Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Pete Hegseth's Fascist Book 'American Crusade'

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Robert and Jamie learn how Pete Hegseth thinks Islam works, and discuss his plan to purge the U.S. of undesirables.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cool Zone Media All right Listeners update I went over to Elizabeth The Not So Dying Squirrel And she scurried away Welcome to Behind the Bastards by the way Into the Cyper

Yeah what fuck off You're gonna do a good You're gonna do a normal intro Some of us have to be professionals here Sophie Someone has to be a professional So just to say Maybe I was right not to smash her

With a Rock and to feel sadness on the inside, and maybe she's okay. I didn't get to evaluate her with myself. So I just said, if she's suffering, you should smash her with a rock. That's the humane thing to do, you know? Well, in that case, I mean, smash, we're all suffering in a way. And are we not all praying for an asteroid to hit? I am begging to be smashed for the rock at the end of the day.

I'm realizing. I'm just saying, I hope Elizabeth the not-so-dying squirrel scurried away and now is like, you know. I hope she's fine now. Enjoying an acorn. If you're not, if something's not fine, you always have rocks. A big enough rock can stop anyone's pain. You know, that's the truth about rocks. I always have my phone that can call you who has rocks.

I've got lots. I got so many rocks. I'm not throwing a rock at Elizabeth. You don't throw the rock. That's not nearly like that's the odds of you missing and just injuring the animal. You know, that's just inhumane. Oh, Robert. I've been carrying around the same rock for, for 20 years.

and I'm shocked I'm shocked how easy it is to get a rock onto I mean I guess is a play You're very experienced killing Like we've established that on the show Don't start this shit again Okay

Listen I can't afford this anymore This is This has followed me I just got back for my book tour And these accusations Have followed me around the country That's right

That's right I've been heckled Sufferable Yeah for those for those deaths And fuck what was the town I made up you killing people in. Oh, my God. I can't forget.

I can't forget because it's yelled at me all the time. Unbelievable. There's so many people who are like, I've signed a book and then they've leaned in conspiratorily and said, I'm okay with what you did in Grand Rapids. Good. You know? They're sickos. We're manufacturing consent so that when you do have to kill somebody, everyone's like,

it's fine for Jamie to do this. This is a psychological experiment. I'm giving you a get-it-out-of-jail-free card here. Look, and now I feel like I shouldn't even say it. But how easy it is to get a... We're going to take the jewelry pool. It's going to be like a fucking Luigi situation. She must have had a reason.

Look, in his defense, I mean, the Luigi defense is, Your Honor. When we put this haughty behind bars, I think not. Come on. He's just simply too. Come on. Are you not foaming? Are you not foaming? Come on.

I just, I've been bringing, I've gotten a rock, like a rock that could probably do some damage through, like, airport security all the time. It's really shocking. Yeah, because rocks don't set off the metal detectors. I don't think there's specifically a rule against taking a rock on a plane because, like, there's gym girls, you know? It's true. I think it's probably fine to take a big rock on a plane, you know? I can confirm you will not have a problem with the rock. You know what?

I'm going to use the company money to book, like, 20 different flights. in the course of like two weeks and just repeatedly take flights with large start with a small rock and just go up by like a half inch diameter each time and see at what point they're like you can't take that on a plane sir i bet my guess is there'll be a point where they'll be they'll ask and then there's going to be a point where they say we cut off and then you should and then you should just be like where's the rule yeah where's the rule it's like air bud what's the rule that says a dog can't play basketball what's the rule that i can't have a rock on a plane it's a souvenir you can't It's a souvenir. It's a souvenir rock from wherever I found it.

So, Jamie, this has all been fun. You know what's not going to be fun. With the rest of the episode? He's returning to Pete Hedgeset's fascist manifesto. I cannot believe. I've thought for sure you were finishing the book, but it was just started. No, no, no. There's so many, there's almost a normal book's number of words in this book, or roughly a normal book's number of words in this book. That's shocking. I feel like they're like really, you know, pamphlet-y. I mean, you know, actually, I happen to agree, you know, some of the, some of the quotes on the back of the book, one of them stated, this is Pete Hegseth's Raw Dog, which since it came out a couple of years before your book was a weird statement to make. But, you know, it is true that publishers who commune regularly with the sacred spirits of the Oracle of Delphi have been awaiting your book for generations, you know. It's, look, I realize that it was fulfilling a prophecy of sorts. Yeah. There are references to Ron. dog in a oh fuck it was gonna be a great joke i forgot the name of the oldest story ever uh fuck

with the with the fucking the monster and the guy with the sword god damn it was the oldest book in the world yeah like the oldest like proper i've no idea not novel uh you're talking about the epic of gilgamesh god damn it what a bull jesus christ i fucked that up so bad no what were you What were you going to say, Robert, about the epic of Gilgames? I was going to say there were references to Roddog in the epic of Gilgamesh, but I forgot the name of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I just ruined the whole bit. It's fucked. It's okay.

I fact checked it for you. Thank you, Sophie. Jesus Christ. Oh, God. Technically, it was a poem, but, you know. Yeah, it's a poem. Whatever. It counts.

It counts. It counts. Just like Pete Higgs sets raw dog. Pete Hes S raw dog. Yeah. American Crusade. I love a good name competition. It would be great if there was a right-wing book

that couldn't use the title Raw Dog. I was just thinking how funny it would be if you get made Secretary of Defense next. And journalists at, like, New York Magazine are, like, quoting from Raw Dog to try to determine how you'll run the military. A bunch of woke bullshit. We really don't know where she's going to go, actually.

This is anybody's game. Impossible to predict her policy on Iran based on this hot dog book. Look, there's a, I think some of my policies are in there. My international policy remains absolutely inscrutable. I know, and you do spend, there is that weird chunk in the middle of Raw Dog where you spend 40 pages arguing in favor of the littoral defense ships that the U.S. Navy was building for a while, which I think that when you read it, it sounds out of context, but when you read

it, it actually makes quite a lot of sense why it's there. They are the hot dogs of the sea. A lot of sailors say so. That's exactly it. This is an I-Heart podcast. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell.

And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Girlfriends is back with a new season, and this time I'm telling you the story of Kelly Harnett. Kelly spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit.

As she fought for her freedom, she taught herself the law. He goes, oh God, Arnett, jailhouse lawyer. And became a beacon of hope for the women locked up. up alongside her. You're supposed to have faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her.

I think I was put here to save souls by getting people out of prison. The Girlfriends, jailhouse lawyer. Listen on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime. My husband said

your dad's been killed. This is hands tied. A True Crime Podcast, exploring the murder of Jim Milgar. I was just completely in shock. Liz's father murdered. And her mother found locked in a closet, her hands and feet bound. I didn't feel real at all. More than a decade on, she's still searching for answers.

We're still fighting. Listen to Hands Tide on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm John. Lithgow. We choose to go to the moon. I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast. That's one small step for man. About Buzz Aldrey, one of the two pioneers of space.

You're a great pilot, Buzz. That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't. Buzz, starring me, John Lithgow, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we're now seven minutes in. Pete's next chapter is called 2020, death, divorce, or dawn, which I do love, like, for a man who's been divorced this many times, death, divorce, or dawn, right?

That's him talking about the different paths the country could go down. We can either die, we can have a national divorce, or we can have a new dawn, right? So it opens with him talking about how much he regrets that he was a never-trumper at one point, or he was almost a never-Trumper, right? And this is a necessary Mia Colpa from a guy who was on record as when Trump first started running, he was backing Marco Rubio, right? And Hegg Seth was a more mainstream Republican in this period, although he is still very, he's always been very far right.

He just didn't think Trump could win. And also, Trump was like a weird New York real estate guy, right? He didn't seem like a real conservative because he's not. Right. He's a politician. He has to hedge his bets. Yeah. He's just a dick and a fascist.

Anyway, his journey is one we've seen a lot of Trump's inner circle go on, right? And the reason why they've been able to go from, this guy should never be, could absolutely never be president, be a disaster, to, uh, you know what? Maybe he's the savior of the people, right? The reason that they went through that is because the only thing any of these people, Pete included, believe, is that like, I should be close to power, right? And yeah, so you just kind of have to, if you're in Pete's position where you have some documentation as being on the other side of things, you have to like explain how you turned around to looking to boot, right? So here's what he gives is his first conversion moment. My first conversion moment

was watching a televised Trump rally in April 2016 in Southern California. The protests on the street were so fierce that Trump and his staff had to leave their cars, walk along a highway to be escorted into a back entrance of the venue. Helicopters followed his every move and leftists were to lighted. What was he talking about that was so controversial? America? Make America great again? Build the wall? America first. Outside the arena, the left-wing protesters seethed with rage. Many of them waved Mexican flags and confronted police. Now, there's no reason to believe that this actually had an impact on Pete. Pete, the reason he brings this up is it fits an established right when narrative, right? I like Pete. Pete. Pete, yeah. I like that better. It fits the narrative that

like, we're only fascist because of the radical left, right? That's what made us be fascist, right? And obviously Pete's documented history shows this, this is a guy who always wanted politics and always had really regressive right-wing views that he largely used to attack people he thought were less than him. Yeah. I like for it. I just, just, I mean, where do you, in Southern California, do you think he was when you saw, when he saw this?

Do you think he said, like, Disneyland? Yeah. He's at Knott's Berry Farm. He's getting hammered at Knott'sberry Farm probably. Yeah. He's got a puk on a roller coaster. He's in the fast pass line for Great Thunder Mountain. He's like, you know what?

I mean, I'm going to give Donald Trump a chance. So one thing I do believe is when Pete asserts that Trump taught him how to wage political combat, which is accurate from what we can see, right? Because this is a guy who failed to get a start in politics because he didn't really understand what Trump did, right? And Trump proved you don't have to pretend to be respectable. You don't have to pretend to be nice. You can be, you can lie and cry havoc and people who are just as shitty as you will hate whoever you're yelling at because their lives are only filled if they have hate, right? Like that's what Trump understood and that's what Pete learns from him and I do think he's being accurate here when he says that Trump taught me how to fight in the political sense because there's absolutely no evidence he knew how to do it previously

I find it interesting that Trump credits him for giving him a Trump spine and he writes that Trump taught him out a quote live the lyrics of my favorite rock band I feel safe inside the violence right of the political arena right that's that's a quote and now I bet you're wondering what What song is that from, right? I'm scared to know. It's from the Everclear song, Santa Ana Wind, which is very much a Southern California tune, about being the kind of person Pete hates. Yeah. His favorite band is Ever Clear. Ever Clear.

Right. That's fascinating. Particularly weird because the lead singer of Everclear, Art Alexakis, describes himself as a left-wing Christian who despises conservative Christianity and wrote a song called Jesus Was a Democrat. That's. I was like, has he listened to the band ever clear? Also, not a Santa Ana Wind is not a song about, like, fighting, really. Like, that's not what it's about.

It's about living in Southern California. It's about the Santa Ana Wins. Really good. A trump spine, just a stack of Diet Coke. Again, folks, don't make art. You know, burn, go out there right now and, you know, destroy a, bunch of vinyl records, you know. Annihilate human culture.

I'm on the AI team now. There's no point. Don't disco demolition the people. I think people should always make art, especially if you're bad at it. Because if you're bad at it, keep at it. You're going to say that, Jamie, until we get the fascist leader who's like holding up raw dog. And he's like, based on this book, we have to expel all the immigrants.

So many of his, you should know better than anyone's history is greatest. monsters were failed artists, just keep making the bad art. If George Bush had just painted his damn landscapes. You're right. You're right. I mean, that is my actual stance is that we need a whole government department that, like, provides fake fans to untalented conservatives who want to succeed in Hollywood. Oh yeah, Ben, everyone loves your TV show. They can't get enough of it. Don't try going out to any of the regular conventions. Go to this one that we're putting on. Your fans will all be there. I would be a crisis actor in that department.

It's critical. It's mission critical. Honestly, just some soft reinforcement. Yeah, just like an elite military corps who show up at the stand-up nights that these guys put on and are like, they have like a Navy SEAL Hellweek boot camp for how to pretend to laugh at them. Although when you put it like that, they are kind of doing that. Yes, no, this would be protecting the nation much more than any military action in my lifetime has. We have to keep selling out arenas for these guys. I would salute those men and women.

As long as they promise to never run for office. Oh, my God. You had to listen to Michael Knowles' stand-up. Like, my country, tis of these. Our bravest soldiers. Our bravest soldiers, yeah. So I think this whole chapter is like, I mean, it's so diabolical where he's acting like a rom-com character who's like, and I could really be my full self now.

I can just be awful. I can be like this song I clearly don't understand because Trump taught me how to be racist and not feel bad about it. Now, the next few pages of Pete's book are a recounting of Trump's rise to be leader of the Republican Party. And again, this isn't really worth going over. We all know what happened. What is interesting is the account that Pete gives in this of his own first attempt at getting into politics, his 2012-12 Senate run in Minnesota, IA, which is not what it's called. Minnesota. Yeah, Minnesota.

During the Senate run, he attempted to defeat Amy Klobuchar. I say attempted because he failed. He blames his loss, and he does not succeed in getting the Republican nomination, right? He loses the primary. He doesn't even get to go up against Amy. He doesn't even get to get Klobett charted. I don't know. Jesus Christ.

Look, they can't all be winners. They can't all be a winner. Cloba chocked. Yeah, that's better. We got there. That's better. So he blames his loss on the Star Tribune, which he calls Minnesota's commune. paper of record.

Weirdly, and here's what's weird. So I look into him like, oh, so they must have like said don't vote for Pete Hegseth, right? It's the opposite. They described Pete as a picture perfect outsider who seemed like he had a really good chance at winning the GOP candidacy because like, oh, he's a veteran, right? Maybe, you know, he could probably win, you know? That's gold electorally. So miserable.

When any type of fascist calls a centrist paper radical, you're like, wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be great? I was like, they're ultimately serving your project. I'm not phrasing the Star Tribune because their analysis was just shitty like, well, he's a veterans who will probably win, right? Discounting the fact that Pete Heggseth can't do anything, right? That, like, he's sucked at the last time he ran. At this point, he's had two different, like, NGOs that he's been a part of,

and he spent all the money on drugs and partying, you know? That take is an insult to veterans. Yeah. Yeah, veterans could be some of the most fucked up people in the country, you know? Often in a, you know, I've, so I started doing drugs with was a traumatized veteran. Actually, he would have been a really good Minnesota Senate member, but, you know, he's too good a person to get involved in the Minnesota Senate. I can see it?

Yeah. Oh, man, can you imagine our buddy Greasy Will in the Senate? I know. I would vote for him in a heartbeat. Oh, man. I love that guy. Yeah. What a hoot. So he loses, and again, he's angry at the Star Tribune because they describe him as a really good candidate. And he's like, well, this is why I lost because, like, no one likes the mainstream media. And when they said that I, you know, was good, that that doomed me, right? That doomed me to my voter base, right? It's their fault. They destroyed me by being nice to me. Nice. Nice. No save.

Pete's campaign was doomed from the start because he's bad at this, right? He's, again, he can't, Pete. He can't, Pete. He can't run an – he can't run a charitable organization funneling money into right-wing politics because he's too fucking corrupt, right? He never had what it took to build any kind of independent support or power. He's not very disciplined. Again, he's hammered half the time here. It sounds like that he's, like, wasted money that was supposed to go to veterans before, right? Yeah, well, it was supposed to be used by a veteran's organization to support right-wing politics. They were not helping vets.

Okay. So money well spent ultimately. we're trying to develop, like, push more support for the surge in Iraq, right? And then attack Obama, you know, like, I'm not saying it was a, I'm not saying, like, oh, it's a shame he wasted that money. I'm just saying, he did waste the money, right? But it's like, theoretically. Yeah.

So I want to quote from an article, another article I found in the Star Tribune in the wake of Pete's defeat, and this is them talking about, this kind of summarizes what an incoherent mess as candidacy was. And so this is right after he loses the primary. Although Hegg Seth had previously said he would not run in a primary if he did not win his party's endorsement, he sent out a cryptic email to supporters Wednesday that raised serious doubts about that pledge. The email was titled, The Fight Continues, and did not say he planned to support state representative bills who decisively won the GOP nod at the state convention on Friday. Now, this all led to days of speculation that he was going to run against the GOP candidate who had been endorsed by the Ron Paul organization.

And it was the kind of thing where they just wouldn't clarify what that message had meant for days until, eventually, like, they were basically cornered and forced to say, like, no, I'm not really going to run. Like, it was just a narcissist who could only respond to losing with sad bluster, even though he had been out-organized and out-fundraised and very obviously beaten, right? Right. I love a good refuse to give up while obviously needing to give up email. Well, obviously failing, right?

It's beautiful stuff. Yeah. So in his book, years later, Pete would insist that he was glad, now he's glad. Now he's glad that he didn't win. And he says specifically, I'm glad that patriots didn't vote for me then, right? Because they were right. I was still a rhino, a Republican in name only at that point, right? I didn't really know the way.

You know, I hadn't accepted Trump as my Lord and Savior. It's really sweet that he thought people were thinking about him that hard. It's good that they won because I wasn't enough of a fascist yet. Cope, cope, cope. So we conclude this chapter with another rant that the American left is an existential threat to freedom. Then we have the obligatory call to violence that he swears isn't a cult of violence. If leftists succeed in turning it and it the United States into something else, then as strident as it may seem, divorce is imminent. If they turn into King George the

third, find me a town square in Lexington or a bridge and conquered to stand on. I believe millions of Americans, properly prepared and organized, would do the same. Our great flag means nothing without freedom. Better to go our separate ways, a new freedom-loving country and all than be complicit in the destruction of America. This is not a call to violence, not at all. And it's not what anybody wants. It's simply a recognition that freedom-loving Americans will not stand idly by and watch our blessed freedoms be trampled. Now, among other things, what were people pissed about King George, the third about? Was it that he was, like, deporting people without, like, any kind of trial?

Was that, like, a big part of the Declaration of Independence that, like, his troops were just, like, arresting and sending people away without any kind of due process? They were doing a crusade with gun. They were doing a gun crusade. And so, actually, it would make a lot of sense that it is, oh, it's just so fucking embarrassing. Good for him. Good for him. Now, the chapter ends with one final little rant about how 2020 is our last possible chance to prevent the collapse of the United States. You know, no more shots after this. The leftists will have taken too much control. Anyway. So, so the Pete Hegseth,

who wrote American Crusade in 2020, was no less committed to forcing a far-right Christian theocracy on the rest of the country than the Pete of today. But he was quieter about it. Not a lot quieter, but there's still even a little bit in 2020, more kind of creep you got to put onto it so that it doesn't sound too bad. Like, the far right still kind of felt like they had to respect some kinds of properly patriotic diversity, at least in public. Okay. So when it comes to the actual timeline of, like, when was Pete radicalized, when did he

arrive at his current beliefs, and what does he actually believe beyond I should be important? That's harder for me to say. Some of the evidence. There might not be much more. Yeah. Some of the evidence from his time in the service paints an image of a man less convinced than his present iteration of like a lot of the fascist stuff. He's gone on record about his upbringing in a Christian home. But in keeping with the traditional reborn and the spirit, evangelical narrative, it's clear he doesn't consider, he will now claim that young Pete wasn't really a believer, right? Not the way I am. Right. As a kid, I wasn't really, I didn't, I wasn't really committed to Christ, you know? Right. Well, it sounds like, yeah, there's a difference. between growing up in a religious household and like enacting the and being religious. I mean, I think it's more, because as we'll talk about, the evidence suggests he was very

religious and always has been. It's more if you are talking to an evangelical audience, there is an expectation that you will give the, your narrative of like your own personal journey to faith has to be a hero's journey. So it can't just be, I've always been religious and always been great. It has to be like, no, I rejected God. I was living this amoral life of the flesh. I used to be a pill popper LSD tripper

High rising and low sliding Popping heads and busting reds kicking indoors and banging whores But then I got a man who was hung up for my hang-ups You know, it's got to be that kind of thing, right? I stole that from Marjo Was that top of the dome, Robert? No, I stole that from the movie Marjo

Which I talked about a lot on this show. You could have lied. It's perfect. It's perfect. It's perfect. That's terrific. No, it's beautiful stuff. It's beautiful stuff. Really, really good. Pete Hegseth has claimed in a recent interview

with the Nashville Christian family, that his parents were Baptist. But, quote, my home life was not political, but it was very faith and family-based. Now, again, this is nonsense. This is a common sentiment from people who are raised in very right-wing environments, that my upbringing wasn't political because conservatism is just common sense. You know, it's not politics, just common sense. Just like Christianity's not a religion. It's just the truth, right?

Which I still think is more commonly accepted, like, across the board than it should be. No, and it's one thing I'll always. give, because I have a lot of issues with my parents and the conservatism I was raised with, but they never said we were apolitical. They were like, we are very political, right-wingers, right? That was always my parents' attitude. Yeah. So at least there's that, right?

I just have no respect for this. Oh, I wasn't political. Yeah, my parents donated exclusively to Republicans, and, like, I edited a Republican newspaper in college, and we went to church three times a week, but I wasn't really religious, you know. So Pete first gave his life to Christ as a teenager, but would complain after the fact that his public school was secular, right? And kind of blamed it like, oh, you know, I'd give my life to Christ, but I still wasn't really Christian because of my public school.

Quote, it's fair to say I had a Christian veneer, but a secular core, and thought I was ready to go out into the world and profess Christ. I wasn't. And the reality is he didn't have any interest in doing that, right? Neither is he now. But he was interested in getting rich and being successful, right? because he's a rich kid, and he wanted to content, he wanted to do the thing that

rich kids do, which is get into finance and get richer, right? Bear Stearns, what a pick. What a pick. It's so funny because, like, the narrative you're describing that he wants to apply to himself, like, it is kind of available to him, where he lived a, whether he wants to admit it or not, a very

religious life. Yeah, all the drunkenness and stealing, but yeah, that sounds bad. But you'd have to be willing to stop doing that in order to have the narrative. So he's got to make one up. Yeah. Yeah, he's got to make one up. And you know what else? We have to make up. What? For all of the people listening to this podcast for free by going to ads right now. You sickos.

You freaks. You monsters. You, I don't know. Heroes. I love you. Bye stuff. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from me. the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

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to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kelly Hornet spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit. I'm 100% innocent. While behind bars, she learned the law from scratch. Because, oh God, her in that, jailhouse lawyer.

And as she fought for herself, she also became a lifeline for the women locked up alongside her. You're supposed to have been faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her. So many of these women had lived the same stories. I said, were you a victim of domestic violence? And she was like, yeah. But maybe Kelly could change the ending.

I said, how many people have gotten other incarcerated individuals out of here? I'm going to be the first one to do that. This is the story of Kelly Harnett, a woman who spent 12 years fighting not just for her own freedom, but her girlfriends too. I think I have a mission from God to save souls by getting people out of prison. The Girlfriends, Jailhouse Lawyer. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime. My husband comes back outside and he's shaking and he just looks like he's seen a ghost

and he's just in shock. And he said, your dad's been killed. This is Hands Tide, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Milga. Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet. Her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help. I was just completely in shock. Her dad had been stabbed to death. It didn't feel real at all.

For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened. There's a lot of guilt, I think, pushing me. And I just, I want answers. Listen to Hands Tide on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm John Lithgow. We choose to go to the moon. I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast. That's one small step for man.

It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen. That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't. Predisposition to depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide. See, Buzz, try to overcome demons. What do you say, Buzz? Another beer?

And triumph over addiction. Here's you, Buzz Aldrin. Good luck to you. And become a true hero. Buzz and I will proceed into the lunar module. Not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz. We intercepted a Soviet radio transmission. Starring me, John Lithgow.

Can you put it through? Can you translate? In the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Columbia. And we're back. You know, every time I say I love you to the listeners, I'm thinking about one specific listener.

And it might be you. You don't know, you know, but everyone else I don't love. In fact, I hate and I'm actively working to sabotage. But one of you, one of you I love. You're always in my thoughts. You're the only thing that I care about, you know? You know, everything, every time I hear you. speak to your listeners. I'm reminded that parissocial relationship could also be based in

antagonism and gaslighting. It's called negging. It's called negging, Jamie. Oh, I've read the book. Yeah, no, that's that's the Bible of how to be a good podcaster. It's the game. Gold Leaf. Did you know there's a Gold Leaf, like, version of that book? Why? Even the author is disavowed it. I know. I know. Oh, God. It's one of my, it's like him and the guy who first came up with the alpha wolf concept just like oh man i i i really this thing that made me famous and noteworthy was a real mistake this thing that made me millions and millions of dollars i i fucked up i i fucked up and then the humiliating pivot you get whereas the guy who wrote the game i think he's like yeah nil stras yeah wait a second i freaking love my wife yeah it's actually

now i have i have i'm happy yeah like like like it turns out this made me miserable and loving and respecting a woman has made me happy. I'm glad he knows he's wrong, but I'm also like, stop publishing books. A little faster, man. Maybe don't write any more books. Maybe you fuck.

I feel differently about the wolf guy, right? He really was just trying to do good wolf research and just a fuck up, you know? It's not his fault. Like, he didn't try to be like, I'm going to make Alpha Wolf a thing. He was just describing wolf behavior and weirdos ran with it.

I guess I'm not as familiar with him. his trajectory. He was literally just talking about wolves? Yeah, he was, the concept of the alpha wolf developed from this wolf scientist who was studying wolves in captivity and describing their hierarchy. Oh, I know that from like smut. I've read. Yeah. And then, and then it turns out that like actually in the wild, there's like alpha wolf behavior does, we don't see it because like it's not really evolutionarily beneficial. It's a thing that happens when wolves are put in an unnatural situation. Basically, it's a thing that happens in wolf prison, not in the wild, right? And And he has spent the rest of his career being like, no, the alpha will fit.

Like, it's wrong. It's not a concept in anything. It's certainly not a concept for humans. Like, stop talking about alphas, you dicks. It's a bummer. Nasty. Yeah. Speaking of alphas, Pete Hegseth.

Ugh. Real alpha male. I'm looking for this, the day of this book, I saw a friend from college like a year ago, and I was like, what have you been up to? She's like, I'm getting really into, like, wolf smut, which was not the answer I was expecting. No, that's probably just straight up pornography, yeah. But otherwise, she was, she was doing really well. I mean, this is a part of it. But she, like, recommended a book, and I listened to it for a while. And, you know, if this is your thing, go with God. But I was

like, oh, my God. First of all, there's so much, there's so many of them. It was one of those, like, the bodyguards, wife's accountant type titles. I'm going to find it. Keep, keep Heggs that thing. I'm going to find this. So, you know, Pete claims, obviously, that, like, yeah, he was secular at his core. He just had a Christian veneer. I think the reality is that, you know, he's always been pretty religiously far right and politically far right. But he was, as a young man, just wanted money, right? Like, that's all he really gave a shit about.

He claims that the first thing that starts to radicalize him towards Christian nationalism is a class he takes at Princeton on Christianity. Quote, taught by an atheist, famous for studying the Gnostic Gospels, The prof believed Jesus died, was buried at a shallow grave, and was eaten by dogs. I realized I was not prepared to combat such thinking, and went to the library to read dusty books that pointed to and explained the veracity of the Gospels. Defending my faith became an academic endeavor because I sensed faith in the Bible were good. And he was eaten by dogs. Eat by dogs?

Like, seriously, I get like, obviously there's a very strong argument made that like, well, the Jesus of the Bible was probably conflating a couple of different actual guys who were like messianic. Guys who claimed they were the Messiah wandering around the Holy Land in that period, right? Like, eaten by dogs? How would you even prove that? Why would that be an argument that a professor would make? And he was definitely eaten by dogs. And why would this be the first we're hearing of it? That is, speaking of dogs, though, I've got the name of the wolf porn I was.

Oh, thank God. The audience has been on the edge of their fucking seats for this. And if this is your thing, I don't want to hear more about it, but I respect it. Here is the name of the book that I read part of. The Tyrant Alpha's rejected mate, which is one word too many, but it's got 3.83. Yeah, that's a long title. It's got, it's got like, we have similar scores on Goodreads. Okay, the heir, followed by the heir appearance rejected mate, followed by the lone wolf's rejected mate.

So a real rejected mate fetish going on here is when I'm reading. Yeah, it's all about, well, what is about is like falling in love with a, with a fuck-ass wolf who kind of is negging you. A fuck-ass wolf. That's how I would refer to. Okay. The tyrant alpha. But you could also easily call the tyrant alpha a fuck-ass wolf. Sure.

Yeah, that scans. So there's no real evidence for any of what he's claiming about his fucking professor here or the fact that, you know, he starts doing serious Bible research that proves the historical. I don't think he does any research, right? Again, he's raised to believe this shit and it like funds, fuels his narcissistic sense of superiority. He's always fit in here, right? This is just the explanation he has to give.

in the book because, as I stated, evangelicals expect a certain kind of narrative. Well, it's also like, yeah, for lack of a better, like, term, he needs to be not like other girls in order for this narrative to work. Yeah. And again, his initial goal is to get rich, and then the global war on terror gets in the way, and Pete winds up gravitating more towards the military.

He claims, though, that during this time, he spends more than a decade studying Christianity, which kind of conflates with other things, he says, because he's argued in this same interview that his faith didn't become real until 2018. This is when he claims that he was properly saved and born again just in time for him to jettison the last of his rhino credentials and hop onto the Trump train. The fact that those things happened around the same time that he's like, oh, I was saved.

At the same time, I realized Trump was God's pick to save America. Right. This is not really trustworthy, right? Although, again, I think the thing he's lying about is he's always been this guy, right? He covered his body with Christian fascist tattoos, you know, and other fucking we the people shit, you know, like I don't think he's lying about being a Christian nationalist or being a fascist. I think he's lying about the fact that this was a journey, you know? Right. I mean, it seems like he has no issue with any of this at any point in his life, but he needs the narrative. He needs the narrative. And I would be so curious, I feel like this happens in all sectors of public life of how many times. you're going to keep telling the same story about yourself to keep yourself like relevant and to keep

yourself kind of an underdog right you always have to be an underdog even once you've like succeeded you know yeah uh i mean that's a big part of my ego right nobody believed that we could have the largest history podcast on the internet you know no aside from all the people who believed in me and fought for me and advocated for me and guested on the show and whatnot like nobody nobody Nobody believed I can succeed, right, aside from most people, right? You were, yeah, you're podcasting from, you know, just like prostate on the floor, nothing. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I was at the lowest a man can be, you know, living in an apartment on the edge of Santa Monica.

So in a way, you also found God in 2018. I did, I did. Yeah, you and Pete have that in common. My God was the pod, you know. Wow. Yeah. Brutal. Sophie, if we register as a church.

church. Do we get to stop paying taxes? Oh, yeah. All this is trick in the book. Oh, shit. All right. We should look into that. We'll talk about this some more offline. We'll talk in some more about this offline. So in like the kind of early chunk of the Trump years, he and his family first moved to New Jersey to attend a community church called Colts Neck, led by Pastor Chris Durkin. I found a year old YouTube video published by the church in which Pastor Durkin reads out five ways Christian families are under attack, which proves that Christian media is always about a decade behind because they've only just discovered listicles, right? This is like 20-20-fucking-4.

Now, the video does not have a lot of views, but Durkin is a guy that Hagseth is later going to claim was like a big influence on him. And so it's kind of worth listening to some of what he says. In a summary for the video, Durkin writes, more than any time in our lives, it feels like Christian families are under attack. Are these contemporary attacks random, or is there a deeper battle going on beneath the surface? He spells there wrong, but I'm just being petty. here. Well, no, no, the hand his ass to him. Also, I mean, you do have to hand it to him that he did not change his name from Durkan. He didn't, he didn't. No, no, and he really should have. He really should. That's why he hasn't blown up in the way the next preacher we're going to talk

about has, but should have been gunner. I will say the way he talks, his speech is so, the speech is written so similarly to how Hegseth talks. It's either just evidence of how much this guy influenced Hegseth or maybe they shared a writer, right? I don't know. Not impossible. It's also probably the case that this is more the result of Christian grievance, conservative grievance culture, just being very predictable, right? The overarching message is always that you, the good normal people, are under siege from the evil outsiders, you know, the leftist or the enemy within, right?

And since the chief enemy of Christianity is the devil, anyone advocating for a lifestyle different than yours is literally the devil, right? And that's made very clear in this segment of the five ways Christian families are under attack speech by Pastor Chris Durkin, which Sophie's going to play for you now. Yay. As a gift from God that through marriage not only is it good because it's not good for man to be alone, that through marriage not only are we commanded to be fruitful and to multiply, but also in the New Testament, marriage is a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself.

Whether you're talking about God's character and plan and creation or even talking about Jesus Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection, his love for his people, his bride, the church, this is going to fill hell with all kinds of fury, and it's going to be aimed at your family. And right, the argument there he's making is that, like, yeah, gay marriage, all of these different, like, culture, like, it's literally the devil, right? Like, anything, anytime you urge anything outside of, like, what Christians believe about this, like, no, God.

decreed what marriage is. So you are literally on the side of Satan, right? Yeah. I mean, this is, you can't have a secular society with these people. You can't be free with these people in your country, right? And that's the reality. This is his baseline. This is his baseline. The listical nature really does crack me up. I do love that it's a listical, yeah. My college, what do they call it? The like guy who talked at my college did, my commencement speaker, Mr. Jay Leno delivered Wow, Bragg. No, no.

He delivered his speech in the form of a list and that was 10 years ago and it was old then. Yeah, good stuff. Okay, so yeah, let's get back to this lovely stuff, this lovely, lovely esopode. So, yeah, the underlying truth that is revealed by reading American Crusade is that people like Pete Hagseth and his fellow evangelical dominionists

have no desire to coexist with anyone else. That's why they have to portray this as an existential battle because only by pretending their enemies are the same as them can they morally justify the kind of violence that they are going to try to do, right? What little fun there is in reading American crusade comes from looking at Heggsett's predictions for what will happen if the left wins in 2020

and comparing that to what actually happened. My favorite example of this comes right at the end of chapter 2. If Trump loses in 2020, I fear America is doomed. The Democrats, on track to nominate a radical leftist, would complete the political domination they already maintain in our culture, media, and schoolhouses. The ivory towers of the Ivy League

would become the policies of Washington. Speech codes instead of free speech. Bye-bye, Second Amendment, anti-Israel and pro-Islamist foreign policy, naked socialism, government-run everything. Yeah, that's all what happened when radical leftist Joe Biden got elected. They should have been thrilled. We certainly embraced anti-Israel policies. I was to say that would in particular.

fucking sticks out like a sore thumb. Well, just how immediately all of these Ivy League institutions, like most of them just caved Trump, like, you know. Yeah. It's incredible. Incredible. Well, Pete, unfortunately, you didn't call that one. And, I mean, certainly is benefiting from that not having happened.

Once again, we desperately wish for a Democratic Party that functions the way Republicans pretend it functions. Yeah. Like, oh, how nice that would be. These radical leftists. These anti-Israel radical leftists. Yeah. Well, oops.

So, again, the big takeaway, the actual practical takeaway, you should get from reading lines like this is that there was never any hope for the Democratic Party to pull away moderate Republicans or fracture Trump's base, right? That was never possible, not from Biden, not from Harris, right? Any Democrat, no matter what they do, no matter how nice they try to be to conservatives, no matter how much they tacked to the middle in their politics, will always be attacked as being anti-Inty. Israel and a radical leftist, right? Period. Tacking to the middle and backing that in Yahoo, just cabbed off people who might otherwise have voted Democrat. You know, it's just a disastrous strategy. I need to write something about this, but, like, part of when I knew what I started

to get really worried about Harris's campaign was when she started, like, campaigning around with Cheney, and I could tell, like, okay, she's doing this because she wants to get, she thinks that she can get Republicans like my mom to vote for Harris. And my mom was a lifetime Republican, loved John McCain, loved Dick Cheney, loved George W. Bush, hated guns, like, was fine with banning guns, was not like – and so – and was very pro-abortion, right? And so you would – I guarantee you if you would, like, bring up the profile of someone like my mom to Kamala Harris, right, or to do a Biden – oh, we can get this voter. We can get this voter, right? This is someone – as long as, you know, we're not too radically left, we can speak their language. and convince them, and no, you can't. My mom would have died before voting Democrat, right? She would have chosen death over voting for the Democratic Party, period.

You know, like there was never any chance of you getting her, right? And the instant I realized they're betting on that as opposed to trying to get anyone, you know, any moderates or people further on the left, like on board with actual, like, policies that will help them. I was like, okay, we might be in trouble here. Well, yeah, I mean, it's something that just like another example of the right being far more like organized for lack of a better term than the left is because there are people who didn't vote for Kamala because she would not move left. Like I don't know. It's just the idea that there are good Republicans buried inside the party and we can shake them out of voting because. No, no, no. even the people who are like good who have more reasonable stances who you know had issues with

Trump what they wanted most is to win and as soon as you like like because of and this is the project 20 something 30 years of right wing media this was what fox news accomplished what matters most to the majority of Republican like dedicated Republican voters and obviously there's a sizable chunk of people who voted Republican last election who flip flopped between and those people are reachable which is why they flip flop so often When we're talking about the core of the party, their primary motivation is hurting Democrats, is hurting immigrants, is hurting the groups of people they hate and have been taught to hate by year. At this point, a couple of generations of conservative media, you know, it's inflicting pain on their enemies. And so you can't win them over by being like, but look, we adopted one of your policies, you know, don't you like us now?

Aren't we better than that Trump guy? I know, because that Trump guy is promising to kick somebody, and they want to see somebody in pain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I reflect often on that, like, the phase of her campaign where there was a series of campaign commercials that were encouraging women, like, conservative women to vote for her behind their husband's backs. Do you remember that push? Yeah.

That was just going to offend people. Like, it's not going to, you don't, it's just bad choices, just bad choices. I do believe that there were probably voters like that, but it's like, that's not the fucking way to appeal. And that's not enough to win. Exactly. That's not as, that's not as effective as actually moving left. Again, like, oh, wow, you know, this swing state has a massive number of, like, Muslim voters. I wonder if they'll be angry at us completely failing to reign Israel in on a genocide.

Probably not. They'll vote blue no matter who. We don't need them. Of course, it's them who gets blamed. Cool. And that's not the only reason Harris lost, right? That explains like one state. There's a bunch of reasons.

But the whole, we can get these people, you know. We can break off a lot of them because they're basically reasonable people. Doesn't work because they're not. They're not. Their brains have been damaged by decades of propaganda. And the damage is permanent. Anyway. This is, good vibes. Good vibes. Good vibes. Good vibes. Good vibes. Anyway, I will say there's a weird kind of comfort I get from reading Hegseth's book, not because it's less awful or even less homicidal than I feared, but because it's the, it's validating. It's the conservatism I know, and it's the conservatism I was raised inside, put on full display, right? And in a way that I think I really would encourage, I found the free copy of this book online, by the way.

the way. I didn't pay for it. If you just Google full text free, you can find it too. I don't know the legal status of this, but it's not hard to find. I want to get Democrats who think they can reach out to Republicans to read this book because it really clearly, it really points out like why it's that attempt is so fundamentally doomed, right? Anyway, there's another mask off moment, a useful one later in the book. When Pete has a chance to lay out the things he had, hmm? A useful one. A useful one, yes. Pete winds up in a passage laying out the things he admires about Islam.

And this is part of he's still, he's making the broader case that it's an existential threat to Americans and freedom. But he writes this, almost every single Muslim child grows up listening to and learning to read from the Quran. Contrast this with our secular American schools in which the Bible is nowhere to be found. And you'll understand why Muslim's worldview is more coherent than ours. first off Not entirely inaccurate statement about the Muslim world Or about schools in the Muslim world Like yeah that describes some people

But I don't know I guess I've just talked to more school teachers in Iraq than Pete has Who complained repeatedly that they just didn't have books anymore And hadn't since Saddam left I don't think that was Pete's focus in Iraq Was talking to school teachers Okay so I mean it's just more Christian fundamentalism that if we've taught the Bible in public schools.

Wow, they're all reading the Bible. They're all perfectly informed about their religion. They're constantly thinking about it as opposed to like, yeah, most Muslims are like most members of any other religion where they're like, yeah, you know, on the holiday or whatever. But like, I got shit to do the rest of the time, you know. Maybe I get more serious about it if I get sick or something. But like...

People. Yeah. They're people, right? They got other shit going on. Pete goes on to argue that the Islamic Holy Books, and he describes the Islamic Holy Books, And he describes the Islamic holy books as being the Quran and the Hadith, if reordered, and read chronologically show an inexorable passage from peaceful writing towards violence, right? That if you reorder all of the different, like, the Islamic holy texts, the holy books, it reorder them to read chronologically. You'll see that Islam inherently moves towards violence, right?

Yeah, and if you play the record backwards, it says Paul McCartney's dead. Yeah, exactly. Like, there couldn't be anything more conspiratorial. Like, well, if you put, like, okay. Sure. Yeah, he's like, and this mirrors Muhammad's own journey, right? Because Muhammad was like a military leader, right? And basically the point he's making is that Islam inherently leads to violence if you follow it honestly.

Now, this is interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, a few chapters earlier when he was talking about his friend, Texas Omar, he'd made a big point that Omar is a practicing Muslim and also 100% American, which seems like it's not something that really should be possible based on how Hegseth describes Islam here. But he's also wrong about Islam, a whole lot, right? No kidding. For one thing, again, he states that the holy books of Islam are the Quran and the Hadith. The Hadith, like, it's not a, it's not a title of a book, right? It's the name for a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad over a long period of time, right?

And it's not really, it wouldn't be right to call it a holy book of Islam, right? It's certainly a text, a holy text in Islam, but it's not really a holy book. Because there are holy books in the faith. Obviously, there's the Quran. There's also the Taurat, which is the Torah, and the Zabar, which is their book of Psalms. And the last of the Islamic holy books is the Injil, which is the New Testament, right? These are all holy books in the Muslim faith, right? But he forsakes three and just adds one. Yeah, well, and he just doesn't really understand what the hadiths are, that like, it's a collection of sayings. It's not really a book in the traditional sense. Discussing Islamic religious texts in a way that

it's accurate, isn't something he can do, because then you have to acknowledge it like, oh, wait, wait, the Torah is like venerated in Islam, and so is the New Testament, even though they don't believe Jesus was the Messiah. Well, then that makes the case that Islam's actually much more tolerant towards other faiths than Heggseth wants to pretend. Okay. And he goes on to note, quote, non-Muslims paid a second-class citizen tax, converted to Islam, or were killed, whichever way they submitted.

And, like, it is, in fact, true that there is a tax. that non-Muslims are supposed to pay, like, and paid under the, like, the first Islamic empires, right? Like a specific tax for being, like, a, uh, not a member of the faith. But also, what he's leaving out here is that, like, this is a pretty significantly better deal than you would get in Christendom as a non-Christian. Like, this is actually kind of, like, a big mark of the, the relative tolerance of Islam during the period of time where it was like this expanding empire.

Because once, if non-believers were paying their tax, they enjoyed state protection, right? They're people of the book. And in fact, there's commandments against abusing people of the book. And I'm not going to say it's perfect, right? And obviously, you are not an equal citizen in like these early Muslim empires if you're Jewish or Christian, but you do have rights, right? And you have a better deal than Muslims are going to get in Christendom, right? And often, we just talked about how after the Crusades stalled, crusaders just massacre Jewish communities in Europe, right? Like, you are best off, in a lot of cases, being a Jew in these Muslim, like, these areas dominated by these, like, Islamic empires, then you would have been, like, in fucking somewhere in Europe, right? Like, yeah. Yeah, you would prefer to pay the tax. Right. It's better to pay a tax and have some rights than be tortured by the Inquisition, you know? Yeah. Not a fair ask. Yeah, again, I'm not trying to whitewash any of these Islamic empires. They're empires. They did some pretty terrible things, like all empires do.

I'm just saying, if you've got to choose between being massacred by drunk peasant crusaders in a pogrom or, like, pay in a tax, most people probably'd say pay the tax. It's a better deal. Right. Again, it's just, I mean, it's so his, like, binary thinking. Every chapter so far has been like, well, here's what I agree with, including a guy I am increasingly convinced he made up. And it's also just like this whole obsession that they all have with, like, you're a. European history, Western history, you know, the great works of philosophy, you know, Plato and Aristotle, these, like, a lot of great classic European think and Western thinkers,

we only have a lot of their writing because it was preserved by Muslim scholars during the period in which Christians were destroying everything. Yeah. That was pre-Christian. So, anyway, again, not to whitewash any faith, all religions, all organized major religions, especially when they have armies do nightmarish things. And you can find plenty of horrible crimes committed like the Ottomans, you know, by the Umayids and the opposites. But, right, you know, it's just the truth of the matter is that for its day, like, Islam was a much more tolerant faith than Christianity, you know, at that period of time.

So. Which is interestingly demonstrated through the work and actions of one Pete Hegseth. Of one Pete. Peter Hegseth, yes. So right after this paragraph, he tries to do a minor mea culpa, and he winds up being both historically wrong and committing heresy. There's so much inaccurate in this next paragraph. I don't know how to summarize it, so I'm just going to read it to you first. Prior to the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, many of these same things could have been said of the Bible and Christianity.

The God of the Old Testament was violent, vengeful, and very judgmental, but a key distinction makes these two Abrahamic religions very different. The Quran has no New Testament. And he goes on to argue that the lack of a New Testament means Islam is centuries away from becoming a civilized faith, right? That, like, well, obviously, first off, there's, again, there's so much wrong here. First off, he says that, like, prior to the life and teachings of Jesus, many of these things could have been set of the Bible and Christianity. But there wasn't Christianity before the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. What do you mean prior? What do you mean Christianity prior to that?

Let him cook. Let him cook. What are you talking about? Because he specifically doesn't write the same things could have been said of, like, Judaism. Right? That like, oh, before the New Testament, you know, like the God of the Old Testament was violent and judgmental. But no, he says specifically before the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. This could have been set of Christianity in the Bible, which is like, first off, I mean, that's, again, man, you can't even get your own fucking religion right. And second, again, he says that the Quran has no New Testament.

And as we noted earlier, the New Testament is in fact venerated in Islam. Right. He just ignored it in his list of holy texts because it wasn't convenient. Again, they don't view Jesus as the Messiah, right? They don't believe the same things about it. But, like, there is stuff in there that is in the faith, right? Yeah. It's just wrong to say that it's completely absent. I mean, whether he actually knows this or not, it's just like it's so clear that, like, this

book is just predicated on how poorly educated his target audience is. And it's this very common thing with conservatives that, like, Islam, whatever is the most radical thing you can find that was ever written by a Muslim. That's what everyone believes and does at all times as opposed to like, no, I mean, Islam's like Christianity and any other religion where like, well, you can find some awful things and people who are like, and that awful thing is exactly how you should act at all times. And you can also find some stuff that's not awful. And some people who say that like, no, the awful stuff's bullshit. You know, this is, and is everyone just kind of picking and choosing what to believe because it makes them more comfortable?

Yes, that's what everyone does with everything. Like, that's how human beings. beings are with politics, with whatever, right? I mean, personally, my holy texts are titles like the Tyrant Alpha's rejected mate. It is interesting learning about it. That is my religious text as well. Yeah, what about installment number four, his curvy rejected mate? See, I'm actually, I consider that like the Gnostic Gospels. Like, that's not canon.

We had our own Council of Nicaa, which was held in Atlantic City. To be honest, we didn't really get around to deciding what was canon. We were mostly just partying. I'm very devout. I've read his curvy rejected mate 40 times once you do. Yeah, you've memorized it like Muslim students are supposed to memorize the Quran. Yes, exactly. But like, yeah, there's lots of bullshit people.

Like the common conservative belief that like, yeah, you just put pigs, you know, pig fat on the bullets and then they can't go to heaven. that's not part of Islam like that's just you'd be in racist but like there's nothing in Islam that says if pig touches you you don't go to heaven right you're not you're even

you're allowed to eat pork in Islam if you're starving right like none of these even within the text of the faith itself like all of this like during Ramadan you're supposed to fast but there's specific exemptions for like well if you're in a desperate situation

and dying or if you're fighting in a war like if there's extenuating circumstances is you don't have to fast. You can eat and drink water because, like, even, even, like, during the earliest days of the faith, mom was like, well, I don't want this to be a straight jacket, right? Right. Yeah. But, again, you can't, there's no actual understanding of, like, how the faith is living.

It's just a bunch of, like, talking points that you can use to demonize these people, right? Yeah. Yeah, which is, like, his whole platform depends on. Yeah. Now, the wrongest part of that paragraph and the thing that I really recognized because my dad used to make the same argument is the idea that virtue was human beings couldn't be good before Christianity. There weren't really good people before the New Testament. It was impossible to truly be ethical, right? Like my dad would talk a lot about like, well, you know, ancient

Greece and Rome were probably like the best societies possible prior to Christianity, right? Because they were, you know, like it's this idea that like decency was invented by Christians and people just couldn't be good before it. You could be all right. That's such a weird, like, you know, scale to be on. Like, you could be okay. You could be all right. You could inch towards goodness, but it wasn't until...

Yeah, it wasn't until Christianity that we really knew how to be good people. It just wasn't possible. And again, let's go back to those drunken peasant crusaders who just decided to massacre all the Jews in their neighborhood because they didn't have enough money for a boat to the fucking Middle East, right? Yeah, really Christ-like behavior. Yeah, Jesus would love that. He hated his own people.

Yeah. So Hegzeth attacks Islam for being, quote, not just a religion, but also a system of governance. And I find this really interesting. And he brings out Sharia law as the usual bug bear here. But statements like this kind of lack the teeth they used to have when you live in 2025. Because in the years since publishing American Crusade, Hegzeth has become a direct advocate for Christian control of the government. and the supremacy of Christian religious law over the lives of Americans,

even those who do not practice the faith. And he's done this. He's talking about, like, Islam's a system of government, and that's wrong. Christianity also should be our system of government, right? And he's done all this while complaining about the injustice. This is a big thing he whines about in later writings.

That his, because he writes another book about fucking war your ethos shit that we'll talk about at some point. But in 2021, he gets like, basically, I'm going to quote from the New York. Times here. He has said that he was barred from participating in the military security detail for President Biden's inauguration in 2021 because of a tattoo on his chest depicting a Jerusalem cross, a religious symbol that was also a symbol used by crusaders. Roiders and others reported

that his tattoos, including the Deiast-Volt motto that has been used by white supremacists, prompted a fellow service member to flag Mr. Hegset as a potential insider threat. And first off, good work. Fellow service member, he was. Probably shouldn't have that guy near fucking Joe Biden with a weapon, right? Okay. But he doesn't get fired, but he claims that, like, well, this is why I had to stop, leave my military careers. I got sidelined because they called me an extremist for simply being a Christian who has the exact same tattoos as the guys who committed a series of hate crimes in Charlottesville. Yeah, this is the same.

They kicked him off of Wiki feet for speaking truth to power. Like, you're like, okay. Yeah. Now, you know who will never get kicked off of Wiki feet? The products and services were about to hear? No. No, no, they are the foundation of wiki feet, you know? So send them pictures of your feet.

Be nice to them. They'll love that. And don't check before you do it. Yeah. It should be a nice surprise. Yeah, yeah, let it be a surprise. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.

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He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, got you. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kelly Hornet spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit. I'm 100% innocent. While behind bars, she learned the law from scratch. He goes, oh, God, her in that jailhouse lawyer. And as she fought for herself,

she also became a lifeline for the women locked up alongside her. You're supposed to have been faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her. So many of these women had lived the same stories. I said, were you a victim of domestic violence? And she was like, yeah. But maybe Kelly could change the ending.

I said, How many people have gotten other incarcerated individuals out of here. I'm going to be the first one to do that. This is the story of Kelly Harnett, a woman who spent 12 years fighting not just for her own freedom, but her girlfriends too.

I think I have a mission from God to save souls by getting people out of prison. The Girlfriends, jailhouse lawyer. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Liz went from me. being interested in true crime to living true crime.

My husband comes back outside and he's shaking and he's just looks like he's seen a ghost and he's just in shock. And he said, your dad's been killed. This is Hands Tide, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Milgar. Liz's mom had just been found shut in a closet. her hands and feet tied up, shouting for help. I was just completely in shock. Her dad had been stabbed to death.

I didn't feel real at all. For more than a decade, Liz has been trying to figure out what happened. There's a lot of guilt, I think, pushing me, and I just, I want answers. Listen to Hands Tide on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm John Lithgow. We choose to go to the move. I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast. That's one small step for man.

It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen. That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't. Predisposition to depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide. We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons. Hey, Buzz. Another beer?

And triumph over addiction. Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin. Good luck to you. And become a true hero. Buzz and I will proceed into the lunar module. Not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz. We intercepted a Soviet radio transmission.

Starring me, John Lithgow. Can you put it through? Can you translate? On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. we're back we're all sending feet picks to whoever sponsors the podcast um they're going to love that and also now uh thank god what now that we have a trump is the presidency again feet picks are legal tender you know that you can use them for currency you can use them they count water yeah they count as assets if you're trying to get a mortgage you know wait sorry i'm on wikifeet.com i think they

I have a dating service. I just had this open. I think they have a dating service.com. Everyone, check out match souls.com. No, pretty good. That's actually not a bad name, honestly. That's not a bad name. You know what?

It was right there. You get a couple. You get some kudos for that. They've updated their interface. Anyways. Okay, sorry, continue. Pete Hegseth. Yeah.

Hegs Pete Seth, right? Yeah. So, continuing Pete Hegseth's book, right after, talking about how awful Sharia law is and how Islam is evil because it's a political system as well as a religion. He writes, voting is a weapon, but it's not enough. We don't want to fight, but like our fellow Christians 1,000 years ago, we must. Oh. Great. Again, U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi. That's literally what he just did. So after the 2020 election ended with Joe Biden winning, And if you believe Pete, or Pete, if you believe Pete, his military career ends shortly thereafter due to anti-Christian persecution.

He moves his family to Tennessee, where they attend the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, which is part of the communion of evangelicals, which is basically a denomination, right? It's like an organization for a specific denomination of weird evangelicals. And this sub-denomination was founded by Idaho-based pastor Doug Wilson. And if you know anything about Idaho, you know that there's no more sinister series of words in English language than Idaho-based pastor. So about a month before I put these episodes together, Politico described Doug Wilson as, quote, the new rights favorite pastor. He is famous for claiming that the Gospels give believers a stark choice, quote, Christ or chaos. And he argues that up to this point, America has chosen chaos. Quote, reality is optional.

That's why you have people saying that a girl can. can be a boy, and a boy can be a girl. Great performance. Egot. Thank you. I know that's how he really sounds. It's easy to see why Heggseth is drawn to this motherfucker. American Crusade is a book that advocates for Christian Theocracy.

And Wilson's entire career for like half a century has been dedicated to, per that Politico article, creating, quote, a comprehensive blueprint for a spiritual and political reformation that would transform America into a kind of Christian republic. And Wilson is the real deal. He is a serious, lifelong committed Christian fascist. Pete is not the real deal. You know, you can call me Johnny Come lately. Not that I don't think he's a fascist, but like he is, he primarily cares about himself and his own personal advancement, as opposed to the cause, right? It's not even a positive thing, but he does care about his own bottom line more than he cares about.

project of fascism. It sounds like this Idaho-based pastor would really put a lot on the line for fascism. But even the way that he's writing this book is he's writing to meet the moment of the amount of fascism you can get away with and still be viable at the exact time this book comes out. That is precisely what he's doing, right? Which is why he's more milk toast than present Pete in some sections because he just didn't think some of that stuff was acceptable. Right. And it's worth noting, again, Wilson's written a bunch of books, laying out a blueprint for how Christians should and must take over the country and dominate violently everyone else. Pete, his book is not a blueprint, right?

He's advocating for the same things. He's clearly supportive, even though he says, I'm not saying violence, but we also literally need to go to war, right? A literal crusade voting isn't enough, but also no violence, right? You know, Pete's book is not really giving a comprehensive blueprint, right? Because Pete is not that smart and is not a strategic thinker. It is your standard wannabe politician book, right? It's meant to stake out a place for its author in the movement by saying the right shibboleths.

But the writing is both lazy and shallow, and it provides no real implementation insight. There's no ideas. It's just like Islamophobia for chapters after chapter. It is scattered and somewhat desperate signposting for like me, pick me, like me, right? Like that's what he's doing, you know. Whereas Doug Wilson has spent his whole adult life building an actual power base in Moscow, Idaho, where per politico, quote, Wilson oversees a network of allied institutions that includes Christchurch, a publishing house,

a classic Christian grade school, a Christian liberal arts college, and a ministerial training program. Beyond Moscow, the network of churches that Wilson founded in the late 1990s called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, or CREC, has grown to include over 150 congregations across four continents. An association of classical Christian schools that Wilson co-founded in 1993 now counts over 500 member schools across the country. Hot. Okay. So he's, he's an effective. He is an effective building. And again, not just in it for himself and his own. Like, in it to build a movement, right? He's very different from Pete. I would be shocked if he really likes or respects the guy. But he's also very smart. He knows how to use a guy like Pete, right? And he's, you know, the fact that he, before Pete became the sec deaf was seeing that this guy had had the potential to go somewhere if Trump won again. Because like, you know, especially. after Trump got out, he really gravitated to the people who were just complete toadies and licksbittles, right?

I was like, she does a mark for this exact kind of guy. Exactly. And Wilson was smart enough to be like, this guy might go somewhere. I should start getting in good with him, right? And Wilson, this guy is so committed, even during the period of time in which evangelical, like Christian nationalist figures had to pretend they weren't, he would openly preach his support for a theocracy. He has refused for years to refer to the civil war as anything but the war between.

the states, and has described his personal politics as slightly to the right of Jeb Stewart, a Confederate general. Great. Cool. Awesome yardstick. Nice stuff. So, while Hedgeseth was, by his own admission, squishy for most of his adult life, Wilson has been a howling committed fascist for decades.

My interpretation of their relationship behind the scenes is that Wilson recognized Hegseth as a useful person who was desperate for a place in the movement, and Wilson was happy to give him that in exchange for having a future Secretary of Defense on his side. We see the kind of desperation Pete had to be involved with and feel like a part of this movement, despite his belated entrance. In Chapter 8 of his stupid book, secularism, deporting God from America, which opens with a stunning paragraph. Wow. What a title. After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, one of the most powerful things to happen to our country and to me was the Christian conversion of the rapper Kanye West. Wait, the conversion of a rapper was a powerful movement

in America and my life? Yes, it was. At first, like many others, I was skeptical of his authenticity. Is this a PR stunt? But when I watched Kanye live and listened to his songs, I was convinced. He loves Jesus and wants to share him with the world. Even better, he went all in, not content to live a private life of faith in order to protect his iconic image. What a shot of adrenaline for the home team. If Kanye is with us, who can be against us? Kanye is a changed man, but not a perfect man. As often happens throughout history and in our country,

the imperfect people become the best messengers. I should note that this was five years before Kanye would release his new hit song, Heil Hitler. Wow. Called it. Called it. And he's now going by Yay, yay, yay. Yay, yes.

No, no, no. Yeah, he changed it again. Oh, I missed that update. Thank you, Sophie. I have stopped keeping out with him. That was so funny. That was a funny. It's so funny.

Kanye's on our back. We can't lose. He'll never lose his mind. Which arguably, like, he already had by 20. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, he very clearly had. He was an active crisis.

Well, cool. So we've got Everclear and Kanye West. Yep, Everclear and Kanye West. God, my two heroes. You know? Wow. Talk about building a coalition. Mm-hmm.

I'm putting together a team. My favorite part of that quote is when he said, he, when he's talking about how like he, he went all. He could really commit to do it. And you're like, yes. You're not, like a broken clock, Pete, broken clock. You're right. Yeah.

So we get another example after this of how inconsistent Pete's, account of his own past is. Hegeseth tries to draw a comparison between Kanye's upbringing, which he describes as rooted in good Christian values and his own, claiming that faith in Jesus was front and center in his childhood upbringing, which is the opposite of the claim he's made more recently in that Christian magazine. Now, we can look at the actual things Pete claimed and say, dude, you were always raised to be the guy you are. At no point did secular society step in to force you to stop being religious? At no point did you have anything but like complete support for being the kind of right-wing Christian Nationalist weirdo that you are from our society.

But it's really, like, he's so committed to this conception he has of himself. Yeah. But the more we talk about it, the more I'm like, you know, what you're described, it's like technically less compelling, but it makes him seem more competent than he is of like, you know, I was like born to occupy this role. I feel like that is an equally compelling narrative that he's just too insecure to even admit. Right. Yeah. Like, I was born to be a far-right, like, fail sun that rises the power. That seems to be true.

Yeah. I mean, yes, that is, like, you were crafted in a lab to be this exact shithead. Yes. And nothing about our society did anything but encourage it. Right. So in the next segment of the book, he claims to be self-aware of his sinful nature. And he says this. Without knowing, fearing and recognizing God, I would be like a ship lost at sea, wrecked and sunk.

You get wrecked plenty as it is, buddy. And trust me, I have almost been sunk more times than I can admit on these pages. Yeah, you have. Yeah. I've only seen 40 short years on this earth, and I've been divorced twice, almost gone bankrupt once, and been deployed with a bunch of toxicly Maxfielan dudes thrice. One tour of which included a war crimes controversy. Oh, my God. Controversy!

He's so oppressed, you guys, when you think about it. I think, you know, really brave of him to call the American. American military toxic masculine. Yeah, I think he's making fun of the left here, right? Like, that's the point of it. But it's also very funny to be like, yeah, there was a war crimes controversy. Like, dude, per your own claims to the New Yorker, you complained that you were scared your unit was going to commit war crimes.

Well, 2009 Pete can't come to the phone right now. He also, he notes in this that there's too much to write about in terms of his like sins and failings. He can't, I can't actually go into all that detail. Right? Well, legally, he probably can't. Legally, he shouldn't. But we can, Jimmy.

Yeah. Okay. Jimmy Loftus. We absolutely can. Okay. And we must. So let's talk about the allegations against Pete Hegseth, R.E. sexual assault. We've already heard about all of his drinking and carousing and spending the money from his different charities in order to party and pursue women and repeated claims in that whistleblower report that he and others sexually harassed women who worked for the orgs that. he was at. Now, that all existed prior to Pete's, you know, getting nominated to be the Secretary

of Defense. But then once it became clear that he was Trump's pick for SEC Def, a new set of allegations kind of hit the public. And these went back to 2017 when Pete Heggseth was at a hotel for like a, I think it was like some sort of a work conference. It was a Republican Women's Conference. And he met. He would be there, wouldn't he? Yes, he did. He met a woman known as, you know, Jane Doe for, you know, legal, obvious purposes. He met this Jane Doe at the conference. And they talked. Other people who were there recall them having a loud argument at one point. And it's kind of unclear, like, precisely what happened. But they were both drinking. They had a loud argument around 1.30 a.m., which prompted an employee to be like, hey, you guys need to, like, quiet down. Seth responded by cursing at the employee and saying, I got freedom of speech. And then the Jane Doe. Patriot, even at his lowest.

Yeah. And then per NPR, Doe then intervened, telling the employee that they were Republicans and apologized for Hegg Seth's behavior, right? I love that that's the shorthand for a drunken argument. No, no, no, no, no, officer, you don't understand. We're Republicans. We're supposed to act this way. And because of the lawsuit that comes later, we have this woman's texts.

from that night and some of them she like at one of them she says he wears a ring on his pointer finger it creeps me out like these messages they're pretty there's one like i'm just going to read the message chain do you know pete heggseth she asks name sounds familiar who is he he's a fox contributor i guess he does outnumbered and fox and friends anyway our ladies are freaking drooling over him oh okay he is tdb light mini tdb oh you mean the man who tried to have sex with my wife not a good first impression for pete right Right? They're talking about, like, yeah, this guy's a creep.

He's trying to, like, fuck everybody. Yeah. And she says that he creeps him out. Later in the evening, Doe told investigators that she saw Heggseth rubbing women's legs and, quote, giving off a creeper vibe. She recalls, because she is drinking too, she recalls that the argument that they had was that she got angry at him for repeatedly touching women at the conference. And so they have this loud argument.

and Doe remembers Hegseth saying, I'm a nice guy, I'm a nice guy. And then, quote from NPR, Doe said that the next memory she had was when she was in an unknown room. This is from the police report. Doe did not know where she was or how she got to the room. Hegset was in the room with her. So this is, she blacks out, presumably. I think she had it. I believe she had a talk screen because she goes to the police, but I don't know.

It may not have been soon enough that would have shown if there was something else in her drink. But, you know, blacking out is. Anyway, she winds up... Well, refer to Pete's previous writing on the subject. And she says, I do recall saying no to him repeatedly, right? And, you know, she eventually files a sexual, like, assault claim against him, right? That he sexually assaulted her, right? He maintains that any physical interaction was consensual.

I wouldn't be surprised if he was blacked out, too, given his own, like, I don't know what memory Pete actually has of this. But ultimately, the police do not wind up prosecuting this because they say they don't have enough evidence to go on. And Hegseth settles out of court with her in a civil suit. He pays her $50,000 as part of a – and makes her sign a confidentiality agreement. This is just like – Per documents obtained by CNN, yeah. This is just fucking wild. I mean, it's not surprising at all that it didn't move forward.

But the fact that it went far enough that she had to – submit her text? I mean, were there, like, kits done or anything like that? Like, I, that's... Yeah, I don't think, like, I think by the time, because she didn't initially want to report it at all. Like, it's the, it often takes long enough that, like, you don't get as early as you need for that, this kind of screens. Yeah. I read a really, uh, interesting book, I was just randomly recommended, but I just finished it last week called the secret, I think it's called the secret history of the rape kit, and it's really good of just like how how much technology there is there that is just not used.

But in any case, that's, I mean, not surprising at all that they didn't move forward with the case, but just the idea of like, well, what does constitute enough evidence, quote, and I know that varies from state to state too. Yeah, and it does. And I got to read in terms of, because, again, Pete makes. the statement that like, oh, yeah, I was a bad guy. But, like, he's, he's basically pretending and, like, the bad stuff is I wasn't enough of an outright fascist, right? Like, yeah, that's, like, mostly the kind of claim that he's making is that, like, yeah, I'm imperfect because,

like, I wasn't as big a piece of shit as I am today. As a result of that, as a result of Pete being like, you know, I've almost been sunk more times than I can admit on these pages. I want to read one more quote about some of the sins that Pete leaves all out. in his Mia Colpa. Okay. This is from the New Yorker's article, Pete Hegseth's secret history. Hegsteth appeared in October 2017 as a dinner speaker at the California Federation of Republican Women's 40th Biannial Convention in Monterey, California.

His personal life was in tumult. In 2010, he had married a second time to Samantha Deering, a co-worker at Vets for Freedom. He admitted in an essay that year that he had fathered a child out of wedlock before marrying her, the Times reported. Then, in August of 2017, we'll still married to Deering, he fathered a daughter with another woman, a producer at Fox, Jennifer Rauchet, who he eventually married. In 2019, as he endearing wrangled their way through a difficult divorce, as the Times first reported, his mother, Penelope Hegseth, sent him an email, excoriating him as an abuser

of women who belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. She admonished him. Get some help and take an honest look at yourself. That's his mom. Oh, my. Well, that's what I call good business consulting. Yeah. That's, oh my God. I mean. That's his fucking mother. Like, Jesus.

Anyway, yeah, I just love it when he's like, oh, you know, I'm imperfect, but God uses imperfect people. That sounds a lot better than like, no, I'm a real fucking piece of shit. Like, I am a gigantic who does not at all live consistently with my stated values. I violate every rule God's set for human beings. On a weekly basis. On a constant basis. it is interesting like he's presenting like even as like a piece of effective propaganda this book is a feel because it's so inconsistent with like who does he want to be perceived as you know like it just seems like he'll say he'll switch the narrative for a moment to moment depending on what is the most effective thing here what are you going to like the most what makes me look the coolest which varies from chapter to chapter like in this he's a wounded bird who had like and then in other ones he's a born warrior because Donald Trump

like that's slid out of his mouth one you know it's just it's awesome it's good shit it's the yeah the the allegations it's like even it I mean and that's unfortunately is like a pretty standard allegation for a guy like this and of course it's just like means

nothing not to mention the civilian deaths right I like well this guy rocks so we're going to wrap up here the second to the last chapter though I should note is chapter 13 is called the front lines education in Israel

and it's 90% of it is about how evil the education system is Pete is like you can't send your kids to colleges because you're funding the enemy you should destroy literally burn your own like graduation certificate or whatever like and he goes

he will later he doesn't do it now he says like oh I'm going to destroy my diplomas from Princeton and Harvard right as a protest he does he destroys he claims to have mail sent back his Harvard diploma years later as a result of woke

but like he doesn't actually do that immediately. He didn't do that. I don't know that he actually did that at all. It might just be a lie. That story is as real as Omar from Texas as far as I'm concerned. After complaining that like college is evil because the whole theme of this chapter

is that like college is evil because of what it makes Americans think about Israel. So after several pages of ranting about colleges, he writes, you might ask, what in the world? Does the state of Israel have to do with any of this? I live in the United States. Why is Israel the front line?

And of course, the answer to that is that Israel is, quote, central to the story of Western civilization, of which America is the greatest manifestation. Pete advises everyone to watch a bunch of Prager You videos about Israel's history, and then goes through a, summarizes Israeli history in like a page and neatly leaves out the Palestinians completely, right? Like, there's just nobody there.

It's like, that's not a factor in the story at all. I mean, he celebrates the big, beautiful army Israel has and talks about their unmatched standard of living, something that might surprise people in Gaza, and says that because Israel is such a great place to live, that's why American crusaders have to fight for it as strongly as they fight for the United States. Pete ends the chapter with these lines. With the front lines identified, let's put a full-on American crusade into action. And the last chapter is just titled, Make the Crusade Great Again. it's not really, it's just a rehash of shit he said previously in the book this chapter's not necessary

and it's not really worth getting into other than this line near the end the American Crusade can be one but not through negotiation stale thinking and bipartisan consensus have betrayed us this moment requires a total commitment to victory which includes co-opting the successful

tactics the left has used for years we must be smart, tough, proactive and bold anyway that's Pete and his a book. I hope everyone had a fun week. Going out on a chapter on Israel, I guess I didn't expect better, but Jesus fucking. And then he wrote another book called The War on Warriors. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that one day. That's his book about, yeah, how America, like, we don't make people want to be

violent enough, right? Like, we shame men for killing and stuff. And like, yeah, it's just, it's just, we'll get into it one of these days. But no rush. Not today. Not today. Not. Well, I fucking hated every second of that. Yep. Yeah. Milled it. So an average episode. A normal episode of Behind the Bastards.

Yes. This was meant to be like an easier week for me, but I still wound up having to do a bunch of research because, God, there's just, you can't just not talk about the reality of Pete when you're looking at like what he claims about himself. No, because, I mean, one thing I was, I mean, not necessarily surprised about, but there's so many approaches to this kind of book. and he approaches, and I wonder how much of it is just legal, but like he says stunningly little about himself while also presenting no ideas. It's really just racism. Yeah, it's just racism and, you know, like callow self-interest, right? He wants to be a big man, an important man. That's all that really matters to him. Yeah, I was like, you could kind of like glean the contents of the book by looking at the cover.

It's a book by a deeply insecure man who's about to get an undue amount of power. Right. Ah, God, we love it when deeply insecure men get great amounts of power that they absolutely are not prepared to wield. It's the American tradition. It's the American tradition. So go out, take power for yourself, and then get corrupt and, you know, destroy huge swaths of the human race. You know, that's my challenge to all of you listeners. Go take power somewhere in the world, become corrupted by it, and, you know,

send us further down the slalom to complete collapse. And all I'll say is Michigan, don't believe what you've heard. I'm a good person. Yeah. Let her into your corner store. Hand or an axe. It's safe. I'm not saying, you could and you would be fine.

Absolutely safe, for sure. I hope to be welcomed in your borders and in due time. But I understand the healing is only just begun. That's right. Well, you got anything to plug? Yes, I should plug my Cool Zone Media podcast 16th minute. We are currently on hiatus, but it is a weekly podcast in which I talk to and reflect on the main characters of the internet, catch up with them years later, and talk about how broken the internet has made us. Check that out. Check out my book, Raw Dog, The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs.

And it's in paperback now So it doesn't cost as much money Or just get it from the library Or honestly, you can steal it It's fine I don't think I'm going to get any royalties And yeah, that's what I got Well, I think you are royalty, Jamie

You're the queen of podcasts That's way better than what you usually call me Which is a murderer, so I'll take it Well, look, name a queen It wasn't a murderer, Jamie That's so true Okay, I take it back I take it back.

Yeah. All right, everybody. Bye. I love you. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com.

Or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. bastards. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in

our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell, and the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Girlfriends is back with a new season and this time I'm telling you the story of Kelly Harnett. Kelly spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit. As she fought for her freedom, she taught herself the law. He goes, oh God, Arnett, jailhouse lawyer. And became a beacon of hope

for the women locked up alongside her. You're supposed to have been faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her. I think I was put here to save souls by getting people out of prison. The Girlfriends, Jail House Lawyer. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Liz went from being interested in true crime to living true crime. My husband said, your dad's been killed. This is Hands Tide, a true crime podcast exploring the murder of Jim Milgar. I was just completely in shock. Liz's father murdered and her mother found locked in a closet

her hands and feet bound I didn't feel real at all more than a decade on she's still searching for answers we're still fighting listen to Hands Tide on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts Hello I'm John Lithgow I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast That's one small step for man. About Buzz Aldrin, one of the two pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. That's the story you think you know.

This is the story you don't. Buzz, starring me, John Lithgow. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.