the gays, the non whites

11:33

are winning the war. on america's christian

11:36

identity to so this think tank that

11:38

we mentioned at the start of the

11:40

show the one that laying out this

11:42

agenda for trump second term is called

11:45

the center for renewing america and an

11:47

or the these names sec they have

11:49

a big likes being we'll that they

11:52

turn sell a random words yes anti

11:54

to yes have a lot of the

11:56

things that they want are not obviously

11:58

linked to christian like restricting

12:01

legal immigration or dismantling

12:03

federal agencies. And that

12:05

to me is really telling, really embodies how

12:08

Christian nationalism has come to

12:10

me more than just writing

12:12

Christian morality into law. It's

12:15

come to stand for this like

12:17

holy war to put women, minorities,

12:20

LGBTQ people and secular people back

12:22

in their place and to put

12:24

white Christian men back on top,

12:26

at least according to their imagined

12:28

pasts of you know, great

12:31

white Christian male utopian dominance. Absolutely.

12:33

And there's this group called Project 2025, another Chad GPT

12:35

name, that's

12:38

linked to the Center for Renewing America

12:40

and a line in the Project 2025

12:43

manifesto, which is scary-ass reading. Yeah. If

12:46

you've ever read Stephen King's The Stand and

12:48

you were like not scary enough, you

12:50

might want to read Project 2025. There's

12:52

a line in it that spells it out.

12:54

Quote, freedom is defined by God not man.

12:57

And that that's kind of become the

12:59

core of this thing we

13:02

now call Christian nationalism. It's

13:04

really a promise for authoritarianism

13:06

on behalf of white

13:08

conservative Christians who see themselves as

13:10

both a persecuted minority and America's

13:13

rightful dominant group. So

13:16

Julie Ingersoll, the religious studies professor

13:18

who we talked to, really emphasized

13:20

this when I asked her about

13:22

the Alabama State Supreme Court decision

13:24

that banned IVF by characterizing frozen

13:26

embryos as people. Well, I think

13:29

the theocrats that we're discussing see a

13:32

patriarchal family as a basic

13:34

organizing building block of

13:36

society and policies

13:38

and practices that undermine that

13:41

and provide options for women to

13:43

make different life choices are

13:46

a threat to how they

13:48

want society to be organized. And

13:51

This movement to forcibly impose certain social hierarchies

13:53

is behind the desire to ban no-fault divorce,

13:55

too. I Have to say, when Trump was

13:57

elected, I was one of the Cassandras. Running

14:00

around with my hair on fire and

14:02

warning that this would spell the eventual

14:04

and not just abortion, but also birth

14:07

control and fertility treatments. but I did

14:09

not see it coming that a man

14:11

who has been divorced twice would usher

14:13

in a politically formidable backlash to no

14:15

fault divorce. Holiday.

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From executive producers of Succession, HBO's

16:10

The Regime premieres March 3rd on

16:12

Max. Can

16:20

you actually explain that? The No-Fault divorce

16:22

and why that, of all things, is

16:24

in the crosshairs now? Sure.

16:26

Before No-Fault divorce was signed into law in California in

16:29

1969 by a certain governor named Ronald Reagan... I've

16:32

heard of him. Woke hero. If

16:35

a couple wanted to dissolve their marriage,

16:37

one party had to demonstrate that they'd

16:39

been wronged by the other party. That

16:42

meant proving abandonment, cruelty, bigamy, adultery, impotence,

16:44

or domestic violence. Bigamy. Bigamy.

16:47

This led to what I'm going to classify

16:49

as madcap shenanigans between couples who would falsify

16:52

spousal wrongdoing in order to break

16:54

up. For example, having one

16:56

half of the couple photographed pretending to

16:59

have an affair with a third party,

17:01

the couple had hired to prove

17:03

adultery. It's kind of a fun way to

17:05

go out, honestly. Madcap shenanigans. It's fun that you

17:07

get to share that little adventure as a way,

17:09

as a kind of denouement for your marriage. It

17:12

would be...it would make a great screwball comedy. The

17:15

entire economy of Reno, Nevada once centered

17:17

on women moving to town to establish

17:19

residency so that they could be granted

17:21

a quickie Nevada divorce. Okay, but

17:23

why would a religious nationalist

17:25

movement be so outraged by

17:27

this? No-Fault divorce

17:29

was another way that women gained a

17:32

modicum of power by making it easier

17:34

to leave unhappier, abusive marriages. Now,

17:37

somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of

17:39

divorces in the U.S. are initiated by

17:41

women, depending on who you ask. One

17:43

study found that as different states legalized

17:45

no-fault divorce, the female suicide rates in

17:47

those states would drop by an average

17:49

of 20 percent. Wow. Yeah,

17:52

there was a lot of hand-wringing in the 1980s

17:54

and 90s about how divorce was tearing the

17:56

American family apart, but in fact, the

17:58

American family was kind of a... nightmare for a

18:00

lot of women trapped inside it. Oh,

18:03

I see. So the old way of doing

18:05

divorce meant that the husband had to consent

18:07

and could withhold that consent to lock their

18:09

wives into unhappy marriages, which these numbers suggest

18:11

they were doing on a huge scale. Exactly.

18:14

Or drag his wife to court and

18:16

she would have to prove things. And

18:18

it's a lot to put somebody through,

18:20

especially if they're being subject to cruel

18:23

or inhumane treatment. And

18:25

that's why the far right hates it

18:27

when it's easy to divorce. In places

18:29

like Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Nebraska, in

18:31

the last year conservatives have been floating

18:33

the idea of eliminating no fault

18:35

divorce. And several influential right-wing

18:38

gadflies have seized on the cause. I'm

18:40

not going to name them because they're

18:42

annoying. They've decided the party to

18:44

blame for the destruction of the American family

18:46

is the woman who chooses to leave her

18:48

shitty husband, not the husband for being

18:50

shitty in the first place. Okay, but

18:53

even in their wildest John

18:55

McNaughton illustrated dreams, no

18:58

fault divorce isn't really going to be eliminated

19:00

in the near term, right? No, probably not.

19:03

No fault divorce is really, really popular.

19:05

I see why. But Christian nationalists are

19:07

trying another attack by introducing a new

19:09

type of marriage that makes it harder

19:11

for people to divorce by design. A

19:13

new marriage dropped. Yes. It's called covenant

19:15

marriage. And in places like Louisiana, Arkansas,

19:17

and Arizona, couples can already opt into

19:19

it. I am almost afraid to ask,

19:22

but what is a covenant marriage? Couples

19:24

opt into it to eliminate the

19:26

possibility of no-fault divorce for themselves.

19:29

They agree to premarital counseling and

19:31

to narrowed acceptable parameters for divorce.

19:34

It's not very popular. I see why. In

19:36

the states where it's an option, fewer

19:38

than 1% of couples have opted in,

19:40

but at least one famous person has,

19:42

Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Ah,

19:45

yes. Mike Johnson, who swears that he's

19:47

not a Christian nationalist, but has a flag

19:49

in his office with the phrase Appeal

19:51

to heaven that is widely considered a Christian nationalist

19:53

motto. That Guy? Yep. That Guy. The Guy who

19:56

compared himself to Moses at a dinner where he

19:58

thought there'd be no press. Yep. The

20:00

guy wrote the Emeka Spree for the

20:02

losing side and Lawrence be Texas the

20:04

supreme court case that legalize same sex

20:06

relationships. That one. That the very

20:09

same, the Speaker of the House is

20:11

not a full throated the A crowd

20:13

is at least incredibly flirty with Chris

20:15

and nationalism. Other new not be flirting with

20:18

prisoners. From his innocence him to his as

20:20

him well they are long say probably by

20:22

season three. Hey well. Like

20:24

you said earlier, Christian nationalism is

20:27

also behind. In some ways. the

20:29

current parental rights movement to the

20:31

schools are portrayed as corrupting secular

20:34

institutions, intruding on the rightful social

20:36

order, and the answer is to

20:38

take over the schools, or even

20:41

to just completely different them in

20:43

favor of unregulated home schooling. Yeah,

20:46

it's already happening to and do you know

20:48

a childcare is so expensive in the allegedly

20:50

pro family state of Utah? Oh why.

20:52

Because there's a belief among certain conservative

20:55

state lawmakers that women should not need

20:57

daycare center, they should be staying home.

20:59

They should be looking after the kids.

21:01

They should be cooking and cleaning. They

21:03

should not have a job. And

21:06

without access to birth control or

21:08

abortion care, the assumption is that

21:10

they be looking after a lot

21:12

of kids. Have to wonder if

21:14

this is part of why initiatives

21:16

like Universal Child Care or Paid

21:18

Parental Leave which pull incredibly well

21:20

nationally across the political spectrum. Nonetheless,

21:23

keep failing at the federal level too,

21:25

so that. Is what confuses

21:27

me about the opposition to

21:29

in vitro fertilization. It's

21:31

literally a fertility treatment. To.

21:34

Help women have more babies. You have

21:36

it, is that the right type of women?

21:38

Okay, let's revisit the Alabama Supreme Court ruling

21:40

from earlier this week. The court ruled that

21:43

for the purposes of liability, destroying a human

21:45

embryo is the same thing. As

21:47

murdering a baby. It. Is

21:49

absurd on it's face and it as a ah

21:51

you're right, it's a big yikes But there are

21:53

a couple reasons that I the As is next

21:56

in the cross hairs. One is that conservatives are

21:58

coming for birth control. the been very. about

22:00

this. And in order to chip away

22:02

at contraception access, they'll need to legally

22:04

define human life as beginning at the

22:07

moment of conception because some contraception works

22:09

by interfering with the implantation of a

22:11

fertilized egg. Oh, I see. So if

22:13

a blastocyst is a child, marina

22:15

is murder. IVF might

22:18

just be collateral damage. Okay,

22:20

and IVF, of course, can also

22:22

help people who exist outside

22:24

of that idealized Christian family structure

22:27

in order to have kids, like

22:29

older moms, women becoming single moms

22:32

by choice, LGBTQ couples, and it's

22:34

also used by cancer patients

22:36

who want to have kids later on. Yeah, take that

22:38

cancer patient. More collateral damage in the battle

22:41

to take away birth control. Of course, it's

22:43

impolitic to say you want to do this

22:45

to reimpose men's control over women's bodies. So

22:48

you get things like this Heritage Foundation

22:50

speaker arguing that taking away birth control

22:52

is feminist, actually. It seems to me

22:54

that a good place to start would

22:57

be a feminist movement against the pill

22:59

and for rewilding sex, returning the danger

23:01

to sex, returning the intimacy, and really

23:03

the consequentiality to sex. And

23:05

a great deal follows from an intentional

23:10

reconnection of women's opting intentionally

23:12

to reconnect with the fullness

23:14

of our embodied nature. Did

23:16

you see rewilding sex? Did I

23:18

hear that correctly? Rewilding sex. Not

23:20

that women have been using contraception and

23:22

abortion for the entire history of human

23:25

civilization. Whatever. Even Nikki Haley,

23:27

who has tried to present herself as

23:29

a moderate on abortion, told an interviewer

23:31

this week that she too believes that

23:34

frozen embryos are human children. I mean,

23:36

embryos to me are babies. So even

23:38

those created through IVF. I

23:40

mean, I had artificial insuffination.

23:42

That's how I had my son. So when

23:44

you look at, you know, one thing is

23:46

to have, to say, sperm or

23:49

to save eggs. But when you talk

23:51

about an embryo, you are talking about,

23:53

to me, that's a life. So

23:55

I would really like to write all

23:57

this off as like nutty fringe stuff.

24:00

that has no chance of becoming law.

24:03

But a survey last year found that 21% of

24:06

self-identified Republicans now adhere to the

24:08

core principles of Christian nationalism, even

24:10

if they don't call themselves that,

24:13

and another 33% are sympathetic to

24:15

those principles. And this

24:17

sort of Christian nationalist ethos is trickling

24:19

into mainstream culture too. If

24:22

you go on TikTok lately, you'll see all these

24:24

videos of what's called Tradwife content. Oh, yeah, I've

24:26

heard of this. Which depicts the life of a

24:28

stay-at-home mom as one of leisure and ease. Usually

24:31

a beautiful, skinny white woman with perfectly

24:33

well-behaved, clean children, doing things that most

24:36

stay-at-home moms rarely have time to do,

24:38

like making bread from scratch. Can

24:40

we hear one? Embrace yourself.

24:43

So prep my man's lunch with

24:45

me. I'm gonna show you guys

24:47

a great tuna pasta salad recipe. That's what

24:49

he's getting. And a piece of

24:52

pumpkin bread. I made it yesterday. It's on my

24:54

channel as well. So let's get

24:56

cooking. So the promise of Christian nationalism is

24:58

give up all your eggs, but you get

25:00

a tuna sandwich? You

25:03

get a tuna salad and pumpkin bread.

25:05

Everybody knows pumpkin and tuna go great

25:07

together. I hope

25:09

she's got a nice pack for that lunchbox because

25:11

her man is about to get a stomach

25:14

bug. The

25:16

message is that quitting the workforce

25:18

is not the economically treacherous decision

25:20

that study after study has shown

25:22

it is. And actually

25:24

that spending all day, every day and taking

25:26

care of children is automatically the most fulfilling

25:29

thing any woman could be doing with her

25:31

body and her brain. Enforced

25:33

female subservience is an important tenet of

25:35

Christian nationalism. And these TikTok creators, whether

25:38

they realize it or not, are just

25:40

a new soft power avenue to promote

25:42

it. Well, and you're now

25:44

hearing prominent Republicans just call themselves Christian

25:46

nationalists now. Like here is our pal

25:48

friend of the show, Marjorie Taylor Greene,

25:51

a couple of years ago. We need

25:53

to be the party of nationalism. And

25:56

I'm a Christian and I say it proudly. We should

25:58

be Christian nationalists. If

26:00

the Republicans learn to represent most of

26:02

the people that vote for them, then

26:04

we will be the party that continues

26:07

to grow without having to chase down

26:09

certain identities or chase down certain segments

26:11

of people. Trump has clearly picked

26:14

up on all of this. In

26:16

a way that he really was not in 2016 or

26:18

even in 2020, is really now bending himself to

26:23

the winds of Christian nationalism and bending

26:25

himself to its influence within the party.

26:28

Here he is at a rally in

26:30

Iowa in December. Upon taking

26:32

office, I will create a new

26:34

federal task force on fighting anti-Christian

26:37

bias to be led

26:39

by a fully reformed Department of

26:41

Justice that's fair and equitable.

26:43

Its mission will be to

26:46

investigate all forms of illegal

26:48

discrimination, harassment, and persecution against

26:51

Christians in America. They are

26:53

going after Christians

26:56

in America. Who can believe all

26:58

this stuff? Oh,

27:03

you love the Bible so much, name five books.

27:07

Name five books in the Bible and they

27:09

can't be the New Testament like ones named

27:11

after. I didn't say old one and new one. No,

27:14

those are just sections. See, again.

27:16

Well, you're the Christian nationalist here. So

27:20

all of this really clarifies how

27:22

a serial philandering, clearly non-believing Trump

27:24

can become the standard bearer for

27:27

Christian nationalism. And why

27:29

you see right wing evangelical leaders praising him

27:31

as leading America in a great religious struggle

27:33

against the forces of evil. And why so

27:36

many of the January 6th rioters waved like

27:38

placards of Jesus wearing a MAGA hat. Yeah,

27:41

it makes sense of a lot

27:43

in retrospect. And it's not that

27:46

these people's religious beliefs are insincere.

27:48

It's that this movement has kind

27:50

of Infused this besieged,

27:52

crusading, holy War American Christianity with

27:54

also a very deep hatred of

27:57

social progress and a desire to...

27:59

to overturn it. And if Trump

28:01

delivers on that, then to them

28:04

he must be a holy man.

28:07

Okay, well it's not your imagination

28:09

and it's not an accident. There

28:11

really are a lot of seriously

28:13

retrograde things happening right now and

28:16

loot. a combination of a decades

28:18

long movement which is now a

28:20

powerful and well money group that

28:22

believes. God. Has chosen

28:24

them. To. Control the future of

28:27

this country. Whether this country actually

28:29

wants any of it or not,

28:31

it's not a hypothetical future scenario.

28:34

Christian nationalism has become the driving

28:36

political force, one of our two

28:38

major political parties. Today.

28:41

And they're already getting some real victories

28:43

on the state level. But. I'm.

28:45

A go along get along Santa guys. So I

28:47

think I'm not only in intuit, I'm gonna pull

28:49

up tic toc and I think I'm just going

28:52

to your driveway. You're going to go travel. I,

28:54

you know what is that? The future? I would

28:56

rather sit and and conformists. In boy I

28:58

think you're actually a boat rocker boys

29:00

gives. Advice to. I'm

29:03

bringing a gender equality to the tried right

29:05

moment to have an ear and tips for

29:07

meaning as checker less. Throw to tic Tac

29:10

sign. It's an

29:12

I use it isn't isn't that insists that woman

29:14

says density to do all the things that man

29:16

is. This is a distortion. And it's his. Men

29:19

has never has to prove that they

29:22

can tunnels attention to why such as

29:24

them into the mess with a to

29:26

this woman in and ought to be

29:29

judged as quickly as a synonym for

29:31

it is in his eminently if they

29:33

participate in humans is a movie has

29:36

some cases of has this. Would

29:51

It is how we got years media. Exposure

29:56

Aaron Producers: is

30:00

our associate producer. Evan Sattin is our

30:02

sound editor. Kyle Seglund, Charlotte Landis, and

30:05

Vassilis Fotopoulos who engineered the show. Production

30:07

support from Leo Sessa, Itsy

30:09

Quintanilla, Raven Yawamoto, Natalie Bettendorf,

30:12

and Adrian Hill. And

30:14

special thanks to one-a-day hosts, Trevel Anderson,

30:16

Priyank Garabindi, Josie Duffy-Royce, and Juanita Tolliver

30:18

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