Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Israel-Lebanon Ceasefire; Hegseth Calls Press "Pharisees"

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

JVL, Mark Hertling and Andrew Egger are going live to cover Trump's announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, Hegseth's press conference, and the continuing war of words between GOP figures and the Pope.Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to https://Quince.com/BULWARKTAKES for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too!

Whoa. Hello, friends. This is JVL here with my Bullwark colleagues and St. Louis Cardinals fans, Mark Hercling and Andrew Egger. And we've got a little bit of breaking news via the most important government communications network available, truth social, that the president has put, I don't know if we can put this up, Matt, excellent conversations with the highly respected president, Joseph Aoun, of Lebanon. Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and they have agreed for a formal 10-day ceasefire starting at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. And it just sounds like it's going to be great. Dan Raisin-Kane is there and mentioned a little disappointed. We don't have anything about the landslide victory in this bleat or the theft of 2020 or Sleepy Joe Biden. but we do have the nine wars that have now been solved, and this is the 10th war. So, I, Mark, like, this is how the commander, like, I just don't even, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah, this is actually a pretty good thing because Lebanon probably has their best government in decades right now. And I think Netanyahu has been persuaded to collaborate with them a bit more. And there's been extensive killing in the southern part of Lebanon as Israeli military. The IDF has gone into that country and continued to fire artillery rounds. And by the way, I should probably say this, but I did my master's thesis on Operation Peace for Galilee, which was the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by the Israelis. And they had been stuck in that area for the last 40 years.

So this would be a very good thing if Lebanon does agree to a ceasefire and they can do some peaceful speaking. But what I will counter are the 10 wars that the president continues to claim he solved because as you go through each one of them, some of them are still going on. There's been no treaties signed between the nations. There's no Kashmir is still contested by India and Pakistan. Serbia is not happening. The dams in Egypt, they're still not flying. You know, it's just, it's a continuous, ridiculous statement by this guy. And I don't know how to counter it better than that, that you can take each one of the conflicts and contest the president's comments about them. It is a little weird that he wants credit both for solving a lot of wars and bringing peace, but also credit for being deadly serious about committing genocide.

Right. He demands that you pretend that, like, his genocide threat, oh, yeah, he was going to do it. He's perfectly willing to do genocide. But also, you have to give him all credit. It's a strange, well, I don't understand. Why do you need both sides of that? Andrew, this would be good, I mean, it would be good news for lots of reasons. If true, right, if there is a ceasefire, if it holds, if it leads to a lasting peace deal over there, it would be good on its own.

But also, I think it probably takes one of the points of contention for the Iranian ceasefire off the table and makes that easier to achieve. Yes? Yeah. Yeah. We're in kind of a weird situation right now where we're kind of like moving in jerks toward the status quo that was announced a week ago, right? I mean, when the president came out and said, you know, I made that genocide threat. I made this really, you know, hardcore deadline that I said, you know, 9 p.m., the bombs are going to start dropping or whatever it is that we're going to do. You know, they said they had a ceasefire.

And then everybody kind of looked around and was like, well, the straight is still closed. There's still all this fighting in Lebanon. Iran is still shooting at ships? Like, in what sense is there truly a ceasefire? And it kind of seems like, you know, we have gradually moved now to a point where that is actually in operation. The problem is it was only a two-week ceasefire to begin with. We're now kind of halfway to that, again, new deadline. And so it kind of seems like to an extent they have sort of just kicked the can down the road.

We're back to this position of, you know, the Pentagon and the White House issuing more and more and more sort of alarming threats. Not yet back at the level of a civilization will go extinct tonight by any means. But we're sort of back in that same position with the one exception that they really have. have actually tightened the screws economically on Iran's shipping in a way that they were not doing before. So let's talk about that because Pete Hankseth did a press conference this morning and we have some sound here talking about the blockade and potential war crimes. In the meantime, and for as long as it takes, we will maintain this blockade, successful

blockade. But if Iran chooses poorly, then they will have a blockade and bombs. dropping on infrastructure, power, and energy. Oh, okay. So, Mark, talking about the blockade a little bit here. The ins and outs of this, and please correct me if I'm wrong, was this a blockade of the strait itself or of Iranian ports along the strait, which is a distinction that does have a little bit of a difference?

Just explain the blockade to us. Yeah, it's the latter, JV. And we wrote, and we had an article. You know, Ben Parker and I put together an article, and it was in the bulwark about three days ago. I was just a period. No, I was today. I'm sorry. I'm just sending up to brag on yourself.

Yeah. No, no self-bragging, but it describes based on what I had in terms of conversations with Navy guys, the difference. And it's still, you know, the blockage of the port or the blockade of the ports and the Iranian infrastructure is a technique of using a blockade. and it is significant in terms of resources and expenditures of equipment and people doing things, and there's a whole lot that goes into it, which we described in the article. If you take a look at blockading the straight of Hormuz, it would take probably three or four carrier battle groups conducting operations for a very long time and with a lot of energy to do a full blockade. And the chairman of joint chiefs and Admiral Cooper both reinforced that this morning.

You know, it was reminded me of a time when, in fact, I said this to Ben yesterday, that, you know, I used to have a sergeant major next to me whenever I said something stupid, he'd say, what the general meant to say was this. Well, that's exactly what Cooper and the chairman were doing this morning. What the president meant to say was a partial blockade of the ports. But having said that, it's still a significant action. And when you're talking about escorting ships in and out of the straight that you have partially blocked from their ports, that takes destroyers and cruisers and all kinds of ships. We don't have enough there for that right now, no matter what the Secretary of Defense says.

So it is still going to be a difficult operation when you consider there still may be mines in the area. You need overhead platforms. Iran has stopped shooting weapons at various ships for the time being to see what happens in the ceasefire. So I think we could see all of those dangers reemerge and the potential for damage to either merchant ships or U.S. naval vessels if they hit a mine or a mine hits them in the future. So the risk has not been mitigated completely. Silly question. Isn't a blockade an act of war, like in the legal definitions of how these things work internationally? Not a silly question.

In and of itself, a blockade is an act of war. When Kennedy insisted on the blockade, quote, unquote, of Cuba, they even changed the name to a quarantine as opposed to a blockade for exactly that reason to avoid having to go to Congress and perhaps the Hague for starting a war. So, you know, those are the kind of things you consider. And yes, it is an act of war, but we've now been five months into a bomb or five weeks into a bombing campaign. So does it matter? We've already committed that, caused us belly of war. Well, Andrew, silly question, part do. If we are committing a formal act of war, does the administration need to go to Congress? I mean, the answer to that is the same as it's been all along, which is, yes, they need to, according to the letter of the thing, but apparently they don't need to in order to actually, you know, commit the act. That law doesn't exist.

Right? Yeah, I mean, like what law was, right? This is one of my long-running thing. Like, you know, if it is a suggestion that you should do it, but there is no penalty for not doing it, then it's not a law. Right. And so if this part of the Constitution is there, then it doesn't, it's actually not part of the Constitution. Right.

And this is, of course, one of the Constitution is. This is, of course, one of those areas in which, you know, the current administration is, is not really committing like a truly radical break in, in sort of quality, so much as with, in quantity with, like, previous administrations, right? I'm, I'm not a military historian. I don't know what the best kind of comparison would be in terms of just like, like, true, like, war by any other name that you are just kind of pretending is a limited military action. My understanding is basically all of the previous adventures in the Middle East,

or at least sort of justified under one or another sort of preexisting authorization for use of force. And this is, I mean, I guess I would ask, Mark, like, what you make of this? Like, is this different in kind from those or just sort of greater than useful? What I'm pushing at is, like, once you say we're doing a blockade, that word has a legal meaning, and you can't, you can no longer say this is a military action and not a war. And what I'd say, too, Andrew, to get to your point, yeah, there's another reason for it. It's not just the agreement by Congress or going to Congress. It's what's behind that going to Congress.

It's to get the American people on board. Congressional reps are supposed to be representing their constituents. And it appears that other than the Hegset-Kane press conferences, there has been real no explanation to the American people in a formal way of why we were at war. And the support, based on polling, which isn't always accurate, it sure seems like the majority of Americans don't want to be doing this. So that could be a reason to go to Congress, although Congress is not completely representing their American constituents on this issue in the first place. But again, if I can state one more thing, it was fascinating to me this morning, a little thing I picked up on during the Pentagon press briefing was the fact that

Secretary Hagsath announced that the Treasury Department is now part of this campaign because they're doing it. He named the operation from the Treasury Department, which is the first time we've heard any other form of government being involved in a whole of government campaign, which is supposed to be part of strategy when you go to war. Small thing. Fascinating. You call it Operation Economic Fury, I think, right? Economic Fury. Yeah.

Yeah. So, Mark, one thing, actually, so this is a good thing, a point in the Trump administration's favor. It is important that they're doing a blockade of Iranian ports and not the straight, because if we were doing a blockade of the strait, that would also be a violation of international law. And so I guess it's good that we aren't unilaterally violating international law the way the Iranians are. by closing the straight? Right? Is that like, is it silly to hang on to that as a, hey, at least we didn't do that? Boy, I, you know, I'm not a legal expert in terms of international law, but it sure does seem like it might be a distinction with a difference or not.

I don't know. But it could be. Just grasping for something. Like, it's like, hey, it looks like somebody somewhere said, sir, we can't do the straight because international law. law governs this waterway. And if we are abridging international law, then the China can do the same thing in the South China Sea and blah, blah, blah. Can I say that's a rate we didn't step on? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Can I say one quick thing on that, too, JVL, which is that you made the point right at the top about, you know, how crazy it is that this ceasefire that we're getting now between Israel and

Lebanon. There are a number of details about it. They're all in this truth social post from the president, right? And this is the way in which these things are communicated. And this is sort of a thing it's unlike, you know, the president's standing at a press podium with, like, a bunch of aides over his shoulder who can, like, immediately step in and, like, clarify things if, if they see the need to do so. I mean, truth, social posts, they just kind of stand alone. If you go back to the post on April 12th, a couple days ago, where Trump announced this blockade, he just said, you know, there you have it.

The meeting went well. Most points were agreed to. But to the only point that really matter, nuclear was not. Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the finest in the world, will begin the process of blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz. Like just full stop. That's what he said. And then you have to wait, you know, days or hours or whatever. Everybody knows. Other countries, other governments have to figure out. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it is really just like an astonishing way to run these things. And, you know, who knows what,

what things may or may not come out about this Lebanon seas fire? This is just the way in which these are kind of the waters we swim in for everything now, when all of this information is coming out through this particularly unreliable source. Well, what I'm hoping is happening is that there are actually military people saying, yeah, we can't do that. You know, that's illegal. And it gets to JVL's point of, okay, we're stretching the boundaries when we even do the ports.

If you're asking us to do the whole thing, that is a, you know, a violation of international law. So, yeah, we can't do that. And I'm hoping that is what's happening, although it doesn't get to presidents. To your point, Andrew, it doesn't get to the president until days later when he realizes that's not what we're doing. And I'm just reaching for some silver lining here where we can take like, hey, this one thing is, what have we got on the spacecraft that works, as Ed Harris family said? All right. There's a lot more, Seth, and we should talk about it.

he had a little note to the press corps he he doesn't like the cut of their jib yeah to the press to the press corps to the american media as i just can't help but notice the endless stream of garbage the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling despite the historic an important success of this effort and the success of our troops. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on. It's incredibly unpatriotic. What's hard to figure out is that he can't separate wrapping himself in the military successes instead of trying to figure out what is the strategy for what we're doing

and what is the country trying to achieve here. There is no one that I've heard in the press corps that said the military operation sucks. You guys are screwing it all up. It's not good. The military is incompetent. It's been great military actions, but to what end? That's the question. And that's what Secretary Hags should be confused about.

This is like the kind of if you remember this, Andrew. But maybe it was 2016, the Republican. nomination, whenever they'd have the debates, anytime anybody on the stage got into trouble, they would just beat up on the press and the moderators. And then the whole audience would clap like seals. There's an aspect of that to this, which, like, Hegzeth knows things aren't going great.

Like, we're trying to get into this ceasefire, which didn't really hold, even though it was a terrible deal for America to begin with. And, like, it's all sort of unraveling. but at least he can say the press sucks and he knows that everybody will get on side then. Yes, is that kind of what's going on? 100%. But there's another kind of funny wrinkle to all of this to me, which is that ordinarily in these moments, you know, if it's happening in the White House press briefing room or something, you know, they are able, these White House spokesmen are able to be sort of like beating up on the reporters that are right in front of them. But that's not happening in the Pentagon press room because,

the Pentagon, the Defense Department, kicked out, you know, 98% of its press corps, you know, of its credentialed media, you know, six months ago or four months ago or however long ago that was, leaving them with basically a press pool that is entirely made up of, you know, Trump sycophants, right-wing media. Do you have the list of questions? I do. I do. So, so Hegseth himself, you know, as he is doing this, he keeps having to stop and clarify, like,

you know, not, I don't mean you guys, you know, you guys are cool. I'm talking about, you know, other media people, not. I'm not talking about CBS News because the CBS News people had me on their air and they're great. So who, like, it is a weird thing. He took five questions. He took five questions while he was up there. And the questions came from, one America news network, real America's voice, the Daily Wire, just the news, which is John Solomon's startup outfit, if you have followed that at all. And then one from the White House correspondent for the streamer Tim Poole, the Beanie guy.

And that is our Pentagon press corps holding these people to account during this Iran war every day during these briefings. I mean, Mark, is it proper for the Secretary of Defense to spend time kind of insinuating that members of the press, unnamed members of the press, are a fifth column? There's a lot of things. Is there precedent for that? No, not that I know. Did this happen during Vietnam? Well, I mean, the press was attacked by a couple of presidents during Vietnam for writing different stories. But never the Secretary of Defense because that Secretary of Defense is supposed to be the interlocutor between the military and the president.

He's supposed to be the guy that coordinates the action, the profession, telling what the department is doing. His job is not to attack the press. I mean, I've got to tell you, you know, I've said this before. there were times when I was a commander where I couldn't stand the embedded reporters that were with us. It's a pain in the ass talking to the media. It is awful to take your time to express what's going on to journalists that are embedded with you. But you know what? You do it because the Constitution says that that's what you're supposed to do, inform the American people of what military actions are about.

Now, if they're asking hard questions, then I've got to be better on my game. And I had some hard questions asked of me in combat. And sometimes you just got to say, hey, I can't talk about that or let me try and give you as much as I can. But you don't attack people because the members of the press, not the guys in the room, are just trying to do their job to inform the American people. I did an article one time after combat with a guy named Tom Shanker, the New York Times, where we both gave our views of the military media relationship. and the title of the article was, the military media dysfunctional marriage, we stay in it for the kids.

And both of us have kids that we have to worry about. The kids for the soldiers are the kids for the commanders or the soldiers. The kids for the press are the American people. That's very apt. All right. So, listen, we had to take a brief pause here for words from our sponsor. Andrew hit it. Yeah, I grabbed this one because my eyes lit up when I saw the sponsor.

answer. My family's been doing a little spring reset with our closet lately, trying to put together a wardrobe of pieces that are well-made, versatile, and easy to reach for every day. That's why we keep coming back to quince. The fabrics feel elevated. The fits are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince makes beautiful everyday pieces using premium materials like 100% Egyptian, European linen. Egyptian linen might be a thing, I don't know. Organic cotton and super soft denim, with styles starting around $50. Their spring pieces are lightweight, breathable, and effortless. the kind of things you can throw on and instantly look put together. That same focus on materials carries over into their accessories,

like their leather bags, which are made from 100% hand-woven Italian leather, and honestly look way more expensive than they are. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. I just, on a personal note, we love that Quince has clothes for the whole family. We first started buying clothes for them for our kids, and as we realized that they were good quality and that we liked them a lot, I started seeing more and more things that my wife was buying for herself,

we were getting for ourselves. You can refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash bulwark takes for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. I know there are some bulwark. Canada people out there. They don't like Samstein. Go to quince.com slash bulwark takes for free shipping and 365 day returns.

Quince.com slash bulwark takes. So the attack on the press as being unpatriotic was not the weirdest or most disturbing of the things that Higgsath had to say about the press. He also did some light theology while he was there. Matt, let's see that. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him.

I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees. Not all of you. Not all of you. but the legacy Trump hating press. Your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors. The Pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation,

only looking for the negative. Yeah. I, uh, I don't know, man. Andrew, can I get a little, a little, you're, you're deep into Bible study guy. You're a good Christian. Is that, is that kind of what's going on with the press? Do you look at the press and be like, yeah, Pharisees. Can I, can I take just like a slight step away from this?

Because I don't know if this is like just a sort of like, you know, breastbeating Lutheran thing or if this is sort of more widespread. But the reason that my jaw was on the floor for this story is it's just really remarkable. to imagine like sitting there in church, anybody sitting there in church, and listening to, you know, these sorts of stories and being like, this is such an indictment of my enemies. All the people that I hate all the time in my life, you know, the people that I spend my entire life denouncing and looking down on and dripping with scorn for. Jesus feels exactly the same way as I do about those things. I mean, like with the Pharisees, traditionally, traditionally, at least in my tradition, you're supposed to be kind of thinking about yourself in those moments. You know, it's like, it's like I have a lot of, a lot of, a lot of problems and and I have a lot of, you know, hypocrisies and arrogance and all these sorts of things. And I, I almost hesitate to say this because I'm kind of doing the same thing right now, right? Like, I make fun of Pete Higgseth for a living. And now I am also, you know, still doing that, like just, but just in this sort of bank shot church way. But I don't know, like, I, I was cringing throughout that because, like, it's just, don't you have any, don't you have

anything that you could be thinking about for this one hour a week when you're in church? Don't you spend enough time sort of like rolling your eyes at the media? Like is there, I don't know. I don't know. Like that was my, that was my reaction to that moment. It felt it rang false to me in that way. I mean, last half full sort of way. At least he goes to church, unlike the commander in chief.

I don't know. So, Mark, you and I have never talked religion. I don't even know. Are you a nice Catholic boy? I'm a nice Catholic boy, yes. You an altar boy? Were you an altar boy? I was.

Yeah, I bet you. You have the look. Believe it or not. Almost became a priest. Oh, we will do a whole three hours on that someday. Okay. Did you, like, did you apply to seminary? Like, how close were you?

No, no. I went to an all Catholic grade school and all boys military Catholic high school. And then all male West Point before it turned into a mix. So, you know, I was, I guess, sexually depraved at some point in my life. I don't know. But yeah, the Catholic rule of having your wrist beaten by nuns and all those kind of things were all part of it. Yeah. So what would you like to know, JVL?

I mean, did you, well, I mean, I don't even quite know what to say because it's, as Andrew says, it is a weird thing to sit in church and think what the Bible is telling me is that everything that I want in life is right and all the people hate are wrong. That's a very weird approach to Christianity. I think, but it's a weird approach to Catholicism where everything is supposed to be guilt at all the things you're fucking up. And so maybe this is just my parochial, you know, all I understand about Christianity is the Roman Catholic Church.

And maybe this is how Protestant types, like I don't even know what denomination Hegzith is. Maybe this is like full on prosperity gospel. Like, you know, if you do well and succeed, it's because the Lord loves you. And I don't know, because it feels like that's a little bit where it's headed. Is that, do I have that wrong? I'll take a, yeah, I'll take a different approach.

Okay. You know, everyone has their own faith, their own religion, their own beliefs. I'm not going to go after Secretary Hegsteth for what he believes. Although, as Andrew said, it seems a little skewed that he would be thinking about that when all this is going on. I'm going to take the approach that he's the frigging secretary of defense. He's got a force of Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Jews, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. He's got a force at 70% Christian and 30% others by my last show of the ratio. And he shouldn't be talking about religion at all when he's at a podium like this.

I'm sure he's working on fixing that percentage a little bit. Well, it could be. But truthfully, it's just it's a. appurrent to me having spent four decades in the military to see someone get on a stage like that. And chaplains don't even do that. I mean, I've corrected chaplains for focusing on one religion when they have a unit standing in front of them that represents all of them. They've got to be more universal and more inclusive. So that's the problem I have with this.

but insulting members of the press, an area that is actually protected by the First Amendment, freedom of the press, and to compare them to a biblical story to me is odd. That's all I'll say. Andrew, go ahead. One final thing on that, Jay, I want it. No, just because you mentioned in passing that you're not super familiar with Hegset's particular denomination, I feel like we don't have time to get into it now, but we could do a whole stream. secondary stream of just me reading you interesting facts about the particular denomination to which Pete

Hegseth belongs, which is a pretty intense sect of, you know, there's been some stuff written about it. But we don't need to get into any of that, any of that right now. We'll brush up and we'll come back. We'll do it next week. Good for them. Do they pray to statues the way we do in the Catholic church? Probably not. Pretty much the, my understanding is that it's a sort of like a reformed sort of branch of Calvinism, which is about as far the opposite from that as you can get within Christianity. Well, you know, we'll just pray to our co-god Mary. This is a little inside baseball Catholic humor for you guys listening at home.

Speaking of which, I am legitimately surprised that Hexath didn't attack the Pope because maybe only Catholics inside the administration have been told to do that. The Pope was in Cameroon this morning, and we have a little bit of sound from him. Jesus told us, blessed are the peacemakers. But woe to those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic or political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth. My boy Bobby from the south side. What do you guys?

What do you guys think of that? Is that very judgment? I should say I'm going to limit myself because I am on the focus group with Sarah later today. And we listened to Catholic voters talking about this stuff. And I heard some wild, wild things from Trump voting Catholics who just do not like this Pope at all. So what do you guys think about that? I happen to be a big fan of the Pope. And I think the sermon we just, heard what he was speaking about is exactly the same kind of thing that Christ said to the Sadducees and the Pharisees. When you drag things into the mud for your own political purpose, and use religion and your faith for that reason, it's not a good thing. So I kind of like the words of Pope Leo as a Catholic. And Andrew? A little Luther love for the post. I always feel, I always feel a little weird like sharing opinions about, you know, theological utterances from the Pope because he's not my guy, you know, like, I mean, I'm outside of his tent as Lutheran

kind of looking in. He's a very important figure for Christendom. I like this Pope. He seems like, you know, it's important that the Catholic Church have a good Pope for a whole kinds, a whole lot of kinds of reasons. The only point that I would make is that I really do think the last couple of weeks have completely vindicated sort of like the church's theory of the American Pope, right? Because this is what was reported broadly for a long time, you know, right around when Leo was selected was that, you know, we've never had an American Pope before. And it really would be kind of this moment where there's this emerging American problem on the world stage. And the church needs to sort of position itself to sort of try to

constrain or direct or mold or just, you know, be present at this moment in the world of sort of like American chaos. And it's strange because, you know, it's not like Francis was like a MAGA guy, you know, but the, it's almost because. Pope's memory that I like to talk to Colin. Yeah, yeah. Like it's, it is almost as though like in picking an American Pope, they made him that much harder for Trump to ignore. And it's Trump who has. picked this fight. I mean, the Pope has been saying the same sort of anti-war stuff that popes typically say, and certainly that Francis, you know, said very much in this exact same vein as Leo the 14th. And yet because Trump has found it so much more intolerable from an American,

he has now picked this fight. And in a sort of unexpected or at least unpredictable, predictable way from the point of view of the president, he has raised the Pope's own salience as sort of like a a guy that we talk about all the time, you know, in terms of in these political, uh, media conversations. So, um, so I think, uh, I think that is all playing out, uh, at least as, as the Catholic, as the Cardinals seemed to, uh, anticipate or, or hope it would, uh, in terms of just the Pope, being a constant presence in American politics that, that, that people need to think about and, and deal with in a lot of different ways. So last point on this, uh, I, Mike, the other than if you guys remember, David Frum wrote a piece

back in 2018, in which he suggested that if conservatives came to believe that they could no longer achieve power through democratic means, they wouldn't abandon conservatism. They'd abandon democracy. And that has turned out to be reasonably prescient. My concern is that at least within Catholic world, if Maga Catholics are told that like Christian nationalism is not compatible with the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, some meaningful percentage of them are going to choose Christian nationalism and Trumpism. And this is, again, this is like what I heard a lot of during the focus group, which ding, ding, ding, tune into

that this weekend. And we have, I don't Matt, I don't know if we have the thing on Mike Johnson and the Pope, but this is like a perfect, a perfect version of it. this. Ponte, or any religious leader can say anything they want. But obviously, if you weighed into political waters, I think you should expect some political response, and I think the popes received some of that. You know, I was taking a little bit of back, just honestly, frankly, but something that was said, I think he said several days back, that something about those who engage in war, you know, that Jesus doesn't hear their prayers or something. You know, it is a very well-settled matter of Christian theology. There's something called a just war doctrine. There's

the time to every purpose under heaven. I think what the president's comments, what the vice president's comments reflect, is their understanding deep in the skiff and the classified briefings of the stakes that are so high in the situation that we're facing and the fact that you had the nation

that was a largest sponsor of terrorism now having had that ability taken away from them. That means potentially millions of innocent people will be able to keep their lives and not be killed by terrorist. That's a good thing. That's what's come out of this. Okay. So I don't, I don't,

I don't want to engage in a theological debate with the Pope. I certainly respect the Pope. So, uh, I mean, just as a quick for the, that might have been true had we achieved regime change in Iran. And if Iran was settling into like Iraq becoming a more normal, stable type democracy, if the Islamic Republic remains in charge, it is not clear to me that we are stopping them being sponsors of terrorism or repressing their own people, right? It's a weird thing that his, Mike Johnson's defense of the war as a just war

is predicated on pretending that we were doing something different than we did. No? Yeah, I, I, I want to chime in on the fact that Secretary Hegseth also said this morning that if they don't abide by what we're asking them to do, as you said earlier, we're going to bomb their cities, their infrastructure, their energy. So I think there's an element of terrorism in that. In fact, it meets the definition of terrorism, except we're the ones conducting it if we do that. It's a page out of Putin's playbook in terms of terrorizing the population. How does that reflect what Speaker Johnson just said? Andrew, do you have any thoughts on this? I might just make it too much of it like, you know,

hey, Republicans are going to Republican. And of course, this is what you should expect. Because the truth is we've had lots of these fights before. So John, people may not remember, but John Paul the second, John Paul the Great now, St. John Paul, he was against the first Iraq war after Saddam invaded Kuwait. He was against the second Iraq war. He lobbied George W. Bush pretty hard on this. He lobbied our European allies to not get involved in it.

Benedict was against the second Iraq campaign. I mean, this is just something that the Pope, the Pope is almost never going to say, a war of choice is okay. That just doesn't, you know, that's not the job description. But the thing is that normally, the president of the United States doesn't give a political response.

The president of the United States says something like, really respect the Holy Father, grateful to hear his views. You know, we have to make our own decisions according to the national security and the United States. He doesn't say,

this Pope is weak on crime and wants Iran to have nuclear weapons. That's the weird, like, so I don't know. Yeah, and that is, I mean, again, just a- Is something shifting here, Andrew, or no? I think so. I mean, I genuinely think a lot of it has to do with what I was talking about a

minute ago, which is the fact that the Pope is American now, the fact that the president sees him as a domestic opponent, which I mean, I just cannot imagine a situation in which Mike Johnson, who is not himself Catholic, or, I mean, maybe J.D. Vance would, but just focus on Johnson. Mike Johnson would never, in a million years, have weighed in on any similar set of comments from Pope Francis. It just would have seemed strange. It would have, it would have seemed like the weirdest out of left field sort of thing at all. And, and part of what that means is that, like, you know, for, for better or worse, Republicans, uh, Republican Christians in America have been able to kind of just go about their lives as those sort of like the, the particular Republican, American

streams of Christianity or strands of Christianity in which they're implanted, which is, also true of Catholicism, that it's sort of like a unique thing in American Catholicism and right-wing American Catholicism is sort of different from just worldwide Catholicism. Like, go through life as though, you know, we are the ones who have sort of the mantle of God. And, you know, like, we're the, we're the Jesus people as opposed to, you know, all of our political opponents who are just sort of godless pagans. And, like, these sorts of intra-faith fights are, like, unusual for guys like Mike Johnson to have to have. which is part of why it's sort of like a floundering thing. You know, it's like the Pope has heard of just war theory before.

That's not his problem. His problem is not that he needs to hear from the Speaker of the House of Representatives of America that there is such a thing as just war doctrine in Catholicism. But, but like just the fact that, you know, these guys are having to have these conversations, again, just kind of vindicates the whole concept of pulling a Pope out of America in the first place. And I think it actually is responsible for a lot of cognitive dissonance. I mean, I know there are a lot of people who are, really just maga Catholics as well as just really maga anything. You know, they're culturally,

whatever, but really their, their, you know, their faith is a political cultural identity. But for a lot of people who are not that, but are still Republicans, who are not that, but still, you know, have generally sort of confused but mostly good feelings about the Republican Party or Donald Trump, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance happening right now, like this week with the stuff about the Jesus meme that he posted on the internet and with some of this, stuff with J.D. Vance picking a fight over the Pope now with, I mean, I haven't seen people commenting on this Mike Johnson thing as much as the Vance thing. But we should not discount that this is a real development in terms of how religious people in this country are kind of feeling

out their kind of their own personal sort of like scales between how they feel about politics, how they feel about religion, how these things intersect. There are a lot of people who had come to like what they felt was a pretty comfortable accommodation about some of these things, who are suddenly a little thrown off balance. And I think that that is not a small development. I think if I can comment on that, Andrew, I think that is a perfect way to put it. There are going to be people with cognitive distance. They're going to go to their corners and say, I'm going to defend this to my death.

But if there's the potential for people questioning and perhaps discussing some of the things, there may be goodness in all of this. Do I think it will create some goodness? I don't know. Are we too far down the path to have even discussions about faith and its relation to politics? It's a great point. If I may, though, you just triggered something in me and not to change the subject, but you just talked about the Jesus memes that are going up on the Internet and all the things that are occurring like

that. I think Secretary Hegsef got a question on that as well regarding, you know, what Iran is doing with their memes and their, their cartoonish approaches. And, you know, it was talking about Pharisees and hypocrisy. The answer to that was just off the chart, amazing, too, regarding how they're immature, they don't understand what we're doing. And yet we have been the king of memes as a country. And they are only my, what we're doing by kind of producing the same types of things. What do you think of that, JBL? Dank memes.

Just dank memes, yeah. All right, guys, that was great. Thank you. I will just leave everybody with just one idea, one thought. We're not going to excavate it. In 1978, the Holy Spirit moved the conclave to choose a Polish pope so that he could go to Poland and stand against totalitarianism and oppose it

and lo and behold, the iron curtain fell. Maybe something like that is happening again. The Holy Spirit moves in very, very strange ways. Guys, we have tickets for our live shows in San Diego and Los Angeles. They're going to come online and be available for everybody starting tomorrow at 12 p.m. in the east. Go to the bulwark.com slash events if you want to get tickets. Do not sleep on these. will sell out quickly. We learned a very bad lesson about that with Minnesota, and we don't

want anybody to wind up disappointed. Mark Hartling, Andrew Eggers, thanks for joining with me. I'm sure that all of the new developments happening between our attempted authoritarian and the Holy Father will wind up being positive in some way. The last decade has taught us anything. It's that big unsettling things always work out in the end somehow. Good luck, America.