Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1334 | DEBATE: Allie vs. David French on Trans Pronouns, Empathy & James Talarico

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Allie sits down with New York Times columnist David French for a candid discussion on faith, culture, and politics. They debate over the definition of “toxic empathy” and how it's used to advance progressive causes on issues like gender, sexuality, and social justice. Allie argues that compassion must be grounded in biblical truth rather than emotional manipulation. French says the real problem is selective or incomplete empathy and that he’s seen an uptick in “Christian cruelty.” The conversation explores where Christians should draw lines between mercy, justice, and cultural engagement in an increasingly polarized America. Nothing is off the table, including hot-button topics like Trump, Luigi Mangione, January 6, abortion, and pronouns. Allie and David find some fascinating points of agreement despite public disagreements online. Share the Arrows 2026 is on October 10 in Dallas, Texas! Tickets are on sale now at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sharethearrows.com⁠⁠⁠ Share the Arrows is sponsored by: A'del Natural Cosmetics: AdelNaturalCosmetics.com Range Leather: RangeLeather.com/ALLIE We Heart Nutrition: WeHeartNutrition.com Buy Allie's book "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.toxicempathy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ – Time Codes 0:00 Introduction 0:23 Toxic Empathy 41:29 Pronouns 55:09 Why French Voted for Kamala 1:16:19 James Talarico 1:29:15 Justice for the Unborn – Today's Sponsors: Pre-Born | To donate, dial #250 and say the keyword, “BABY.” Or visit Preborn.com/ALLIE. At Freedom Project Academy, its classical online school for pre-K through high school is bringing education back to what matters most: truth, tradition, and biblical values. Go to Freedomforschool.com and SAVE 10% on tuition when you use code ALLIE. Seven Weeks Coffee | Experience the best coffee while supporting the pro-life movement with Seven Weeks Coffee. Use code ALLIE at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.sevenweekscoffee.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get up to 25% off your first order, plus your free gift! Patriot Mobile | Go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 972-PATRIOT. Use promo code ALLIE for a free month of service. Your gift to ADF will be used to fight for religious freedom around the world, including in Turkey. And for a limited time, all gifts will be MATCHED thanks to a special grant — only while funds last. Go to JOINADF.com/ALLIE or text ALLIE to 83848 to give today. Episodes You May Like: Ep 1212 | The Left Cares About (Certain) Unborn Babies Now https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1212-the-left-cares-about-certain-unborn-babies-now/id1359249098?i=1000715198443 Ep 920 | Russell Moore, David French & the Fake Threat of Christian Nationalism | Guest: John Cooper https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-920-russell-moore-david-french-the-fake-threat/id1359249098?i=1000638231068 Ep 420 | Why Do I Vote Republican? | Q&A https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-420-why-do-i-vote-republican-q-a/id1359249098?i=1000521577829 --- ► Buy Allie's book, "You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love": https://alliebethstuckey.com/book ► Subscribe to the podcast: iTunes: https://apple.co/2UVssnP Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2FwkXxj ► Connect with Allie on social media: https://twitter.com/conservmillen https://www.instagram.com/alliebstuckey/ https://facebook.com/allieBlazeTV/ ► Relatable merchandise — use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

New York Times writer David French is here today to debate pronouns, toxic empathy, James Talarico, voting for Kamala Harris, abortion, and so much more. You will love this lively discussion on today's episode of Relatable. It is brought to you by The Last Stand. This is an incredible pro-life Christian conference happening in Denver, Colorado on June 5th and 6th. I will be there along with Frank Turrick, Seth Gruber, and so many others. Go to the Last Stand.com. use code Alley for a discount. Thelaststand.com code Alley. David French, thanks so much for taking the time to join me. I really appreciate talking to you in person. I'm very happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. I think it's been a minute since I've been in Blaze Studios.

I think it's been 10 years. 10 years. And here you are. And here I am. We met once before we were on a panel. We were just talking about this with Lila Rose and Kinstar. So it's been a few years since we've gotten to talk in person. Yeah.

I'm glad to do so. I would love to talk first about toxic empathy. The book that I wrote a couple of years ago, you wrote two articles in the New York Times about toxic empathy, your thoughts about- Your thoughts about the concept. Would you mind just restating your argument about the concept and my book for the audience? Well, let me begin with my points of strong agreement. Okay, so one of the pieces that I wrote, I began with my points of agreement.

I think one of the problems that we have in this country is, is with emotional manipulation. In other words, when we decide, like, whose experience really matters, and then we dive in on one side's experience, and we neglect the other sides. So, in other words, if you're talking about, like as you raise in the book, like the problem of immigration, if you dive into what are the things that drive somebody

like from Honduras to America, you know, fear of death, extreme poverty, all of these things, That's a very, you know, in my view, that's a very valid thing to dive into and understand, but we cannot neglect what happens to border communities when there's a flood of undocumented immigrants. We can't neglect what happens to infrastructure, social infrastructure. We can't neglect what happens with crime, et cetera. And so the issue in my view is that I think you've very accurately identified how one side of the debate, and partisans are very guilty.

of this on both sides will use one story and one person's or one side story and then foreground that story and then say, well, you've got to satisfy their issues. And one thing I think you do very well in the book is you talk about, so for example, an abortion, there's a whole another person to think about here, right? There's an unborn child. And so, you know, you very vividly talk about what happens in abortion, right, which is a way of generating, quite frankly, empathy for the unborn child, that you're trying to put yourself into the shoes of total innocence. Total innocence. And so I do think absolutely, as I was reading your book, the parts that really stood out to me were what I would describe as almost like emotional manipulation. In other words,

you're saying, here's the story, this is the story of a person's pain and anguish, and that's what we're going to focus on exclusively. But there's other stories as well. So my issue, wasn't so much with your point that, you know, telling one-sided stories leads to bad decision-making, including immoral decision-making, because you only hear one side. My issue was really we don't have enough empathy, that empathy needs to be more holistic. In other words, we need to think about the unborn baby and the mother. We need to think about the immigrant family and the border town or and the American economy, et cetera. And so in my view, one of our big problems is not enough empathy or very, and particularly amongst very partisan people, very selective

empathy so that only my allies experience really matters, only the people I've decided to ally with, only their experience really matters. Whereas my view is I don't think that we can make morally informed choices. We can't make morally sound choices unless our understanding is much more holistic that you're thinking about the unborn child as well as the experience of the mother. And it sounds, it really sounds like we agree because my definition of toxic empathy is that empathy that causes you to ignore the person on the other side of the moral equation. So I would agree with you that I'm actually calling people into a deeper and more expansive form of compassion. Now, I tell both sides of the story. I start with a story typically of,

for example, the mom in crisis who is going through financial turmoil. She's got eight other kids to take care of. She finds out that her baby inside the womb has an encephaly and is probably going to die in or right outside of the womb. And I tell her story in an emotionally evocative way to get people to care about this woman's story. But then I also tell this story. But then I also tell the story of, as you said, the brutal reality of abortion to let you know that this is a human too. And so I'm actually doing what you say needs to be done, which is expanding compassion. But I don't end there because I think you would agree. We don't get anywhere if both sides are just saying, well, my story's sadder. No, my story's sadder. I want Christians to be thoughtful

enough to think about both the illegal immigrant and Lake and Riley, but then ask ourselves. and this is maybe where we disagree, and that's okay with me. Ask ourselves, but what is true? Like, what is biblically true? What does the Bible say about killing, for example? Because actually, we don't even get anywhere if we say, well, it's really sad that there's this woman in crisis and this baby inside the womb I'm sad for both of them. That actually paralyzes you from making a good moral decision if that's where you end.

So we have to ask discerning questions. What is biblically true? What's morally true? What's politically true? Logically true. Historically true, all of that. Now, I'm a fallible person. and so maybe someone would disagree with my arguments of like what is actually true in these cases.

So it doesn't really sound like you disagree with me here, but it did sound like you did in the articles. Well, and also I would say in the articles, I'm talking about not just your book. I'm talking about other books. I'm talking about also secular. But you do use the phrase toxic empathy. You said, for example, in 2025, you said, for example, if people respond to the foreign age shutdown and the stop work orders by talking about how children might suffer and die, then they're exhibiting toxic empathy. That's not what I say toxic empathy is. Well, it's absolutely what I see a lot in the public discussion that when you raise this.

But you are using the title of my book. And you called me the foremost architect of this concept of toxic empathy. But I don't say that toxic empathy is someone caring about children dying. And that's how you describe it in the article. Well, one of the things that I've seen is that I've seen when people are talking about the crises that have emerged, say, in the developing world about the end of USAID. or if you tell a story about an undocumented immigrant who has come over with their parents, you know, 25 years ago and is being seized outside of a Home Depot and thrown into extraordinarily brutal conditions in a lot of these detention facilities.

And you raise this, one of the sad things that's occurred, and again, I'm not putting this all on you. One of the sad things that has occurred is this global larger attack and talk about empathy has led to an immediate response when you talk about huge. human suffering, I will see many Christians say, that's toxic empathy. Now, that's not the, that when you read your book, for example, you're very good at outlining in many circumstances. Here's the understanding and my understanding of the experience of somebody else, which is an empathetic response. I think the problem that you're having and the problem that we're seeing

is that when we talk about human suffering on the part of people that maybe you're an immigration restrictionist and you you really want to have fewer immigrants, or maybe you want to see sort of the very, very large-scale mass deportations. And then you get extremely resistant to all of the stories of suffering that are the consequence of your policy. And then you write this off as, well, that's toxic empathy. And I don't think that's what you're trying to say here, but I do see that this has been a cultural phenomenon, especially in parts of like what I would call Maga Christianity, that if you talk about human suffering that results as a product of policy, that the reference to human suffering is referred to as, well, that's what toxic empathy is.

But in my view, what we're talking about here is we're dealing with incomplete empathy. We're dealing with selective empathy in the same way that, let's say, you had two kids, and for some inexplicable reason, you loved one of the kids and you didn't love the other kid. you wouldn't necessarily cause that failure to love the other kid, toxic love, because love itself is not toxic. You would say you need to have more love. There needs to be more love. We need to have an expanded view of love, not a restricted view of love. But if someone used for the title of a book or for the name of a concept, toxic love to describe, for example, the overbearing love that a mom has for his son so that he has a failure to launch, you would understand what they're talking. about and you would understand the point that they're trying to make, that they're not saying that all love is bad, that there's actually a healthy way to do it, but that it's turned toxic.

And I would actually say selective empathy that makes us make immoral decisions is a form of toxic empathy. And you said in 2026, you said, are you concerned about children who might die because we gratuitously and needlessly cut billions of dollars in foreign aid? That's toxic empathy. Are you worried about the conditions and detention facilities where migrants are held by the thousands, that's more toxic empathy, which again is not my argument. And you might say, well, that's what other people are saying. But if that is the case, like, you would think that these articles would be defending me and saying people are really misusing Ali Stuckey's concept. That's not what she argues in the book, but you're not. You're actually saying she is the source

of their thoughts. And that's not the source of their thoughts. Well, but I have seen you, I have seen you online talk when people talk about the plight of others, the plight of immigrants, etc. I have seen circumstances where you bring up then again this example of, you know, what we were talking about with toxic empathy. And I think that maybe— Can you give me an example? I don't have your Twitter feed in front of me. But the problem that I see is when we articulate ideas, you know, and when we articulate ideas about empathy, one of the things that is very, very important is that we need to be in a position where our position about that idea is

crystal clear to people in a way that is reflecting your holistic view of this situation. And one of the difficulties I have is that what we're seeing right now, and I've seen this again and again and again and again, is I'm seeing a remarkable decline in many, amongst many Christians, a remarkable decline in whether you want to call it empathy or compassion for people on the other side of the political aisle, just remarkable. And I see that, this from the far left, too. I see a dehumanization of people on the right. I see a dehumanization of people who are, you know, Trump supporters, et cetera. I see a remarkable dehumanization of people from on the right of the left, like this phrase that I frequently hear like demoncrats, for example.

And that, in my view, one of the responses and one thing that's absolutely necessary is to be walking out into the public square and saying, we need more empathy. We need more empathy. And if I'm going to be talking to some of my friends on the far left, which I do, and they are mystified by Trump support, for example. They just can't understand it. And so one of the things that I do is I try to walk them through, like, let's get in the shoes of a Southern Baptist pastor in Mount Pleasant, Tennessee. And what has been their experience? What have they seen? Or let's get into the shoes of a young college student who goes to Yale University, for example, and let's suppose they're a conservative Christian.

Tell me, just tell me what you think their experience is. And just do a thought experiment. Walk in their shoes for a minute. And what I have seen time and time again is when we actually expand that concept of empathy, not restrict it, but expand it and say you're not empathetic enough as I have seen real progress at bridging some of these divides.

And so I would say, you know, amongst the, in the world of empathy, conversation and the conversation about empathy, the last thing that I want to do is communicate to people that we've got too much of this. When the reality is we just have too, we have much too, we have too little. First sponsor is seven weeks coffee. Seven weeks coffee is America's pro-life coffee company. They're called seven weeks because at seven weeks gestation, that little baby is the size of a coffee bean. Yet he or she has the same value as you and me. Her rights matter. Her life matters and that's why seven weeks coffee donates 10% of every sale of their coffee to pregnancy

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based on the articles about my book or this concept, but I'm not calling all empathy talks. I actually start the book with an example of how someone who could put herself in my shoes really benefited me and then I was able to do that for another struggling mom in the airport. And so I don't disagree that there is value in putting yourself in someone else's shoes. My argument is that feeling so deeply for a person that because of those feelings, you end up affirming sin, validating lies, or supporting destructive policies, that that's wrong. Like, for example, if I feel so deeply for someone who tells me, I've been born in the wrong body, I'm trapped in this body, I can feel that deeply.

And that might be okay to feel empathy for that person to say, gosh, I've never felt that way. that would be so hard. I can't imagine the distress that you feel. But if I take that extra step to say, you are, you are a woman. And you know what? As a woman, you can play women's sports and you can go into the women's bathroom. That is my argument. We can talk about semantics, whether you want to call it selective or whatever,

disproportionate. But my argument is when your empathy leads you there. And you could say it exists on the right or the left. I'm a conservative, of course. But that is when it becomes toxic. And I think that that is a very understandable concept for a lot of people. I think you understand it because you actually articulated it beautifully at the start. You know, I think that one of the things, you know, in looking at your book, that I looked at it and I kind of tripped over it was you really refer to empathy as kind of an emotion.

You refer to it as an emotional phenomenon. The ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes emotionally because you're not doing so physically. Well, what you're doing also, you're doing it emotionally. You're doing it intellectually. Sometimes you're literally doing it geographically. So, for example, one of the ways in which I developed much greater understanding about what was happening in Ukraine, I can read about a Russian missile attack. I can see a video of a Russian missile attack. I can even try to imagine what it is like to be under a Russian missile attack. But then when I was in Kiev and we had a host of Kenzal missiles coming in, you really, that allowed me, that allowed me to be almost much more empathetic to the plight of Ukrainian. So it wasn't just an emotional thing. It's a, it's a practice. It's a skill. It's something that is, something that is cultivated and developed. But you were able to feel how they feel, which is my point. Yeah. And also many other things.

I'm also able to see what they see. I'm also able to, I'm also able to hear their arguments made in a place where, and I'm going to get a lot better sense of their arguments by hearing them in person as opposed to imagining what they are, et cetera. So there's emotional components to empathy for sure, no question about it. But there's also intellectual components to empathy. There's practice, physical practice components to empathy. It's a pretty broad concept, and it's actually pretty difficult. Like to do it well is pretty difficult. And what I really want, I don't want people to think of empathy as just an emotion because that's more of a concept like emotional contagion.

In other words, like you experience an emotion alongside somebody, and because they're experiencing an emotion, you experience an emotion. That's a very normal human reaction. When people are sad around us, we tend not to be happy. We tend to kind of join them in their sadness or vice versa. And so it has to be really pulled out of that emotional context because it is an intellectual practice as well. very important intellectual practice.

And often it's the intellect that precedes the emotion because it's the intellectual practice that allows you to imagine, that allows you to, and then also, you know, it provides you with opportunities to try to think about how can I understand better. And this is part of why I start every chapter with a story that maybe conservatives hadn't hurt. The story of the woman who is going through the hard time

when she's pregnant, the story of the illegal immigrant who has built a life here and lived in Ohio. for several decades. The story of the person who feels that they're trapped in the wrong body. And so, again, I want to reiterate that my claim is not that all empathy is toxic. Now, maybe we disagree on the extent of what empathy actually is. And I think that you make an important point there that it can look different ways. I do wonder what you think about my argument. And I wonder if this is part of also what tripped you up in that. I make the argument as others have, like Paul Bloom, secular Yale psychologist professor, who claims that empathy itself is actually

neutral. That is really one of my arguments there, that empathy itself is neutral because you could have gone and felt what they felt in Ukraine and you said, okay, I don't, you know, I don't care. That doesn't actually, you know, I'm on the side of Putin. I love Putin. So it actually didn't necessarily lead you to virtue. There had to be something else, truth that led you to virtue, conviction that led you to virtue. And my point is leading people towards that. I'm saying don't allow your empathy to drown you so that you make bad decisions, so that you make desperate, immoral, unbiblical decisions. And I think you would agree with that, that your empathy has to be tethered by truth. And for the Christian, it has to be biblical truth. So I would say, I completely agree

that empathy is neutral. I think empathy is an indispensable element of moral reasoning. And so it's not, it doesn't end the inquiry. So, for example, I'm pro-life. I have been a pro-life activist and lawyer my entire adult life. And I have a lot of empathy, as you articulated for the plight of unwed mothers. It's one of the reasons why I'm pro-life is I, especially when I was in high school, I was in high school at the age where abortion was far more prevalent than it is now, where abortion was almost like a form of birth control in some places. And I saw the effect that that had on the young women who were, many of them, their parents would pressure them, their boyfriends would pressure them. There was this crushing pressure on them. And so that made me more

pro-life, actually. And so I think that when you're talking about empathy, the value of it is this, is I do not think that unless you are empathetic, you can truly fully understand other people. And it's a lifelong practice. It's a lifelong process of becoming more empathetic. And then, Once you have that understanding, the virtue of the understanding is that you apply superior understanding to your moral reasoning. I think we'd agree on that. Yeah. And so then that's why I see empathy as a real virtue as something that is, it's not morally

neutral. It can be used in poor- I thought that you said that you agreed that it was neutral. No, it's not morally neutral. It's an indispensable value. Okay. That then does, but it doesn't end the moral inquiry. So I can have empathy for somebody, which is-

of real virtue and value to have empathy. But the empathy alone doesn't settle anything. Empathy alone doesn't settle anything, but what empathy does is it gives us information and understanding that we then apply, say, for example, biblical reasoning that we to, that we apply logic to, that we apply science to, that we apply all of these other things. But it's very much like you know, how in college you have prerequisites before you take like the 400-level class. I think empathy is like the 100 or 200 level human interaction that is the necessary prerequisite to really understanding in a greater way who people are, how to reach them, how to talk to them, what their life experience is. And from that standpoint, what I have seen and what really

distresses me, and I've seen it in the church, is just a lot less curiosity about the experiences of the people that they oppose and a lot more harshness directed towards the people that they oppose. And you and I have both experienced this. I mean, I know you have experienced a bunch of hate online. I have experienced a bunch of hate online. It is something that is a very sad reality of being any kind of public figure politically nowadays. You just get this enormous hatred. And I do not believe that if we had more widespread empathy, I think we would have fewer death threats.

for example. We would have much less cruelty, for example. And one of the things that really distresses me now is the sheer amount of Christian cruelty I'm seeing is remarkable. I mean, I know you've seen it. You've been at the receiving end. I remember I saw something that wasn't that long ago where you made a very, what I thought was important statement against pornography. And then you got dragged. You got called a feminist and all of that stuff. Yeah. Like I don't even follow Twitter dragings that much, but that made it to where I saw it. Yeah, it was that widespread. What are we? What is happening here?

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like Patriot Mobile. You'll help grow a movement that fuels Christian conservative causes. Switching is easier than ever. Activate in minutes. Keep your number, keep your phone, or you can upgrade. Go to patriotmobile.com slash Allie for a free month of service. That's PatriotMobil, I really do think that we essentially agree. And that's really the point of each chapter that, okay, now we have empathy for these two characters, real people actually, that I've introduced you to. What do we do? Now, that might be where we disagree. On some things, but not everything. Now, like, for example, when that sweet little boy in the blue toboggin, where he was left, and all we saw was that picture of him by himself. And we felt so deeply, I felt so deeply for him.

I'm a mom, your dad and grandfather. Like, you do think you're like, what if this was my child? That is a level of empathy. I don't want that to stop. Now, where I would disagree is when people would say, and maybe they would for other reasons, but say it was just for that picture to say, okay, we can't enforce our immigration law anymore. Okay, ICE just has to stop. Now, again, you might have other legitimate reasons to be against ICE.

But I see that kind of thing a lot. When I told the story of the woman who had been reported, I believe it was NPR in the first chapter about my book, the woman who had all of these hardships as she was pregnant, all of the comments were talking about how much Texas lacks empathy because how dare they force her to have this child and how dare they force her to remain pregnant. But really, like what I want Christians to see is, no, no, no, that pro-life law recognized the dignity of her unborn child, allowed that unborn child to be delivered and named and kissed and wrapped and loved and buried. And so, again, I just want to reiterate because I think we're talking past each other a little bit. I don't disagree with you that there is some healthy empathy that's needed. My point is exactly what you're saying.

What is your empathy leading you to? don't allow your empathy to be untethered from thoughts and from biblical truth. So one of the interesting, and I agree with a lot of what you said there, one of the things that I think that I'm worried about in the pro-life context is the rise of what we see from part of the pro-life movement of abortion abolitionism, including with the drive to, for example, potentially imprison mothers. And that is an example where I think that a profound lack of empathy for the mothers. And if you had a more full understanding of what they're experiencing and what they're thinking, this sort of idea that what I'm going to do is I'm going to respond to this by imposing

punitive criminal laws on these young women, that in that circumstance, I think that that's an example where I think a shared sense of empathy, a greater sense of empathy and a more complete understanding, would show that that is not just sort of political folly, just from an instrumental way, that it's also moral folly, that it's an apples and oranges comparison between, say, a murder statute and an abortion by a, you know, a desperate 19-year-old, that these are very different moral and very different from just a matter of intent and mindset. These are just very, very different things. Yeah, I think they would probably argue, and I don't, like, I think it is an interesting topic,

and we've kind of debated it and discussed it on this show. But I think their argument, to be fair, is not necessarily a lack of empathy, but one, that it's a case by case. They're not always desperate 19-year-olds. And I do think that you have to look at each circumstance, that there are women who know exactly what they're doing. And it's not just at six weeks gestation. It's at 16 weeks gestation. And that not all women just because they're having an abortion are an automatic victim. And then I think the bigger idea is that if we really believe that all human beings are made in the image of God from the moment of conception, why doesn't that little baby deserve the same rights that you and I do? We believe that if someone conspired to murder us, paid someone to murder us, or murdered us,

that they should go to jail. And I think the argument, and you could tell me if I'm wrong by abolitionists, is that, well, then we really are treating those little embryos as unequal. If we're saying that their murderer or the person who paid for them to be, say, in this case, knowingly murdered, if they don't go to jail, we don't actually believe in fair and equal justice for that embryo. So I don't know if I can say overall that the abolitionists are lacking empathy. I think that they're driven by, you know, the desire to oppose unequal weights and measures when it comes to these little babies inside the womb that I know you also care about.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, and maybe they're out there, but I have not seen too many people calling for murder prosecutions in IVF clinics. And as we know, um, oh, I think that you could get abolitionists around that real fast. Yeah. No, they're aggressive. They're, Intense and aggressive people, they haven't always been nice to me either. So I'm not defending all of their tactics. And so, you know, one of the things that I've seen in when you're talking about the situation that a lot of moms are in in these circumstances before abortion, one of the most interesting elements and phenomenon in the last like 30, 40 years is why is it, how is it that the abortion rate kept going down, down, down, down, for year after year after year after it peaks around 80, 81. And it goes down, down, down a lot because there's a couple of things going on. One is that the abortion experience itself for a lot of people was just horrible, that they have deep, deep, deep, and profound regrets and have communicated that to their

own families, to their kids. And so there's been an experience of abortion, especially when it's at its peak, that was just profoundly negative for people, and they communicated that. But there was also another thing, and that is when the pro-life movement, for sadly, for 40 years, we were really cut off from meaningful legal reform. We could dabble at the edges. You could pass a waiting period law, things like this. But we were really cut off from major legal reform. And so we had to get really creative and we had to get very intentional in interacting with human beings out in the real world. And one of the things that we found was that, you know,

this real intentional intervention with women in their real lives was helping diminish and diminish the abortion rate. And so we went through this period where by 2017, the abortion rate was lower than it was before Roe. And what's shocking is that this is something that's really surprising to a lot of people. The largest drop in abortions

actually occurred during the eight years of the Obama administration. But you know, presidents don't make laws, and you know it was mostly state-level Republican legislatures. But the problem is it's not, we can tie some restrictions some diminished abortion rates to some restrictions, but it's well beyond that because we got more

restrictive. We kept getting more restrictive, but then the abortion rate went up again. And so in 2017, the abortion rate comes up again. So for the first president, really since Carter, who ended with more abortions and a higher rate than when he started was Trump. And what do you think Trump did that caused that? Because your argument is that he caused it. No, no, it's a very multi-causal factor. So there's a lot of... So it's not necessarily about Barack Obama or Donald Trump. Complex social phenomenon typically don't have singular causes. So for example... Yes, but you highlighted that. You highlighted that it was Obama where the abortions went down, that it was Trump where the abortions went up, but you're saying that they don't have a causal relationship. No, they do, but they're not monocausal. Not only that cause. That's not the only cause, right? So for example, just a minute ago, I said, the experience of abortion was really, that has not

nothing to do with who was a president, but the experience of abortion being very negative for a lot of people. And I know abortion advocates will often don't like to acknowledge that that's the reality, is that lots of women have a profoundly negative experience because of abortion. And that often gets minimized, but it's not minimized in the real world. People talk about it, and that gets, radiates out. But I will tell you this. I think that we've been dealing with some culture changes that I think are really negative. And one of those really negative culture, changes, and I do put this into the MAGA world, is America is a lot more libertine. And Donald Trump is a very libertine man. He does what he wants. He does what he wants sexually. He does what he

wants financially. He just does what he wants. And libertineism, not libertarianism. That's a different thing. Libertyism. Doing what you want. Is incompatible with a pro-life ethic. Yeah. And one of the things. And one of my problems is I, truly believe that the right has become much more infected with libertinism in the last 10 years than anything when I was growing up. Yeah, I would agree. That the emphasis on personal character is much less. Yeah.

Sexual ethics. All of this. It's just less, less, less, less, less. Yeah. And I remember I had a podcast with my dear friend Alexander DeSaintiff who's just a marvelous pro-life advocate. Yeah, I've had her on the show a couple times a long time ago. Eight or nine years ago, I said, I'm really worried about what's going to happen with the abortion rate in this country because of the rise in libertinism.

And the more libertine a movement is, the more libertine a population is, I firmly believe the less pro-life they're going to be because parenting is immense love. And as you know, it's also immense sacrifice that you are not the most important person anymore. And we would also agree probably that libertinism and just leftism has also included. based on the left. I don't think libertinism is leftism because I think Maga is extreme libertine. I don't think that I didn't mean to say that. If that's how I articulated it, I don't necessarily think that they're synonymous. I think someone can be a libertine right-wing Trump-loving person. Absolutely.

I was just saying that that has also increased on the left as well. I think that you would agree. We weren't talking about a bunch of trans stuff and drag queen story hour 15 years ago. And now that's something that parents really worry about. I would say that definitely on the ideological edges, you have just seen a degraded of, gosh, I mean, libertinism is one word, just an extraordinary cruelty, an extraordinary, if you look at the actions of the wings of American life, and you know, I know you're familiar with horseshoe theory that when people become ideologically further apart, ironically,

they often begin to adopt the same tactics, the same methods, the same morality, et cetera. We just see this, I think, all over the place in the United States. And I do think the extremes in this country are just ripping us to shreds because what they're doing is they're dehumanizing their opponents. They lack any empathy for their opponents at all. And that they are in dehumanizing their opponents and in believing that they're righteous and believing that just that we are the righteous side and the other side is entirely evil and horrible and demonic. I think they're harming their own souls in that. We are not built to be that so self-righteous. We saw that a lot after Charlie was murdered.

Now, you definitely saw some empathy with liberals, and I'm not saying this is only a left-wing problem. But I was shocked by a lot of people who basically said he had it coming because he was racist. And yeah, it's ugly. It also does something to your own soul when you're reading that and imbibing that. Oh, and think about the way like the Candace Owens is of the world have treated Erica Kirk. Oh, yeah. It's horrific. It's unbelievably horrific.

Yes. And so, yeah, you had this. it's one of the more dispiriting things, Ali Beth, that I've seen in my life, is this one two thing that happened after Charlie was killed. One was these people on the left celebrating his death. Just like the cult of Luigi or whatever, this guy who murdered a health care executive.

Like the fact that there are people in the world who will celebrate the death of an innocent person just because they disagree with them politically or believe that they were an economic problem or whatever is vile. And then we immediately sort of, switch over and we see this host of conspiracy theorists and people just destroying like I can't even imagine treating a young widow with young children the way they've treated her totally it's insane and again we completely agree on we just have like this whole idea we just have to be more expansive

with empathy also yes that's part of it I think that also a lot of it is just a lot of it is just like a lack of virtue and a lack of morality and a lack of guidance. Okay, our friends at Alliance Defining Freedom need our help. Right now, they are taking up a case for an Oregon Christian nonprofit who helps at-risk kids, kids who have been kicked out of their house, kids who are homeless, kids who have parents who are unable to take care of them. This Christian ministry meets their needs, helps them and shares the love of Christ with them. But the state of Oregon, which is very progressive, has gone after this.

nonprofit organization simply because they hire people that share their values and share their faith. Thankfully, ADF is coming to their defense. They're asking the Supreme Court to hear this case now because no ministry should have to choose between its faith and its funding. Your gift to Alliance Defending Freedom today will be doubled for a limited time only while matching funds last. Go to join ADF.com slash alley. Have your gift doubled. Go to join ADF.com slash alley. One thing that you said in the article where you said that I was the prime architect of toxic empathy is that a lot of MAGA people have decided that cruelty is a virtue, that decency is a vice, and we live in the harsh new world that they made. And I will say, like, it does bother me for my argument and for me, myself, to be conflated with someone who is saying that virtue is a vice and that cruelty is a virtue. I think that you know, if you've read my book and you've talked to me, that that is not who I am,

and that's not the argument that I make. And again, I think it would have been interesting if in the article you have said, you would have said, like, look, this is not what Ali says, and it's actually sad that it's being distorted. Or maybe even if you said, if she had been stronger and saying this, it would have stopped those distortions. But I was the hook for the article in making your argument. And that bothers me. Well, I understand. The concept, the hook was the concept, the, this attack on empathy that we have been seeing, not just from you, from a number of people. And one of my problems is that, Allie Beth, we have seen Christians calling cruelty of virtue and attacking civility and decency.

People who profess to be Christians, sure. Yes, yes. And people who profess to be Christians also claiming to be pro-abortion. Yeah. And it's a problem. There are people who are in the name of Jesus proudly cruel to their opponents, It's proudly cruel, and it is, it's an epidemic. If you had told me, Ali Beth, if you had told me in 2015, early 2015, before Trump came down

the escalator, that we're going to be living in a world where there was so much blatant white nationalism and racism coming from American Christian denominations, evangelical denominations, that you were going to see just a shocking rise of anti-Semitism, for example, left and right that we have seen in this country. And that you would see and you would have, for example, a man in the Oval Office who is vicious to his political opponents, just vicious and cruel to his political opponents. And that is applauded. That is applauded, applauded by so many Christians.

And look, I don't live in a blue bubble. In 2024, 85% of my neighborhood voted for Trump. the large majority of my extended family voted for Trump. I've seen with my own eyes the change in the character of the American church towards more cruelty, towards more anger, towards more fury, towards more. It is one of the most distressing things I've ever seen in my life. And it's, I feel like we're looking at the point where the American church, especially American evangelical church, has in many ways become so much more cruel.

than I remember and with most of my life, I feel like the one thing that we should absolutely be telling them is you need more empathy. And you need more, and that empathy should lead to a better way of knowing and loving people. That definitely wouldn't be my primary message. It would be to, yes, feel deeply for people on both sides of an issue, but don't allow your feeling to be untethered from biblical truth because you'll make bad and stupid decisions and affirm sense, which is not good. I do have a question for you. You have a colleague at the dispatch whose name is Brian. He has claimed, or now he goes by Jessica, that he is transitioning into a female. And when you were talking about this person in 2025 in a podcast, you referred to Redel as she. So is your stance one of pronoun politeness that you believe that a man who identifies as a woman should be referred to as she, her? No, I, it's, that's funny. I, I didn't even remember that I'd done that when, when that was, when that was, when that like blew up on Twitter or whatever. I have a lot of grace for people. This is a hard decision to make. And my, my view is, number one, I'm not going to be, if there is a trans person in front of me, if there's an, and, you know, Jessica Reedle is a brilliant analyst, a brilliant analyst of the, federal budget probably knows more than anybody else, right? And one of the things I'm going to do is

I'm going to go out of my, I'm going to be kind to them, but I also don't want to say things that I don't believe are true. And so the way I deal with that is I use people's names. That's my practice as I use people's names. And so that's been my practice forever that as I use people's names, but I'm definitely not going to go out of my way to call Jessica he. I'm not going to do that. But I'm also going to use names. And that's the way, because I want to be kind to people, but I also don't want to say things that are, I don't believe to be true.

Yeah. And so that's how I try to square that circle. In 2018, you wrote this article, which I really appreciate and agree with. You said the use of a pronoun is not a matter of mere manners. So it's a declaration of a fact. I won't call Chelsea Manning, she, for a very simple reason. He's a man. You say that you'll use someone's legal name,

but I will not use my words to endorse a false. falsehood. Yeah. Do you agree with yourself? Of course. Yeah. Absolutely. I... But you did just say that you are not going to call him he because you want to be polite and you want to be kind. I'm going to call the name. I'm going to use the name. But I'm not, so I'm not saying if I'm using Chelsea Manning's name, that's the name. I'm going to use. But you would call Jessica he? I would use Jessica's name. You just would avoid pronouns. I would avoid pronouns, yes. Even when talking about that person like you did on the podcast. Like, do you equate calling a man who identifies as a woman, he with being unkind?

Like, if I tell the truth, as you said, it stayed in a biological fact. And I think it's wonderful that people are made in God's image from the moment of conception being male or female. So I don't see it as unkind calling someone, whether it's to their face or not to their face, the gender that God made them. Oh, I think if somebody is dealing with gender dysphoria and is struggling with gender dysphoria, I don't see the value in me saying something to them that I know and they know is going to be hurtful to them. It's this normal, complete politeness and manners. I mean, if you are interacting with somebody and there are words that you know, even if they're true words, they're going to be hurtful to somebody.

I'm generally, unless we're in a debate, for example, over, you know, is a trans woman, a woman. Like if you're actually in a debate over that, well, then we're going to talk about this. We're going to have that conversation. But the one thing that I'm not going to do is I'm just not going to go out of my way to say something that I know is going to be hurtful just because I can justify it as being true. That's not the, all true words are not kind by virtue of just simply being true. then it's not going out of your way. I mean, it's easy to, you know, in conversation, you've already a few times. You're not trying to go out of your way to talk about this person, but, you know, you've used the name where you would typically use a pronoun. And so if you hadn't, though, like if you had said,

he, that wouldn't have been you going out of your way to say that. That would have just been you saying something that's true. And so I just don't equate telling the truth in that case. I agree that you don't have to, you know, be rude to someone say that shirt looks bad on you. That might be true, but it's not a kind thing to say. But when it comes to this, like when we know it's a lie that damages someone that hurts them, spiritually and physically and emotionally hurts their family, I just can't get on board with assenting to the idea that 2 plus 2 equals 5 just because they're struggling. Well, I'm not assenting to that.

You don't think you're assenting to that by calling a man, she? Well, I don't do that. I did that as so far as I know one time. It was a mistake. I didn't even realize that, doesn't it. I literally, because when you're speaking in names, like often pronouns just flow, you know, so it's very, it's an intentional act, right, to sort of reset your mind. But I'm not advocating saying anything false at all. Just avoiding the pronoun altogether. I avoid the pronoun because I

do not want to say anything false and I do not want to be unkind, both of those things at the same time. And you do think it's unkind to call a man he. I think it is unkind if I'm talking to or about a person who's trans that to if I don't have to call them he or she depending on, I'm just not going to do it. I'm just not going to do it. I do not want to create a barrier, an unnecessary barrier between me and this other human being when, you know, I don't see the point of taking this thing that is so singularly important to them, that is so singular in how they're defining themselves and just shoving the contrary statement in their face in a context where I know and they know it would be hurtful to what end, to what end? And again, this goes back.

A lot of truthful things are hurtful, but that doesn't mean the intention is always to hurt. Like I think if I had this, you might even know who this is, but she's a wonderful woman. Her name is Laura Perry. And she tells her testimony. of she really believed from a young age that she was a boy named Jake and she was trapped in the wrong body. I mean, kind of textbook, clear gender dysphoria. I don't think everyone who identifies as trans has true gender dysphoria. But I think that, you know, she really struggled with that. While her parents, conservative Christian, all of that, she goes off, she gets a double mastectomy, she gets hormones when she's an early adult. And her parents would never call her Jake. And her

parents' church, this conservative church in Oklahoma, would never say he, and that offended her for so long. And she really felt like, why don't they understand me? Why can't they see that I'm happy, even though she knew she wasn't? But one day her mom was like, hey, well, you help me transcribe these Bible study notes. And anyway, God used that to soften her heart. But she said that she felt so much just affection and love and welcoming from this conservative Christian country church in Oklahoma because they never stopped calling her Laura, because it was more important for them to affirm how God made her

and what is true than it was to be polite in the moment. And do you agree that maybe little offenses aren't the worst thing that we can do in service to the truth? I guess I'm a little bit stumped because in that story, they didn't call, you know, they didn't use the biological pronoun and the biological pronoun was like, oh, that led me to Jesus. She does a Bible study, right?

No, but those are the people that, yes, I didn't make that argument, but those are the people that welcomed her. Those are the people that she realized after God had captured her heart. Oh, my goodness, these are the people who have loved me all along. And the people who affirmed me, called me Jake and all of this stuff. Those people didn't really love me. And so I just wonder if it's actually a greater testimony, if in kindness. I wonder if there's a way to do this.

You tell me. I had to do this when I was doing the Jubilee thing, which I don't know, you saw that, but it was tough. You had someone sitting across from you being like, I think I'm a gay Christian, is that okay? That's hard. That is hard when you were dealing with an image bearer of God, not just an abstract issue.

And thank the Lord, I feel like I was hopefully able to do this to be able to say, look, I love you. You're made in God's image. And yes, I believe that it is impossible to actively commit any sexual sin without repentance and be in alignment with Christ and His will. not just for you, also for me. Do you think there's a way with people who identify as transgender to say,

I love you, you're made in God's image, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to continue to call you by the pronoun that corresponds with your biology because I believe God made that good. I mean, look, if I'm in a personal relationship with somebody, you know, we're friends and I'm talking through this, you know, I would talk very frankly and openly about this thing. But if I'm in a casual conversation with somebody or I'm interacting with somebody professionally, I'm just, I'm sorry, Alibeth, I'm just not going to send them an intentional stab of offense and pain when divorced from any larger context of love, concern, care, etc.

You know, one of the things that I grew up with, I grew up in a very fundamentalist church background where it was just constantly my way or the highway. And I am very used to this sort of argument that when you're talking about kindness, well, my truth is kind. If what I'm saying is true, then it is by definition kind. And that's just not the case at all. No, I don't believe that. But I definitely don't believe lying and affirming a sin. And you're saying that you're not using pronouns at all, but pronoun politeness.

I don't think that's kind. But I'm not affirming a sin. So you're having a conversation with a different person. I'm not lying. I'm not affirming a sin. What I'm doing is in circumstances where I'm dealing with colleagues, with friends, I am absolutely, and this doesn't just apply to pronouns. This just applies to a lot of things. I am not going to engage absent very compelling reasons in speech that they find to be hurtful. And do it, especially do it intentionally. I'm just, that is not the way I interact with people. I try to, you know, I'm leave Galatians 5, through the spirit, kindness, peace, patience, gentleness, self-control, all of these things against which there is no law, I want, when I'm in communication with people, I really want them to take away, even when I'm talking about tough things, tough things, I want them to take away from it, that this was an interchange where there was kindness,

there was self-control, there was patience, all of these things. And if I'm sort of doing this, and I feel like one of the things that's happened in this whole pronoun conversation is the world creates the Christian world to create these litmus tests to say who's really bold who's really bold well boldness isn't one of the fruit of the spirit right and so if my boldness collides with my obligations to treat people with kindness patience gentleness etc then my boldness needs to maybe take a half step back and you know it's funny i think where we disagree is equating kindness with not using someone's biological pronoun and equating using someone's biological pronoun with stabbing them with, I think he said, like a knife of offense. I don't think it has to be

that way. I think you might think I'm conflating what you're saying with lying and you're conflating what I'm saying with being like going up to someone who thinks they're a woman and saying, hey, dude, you're a man. I'm not saying that. I am saying that if it comes down to it, I'm not going to avoid telling the truth. That might be putting my hand on their arm and saying, look, I know this is hard, but let me tell you my convictions. And if that offends you, I totally get it. But I can't lie to you and I can't avoid saying what is true.

And so you're not saying that you're purposely lying. I'm not saying that you should be purposely mean. I think that we shouldn't purposely avoid using pronouns that correspond to someone's sex. You think that you should for the sake of politeness and kindness. So I think that I, did I accurately summarize your position? I think that's roughly correct. Yeah. Okay.

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You'll save 10% when you do. Freedomfor school.com code alley. In 2024, you said that you were voting for. Kamala Harris. Besides just being the alternative to Trump, like what is the positive case for a conservative voting for Kamala? Oh, yeah. So number one, definitely more traditionally conservative on foreign policy, for example, which is very, very, very important to me. If you go back and you look at 100 years from now, what are historians going to be looking at at this point in life? And 100 years from now, one thing that we know they're going to be talking about is the Ukraine

war. 100 years from now, if the NATO alliance breaks up, we know. they would be talking, we know they would be talking about the breakup of the NATO alliance. This would be a massive, the loss of the Ukraine war, the breakup of the NATO alliance, we're talking a massive world historic, in my view, catastrophe. And so when I was looking at these two candidates, especially in the world of foreign policy, I absolutely saw more of what you would recognize as traditional conservatism in the Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris foreign policy, which was supporting. Ukraine, continuing to provide aid to Ukraine, continuing to support NATO. This was one of the single most important issues for me. Now, number two, number two, I thought it was incredibly important

to hold Donald Trump accountable for January 6th. I think that it was a pivotal moment in American history that we had a president who engineered an attempt to overturn an American election. There was a violent riot that stormed the Capitol on January 6th, and we knew that if Trump won, he was going to pardon those people and there was going to be no accountability. I looked at this as an important event in American history where there had to be accountability for criminal wrongdoing in the office of the presidency. And I was not going to get accountability for criminal wrongdoing if Donald Trump won because he would just do exactly what he did. He had the cases dropped. He pardoned all of the people, including the violent criminals on January 6th. And so to me,

it was very important. The Supreme Law of the land, the ruler in the land is the Constitution. It's not a person. It's the Constitution. And so when you have a person who's so directly contradicted and attempted to usurp the American constitutional system, I believe it was of paramount importance as a conservative for the rule of law to be applied to even the president of the United States. If we have anybody, any person in America who the rule of law does not apply to, that's outside the constitutional structure. So right there, we have strong support for international alliances, strong support for our ally in a confrontation against Russia, strong, much more support for the rule of law and applied to Donald Trump after January 6th.

Do you think that Kamala Harris, because I do, I hear you about some of these things about Donald Trump, but, you know, I have friends that I really respect. I certainly would never take away their conservative bona fides because they don't like Donald Trump or didn't vote for Donald Trump. I got a hard time with you who I believe that you care about abortion. I believe that you care about the Constitution that you've defended. the First Amendment, and I'm very thankful for that. With making a case, a positive case for Kamala Harris that you know, as we were talking about off camera, had a years-long campaign against David Delighton, the pro-life activist, who when she was state AG, I mean, she went after these pro-life pregnancy centers violated their First Amendment rights by trying to force them to advertise for abortion when she was the state AG. She has partnered with Planned Parenthood under the Biden administration with the DOJ to go after pro-life activists and track their movement and track their travel. That's the new report by the DOJ. I'm like, I don't know if it was me. It's probably Lila Rose, probably a lot of

other people. That was before the Biden Harris DOJ arrested, charged, sentenced these pro-lifers, grandfathers, grandmothers to double the time on average that they sentenced the pro-abortion terrorist Jane's revenge. And so it's hard for me to square that. I hear what you're saying about Donald Trump, and I don't know that I completely disagree with you. But Kamala Harris is no friend to the Constitution. She's no friend to unborn babies. She's no friend to gender deceived kids. So let's talk about abortion for a second. It's hard for me to justify that. So let's talk about abortion for a second because I talked about that. I began my piece about that saying I'm pro-life. I would vote for the Florida six-week abortion ban that was up for a very, very important vote,

which, thank the Lord, it narrowly survived the six-week abortion ban. And I think that I think it's about the only significant electoral victory for the pro-life movement since Dobbs. And I'm furious at the Republican Party, and I definitely wanted to punish them. And I'm furious at the Republican Party because what it did in service of Donald Trump was it took out the pro-life plank in the Republican Party platform. There's no more call for the Human Life Amendment. It's now a functionally pro-choice platform by state. But I'm livid about that, too, and I talked about that, and I would never vote for common years. And you lived in a red state during this time.

And so you know that electorally your vote was not contributing to her victory and wouldn't really in practicality hold Donald Trump accountable. So it was so important to your conscience to vote for the, I think, rabidly more pro-abortion candidate in Kamala Harris. And that's hard for me to square. And also my problem, Allie, Beth, is I'm looking at a world where under that dude, abortions went up for 40 years before. But for lots of reasons, as we've already talked about. that he is not the monocausal reason in your words. It's not monocosal, but he's part of it. I believe he's part of it.

And also, what did he do that caused abortions to rise? What I'm saying is, as I said earlier, this is a man who contributed to an extraordinarily, extraordinary growth in libertinism, especially on the right. Do we have data that shows us that it's more people on the right that we're getting abortions under Donald Trump? We don't have data. Okay, so tell me what you can prove that Donald Trump contributed to the rise in abortion. You have 40 years of uninterrupted decline in abortion, 40 years. And then you have an increase in 2017. And you have an increase in abortion. And you don't think it has anything to do with the president

who was in office eight years before that. Well, the president who was office eight years before that, he had 330,000 fewer abortions. So then we have- But you don't think that his policy or his advocacy had any contribution to the increase in abortion. I'm just looking for like, I think his policies contributed to... Is that just a theory that you have or what policies? I think his policies contributed to the decrease in abortion. And do you... Okay, well, I'm interested in which policies specifically, but which policies for Trump contributed

to the increase in abortion under Trump? I think it's the cultural effect. He had just become president. I think it's the cultural effect of Donald Trump. And I... Okay, so you think the cultural effect of Donald Trump made MAGA more libertine, which I wouldn't necessarily disagree on that. For me, I see it more in the endorsement of gay marriage and all of that kind of stuff,

which I'm adamantly against. Do you have any data that shows that it's MAGA that was getting more abortions? Because that's the only way your argument makes sense to me. No, no, no. I think that what you're talking about is Donald Trump is reflecting a, because it's not just, it's not just evangelicals, obviously, who voted for Donald Trump. A lot of what Donald Trump did was bring in a new coalition. You're familiar with this term barstool conservatives, for example.

So what we've seen. Which I'm not a part of, of course. Yeah, what we've seen as a growth in the right. And what we've seen is a growth in the right of this very libertine. UFC slash bar stool culture of sexual, I mean, the, the, gosh, Ellie Beth, go to, when you go to CPAC now, I've seen fraternity parties that are more restrained and circumspect than like CPAC now. Well, I don't go to CPAC. It's unbelievable.

And I agree with you. Like, I'm on board. It's lonely out there, okay? being like a conservative who votes for Donald Trump because I disagree with you. I think that he is the lesser. You think I think Kamala Harris is the lesser of two evils. I think Donald Trump is the better alternative. I still stand by that. But I agree with you on libertinism and all of that. Your argument, I think what I'm hearing is voting for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump is that abortions went up Donald Trump. But under Donald Trump, that's one of the reasons maybe. No, no, no, wait. Let me finish. Okay. So one of my problems is, is I saw a Republican Party that had become more pro-choice than I imagined it would become,

effectively pro-choice. We've now had this, you know, Robert F. Kennedy's, Robert F. Kennedy's department has, you know, permitted the generic abortion pill, for example. We have seen, you know, an explosion of support, for example, for IVF and parts of the Republican Party. We have seen a lot of these things that have happened that are dramatically, in my view, dramatically negative. Also, at the same time, we have seen abortions go up. Now, that's a super complicated factor. If I'm looking at a situation where in 40 years, I've seen abortions go down, and now they go up, and then the same president under whom they went up has watered down the

abortion plank. That same president is talking about nominating a Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's a radical pro-choicer. I think the difference between Kamala and Donald Trump here is very, very, very little. And then if there's no real, and I saw them as very little difference, and then you have a, where the results sort of speak for themselves on the trend and abortions, and then you have the Republican Party departing so dramatically from its historical, moral commitments. And I'm going to vote for the, I had two motivations in supporting Hamila Harris. One, she had multiple policies that I felt were much more in line with foreign policy, foreign policy, rule of law, et cetera, much more in line.

But you knew from her history what rule of law looks like. It means targeting pro-lifers. The very pro-lifers that you have defended in court, Kamala Harris would go after. She did. I mean, under the Biden administration, she did. As AG of California, she did, like her history is lawfare against pro-lifers. So when you say the rule of law, are you only talking about J-Sixers? No, I'm talking about, I mean, my goodness.

The Trump administration pardon, praise God. What on earth is happening to the Department of Justice right now? What we are seeing is the total. Oh, they're doing some really good things like using the FACE Act to go after Jane's revenge. That's a really good thing. And to make sure that those people are being charged and sentenced. Compared to, compared to the corruption of the justice system right now under the Trump Department of Justice, it is stunning. Right now we're beginning to see.

the DOJ is lying and defying quarters to such an extent that is for the first time in my lifetime is losing something called the presumption of regularity where federal judges are can count on the honesty of the Department of Justice. We're seeing essentially pardons for sale at a scale that is mind-boggling. We're seeing a traumatic drop in prosecution of public corruption and white-collar crimes. We are seeing a situation where the DOJ is firing people for doing their jobs. If they were involved in the January 6th investigations, et cetera, they're being fired for doing their jobs. What is happening to the Department of Justice is a catastrophe. And so, yeah, there were a lot of things about Kamala Harris. In normal circumstances, that is not somebody that I would consider

voting for, but against this particular president who had both transformed the Republican Party in a way that I find to be just morally abhorrent. And then the migration of Democrats to be stronger against Russia than the Republican Party, to be stronger on public corruption than the Republican Party, in my view, they were moving towards me

in some pretty important ways, and the Republican Party has been sprinting away from my conservatism, just sprinting away, fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, national security conservatism. I was talking to somebody the other day.

I understand these, frustrations, I don't understand voting for someone like Kamala Harris. I remember this just absolutely evil story that I think that you would agree is evil, that under the Biden-Harris administration, that they had used the USDA to take snap breakfast and lunches away from poor schools that didn't abide by the rewrite of Title IX. So if a public school that took these funds for poor students that maybe didn't get meals at home, if they did not allow boys on girls sports teams or girls or boys in girls bathrooms those poor kids those kids like wouldn't get food anymore for that and like we can talk about is snap overfunded like I'm open

to conversations about welfare reform but for that reason I and I mean they were so pro trans they had guide I mean talk about okay where you can talk about like who is the head of our health department think about who was the head of the health department under Biden who is a man who identified as a woman who put guidance out for puberty blockers for kids and again when it comes to abortion, Kamala Harris, all nine months, without any punishment or any regulation whatsoever, she even promised to pass federal law if Congress was with her to legalize abortion through, I assume through all nine months, maybe it was 24 weeks, across the country. So I agree with you on so many of these issues.

Like, I want the Republican Party and Donald Trump to be more conservative, more pro-family, not against taxpayer-funded IVF, anti-abortion and all of these things. I think I'm identifying some of our differences here. I just don't think I could ever vote for Kamala Harris. Last sponsor for the day is pre-born. The pre-born network of clinics is helping pregnant women in crisis, given the resources that they need to make the most life-affirming choice. They want to save lives, but not only that, they want God to save people's souls.

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Go to preborn.com slash alley. I think I'm identifying some of our differences. And one of the key differences is in how do we prioritize different policies. So we've talked a lot about trans issues. And we've spent a lot of time, for example, talking about pronouns. Because they're creation order issues. And so Genesis 1 issues, when it comes to policy, are important to me. I would place a war in which a million people are being killed and injured,

which could potentially lead to a World War III that we may not survive as a species. in an intact way. I'm putting this way above things like pronouns. I'm sorry. It's just they're not even in the same universe. Hang on. I just gave you. I assented to, okay, yeah, that's a really big deal. You diminished what I'm talking about into pronouns. But that's not what I'm talking about. You know, I'm not just talking about pronouns. I didn't say anything about Biden forcing pronouns. I'm talking about medical guidance for hospitals to chemically castrate kids. I am talking about in Democrat states, I don't know where Biden or Harris stood on this, but taking kids out of the custody of their parents because the kids won't, or the parents won't affirm this newfound gender of the

child. I'm talking about Democrat run states. I don't think that Kamala Harris was advocating that. And I just said that. I just caveated that. But that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about when I say that I care about transgenderism. I'm not just talking about pronouns. That's a personal thing that you diminished my stance on that to that. And I don't think that's fair. I mean, you spend a lot of time just talking about pronouns. But we were talking about it. in the context of an election, were we? In the context of Kamala Harris. So the question I, the issue that I have is that we have, and I see this all the time,

what was it, Al Mueller after Trump did something just unbelievably absurd, and goes, well, at least he knows what a woman is. It always, it seems to come back to this trans issue again and again and again, almost no matter what else we talk about. And I disagree with my Democratic friends on a number of fronts on trans issues, for example, biological male participation in female sports, youth gender, medical youth gender transition. I agree with them on protecting against employment discrimination and secular employment. I think that I agree with them on, as very famously people got very upset at me, it's saying that,

for example, drag queens have the same free speech rights as anybody else. So I have agreement and I have disagreement on these issues. But what stumps me, what puzzles me is the extent to which so many people in this, in this, in this moment, when we're looking at the crumbling of our separation of powers, our constitutional structure, we're looking at the potential crumbling of the most important military alliances, that we're looking at the crumbling of the credibility of the Department of Justice, when we're looking at large-scale public corruption in the Trump administration, that the final thing to say is, well, at least, you know, and we're looking at the Trump

administration being in many ways, I don't know much how different they would be than a Harris administration right now in abortion. And we're looking at that. And then at the end of the day, we're going, well, I still can't understand why you would support this other side because of the trans issue. These are things that are, I just don't have the same priority on that issue, especially given the way in which the federal government is not in total control. And the president is not in total control of these issues. And the way that a president is, and as we have seen, extraordinarily extraordinary control of foreign policy, including starting an illegal war without going to Congress. That is, you know, again, you know, when I'm talking, when I was talking about voting for Kamala Harris,

the number of people who gang tackled me to say, warmonger, we're going to go war with Iran, if you do this. And then here we have a war with Iran. And look, I think the Iranian regime is loathsome. But we just launch a war in a dramatically unconstitutional and lawful way. And that is extraordinarily significant. And it's so weird to me, Allie Beth. I get it. I wrote in my piece about voting Kamala Harris. I said, look, people will disagree with me who I really respect.

They'll absolutely disagree with me. And I understand that family members, people, I absolutely, but what blows my mind is the idea that in the face of everything that I just said, people will say that the choice that I made or other Christians made to support Kamala Harris means they're not Christian. I don't think you would say that. But the choice to vote for a Democrat in these circumstances, when the alternative, and we haven't even gotten into Trump's, I mean, I'm learning, Ali Beth, I'm far more conservative than lots of my evangelical friends. I'm much less permissive regarding adultery and pornography than they are. It's, you know, I'm old enough

to remember in 1998 and Bill Clinton. And I'm old enough to remember the statement said, tolerance of serious wrongs by leaders sears the conscience of a culture leads to unrestrained lawlessness and surely will result in God's judgment. That's what we, the evangelical church said in 1998. And you just feel like we need to be saying that now. On the issue of gender, I do think things like Title IX do matter. I think that how that's rewritten, and look, Gorsuch was part of the Bostock case, and I understand all of that, and he was appointed by Donald Trump. So I don't think that Supreme Court nominees and appointees are everything. But I do think as a man of religious liberty, like you could agree that the current makeup that we have of the Supreme Court is really good for

religious liberty. It's been pretty good for life. It's been pretty good on the issues that I believe you still care about. We do have to give Donald Trump some credit for those things. I do believe also that being able to define reality, whether or not Donald Trump can always do that. I think he's actually been like sometimes a little weird about the question like what a woman, she, her and all of that. But the people around him absolutely do. I really care about that. I really care about them getting rid of the people in the DOJ. And we can talk about the other issues that you think that we have another time. But getting rid of the people who were tracking the movements of pro-life activists, along with Planned Parenthood and feminist movements. Like, talk about the rule of law. It's again,

I strongly, I'm strongly opposed to that. With your history of defending the First Amendment, again, Kamala Harris, with her history of just lawfare and hatred against pro-lawful. lifers, you know, pro-lifers that you've defended, that's tough. Okay, I really want to respect your time and I think that I gave you a fair hearing and describing your case for Kamala Harris. So I just want to last question. So you wrote an article for the New York Times claiming that James Tolariko, state representative, he is running for Senate, is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian. Now, this is someone who said this summer after the Dobbs decision was decided,

Talariko said more than half of our population became second-class citizens, talking about women, every one of our neighbors with a uterus, became the property of the state, and nothing is more unchristian. He says, our trans community needs abortion care too. He says, there are certain interpretations of certain passages from the Torah

that give instructions for an abortion. And then he also says, God is non-binary trans children or God's children made in God's own image. So when you say Talariko is one of the few openly Christian politicians who acts like a Christian, what do you mean? Yeah. So in the article I said there's two ways to sort of think about a progressive Christian. One is on policy. And progressive Christians and conservative Christians have disagreed on policy forever. I have been arguing with Christian friends of mine about abortion, more left-leaning Christian friends of mine about abortion my whole life. I've been arguing with more left-leaning Christian friends of mine about trans issues ever since trans issues have been. become part of the national conversation. Absolutely. So to me, it's not interesting, it's not necessarily interesting that he's a left-leaning, progressive Christian on policy. And as I said,

that's not interesting to me. But what is interesting to me about him is the way in which he interacts with his opponents and the way he interacts with which he interacts in the public square. And what we have seen, and one thing that is ripping this country to shreds is our country was built from the ground up to accommodate disagreement. One way to think about the American Constitution is it's really a kind of an elaborate dispute resolution mechanism. It's how we channel all of the fights that used to lead to war. How do we channel it into a political process that still leaves us with a united nation? And the First Amendment, for example, is absolutely critical and all of that. And so I'm very used to Christians disagreeing with me on political matters. What I'm not nearly as

used to. And what I think really is threatening the fabric of our country is it's a very different thing to disagree on substance and then to turn around and be cruel to another human being, to be vicious, to be cruel to another human being because you disagree and you dehumanize them and you hate them because of your disagreement. And we have a massive problem with that in this country. And one thing that I liked about the Democratic primary was you had a really interesting confrontation there. And you also have it on the Republican side that's coming up with a runoff. And the confrontation was, you had two progressive politicians, one of them who made her name being vicious and cruel to her political opponents, and another one who was making his name by reaching

out and trying to extend an open hand, even though he's much more progressive than I am. And his kindness towards opponents, his openness towards opponents, and that I saw, to me, that's acting like a Christian. And when you look at the kindness and the openness to people, that is acting like a Christian, even though I strongly disagree on policy. With Jasmine Crockett, you know, what I was seeing there was, not only do I disagree on policy, but I also think she's just cruel to people. So you go to Cornyn and Paxton. You know, both of them are very conservative men. One of them, however, is a serial adulterer. One of them is remarkably corrupt. One of them is incredibly cruel to his political opponents. One of them tried to overturn a lawful election.

And so I don't look at these people as balls of policy only. I see them as both possessing a set of policy positions and possessing a character and temperament in the way they interact with their fellow man. And in Talariko, I saw somebody who was interacting with his fellow man in a way that was kinder and more Christian than the way I've seen many cruel Christian politicians relate to their fellow man.

And I will tell you this, you know, also it's very important to know, part of this column was just pure analysis. Why do so many people email me? And I put it right at the beginning. Like I get more questions about James Talarico than anybody not named Donald Trump, like on my inbox. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? And I'll tell you the reason why. They like his kindness. They like the way he reaches out. And I'm telling you that this moment, we're moving towards a moment where I believe this strongly. We're moving towards a moment where people are going to be reacting against cruelty after this age, and they're going to be moving more towards civility and decency. And if Paxton beats Cornyn, one thing that's going to be

very sad for me is to watch a lot of Christians then sort of come out there and say, well, Christians can only support Paxton. I'm like, what are you talking about? What? I'm literally, you know, I get it from the standpoint of kind of maga radicalism. You don't get it from the standpoint of policy? No, no, I'm talking about in the primary. Are we really, is in the state of Texas guys, is it really the case that whatever minor sins Cornyn is committed against conservatism, it's worth kicking him to the curb for an election denying adulter or corrupt man who was impeached by a Republican-controlled house?

What? I think that's a more like interesting argument. and one that I would kind of understand from a conservative. Yeah, I got a hard time with even just saying, you know, his polite, Tala Rica's polite disposition is more like a Christian. Yeah, he's a politician. And this, it might be genuine, but this is his strategy. We've seen a lot of nice politicians from both sides of the aisle for a long time. And honestly, he probably thought he's a good foil to Jasmine Crockett, who is kind of out there. I don't know if you could say that someone who uses Christianity. I would say this about the right or the love.

left, by the way, who uses God to justify abortion, uses God to justify something like trans and kids, who uses God in such a blasphemous way, I think we agree on blasphemy, to say that God is non-binary. I don't think I could ever say, that's a Christian right there. Now, it might be interesting to say, he seems more civil, he seems more polite. I like that. I like his disposition. I like that he's a little bit more polite. And, you know, you could say, I don't like Paxton. that's totally fair. But to say that he is more Christian when he's saying these openly blasphemous things,

that's a lot. I was saying he was more Christian in his conduct. And his politeness, basically. And it's much more than just mere politeness. And I think that it is very important, and this circles back to an issue that I've been really having problems with over the last 10 years.

We're very eager to write people out of Christianity based on their political positions. It's a weird thing to me. And I see this all the time. He can't be a Christian because he's pro-choice. He can't be a Christian. He can't be a Christian. He can't be a Christian. It's because he said that he believes that they're like all religions share truth. Share the central truth, basically. I'm just really not willing to say that James Tala Rico is not a Christian. I'm just not going to do it. And and I, you know, when I, when I look at the, when I look at our political discourse around Christianity in this country and political Christianity. It's so broken because here's what we're doing. What we're constantly doing is we're writing people out of Christianity based on policy positions. And then often- Or biblical position. They're not policy positions to say God is non-binary. That's not a policy. Or to say our trans neighbors need abortion care too. Or to say that I think all religions share the same central truth. That's not a policy position. That's a theological- Well, some of those were policy and some of them are not.

Not really. Is God as non-binary? I don't think he said. Well, the abortion policy you're talking about. Yeah, but those are theological issues first. I think you would agree before their policy issues. So that's what I have contention with. It's not only the policy. When I'm talking about whether or not he's a Christian, which I don't know if I've made that strong statement or not. But I'm talking about what do you believe about Jesus? What do you believe about God's authority? How do you define these things? Can you even affirm Genesis 1? Okay, no. It's going to be tough. Yeah. Well, I'm just not writing these people out of Christianity. And I'm just not doing. it. I think that's fine to say you don't know where they're going to end up without saying they're a great Christian example. Well, the conduct that I was referring to, I do think he's a Christian example. And I think that that's one reason why people are responding to him is because he is so countercultural in this political moment. And this brings me to, I think, a really important point.

And this is something that I really want folks to sort of sit with. The Bible says a lot more about how we treat human beings than it says about public policy positions, a lot more. And one of the things that I think is very important in this Christian curriculum, this political curriculum I created with Russell Moore and my friend Curtis Chang, we said, look, you go to Micah 6-8. This is a key verse in the Bible. Anytime it says, what does the Lord require of you, oh, man, what is good? In other words, you really want to listen to this. This is one of these big summary verses.

It says to act justly, so you cannot forsake justice. You have to, you should pursue your positions that you believe are right and just biblically. It also says, and to love kindness, so you cannot abandon kindness, and it also says to walk humbly with the Lord your God. And so one of the things that I have seen is an immense amount of cruelty and almost no humility being directed at political opponents, all in the name of justice. And so when you see people who actually seem to to walk with some humility and also with some kindness in their pursuit of justice as they see it. And we're going to disagree on a lot of it, but we're also going to agree on a lot of things. Then in that circumstance, I think it's entirely appropriate to say this person's commitment,

look, I can't peer inside his soul, Ali, but I can't say that he has pure motives, or he has mixed motives, or he's just a malign actor who's using politeness for his own ends. But in the bottom line is, when I see things like kindness, when I see things, things like humility in the public square. I think that is something that is we should be really reinforcing. We should be really, we're going to be a lot better country if we have, for example, a situation where you have a Republican and a Democrat who disagree on policy, but they're united on kindness and humility. It's going to be a lot, a lot better for our country because right now, hatred is killing us. I disagree. I disagree with someone who denies

the basic tenets of Christianity to be, you know, someone who's a Christ-like example. Is there someone on the Republican side that you think reflects that level of Christian's ability? Spencer Cox, Governor of Utah. Spencer Cox has been phenomenal. I don't know if you followed his disagree better initiative, but he, you know, what he did, and this is what I really appreciate is Spencer Cox is a conservative. But he's also, he is also kind to his political opponents, and he sees them, as fellow citizens and neighbors to love and not enemies to oppose and hate. And so he's absolutely

conservative at the same time he reaches out to people. And there are other Republicans like that as well. He's not the only one. He's one who comes to mind right off the top of my head. But you know, I think of it. I, you know, I'm, it's funny and people to ask me, because I'm not really as much a political pundit as I am right about law and religion and armed conflict. But people ask me all the time. I mean, what race are you really looking at this midterms? And I said, I'll tell you, it's not even a general election race. It's the primaries in Texas. And if you end up with Cornyn and Tala Rico, that's a sign I think American politics are turning a positive corner. You're going to have a conservative who is not corrupt, who is known to be the person of integrity that people across the aisle

can interact with, with against a progressive, who is not corrupt, who's known as being a person in integrity so far as I know who can operate with people across the aisle, that is a nature's healing moment. If we ended up, thank the Lord we don't have a Paxton Crockett race, which I think would just be an unmitigated disaster, no matter who wins that. I'm really hoping we don't end up with a Paxton-Talor-Rico primary. But if we have a Cornyn, I mean, Paxton-Talor-Ric race, if we have Cornyn and Tala-RICO, I feel like that's a sign that America hopefully, at least part of America, is starting to turn the corner from this sort of worship of power and cruelty in the name of power. Okay.

In the spirit of that, let's see. Just a couple things. And if you want to respond, I'll let you respond, or if you can just move on. I just wanted to respond to the Micah 6-8, which, of course, is a beautiful verse, an important verse, a verse that all Christians should believe in. We have to define justice and love and mercy and kindness the way God defines these things. And one thing that stands out to me in the abortion conversation, we talked about that, very thoroughly, but that I meant to say at the time when you were saying abortions go down,

this president, they go up and this president, I think that you would agree that justice is not just about outcomes. Justice is not only for unborn children about how many children are slaughtered. We care about that a lot. And there's a lot of things that Christian pro-lifers do non-legislatively to help those women. But it's also about the process of justice and giving them their due. I think you would agree with that, acknowledging their rights. And when I look at the look at the not just the candidates, but the people that they're going to put in place, the people that they're going to appoint, the judges that they're going to appoint, do they recognize the due process of justice for any person, but especially when it comes

to that unborn child? For me, it's like, well, Kamala Harris, no way. It's not even her. It's everyone that she's going to appoint what she did in California, whatever. Donald Trump, more likely. Can you understand that position? Can you understand my position to say, You know, I don't really love everything that Trump does. That's tough for me. I think it's more likely that we'll see a better definition of justice when it comes to certain things under Trump than under Kamala Harris. Oh, not only do I understand that position, but I wrote to that I understand that position. Like that, that is a, I explicitly said that in that very article that I do understand that position. And as I said, you know, 85% of my neighbors voted for Trump. I think

they made a mistake, but I love them. I, you know, and I don't disrespect a human being simply because they voted for Donald Trump. Now, there are Trump voters I do disrespect, but not just because they voted for Donald Trump. And there are Harris voters I disrespect, but not because they voted for, I mean, obviously not because they voted for Kamala Harris. We can't be using somebody's vote as a shorthand for in total assessment of their character. We just can't do that. I'm never going to say to somebody who says, you know, look, I don't like abortion. I want there to be fewer abortions. I also don't want a corrupt person in the White House.

Look, in this really hard decision, what I have seen, you know, if you go back to, I remember an eight-year span when abortions went down by 330,000, and you asked me, are there any policies? And I'm going to say, yes, there were policies. Because one of the things to circle back, I'm very big fan as a lawyer. we always do this thing where we start, we talk about what you're going to say, you're going to say it, and then you circle back to what you already said. Circling back to empathy, one of the interesting things, when you really dig down and try to get empathetic with people who are facing this issue is you realize that financial and health care

insecurity contribute greatly to an abortion decision. They really do. And so if you can address financial insecurity and health care insecurity, you're going to actually decrease abortions. I remember when Mitt Romney proposed his child allowance, which would begin prenatally. So it would begin before you gave birth, you would get about, I think it was like 1,200 a month or something like that. And that would allow you to get a crib and allow you to get the kinds of things you need to get ready for a child. And there was an estimate that that policy alone, that policy alone could perhaps lead to 20 to 30,000 fewer abortions. Yeah. And so,

And I'm being told to wrap. Yeah, yeah. I'm being told to wrap. Sure, sure. Do you feel like you fairly were able to articulate and defend that point? Oh, of course. That it's possibly, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think just to end on, I think where I would have an issue is that, or maybe where we agree, is that I would love to talk about support for those women. What can we do to reduce abortions without taking justice away from the unborn child? So without advocating for laws that allow us to legally murder babies, because if it's not legal to murder you and me, which I support those laws. I don't want it to be legal to murder babies either. And so I can't justify voting for that in my mind just because they might have other policies that support. That's unjust. That would be against Micah 6-8, M-I-A-V-O. Is that, can we end on that? Is that okay? Do you feel, do you feel like that's fair?

I know, but I like to be fair. I want to be fair to you. David, thank you so much. This was an hour and a half of a very, I think, fun conversation, productive conversation. I really appreciate it. Oh, this was a great conversation. Thanks for having me. Thank you.