From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - My Mom's Passing Is A Reminder Of The Beauty in Big Families

Episode Date: August 3, 2024

Sean and Rachel join from Wisconsin as they honor the life of Sean's mom, Carol Duffy, a loving wife for 69 years and the mother of 11 incredible children. As Sean and Rachel reflect on his mom's life, they can't help but feel overwhelmed by the beauty of their family, as Sean's siblings gathered together to make their mother feel loved in her final moments and show support for one another.   In a world where it's becoming increasingly common to place career aspirations or other personal desires over family, the Duffy's sit down to remind listeners of the beauty and importance of big families, because when all is said and done — it's the people we love that we'll cherish most when reflecting on life.   Follow Sean & Rachel on X: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. It's so great to be back at the kitchen table. We're in Wisconsin, Sean, and we come up here every month and we'll usually try and make sure we have time for you at the end of the month because it's your mom's birthday. But sadly, a few weeks ago, your mom passed away. She did. So my mom was almost, she would have been 90 today. We're doing this on Thursday, dropping on Friday.

We're doing this on Thursday, dropping on Friday. But she's had a tough go of it. My mom has. She fell and broke her femur in January. Just had a whole series of events that took place. And in the end, it was really hard. But you and I have talked about this a lot. We talk about big families a lot and why big families are important. And I'm just going to tell you, why do I care to talk about this in the podcast? Because there's a theme that we

discuss a lot that I want to bring up. So she's been married to my dad for 69 years. Gerald Duffy. Yep. And she had 11 kids. And what was fascinating is in, in essence, the six months that she was, she broke her femur, was in the hospital. She was able to come home for a little while, but then was back in the hospital. My dad was with her every moment. Once in a while, he would leave her side to go get the mail. To shower.

Once in a while to shower. That's right. But he was there day in, day night, stayed in the hospital with her. but that's right. But he was there day in, day night, stayed in the hospital with her. They actually created a bed situation so he could sleep next to her in the place where in the it's like a care center that she was at. And they slept together every single night holding hands. And when she was in the hospital, he would sleep on the couch in the hospital. But more than that, even was that the kids, the 11 kids to different degrees, all pitched in. So rarely was it just my dad there with my mom. It was one of the kids with my dad, with my mom. Yeah. Because it was, it was him too. It was stressful. It was hard. There were

decisions that had to be made as the process went along. She'd get up at night sometimes and she needed help going to the bathroom and she would, she'd be up late and they always need to be someone there, but it was just easier if there were two people. And so, you know, we obviously don't live in the town and the ones that were here really took the brunt of the work. But the fact is, there were a lot of adult children to carry that weight. And as Sean said, some did more than others for lots of different reasons. But there was a really remarkable support system for Carol in her last months. And as I saw it, and I mean, I've told all of his siblings just, and his dad, I think just today we had a mass for Carol in honor of her birthday. And after mass, I told your dad, I was like, this family is remarkable.

like this family is remarkable. And it was interesting that in its most difficult moment, the beauty of that family, of your family, really shone through. I mean, I said, you have the most remarkable family. And your dad said, I know. And I told him, I said, I've doubled down on big families, seeing what happens at the end of life how difficult it is and also not just helping with your mom watching you and your siblings support each other how much easier is it to get through losing a mom when you can share that grief with so many other people get it and we had time to share memories and stories and that's the gift of how long it took her to pass on it was like five six months and i think that was the greatest gift she gave you guys i i was able to be there as she told so many of you and so many of your siblings just stories and how

much she loved you guys and how proud she was of you. What a gift. Because some people, death is very sudden. If they get a heart attack or a stroke, she was able to, in a long goodbye, really, and she was so good at expressing herself and her love for you guys. It was beautiful. The long goodbye, which was great for us, was incredibly hard for her. She started to lose her sight and her hearing. And again, I just want to be very clear. My family, like I think all families, has its dysfunctions and its wards and its complications, like every family.

Multiply when you have that many people, actually. But to your point, they all rallied around my mom. Amazing family you have. My mom in the end and they were they were all with her and what i just i'm going to tell you a quick story which is that um she likes to call her 11 kids her masterpieces it was her life's work her family was her work um and it was funny when we would it's because you couldn't hear very well or see very well if we would and i don't know why we did this but i would go into into the room with her and I'm like, Oh, she'd be like, who's here? And I'd be like, Oh, it's your favorite child.

And she'd be like, Oh, Brian, Brian's here. I'm like, no, it's not Brian. It's Sean Patrick. I'm here. And then Brian would do the same thing. I'm your favorite. I'm here. And he'd be like, Oh, Kevin, Kevin's here. So what she did, she never got it right. And I think she did it intentionally because she's like, I don't have any favorites. You're all my masterpieces. So when you come in and tell me that you're my favorite, I'm going to tell you someone else's name, which would really tick us off. But we also got the humor in it. And I get so cool. But there's a lot of people I don't go.

I haven't been to a lot of care facilities. I haven't in my life. And it was interesting to be with my mom as she was in this longer term care facility in the end. And there's a lot of people who don't have anyone come and see them. And it's the loneliness in those places for some people. It's really hard and it's really sad. A lot of them die of loneliness, probably more than their... I mean, we saw that during COVID, right?

When we had so many elderly people locked in nursing homes, and they died of loneliness more than COVID. But you know, Sean, when I first met you, I was so fascinated by your family. So I thought I had a large family. There's four in my family, two boys, two girls. And then I met the Duffies and the 11 kids that I remember asking Sean, oh my God, was it so strange that you had 11 kids in your family? He said, actually, we were the largest, but down the street, there were people with six kids and eight kids and seven kids. And so that was a period of time, especially in small town America, where people were still having large fans. There's a lot of Irish Catholics up here. Not as many Irish Catholics, but a lot of Catholics. A lot of Catholics.

You can leave the Irish alone, but the Catholic part, you had a lot of kids. Irish Catholic and Hispanic Catholic together, and we got nine. So, but it's a lot of of kids but it was kind of normal and this week in politics it's been interesting jd vance um is getting hit a lot for you know he's been championing families um and the importance of families and the importance of our leaders valuing and prioritizing families and for that that, and for some of his provocative comments, take him what you will, I think he's just trying to be provocative

and make the point that a lot of our leaders aren't very family-oriented. I don't think people can argue much with that, especially from our leaders on the left. There's been, I think, this new talking point from the left that J.D. Vance is weird. And Sean, that word weird is familiar to me because that's how people often think about me and my choices and us and our family. Because nowadays, to especially people on the left, having nine kids is even more weird than and so necessary in the circle of life.

Well, when you have a big family, oftentimes you have a network of people to rely on in good times. And we saw with my mom in bad times. But and again, I'm not everyone makes their own choices. But what Democrats want is if you're single, because and again, this is Democrats. Democrats are the ones that are telling you to put your career first, put your love life second. Don't have kids because you're you know, the the the world is going to, you know, burn from the heat wave from climate change. And so save the planet. Don't have kids. I mean, this all comes from the left. And Sean, lest you think that it's like we're making this up. Remember the life of Julia? Exactly. So this is under Barack Obama, where basically they gave us the course of the

life of Julia. And in essence, she married the government. She married Barack Obama's government, who was going to take care of her and be her partner through the end of life. And we've said this oftentimes, your government or the corporation for which you work, they'll never love you, right? You might have a friend at the DMV. You might have friends in the corporation in which you work, good friends, but the corporation and the government themselves don't love people. It's people and families that love each other. And I think, again, that's why that that life of Julia was so disturbing. Seen it. You can still Google it. I don't think Google has memory hold Julia yet. But if you look at life of Julia again, she's this fictional woman who gets through life and

Barack Obama's administration tracks her life and basically your entire life is interfacing with government at all these different points of her life as opposed to families and and the way families support each other and again sean you're so right government can never love you back corporations can never love you back. And when you're in your, when you're on your deathbed, no one from the government is going to love you the way your family loves you and care for you the way your family cared for Carol. They're not going to hold your hand, spend the night with you, tell you stories about, you know, the things that you all did together through the course of your life together. That doesn't happen with your government, but it does happen

with your family. We'll be right back with much more after this. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy, host of the Trey Gowdy podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com. You know, going back to J.D. Vance, part of saying that J.D. is weird, and again, by promoting families and decent-sized families, again, the human heart is made to find love. The human heart is made to reproduce.

And so the weird ones are the liberals who say, go against the genetic makeup of your being and stay single and don't have kids. But that aside, MSNBC wrote an article trying to talk about how weird J.D. Vance was. And in the article, just the dishonesty. So one proposal, and this one goes back, I think, to 2021.

J.D. had said, you know what? If you have a family, we should give you more tax breaks, which, by the way, countries that want to promote formation of families actually give tax breaks for the formation of a family like in Hungary. Right, Rachel? And so he said, if you make between, you know, one hundred and four hundred thousand dollars and have, I don't know, he said three or four kids, he gave a percent of a tax break that you should get for having kids. And so MSNBC in their article took his proposal about tax breaks when you pay in taxes that he's saying, JD is saying you should pay less because you have so many kids. And MSNBC contorted that and said, well, there's already breaks for having kids. And then they talked about tax credits for people who have kids that don't make as much money.

Right. And so there's a difference. A tax credit is money that the government actually gives you. They credit you money for having kids. Right. That might be a form of form of of of of I don't I don't want to say welfare, but assistance that the state gives for having kids. What JD was talking about is people who are doing well, who are making some money, letting them have a tax break as well because they don't get the tax credit. They make too much. But let them pay less because I can attest having kids is more expensive, right? having kids is more expensive, right? They cost to feed them and clothe them and send them to help them go to school, especially in Joe Biden's economy,

it gets to be really expensive. And so if there was a tax break, good on J.D. for going, you know what? If you value the family, let's put our money where our mouth is and value the family. And by the way, Sean, when you have kids, that means that you're going to depend less on the government in your old age.

Hopefully those kids will come back and help you out and you won't. So again, I don't think we talk enough about, I mean, I think children are valuable intrinsically just because they're made in the image of God, right? And they have value and dignity just in that. But for people who are concerned about tax breaks, for people who have families, make no mistake. Children are necessary and positive contributions to the society on every level. I mean, who do you think is going to pay into Social Security? Who do you think is going to be that nurse that's by your side?

Or who do you think is going to be that kid who helps? You know, there's less that you have to depend on the government when families are helping each other out. And that's how families used to be, Sean. It used to be you have, you know, five kids and one of them runs into hard time and everyone pulls together and helps that kid out, you know, that that adult child out because he's running in hard times. That's way more preferable than creating government dependence. I wanted to tell you, Sean, what I have a quote here of something that that J.D. Vance said, and I think it's important, again, to hear his own words.

He also, when he talks about this, he's talking about not people who are trying to have a baby and are infertile, or, you know, there's lots of different situations for which people don't have kids. But what he was saying is there are a lot of people out there who actually are anti-kid. And I can tell you in New York City, there are restaurants that are dogs allowed, but no children allowed. OK, I've seen those restaurants in New York City. So here's J.D. Vance's words. He says they sound about these liberals who are not family friendly. He says they, sorry about these liberals who are not family friendly, they live in one. They want cats, not kids.

Yeah. They live in one bedroom apartments in New York City. They've played their entire lives to win a status game. They're obsessed with their jobs. They're obsessed with their wealth and the choices that they've made. And they hate normal Americans for choosing family over these ridiculous Washington, D.C. and New York status games. That's what J.D. Vance is talking about. He wasn't. I want to go back to, you know, we talk about this a lot, but Democrats are guilty of what they accuse Republicans of doing. And so, for example, they say Republicans are a threat to democracy, right? As Democrats are the ones who are undermining the security at the ballot box.

They're the ones who had a primary but forced the guy that won the primary out of the presidency so he doesn't run for a second term. That would be Joe Biden. And in regard to J.D. Vance, they say J.D. Vance is weird. What they really mean is they're weird. If you're a party that believes in giving kids puberty blockers or transitioning 12-year-old kids from boys to girls or girls to boys, you're weird. If you're going to fight to talk to kindergartners and first graders about sex, you're weird. If you want to take the life of a baby in the womb at eight or nine months of pregnancy, if you've ever seen an ultrasound, you look at that and go, not only is that shocking, but you are weird. The Democrats have you want to open up your borders? You're weird.

If you want to pretend like the defendants, violent criminals are victims and shouldn't go to prison and they should be back on the street the very same day they commit their violent crimes. You're a weirdo. This week at the Olympics, we saw a man beat up a woman and they thought that was cool i mean that was crazy the olympic boxer girl was like no i'm not going to get in the boxing ring anymore with this man um that's weird the opening ceremony was not just demonic, by the way, of the Olympics in Paris, France. It was weird. And the people who stood up and said that. Grey Queens recreating the Last Supper.

That's weird. And demonic. And demonic. And everybody who applauded that, also weird. You know, we could go on and on. Also weird. You know, we could go on and on the pictures that were online, Sean, of, you know, men in drag with beards doing, you know, photos with Kamala and Joe Biden. I'm sorry. That's weird. We shouldn't not we shouldn't have people, you know, running our nuclear programs here, you know, for our government who aren't sure if they're a man or a woman. I mean, these are mental issues that they need to deal with. So I also, as you as you think through this, if you're talking about J.D. Vance and some of his comments and tax policies

around families, you're not talking about the destruction of Joe and Kamala with regard to inflation. You're not talking about the border. You're not talking about crime. You're not talking about the destruction of Joe and Kamala with regard to inflation. You're not talking about the border. You're not talking about crime. You're not talking about the failed policies around the world that have brought you war in Ukraine and brought you war in the Middle East. anybody's life, which is a comment by J.D. Vance. And it's a way to divert, to go through. The election really isn't about your family. And do you have money to put gas in your car or food on your plate? Don't have that conversation. Let's talk about a comment that J.D. Vance made two years ago. And the problem for Republicans is they fall into that trap. And in the end, you should come back to start continually talking about the issues that matter to the American voter. Don't let the liberal media take you off track. Let them foment and foam at the mouth on these issues. But talk about what people and voters care about.

That's why I think it was such a mistake for Donald Trump to go and do the the the the forum with the with the black journalists, the African-American journalists, he does very well with minorities, with blacks, Hispanics. When he goes right into their neighborhoods, I saw and I went into the Bronx when the day before he gave his big speech where he was very well received by the working class. But this event with the African-American journalists was going to go exactly the way it went.

It was predictable. He was going to be with elite African-American journalists, with the exception of our friend, Harris Faulkner, who asked very relevant, interesting questions, because she was genuinely interested in getting an answer to it. She was asking questions about topics that affect people's lives. That was what Harris did, which was great. And the other ones wanted to play, I got you. And I'm going to try to, you know, say these lines that you've said in the past and just play, you know,

got you journalism with Donald Trump was actually offended because about that. I mean, they kept wanting to talk about J.D. Vance. They kept going back to J.D. Vance because I guess several of the black female journalists were unmarried and were deeply offended by his cat lady comments. And so they were obsessed with this comment. And they weren't asking, you know, African Americans in inner city Chicago or in rural Mississippi are not sitting around thinking about whether J.D. Vance, what he thinks about cat ladies. They're thinking about inflation. They're thinking about crime. They're thinking about, you know, can I pay for, you know, to put gas in my car?

So I want you to talk about this because I thought it was fascinating that the women on the panel exclude Harris, but they were... Foxy Leigh is one of the finest journalists out there. Across the board,

she is so remarkably smart. She's so good at her job. I cannot say enough about Harris Faulkner. She really looked... Like, she was just so amazing, not just there, but everything she does. Because Fox has journalists like Harris Faulkner, and ABC has the hacks that they put up there. But what I wanted to talk about is one of the not-so-great journalists were complaining that J.D. Vance, or was it Trump?

One of them had said that Harris was a DEI vice president. That Kamala Harris, yeah. Kamala Harris was a dei vice president right that kamala harris yeah harris was a di president they're very offended a di is she a dei candidate is she you know are you saying that she just got her job um as vice president because she's black that was the question that was the question and then the question becomes well that begets the question that if you have DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and someone becomes the vice president and you have DEI all over the country, the question becomes, did you get your job based on merit or did you get your job on DEI? And they were offended that she could have got her job by DEI and not on Merit. So it begs the question, why are you then supporting DEI?

But I thought DEI was good. So why would they be concerned that she got it because of DEI? They're promoting DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. And if she got it because of diversity, equity, inclusion, they should be happy. But they weren't. So it's like this double a store give us dei but then don't say we got dei well you got the job because of dei we're offended by that it doesn't make any sense implement dei policy in every single corporation and government agency but then you'll get in trouble if you say that somebody got the job

because of DEI. It doesn't make any sense at all. I think the whole thing, Sean, was just such a mistake. And part of the mistake, too, Sean, is I think there's always been among Republicans. Listen, I think if you have a great message about the economy, about crime, about, you know, the border, these are issues that resonate with Americans, regardless of their race and color. But there has been this obsession of late among Republicans that we have to get the African-American votes. And if you look at and listen, of course, I'm not opposed to reaching out. I think you should reach out to working class Americans and not elite African-American journalists if you want to have a decent conversation.

But really, if you have limited campaign dollars and you know what that's like, Sean, you're running a campaign. You only have so many dollars to work with and you only have so much time, which is like money. Essentially, the candidate's time is money. And where would you invest that money? I think if you had to make a bet, Hispanics are a far more persuadable and it's been proven far around the border issues that they say are racist and blah, blah, blah. Hispanics are moving at a much faster clip towards the Republican Party and towards those policies. policies and yet you see the appears at least from the outside looking in that the trump campaign is expending a lot of resources on trying to get the african-american vote again i think these issues are for all americans but if you're going to do targeted campaigning sean boy i think you're going to get more bang for your buck out of hispanics and i don't say that just because

i'm hispanic because i wouldn't have said that like, you know, 12 years ago. number of interviews in inner city Chicago where there's Democrats are bringing in all these illegal migrants and spending tons of money and the community there that voted for the very people that are bringing in the illegal migrants are like hey you said there was no money you couldn't help us out and by the way the crime has gone up and by the way you're putting them on our soccer fields and so now we don't have a place for our kids to play soccer or baseball or football. So, again, as voters, it's important that you vote for grabs. Make people work for your vote and then deliver on their promises. That's how politics actually works. If someone can take a vote for granted, it doesn't bode that well for a group of people.

Let me bring up something else, Rachel, though. Donald Trump went to this event. And by the way, you've probably seen clips from it. And it was a very hostile event. And Donald Trump, I thought, did really well. Fighting back, pushing back, saying the questions were nasty. Some of the interviewers were nasty, which is all you really can do in that environment.

He had to fight his way out of there. He had to fight his way out of there. You're right. The problem is, who in the hell on his campaign said, if you talk about money, it's not just the money that you spend, it's the time that you spend. That he actually came to this event and was beat up the way that he was. And he had to fight his way out. The problem is he didn't get any additional voters. His base likes it. But what the liberals did as a win is they forced him to fight.

And when he does that, some of the independent voters, some of the suburban moms are like, hey, you know what? Oh, I remember this Trump and I don't want to vote for that. I think he actually, even though he did a great job fighting, I think he lost votes by going there had he just not gone at all. Your thoughts? I agree. I mean, I think it was a hostile environment. But what I think you're trying to say, Sean, is that it was a predictably hostile environment and an unnecessary event for him to do, considering how well he's doing, you know, especially after the assassination attempt on him. I think a lot of people are moving over towards him. I think a lot of the hype around around Kamala Harris is just that hype.

And I think he tried to bring it back to the issues, but he was getting attacked. And in order to, I mean, anybody, he's a human being. Anybody in that hostile environment is going to have their backup. And you're right. Some voters, some suburban women, I don't relate to it. I'm not a suburban mom who, the kind of suburban mom who likes a really docile sort of Mitt Romney, everyone get along. I'm okay if, you know, losing kind of candidate. I like a fighter, but a lot of women don't. And that situation forced him to be a fighter. And in the end, I think you're right, Sean, I think he lost votes. And also, it's not where these women don't. You could see from the questions they were asking outside of Harris Faulkner, these women don't care about the issues that African-Americans

care about. And I think Donald Trump did well, Sean, but he could have done a better job. He did talk about the issues, but he could have done a better job of turning it around on them. So as they want to talk about their hurt feelings about being called cat ladies, he could have said, really, do you think that the people on the south side of Chicago care that you feel bad because you're a cat lady? They feel bad because they can't afford gas and groceries. And I think that for some reason he wasn't prepared for that. They also had a really tough question for him. They had a very predictable question, I should say, for him on a recent police killing incident that happened. And I think he didn't have the best answer for it. And he should

have been better prepared for that. So I don't know what happened here. I think he was just kind of a little off kilter because I don't think even he as used to being attacked as he is. He didn't expect for them to come out that hard on him right out of the gate. And I think he was just a little off kilter because of that. Well, again, I would just tell you from serving in the Congress and dealing with local media and national media, they have a left leaning bias. We all know that. right? They lean left. But what I found interesting in this interview was the ABC interviewer didn't even pretend, didn't even try to pretend like she was impartial and unbiased and wanted to hear real answers to

real questions. And the way she was asking questions of Donald Trump, she would never ask a question to Joe Biden like that. She would never ask a question to Kamala Harris like that. And also, by the way, in the interview, they became really hot on the idea that should presidential candidates take cognitive tests, right? It was like, and Donald Trump's like, yeah, I've taken several of them and I'm, you know, I'm fit as well. Get out. And, you know, I've taken them and sure, I have no problem taking cognitive tests, but

they've only now gone to cognitive tests since Joe Biden is out. But when Joe Biden was in, they didn't want cognitive tests. They didn't want Joe Biden to go take a cognitive test, Joe, and let's see how mentally astute you are to be the president. It's so transparent and so partisan. It does beg the question, who on Trump's team gave him the advice to go and do it? Because it was predictable to your point, Rachel, that it wasn't going to go well. They weren't going to be fair. They weren't going to be nice. It was like, by the way, Kamala or Joe or Barack Obama in an interview would have treated Trump better than these interviewers. Maybe even the ladies in The View might have

treated him better than this ABC, in air quotes, journalist was to Donald Trump. Yeah. And I want to bring it back to what we started the podcast with, which is, you know, your mom's passing, which by the way, she was such a remarkable woman. She was beautiful to the very end. She was an extremely good looking woman, extremely athletic, won countless races. She was a cross-country skier. She swam. She skied. She ran. She hiked.

She polar plunged. She was healthy and organic before that was even cool. I don't know anyone in my life, even now, who eats as healthy as your mom was eating, You know, since I knew her, since you were growing up with her, she just was a remarkable woman ahead of her time. She's dearly missed. Her end of life story to me is really about family. And today, sadly, government is getting in the way of family. Government is getting in the way of family formation. Government and culture are encouraging young people to not have families, and it's devaluing families, and it's hurting kids with, I mean, just the rise of pornography and all these things that are attacking the family over and over again. And I'm just reminded that in so many ways, this election really is about a choice between government and family.

And I think that's why J.D. Vance has everyone on the left back up in a way that probably Donald Trump can't do it. J.D. Vance is putting forward the primacy of the family in American culture. It always was. And it's only in the last, you know, frankly, I think the attack has been a long attack, but it's been full force, full frontal attack since Barack Obama. And as we all can see right now, Barack Obama is still in charge. We have like I try to figure out this week, Sean, who's in charge? How many presidents do we have? Is it Kamala? Is it Joe Biden? Is it Barack Obama? In the end, it is Barack Obama. And this is the fundamental transformation he was talking about. And I was so happy to be here in Wisconsin, away from New York over the last month. And as sad as it was to see your mom's passing, I just, I'm coming

away from this trip with a renewed love and appreciation for family and specifically for your family. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Well, listen, I appreciate that. And I'm grateful to her and all she did for all of us kids and the time she spent and the trips that she took and it's not easy having 11 kids and she didn't have I know and she didn't really have any help in the house and she did it all on her own

and but what you mentioned Rachel about J.D. Vance and my mom and I think she was a democrat by the way. As hard as it tried. He raised all Republican kids, but, you know, I guess,

I think it was the Iraq War and George Bush turned her, flipped her in. With her on the Iraq War. Maybe you're more alike than we like to think. Peace snake at heart. And I've become a peace snake too.

I've become the Cindy Sheehan of Fox News. I'm so anti-war. Well, these Fox and Friends weekend. You are the Cindy Sheehan of what they call me. Cindy Snowden will impede. But I want to go back to this point, which because it would make sense that Democrats are anti-family. And it makes sense because if you have strong families, you have a strong country, right? And the policies of the left, everything they can do to undermine

the strength of this country, they embrace those policies. And anything that'll make you stronger, they're opposed to. And so this is just one more example of the left saying, again, we don't really love America. We think America is evil. And so if families make us stronger, right, those toxic American, you know, mind cells that happen in playgrounds across this country, in forts that are built across this country, that is a, we can't have that. And so we can't have people, you know, procreating, we have to have people, you know, in their apartments, taking Uber Eats and, you know, working online from their home is what the left wants, which by the way, doesn't make people happy. No, it's definitely not. It's really, I think even deeper than that, Sean. I mean, uh, the ideas that are coming out of the left are Marxist. They're communists. And at their heart, they're atheists. And we are in the midst of a spiritual battle. And of course, in a spiritual battle, the first thing you have to take on is the family.

The communism is about power, the power of the state, the power of that political party, of the communist political party, of the Marxists. And make no mistake, we are we are living among Marxists and socialists and communists on the Democrat Party. And the family and religion are a threat to their to their to their power. And so they want to take down the family, and they are also attacking religion. That's why you saw what you saw at the Olympics. They are trying to take down faith, religion, and the family. And again, you can take this as political, you can take it as spiritual, but I think the main lesson here is at the end of your life, the things that last are God and family. Really well said.

I couldn't agree with that more, Rachel. And so I appreciate you talking on the podcast about my mom. I love her dearly. We want to share what happened. That's where the last couple know a couple weeks that's what that's what um i've been doing up here in wisconsin but um it was a remarkable life and the story of a dysfunctional uh family at times that was actually very functional at at the end i couldn't i couldn't love them more and they had you guys came together for the wake then you had, you guys came together for the wake.

Then you had the, you know, in the visitation, you had the funeral. We had a mass here at our cabin on the lake, celebrating your mom the next day. And by the way, in the middle of the mass during consecration, your mom loved eagles. And an eagle started circling around the top of the cabin and around the altar it was it was incredibly moving that's not a normal event that eagles circled the cabin but they were for this mass uh for my mom it was incredible um the whole family enjoyed each other on the lake for a family day, really kind of because your mom loved being here at the lake so much. She has a cabin here. You and your dad and your mom have a cabin here as well. And went to the gravesite, had another birthday mass for her this morning because it was to

celebrate her birthday that she wasn't here for, but all the children got together for that and the grandkids. So just an incredible family time up here. And so I guess if those of you, you have a family, lean into it, celebrate it, enjoy it, build it, strengthen it, all really important things. And if you're a young person thinking about what kind of life you want to lead, think about not just what you want right now. Again, I can go out and party at night and get up in the morning and go get lattes. There's that. But there's another time that will come in your life where the power and the grace and the love that comes from families is really important.

And again, you said that's what lasts, Rachel, and I couldn't agree more. It's family is what lasts. And we saw that over the course of this last six months with my whole family coming together and with my mom's passing. Can't build a family if you don't start one. So start prioritizing your love life. Think about the things that last. Think about love. Think about the things that last. Think about love. Think about marriage.

Go out and have some babies and build yourself a family. And then be merry. So with that, listen, thank you all for joining us at the kitchen table. We appreciate it. Last time from up here in Wisconsin, we'll be back out east next week. But again, we drop every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Get us at foxnewspodcast.com, Apple, or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us.

Share us with your friends and family and neighbor and coffee clutch. Tell them to tune in. Great review. We'd appreciate that as well. And until next time, I hope you have a great weekend. And until next week, who knows what politics is going to bring us because

this has been wild. And I think it's going to continue to be wild over the course of the next several months. A time when I yearn for the days when, and I love politics, but yearn for the days when politics maybe wasn't so crazy, which is weird coming from us. Go back to the boring 1990s politics, Sean. That could be, well, at least for a little while, maybe for a week, we plan to go back to 1990 where nothing really happens. Actually, 2016 felt pretty tame compared to this right now. What else could happen? Well, when it does happen and it will, we're going to bring it to you at the kitchen table. So thank you for being with us. Have a great weekend. Enjoy your family. And maybe, well, I'm not going to say that. I was going to talk about starting one this weekend, but put some more thought into that.

Bye, everybody. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Streaming now on Fox Nation. You believe you were sent by God? Yes. The Saints