Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Hillary Clinton Wrote a Hit Piece on Me. My Response

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Starting point is 00:00:52 mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers, DBA Fellowship Home Loans, equal housing lender, NMLS, number 819382. Hey y'all, welcome to this special episode of Relatable. Our typical Friday episode will be coming out tomorrow. I am so excited for you to watch that episode. But I've got a very important response to give you today to none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton. First, I just want to make an announcement. I want to announce that I love my life. I love living. I'm happy to be here. That is an important declaration to make. Anytime you get in the cross-haired. of the Clintons, which, to my astonishment, I am. Now, yesterday I was having a lovely chat with my dad and my husband, and my phone started buzzing. And I looked down to several messages letting me know that Hillary Rodham Clinton, of all people, had just published an op-ed in the Atlantic, focused on yours truly. And my book called Toxic Empathy, How Progressives Exploit, Christian Compassion, and this article is titled Maga's War on Empathy.

Starting point is 00:02:03 Now, if I had made a list of predictions for 2006, this would not have been on the list. So I want to take this very unexpected opportunity to do a few things. Number one, I want to respond to the misrepresentations that are made in this article. Number two, I want to highlight the hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton's claims. and number three, I want to encourage you. This article might mention me by name, but it is not actually about me because the truth is, if it weren't for all of you,

Starting point is 00:02:37 Hillary Clinton would not care about me. It is because of your presence, because of your courage, because of your resolve, your influence over this and future generations that Clinton is writing this article. And if there is ever a time to stand firm and to double down, it is right now.

Starting point is 00:02:55 And then number four, lastly, I want to make an honest appeal to Secretary Clinton and the audience that she is trying to reach with this article. Now, as a preface to help us kind of get our bearings, I want to set up the context, the why, for this article coming out right now because my book is not new. It came out in October of 2024. The discussions and the debates are not new. It became a New York Times bestseller right after its publication, largely because of this immediate reaction. what truly was, by the way, unexpected and unintended by me, just the immediate offense that it caused, but it caused all of this buzz in the media simply because of the first two words of its title.

Starting point is 00:03:38 Let me read you just a few of the headlines of the articles that have been written about this book in the past year. We've got the New York Times, how empathy became a threat, which is about my book. The Atlantic, the conservative attack on empathy about my book. Salon. Maga's War on Empathy was started by a woman. New York Magazine, the Christians who believe empathy is a sin, which, by the way, is not the title of my book and is not really the argument, but these misrepresentations are common. The Guardian loathe thy neighbor. Also not my argument. Elon Musk and the Christian right are waging war on empathy. So this has been written over and over and over again. And it's always the same mischaracterizations and the same

Starting point is 00:04:30 argument. So why again, why now? Why Hillary Rodham Clinton? The deeper reason first, before I get to the obvious kind of superficial reason, the deeper reason is so incredibly clear to me. And that is that we are over the target. We have gotten to the heart of progressive manipulation. We looked at their lies straight in the face that abortion is health care, that trans women are women, that no human being is illegal, and we said, no, I see what you're doing. And we are going to give that a name. And not only that, but we're not buying it anymore. You aren't going to exploit my compassion to support policies that are bad for my family and bad for the country. No longer am I going to allow my emotion to paralyze my critical thinking. And now they're afraid.

Starting point is 00:05:16 This is the tool that progressives have used to capture women for a very long time. and they thought they had the female vote in the bag forever. So when you have a woman, a Christian, a wife, a regular suburban mom, talking to other Christian wives and moms about critical thinking and biblical truth, they know they're in trouble. When we've got 7,000 women, by the grace of God, showing up from around the world to our no-fluff Christian women's conference, and even the Washington Post has to write about that,

Starting point is 00:05:49 they're looking at that. They're looking at y'all. And they're thinking, shoot, this is a thing, isn't it? Like, this is getting out of our control. 2020, they looked at the landscape of Instagram and they thought, okay, we almost have a total monopoly on female compassion. Now in 2026, their hold has weakened a whole lot. And that is because of y'all. They don't trot out.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Former Secretary of State, former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, unless they are really, worried. But why this moment? Why right now? Hillary Clinton tells us, she says in this Atlantic article, Americans have now seen with their own eyes the cost of President Trump's abuse of power and disregard for the Constitution. Videos of the killing of Preddy and Renee Good, she says, by federal agents have exposed the lives of the Trump administration, officials who were quick to smear the victims as domestic terrorists, even Americans who have grown habituated to Trump's excesses have been shaken by these killings and they're reflexively cruel and dishonest response from the administration.

Starting point is 00:06:57 Okay, so that is the framing. Look how cruel Trump is. Look at what's happening in Minneapolis. And somehow this cruelty is being justified by people whom she calls quote unquote Christian influencers. She says the glorification of cruelty and rejection of compassion don't just shape Trump the Trump administration's policies. values are also at the core of Trump's own character and worldview. And they have become a rallying

Starting point is 00:07:25 cry for a cadre of hard right Christian influencers who are waging a war on empathy. My husband and I have this inside joke that we use all the time a few years ago. Our oldest heard us talking about her quietly. And she piped up from across the room and goes, is her name me? And so whenever it seems like, wait, is that person talking about me? That's the question that I had in my head when I was reading this paragraph, the Christian influencers, is her name me? And the answer is yes. Yes, it is. Here's what she goes on to say in this article. The day after taking the oath of office last January, Trump attended a prayer service at the National Cathedral. The Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Marianne Edgar Budd, directed part of her sermon at the new president. In the name of our

Starting point is 00:08:08 God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. She goes on to say the right-wing Christian podcaster, Ali Beth Stuckey, called the sermon toxic empathy that is in complete opposition to God's word and in support of the most satanic destructive ideas ever conjured up. Toxic empathy. What an oxymoron, Hillary Clinton says. I don't know if the phrase reflects moral blindness or moral bankruptcy, but either way, it is appalling. This is certainly not what I was taught in Sunday school, not what my reading of the Bible teaches me, and not what I believe Jesus preached in his short time on earth. However, this example that she gives, that I responded to, that I said is an example of toxic empathy and represents some of the most

Starting point is 00:08:52 evil ideas on earth is not in the quote that she gave of the sermon. She is betting that you will not actually go to my tweet and see the speech that I was responding to. What I'm responding to is this so-called bishop support of quote-unquote trans kids. Here's not one. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy of upon the people in our country. We're scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in democratic, Republican, and independent families,

Starting point is 00:09:32 some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes, after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. I had forgotten about J.D. Vance's awesome facial expressions as that woman is giving her rant.

Starting point is 00:10:10 When she says trans kids, he looks at his wife like, oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. And that is what we all feel. but it's not only ridiculous, it's also evil. The idea that a child could be born in the wrong body. The idea that a child should go on puberty blockers or should change the hormonal makeup or the body that God providentially gave them is not only unbiblical, it is downright wicked. And it leads to a life of brokenness for that child.

Starting point is 00:10:37 And so, yes, it is evil. That is the Christian position. And it is toxic empathy that leads someone to feel so deeply for a person, who says they were born in the wrong body, that you actually condone a practice or a policy that ends up maiming their body. So let me just explain what toxic empathy is. Hillary Clinton is confused. Maybe she's only read the salon article about my book. She hasn't actually read the book. And by the way, if Hillary Clinton wants to send over the mailing address, I would be happy to sign a copy of toxic empathy for her. I can send it her way so she can read my argument in its totality. But a little

Starting point is 00:11:14 TLDR, empathy means to be in someone's feeling. So it's different than sympathy. You feel for someone. It's different than compassion. That means to suffer with someone. And it's different than love to seek the best for another person. Empathy actually means to feel how someone else feels. And it's not always bad. But empathy becomes bad when it blinds you to both reality and morality. You are so deeply in one person's feelings that you no longer can think objectively. You no longer consider the person on the other side of the equation. And then you make decisions based on how much you feel for one person rather than on what is true and moral and just. So for example, you feel so deeply for the poor woman carrying a pregnancy that you forget about the existence, the rights, and the pain of the

Starting point is 00:12:00 baby inside the womb. You feel so deeply for the man who thinks that he's a woman that you ignore biological reality and the rights and the privacy of girls and women. Empathy becomes toxic when it leads you to do three things. One, to affirm sin. Two, to validate lies and three, to support destructive policies. Christians instead are not called to callousness, but we're called to love. And the thing about love that distinguishes it from empathy is that it is inextricably intertwined with the truth. God is love, 1 John 4-8. He gets to define it. And he tells us what it is in 1st Corinthians 13. And in verse 6, we read that love never rejoices in wrongdoing. but rejoices with the truth.

Starting point is 00:12:44 So you cannot have in Christianity love without truth. And this is the dichotomy that Jesus represented. Not unconditional empathy toward every purported victim group. He showed mercy to the outcast and we should too, but he also urged them to repent from sin. So that is my clarification of what toxic empathy actually means. Now, Hillary Clinton wants to tell us about her faith, convince us that she is actually the authority on all things theology. She says,

Starting point is 00:13:16 I've never been one to wear my faith on my sleeve, but that doesn't mean it's not important to me, quite the opposite. My faith has sustained me, informed me, saved me, chided me, and challenged me. I don't know who I would be or where I would have ended up without it. So I am not a disinterested observer here. I believe that Christians like me and people of faith more generally have a responsibility to stand up to the extremists who use religion to divide or or undermine our democracy. Now, I just want to say that truth divides. Like, I'm not worried about someone accusing me or anyone else of being divisive. That's not the purpose in anything I say. The purpose and what I say is to try to tell the truth and love as much as I can. But Jesus himself

Starting point is 00:14:00 didn't bring peace but a sword. The truth divides. Undermine our democracy. That's just a silly accusation, not even sure what that means. And I'm not being sarcastic when I say, I'm glad to hear that Hillary Clinton identifies as a Christian. I did not know that we had that in common sincerely. But for her to position herself as someone who is an authority on faith, when she admits here that she's never been public about her faith, that's a problem. That's actually not something that's an option within Christianity. Christianity is a word based, evangelism-based public faith. It's not like Buddhism or other religions out there that say, well, you can just keep this to yourself.

Starting point is 00:14:41 Just lock away the belief that Jesus is, that Jesus is king in one compartment, and it doesn't have to affect other areas of your life. You don't actually have to tell people about it. The last command that Jesus gives us before he ascends to heaven is go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So we are called to be agents of this truth in love, this gospel, that God entrusted us with through Christ. And so this idea that you can just have this compartmentalized faith

Starting point is 00:15:15 that you don't tell people about, that's not what Christianity is. So I just want to correct the record on that. But I also want to look at the fruit of Hillary Clinton's life. Now, if she's repented of these stances, that would be news to me. I think that would have been a much more interesting Atlantic article than the 15th article about my book, Toxic Empathy.

Starting point is 00:15:36 but as far as I know, she still holds all of these beliefs on abortion. So I just want to go through them, just the facts very quickly. First, I want to remind you what Hillary Clinton thinks about abortion. And we can look back to her time as Senator. As a Senator, Clinton voted no on prohibiting minors from crossing state lines to get an abortion. She voted no on notifying parents when their teenage daughter leaves the state to abort their grandchild. This was in the early 2000s, by the way. She voted no on giving criminal penalties to someone who harms an unborn child during a crime like assault.

Starting point is 00:16:12 That doesn't even have anything to do with abortion. She voted no on prohibiting partial birth abortions. She was given a 100% rating by pro-abortion nairal. She was endorsed by Planned Parenthood, not only when she was a senator, but also when she was running for president. Clinton has been clear in the 2016 debates over and over again that she believes in the unqualified legal right to kill unborn. children through all nine months of pregnancy. She has been clear on that for years. She said, quote, I will defend planned parenthood. Now, Planned Parenthood kills about a million unborn children every year. She said, I will defend Roe v. Wade, and I will defend women's rights to make

Starting point is 00:16:53 their own health care decisions. Now, if you want to talk about an oxymoron, healthcare abortion is an oxymoron. And also, just to show how much she flip-flops on things, like let's look at her immigration stance in 2003. She was the one who said on a radio show, I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants. We've got to do more at our borders and people have got to stop employing illegal immigrants. So she just kind of goes where the wind blows because in her 2016 campaign, she described Obama's immigration policies as too harsh. And of course, now she is criticizing the morality of, quote, mass deportations. She also flip-flopped on things like gay marriage in 2004. She said, I believe that marriage is not just a bond, but a sacred

Starting point is 00:17:41 bond between a man and a woman in 2013. She changed her stance on that. And no, this is not just genuine evolution. This is what politicians do. Also, 2019, she said completely unabashedly, quote, trans rights are human rights. She is in complete support of the idea of men becoming women and infiltrating women and girls spaces. Of course, she's got a long list of scandals in her past. She's got the Clinton Foundation scandal. The Clinton Foundation took in millions from foreign governments like Saudi Arabia and Algeria during Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State. There are a lot of questions about what actually happened with those funds if they were actually used to help the poor people in places like Haiti that they were supposedly supposed to be

Starting point is 00:18:34 helping. Also, of course, we've got the whole email server scandal. She kept a private server with all of her Secretary of State correspondence on it. She lied about that. And in one of the 2016 presidential debates, she claimed she didn't send her, received any classified material to the server, which of course was a lie. If we look back to 2012, Benghazi, she was Secretary of State. during the September 11th, 2012, Benghazi attack that killed four Americans. She linked the violence to an anti-Islam video, but of course there's no evidence of that. The attack was a pre-planned assault by terrorist militants. It wasn't a spontaneous protest because of any kind of video.

Starting point is 00:19:19 And you'll remember, speaking of empathy, her callousness when she was asked about, hey, what happened that resulted in the loss of these lives? We had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night or decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? And then she also goes on to specifically highlight the problem with me. She says the mainstream Christian view is one that rejects the Christian nationalist narrative of rejecting the stranger and saying that people who are oppressed deserve their oppression. That's what she's saying people like me believe. I don't like that there are mainstream Christians who are repudiating that view. She says this is exactly the kind of mainstream Christian view that enrages Ali Beth Stuckey, the author of toxic empathy who styles herself as a voice for Christian women, has more than a million followers on social media. And between lifestyle pitter-patter and her demonization of IVF treatments,

Starting point is 00:20:18 she warns women not to listen to their soft hearts. This commissar of maga morality targets other evangelicals whose empathy she warns has left them open to manipulation, maybe they recognize the humanity of an undocumented immigrant family and decide that mass deportation has gone too far or they make space in their heart for a young rape survivor forced to carry a pregnancy to term and start questioning the wisdom and morality of total abortion bans it's all toxic to tisucky first of all i don't know what lifestyle pitterpatter is i should start doing lifestyle pitter patter i should have a whole playlist on my youtube channel lifestyle pitterpatter i'll have to think about what to post

Starting point is 00:20:54 on that i'm not sure yet um okay my stance on on IVF. I know why she's doing that. She's trying to target a lot of the women who are in the middle and who are more moderate and they hear demonization of IVF and they think it's some radical position. But my position is that all human life matters, whether you are an embryo or whether you are a full-grown adult. And I don't think that people, human beings should be frozen indefinitely. I don't think that they should be graded for abnormalities like Down syndrome and then discarded. I don't think that they should be treated as social experiments. And I do believe that we should honor the dignity of all human life by protecting them from the earliest moment of conception.

Starting point is 00:21:42 And IVF actually puts those lives at risk. And so I've got lots of episodes on that. If you want to hear more and I write about it in my book, Toptic Empathy. And then, you know, she says, I'm a commissar of magomorality, which goes, so hard, like I'm definitely going to continue to use that. I might have to put that like behind me. Purposely misrepresenting toxic empathy, of course. So we should just break that down for a second because she actually gives me really good examples of what that is. You should recognize the humanity of illegal immigrants. They are image bears of God, just like the baby in the womb, my dyad. But their humanity does not just

Starting point is 00:22:27 failing to enforce our completely valid immigration laws. You should make space in your heart for rape survivors. They should, but this should not lead you to justify killing a baby who is not guilty of anything. Like if we want to talk about the death penalty in a rape situation, let's give the death penalty to the rapist, not to the baby. Hillary Rodham Clinton believes that babies should receive the death penalty for a crime that someone else committed. And then she would like to turn around and preach to us about morality and dignity. And just remember, She has over and over again stated that she believes in the unconditional right to kill a child inside the womb. Now, she argues that we should have more empathy and not less, and that actually

Starting point is 00:23:08 that's going to save civilization. She writes, empathy won't destroy civilization. Indeed, it might just save it. We can debate policies. We can debate theology. But if we give up on empathy, we give up on any real chance of coming together to solve our problems. Empathy does not overwhelm our critical thinking are blind us to moral clarity. It opens our eyes to moral complexity. It is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength. She's completely wrong on that. There's a book called Against Empathy by a Yale psychologist named Paul Bloom. He's coming at it from a secular perspective. He argues that psychologically empathy does arrest our thinking and that when we use it to make moral decisions, we end up making bad decisions. He also talks about this phenomenon that Abigail Shrier has

Starting point is 00:23:53 talked about on my show that you can be full of empathy and mean as hell. So when you feel so deeply for one particular person, everyone that you perceive as the enemy of that person becomes your enemy, and therefore you justify cruelty against them. It's like the mama bear effect in politics. You feel like the illegal immigrant or the man who says that he's a woman is almost like your child that you have to protect. And everyone who is against them and against their so-called rights, no matter how common sense those positions are, they become your enemy. and you justify violence against them, you justify cruelty against them. She says the empathy opens her eyes to moral complexity.

Starting point is 00:24:30 But when you're saying things like trans rights or human rights or that abortion is health care, well, you're not showing empathy for the little girl who is forced to change in front of a man in a locker room. You're not showing empathy for the baby inside the womb, who is being poisoned, who is being dismembered, whose life is being snuffed out before they're born. That's the problem with empathy. When it leads you, your morality becomes very, one-sided. It's much better to be guided by the truth and love. She said, we already have Christian influencers saying empathy is a sin. That's not exactly what I said. It can lead you to sin, though.

Starting point is 00:25:04 She says, I hope grassroots faith leaders across the country who are appalled by what they see from an immoral administration and an extremist political right also find their voice. Influencers like Stuckey are zealously policing any deviation from the party line. But speaking truth to power has been part of the Christian tradition since the very beginning. I actually agree with that. Christianity has always been a boil on the back of tyrants and it will continue to be. And she doesn't believe in Christians speaking the truth to power when we're speaking against the zeitgeist that is pro-abortion culture in our country or against the idea

Starting point is 00:25:40 that a man can become a woman. She is appealing to the Christians who are wavering right now. she very badly wants the female Christian vote and she knows that she can pull on your heartstrings and emotionally manipulate you into no longer critically thinking about both sides of an issue but simply going along with what she and others say is the virtuous choice. It is manipulation, it's moral extortion, it is weaponizing your good, soft heart, your Christian compassion against you for nefarious, in chaotic means. Remember, empathy becomes toxic when it leads you to affirm sin,

Starting point is 00:26:24 validate lies, or support destructive policies. And so I just want to thank Hillary Clinton because she's put more eyes on this book. And it's not about selling books. It is about getting Christian women to see what is logically and factually and most importantly biblically true about some of the biggest issues of our day and to be able to stand confidently in that even when we see the swirling propaganda all over Instagram and elsewhere. And I just want to end on an encouragement, a piece of encouragement and an appeal to you. I want to remind you of a couple of Bible verses that I remind myself of, Luke 622, blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and when they revile you

Starting point is 00:27:08 and spurn your name as evil on account of the son of man? when you are speaking the truth about life inside the womb, about gender, about marriage, about the things that the Bible makes very clear, even though those things have become political at the end of the day, you are being persecuted for something that is ultimately theological. And if Hillary Clinton is against you on those things, it is a pretty good, not perfect, but a pretty good indication that you're probably on the right track. Luke 626, such an encouragement. woe to you when all people speak well of you for so their fathers did to the false prophets and so it's actually a bad thing when everyone speaks well of you remember jesus perfect the godman they crucified him stephen full of grace and power simply told the truth shared the gospel to people who did not want to hear it they stoned him to death and so if that was how they treated jesus if that was how they treated stephen

Starting point is 00:28:11 if that was how they treated the apostles, then surely today we are not going to get better treatment by going against the grain, swimming upstream, saying what is biblically true even when it is unpopular. And I just want to make an appeal here because I don't actually know the state of Hillary Clinton's heart. Like I can't say the state of her salvation. I can look at her statements and some of the fruit. But honestly, this is the truth. Like I hope to see Hillary Clinton in heaven. And I hope that Jesus reveals himself to her. And I just, if you're listening to this and this is all new to you, I just want you to know that no one is too far off.

Starting point is 00:28:51 No one is too far gone. That the gospel is that God sent his son Jesus to die a death that you deserve to die on behalf of your sin so that you could be forgiven forever, so that you could be reconciled to God, so that you could be friends with God, so that you could be free from sin today and live forever with him. Like that truth is for you, that gospel is for you. And maybe you disagree with me on all of this. But I just want you to not listen to me.

Starting point is 00:29:17 I want you to pick up a Bible. I always encourage people get the ESV study Bible. It's available on Amazon. It's not very expensive. Start in the Book of John and go from there. Don't take my word on these things. If you never listen to me again, that's okay with me. But I want you to pick up a Bible and see the truth and the good news that really,

Starting point is 00:29:36 really matters in all of this. Again, tune in tomorrow. We've got our regularly scheduled episode of Relatable coming out on Saturday this weekend. I'll see you guys then.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Hillary Clinton Wrote a Hit Piece on Me. My Response

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