The Ben Mulroney Show - Can we talk honestly about German Pride attack/Sophie Cunningham trans comments?

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

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This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Well, I wish we were starting this segment with something uplifting and upbeat. But sadly, events of the weekend make that impossible as we turn our eyes and our hearts to the devastation in Berlin. during a pride parade when a 21-year-old man with prior Islamic State-related convictions

drove a van into crowds near the festival, then got out of the van and attacked people with a machete, killing one woman and injuring not one, but 29 others. It was chaos. and let's listen to that chaos by way of German TV. This is the man police have been hunting. 21-year-old Berlin-born Abdul-Balut was known to the police. In the last hour, it's been confirmed he has been shot and killed. Investigators are treating the incident as an Islamist terrorist attack.

So the suspect, as you just heard, a German citizen, Lebanese descent, longstanding history of criminal offenses, deep roots in Berlin's radical jihadi community, actively used social media to promote that hate, specifically publishing ISIS propaganda videos, extremist material on his personal Instagram. As a matter of fact, Intrepid was telling me that he tried to join ISIS. Is that right? Yeah, he tried to do. He went to Lebanon to try to join him.

Okay, yeah, this, he was a true believer. And this is where, when I heard the genesis, when I heard the origin story of this crime and this tragedy, it brought me right back to Canada today. Because tell me if this sounds like something that would happen here. In May 2026, he was in a district court convicted of preparing a serious action. of violent subversion endangering the state. That sounds like terrorism to me.

All right. Convicted of this. The court handed down a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months in youth custody. Keep in mind, 20 at the time. Okay. So what's the sentence for that? Out on probation. Why?

Why was he out on probation? Why would you let this guy out who was this close to a terrorist attack? Well, according to the court, low flight risk. likelihood of reoffending pending pending an appeal from prosecution. And they, they were unhappy with the sentence, obviously. Yeah. And they said, let's, let's do this. And the guy was out on, he was out on bail.

He was out on bail. And what did he do? Killed one, injured 29. And yeah, low risk. Yeah, low risk. Low flight risk and low risk of reoffending. Look, Berlin Pride, we got to talk about this honestly. We have to talk about this honestly.

I don't know how many of these things we have to see before we can have an honest conversation. And for people who are unwilling to talk about this are finally willing to talk about this. Because Berlin Pride ask that the attack not be politicized. I'm sorry Berlin Pride. You don't get to say that.

You don't get to choose this. And let's be honest. You politicize everything. The whole idea about pride. The whole idea of pride is politicizing everything. don't tell me what to politicize and what not to. When you decide you're going to politicize my, the questions that I have around pronouns.

And you don't get to do that. You don't get to do that. It happened at Pride today. It could happen at a different event tomorrow. You don't get- Salsa Fest. You don't get to silo this stuff off and say, oh, no, no, we don't get to do that.

And at a vigil, by the way, talking about not politicizing it, an LGBT speaker and it was in German so we don't have it here but this LGBT

speaker was caught saying that she had hoped the attacker was quote not an Arab Muslim but a white Christian person what is that if not politicizing the event?

She said it on stage with a microphone right? Yes, this wasn't caught on a hot mic this is what she said she hoped it'd be a white person and then there is a woman that was on social media, so we all saw it,

who performed an act of gymnastics. These are mental in nature, but an act of gymnastics that would make Nadia Komenitz blush. Let's listen to this woman who identified that the killer is an Islamist, but then somehow blame people look like me. So this aspect is an Islamic, extremist. That's their suspect right now. That's what I read. Okay. I'm not going to say anything

about the rest of the Muslim population because of actions of this one person. But what I can say is the people who were celebrating about this were all white men, young white men, with crosses in their profiles. Because we've all seen it. We've all seen how you guys react towards gay people and how you wish harm on them constantly. I get a constant hate on my videos, especially about trans people. You're not going to hide behind another scapegoat group and pretend that they're actually the violent ones when it's you. You hold the same exact beliefs that this man who did this attack did. I mean, I've got half a dozen cute ways to insult this woman.

They're lined up in my head, one after the other. I'm just, I'll just say this. That's unhelpful. But that's a lot of finger pointing at a lot of people. But exactly. So let's just say that's unhelpful. Because that does nothing. You are digging in your heels.

You have decided who the enemy is. And we have a lot of problems as a Western society. We have problems that we can deal with today. There are problems we must deal with today. The problem we must deal with today is this one. It's this one. It's the problem of radical Islamic jihadists. And I say radical Islamic jihadists because if you ask the question, did Muslim groups in Germany condemn this attack?

The answer is yes. Of course they did. Of course they did. Of course they did. But much like the Kirpon attack and this man has now caused problems for his broader community. And they are now responsible for condemning his. his behavior, when we all know every one of us has wonderful Muslim friends. Every one of us has known them since we were children.

There were some interesting stories. They spoke with this guy's family and his parents. And their parents said that they were not religious. In fact, they argued with them viscerously about not having the beard because they said he looked apart. He obviously thought the way he did. Yeah. Well, look, Terry Newman, who's a senior editor and columnist with the National Post, was on this radio station this morning with Greg Brady.

And she called this like it is. It should be very clear the threat from youth as well. The CISD report talking about radicalized youth, for example, also does not mention that the concern really comes from radical Islam, right? Why are our highest levels of security not doing this? Right. So I think my general idea is that they come from universities and universities have the same issue as the government from saying this type of stuff, albeit for different reasons. The government may not be saying it for voting demographics. But we need to stop, you know, it's suicidal empathy. We need to stop basically not talking about the truth because we are not keeping people safe. And, you know, the blame against, you know, homophobia and stuff like that then gets transferred on to conservatives, which makes no sense. whatsoever. And look, Terry brought up politicians, but the police in Ottawa over the weekend did the exact same thing. There was a protest. I don't have to tell you what they were protesting. I'm pretty sure you know. And you'll actually hear in this video and in this audio, the police

making excuses for the protesters who just dropped down in a street and decided it belonged to them. They're safe. They're safe. No, that don't give me that loud. No. So their protest is awful. No. Do they have a permit? They don't. They never get permits. That's why. Okay. They are allowed to protest.

And I'm allowed to count. But I'm just asked. We can deal with the issues that organize religion having problems with the LGBT world because, yes, there are Christian groups that have problems. There are absolutely, we can deal with that. But the problem in the here and now, the problem that hits us in the face almost on the daily across the Western world is the problem of violent. jihadis. That's the one. And you can twist yourself into a pretzel saying that's, it's caused by

colonialism. Gays are not responsible for colonialism. Gays never colonized anything. Gays don't operate within the sphere of whiteness or white supremacy. So if you, you cannot square that circle because it is an impossibility. You have to let us have an honest conversation. Stop digging in your heels, stop protecting your turf and start recognizing that we are all collectively. as a Western society in more danger today than we were yesterday. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, it's time for some common sense, BMS style. Hi, I'm Jane Koston, former writer and podcaster for places like the New York Times, the Atlantic and National Review.

And now I'm here to hang out with you five days a week on what a day, Crooked's Daily News podcast. That's right. Now who's respected on both sides. Okay, yeah, it's not me. It's probably still just Dolly Parton. Moving on. These days, it's hard to separate what matters from all the noise, especially when the noise somehow also feels like it's made out of knives.

That's why every weekday, the team and I scour the headlines to bring you the stories that matter most to the way you live in just 20 minutes. Listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Well, we are going to continue with what we hope is a sober, common sense conversation. And this time we're turning towards sport and the athlete Sophie Cunningham. She is a rising star. We talked about her at the end of last week, a rising star in the WNBA. And she's going viral, depending on your perspective, either for good reason or bad,

because she believes that sports categories matter. And women's and men's sports are different, and women and men are different. And women's sports should be reserved for biological females. And she remarked that she wanted to, quote, protect young girls in a locker room or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men. That's it. That's all she said.

She said nothing else. And despite that, she's being labeled anti-trans, MAGA, even though she described herself as politically centrist. I mean, listen, as athletes, I don't expect my athletes, I don't expect athletes to be political at all. Her stance is rooted in protecting Title IX,

which is a seminal law in the United States that essentially establishes and protects women's sports and women's ability to compete. And she doubled down and she said, I said what I said. She had to double down because she started getting attacked by a lot of people, a lot of well-known people on the left.

Oh, of course. And it was pretty vociferous. Well, let's listen to a trans woman burning Sophie's jersey and listen to what she thinks she heard from what Sophie said. Sports have the power to bring people together, but when someone uses their platform to demonize or marginalize an already vulnerable community, I have to decide where I stand. So today I'm not burning a person. I'm burning my support.

As a trans woman, I've spent years fighting just to exist authentically. I won't spend a dollar or another minute or another. ounce of energy supporting people who contribute to making that fight harder. This isn't about hate. It's about accountability. I don't think anybody should ever be accountable for things they didn't say. Who said she didn't exist? Well, that, that, exactly.

There, there is this, there is this, uh, magical dark art that exists on the left to take somebody's words, their black, their black words on white page and turn them into things, not only they didn't say, but. they don't feel and they don't push for. You're right. It is a dark art. It's a magical dark art. And Sophie Cunningham said nothing of the sort and you cannot extrapolate from that why this

woman is burning what she's burning. But this woman then is burning her jersey. Yeah. And because it's just so horrendous that she is now attacking me. Nobody attacked her. Nobody said she didn't exist. Nobody said that. And the living in a world of perpetual victimization.

where you are a victim of everyone all the time. And you have been, and you, and you're in a self-reinforcing bubble where everybody tells you that you're a victim because you're surrounded by other victims and you are constantly protecting yourself against those who want to increasingly victimize you. It's a terrible way to live, but nobody is suggesting you must live that way.

Now, I want you to hear a counterpoint from the trans community. This is Scott Nugent, a trans man. so formerly a woman went through a medical transition years ago. Here's what, here's his advice to Sophie Cunningham. Let me say what many won't. Please don't back down. Standing for women and girls is not hatred. Protecting female sports and female spaces.

Well, that's not discrimination. A society that cannot acknowledge biological reality will inevitably fail. The very people it claims to protect. You see, I know what medical transition is because I've, lived it. Hormones and surgeries, well, it can change your appearance, but they do not change your biological sex. We can respect every person's dignity while also recognizing that biology matters in certain spaces. Yeah, I brought this stand-up comic. There's a, I think, a Canadian stand-up comic. He's gay. I think Asian. And he said, he said, biology matters. He said, biology of course

matters. He said, I didn't know my biological dad. I was raised by my mom. my stepfather. So to me, just like, you know, trans women or women, except when it comes to X, my stepdad is my dad, except if I need a kidney, because biology matters. And you want to change that? Talk to God, man. Like, I can't change that. If I could, if I had the power to make it so people could just.

change their DNA, change their biology, of course I would. I don't want anybody to live a life they don't feel they should live. The thing that I find so sad about this, though, is that Sophie Cunningham came out and she seems like a very reasonable person. Yeah.

She's well-spoken. Yeah. She just said it's just so matter of fact. She was asked about it, and she responded. She said, yeah, you know, because she grew up as a girl playing a tough sport.

Yeah. And having to fight for, she had to fight for her right to be able to even get to where she is. Yeah. And, and, but I'll say this, and because I, I talked about this a few months ago as well. This is a woman who would probably gladly and proudly march with the trans community on 90% of their issues. But on this one where she has a stake and she's going to have a daughter one day, perhaps, this is one where she says, you know what, in this, we don't, we don't get everything we want in life.

What if LeBron James right now? Yeah. Decides, say, he goes, you know what, I'm going to take my talents to the WNBA? Yeah. Yeah, I self-identify and I'm going to go to a WNBA. Like, what say you now, Megan Rapino? But so you would probably get buy-in from Sophie Cunningham on 90% of the things that matter to you. But because you're not getting the last 10%, she is anti-trans and she is making, she is victimizing you. In what world, in what world do you get everything you want? In what world does everyone have to agree with everything that you believe in? She's getting raked over the coals for this. Yeah.

Just absolutely. And this is really just blown up. Well, let's listen to Stephen A. Smith, who gets some stuff wrong. But on this, I think he got it dead right. Sophie Cunningham said every word right on the money. There's no hate involved. There's only love we're talking about. But what happened to loving girls who are born biologically as girls?

What about their rights? What about fairness associated to them? Leah Thomas, I'm going to keep bringing that name up. 400 plus in the world competing as a male. Transitions to female, name is number one. If we're going to act like transitioning from male to female doesn't involve an advantage for that trans athlete, I have nothing to say to you. You're not, you're not exercising common sense. No, it's an unsurious argument to suggest that even somebody who transitions to a certain extent does not have.

have an advantage. It's not an attack. It is not an attack. People will say that, oh, it's because you don't. Who's saying anybody doesn't like trans? If you don't, if that's something that you're not, you don't agree with, that's fine. That's up to you.

But that's not what Sophie's saying. It's not what you and I are saying for sure. Yeah. And again, I will never defend myself against things I didn't say. Yeah. And I'm not going to let anybody infer from my words. I pick my words pretty carefully. And I'm sure Sophie Cunningham did too.

We are very careful on this show. We say what we mean and we mean what we say. And I will never defend myself against things I didn't say. And I will not defend beliefs I do not hold. And nobody has the right to put those things on me. If you're doing that, you've got to ask yourself why. But how is this still happening? How are we still in this space, the space where people,

we're allowing these people with their dark arts to be able to twist words and just get away with it? Because warfare is what fuels that side of the political spectrum. It's class warfare. It's sexual warfare. It's economic warfare. It's political warfare. It's social warfare. And there is an inevitable conclusion to it, which is death to the West, death to Canada.

It's all that stuff. It's all interconnected on that side. And some people think they're the dog when in fact they are the tail. Welcome back. And when I say the Crusades, most of you, most of us, let's be honest, I don't know much about it. Our knowledge begins and ends with Indiana Jones and the last crusade. But these were military and religious campaigns over the course of, I think, at least a couple of centuries.

And so there's no way there was one single reason, one single driving force, one single value system. And there's no way it was just, it was, I mean, there were multiple campaigns and multiple crusades. So let's dive into the nuance. of what a lot of people think is, can be summed up as a war between Christianity and Islam with our good friend, the host of Hostel History. David Boris, welcome. Hey, hey, hey, buddy, how you doing?

Well, I'm good. I'm glad you're bringing this up today. I mean, we, we are seeing these, you know, more and more religiously motivated attacks around the globe. And it's hard not to feel like we are in a, today, in a battle of, you know, a religious battle force, for civilizational supremacy. And so hard not to ask ourselves, is this the beginning of another crusade, I suppose?

But before we ask that question, why don't we delve into what the actual crusades were? Yeah, that's, I mean, you're totally right. And this is why this episode is so important. We're bringing on a colleague and friend, this great historian, Neil Christie, to really unpack what the crusades are. Because I'm sure, like you just mentioned in the intro,

most people think of the crusades as just an entree, contractable clash of two civilizations that can never get along that are always trying to kill each other. And of course, there are moments of that, but we're talking about, like you said, three centuries of sort of the crusading era at its peak, a lot more is going on than just bloodshed, hatred, and violence. So talk to me about the flashpoint that erupted the first crusade. Well, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. So we're in the late 11th century, 1096, is the start of the First Crusade. Now, the first flashpoint is, of course, that the Holy Land is captured by Islamic forces.

And that's the catalyst for sure for the Pope to call upon this crusade. But you have to understand another thing's going on in Europe at this time, Ben, and that is constant warfare between feudal kingdoms. And all of these Christian soldiers and warriors are attacking each other. And what better way to get this sort of Christian masculine warrior ethos outside of Europe then direct it towards the Holy Land. So, okay. So it's a desire to, what,

get people to stop fighting each other in Europe and all row in the same direction towards Jerusalem? That's absolutely part of it. 100% is just the Catholic Church was struggling with how many Christian feudal kingdoms were fighting each other constantly, petty lords to the biggest kingdoms possible. And so, hey, let's redirect that fury and passion

and warrior ethos to the other, to the infidel. And, and, but was there not a request by the Byzantine emperor for help? It was that? Yes. Absolutely part of it. There was letters, but there was a lot of letters coming out all the time to get Europe on board to help them.

There certainly was, there was repeated requests, but it's really these sort of two major. I mean, certainly the call of the Holy Land and then this sort of just getting that sort of those warriors directed in another direction. What better direction than the Holy Land. And how many crusades were there? Well, that's a great question. So there's traditionally five crusades, basically from to the 13th century. But, you know, there's a lot of other crusading going on.

I mean, if you look at the history of Europe, there's crusades launched in southern France. There's crusades launched on the Iberian Peninsula. There's crusades launched into the Baltic states. I mean, there is crusading going on everywhere. And then, of course, the language of crusade then gets co-opted by every major campaign over and over again all the way up till today. But you contend, and I guess you're going to talk about this on the show this week, that the story of the crusades of the crusading era isn't one of interminable, intractable war,

but there are also moments of peace and cooperation. Well, here's the crazy thing. There's far more moments of peace and cooperation than there is war. And I know that for most people listening, they're like, that can't be possible, that can't be true. But this is what we're unpacking in the show. We're looking at the ways in which, Cultures were living alongside each other, were cooperating, we're trading, we're exchanging ideas.

All of these things were going on. And the violence was actually the rare parts of the crusading period. So of those, you know, over 200 years of the crusades, how much of it was violent? I mean, there were battles, of course. And there was efforts to, you know, repress or sort of to control populations. But again, I really like these battles were rare moments. You have like, you know, a crusade takes four or five years. And in that you might have four or five major battles.

And of course, you actually, you probably even have less than that if I'm being honest. But the point here is the battles are what lives in, you know, legend, right? Richard the Lionheart, Saladin, all of these things. That's what stays in our mind. And the problem is, Ben, it's actually kind of dangerous to think that all this was was just violence and bloodshed and the two sides never could get along. Yeah, because I've got, in my head, I've got, you know, someone goes off to war for, in my head, if I had had to give you what I thought the Crusades were, it was like a guy, a group of people go off to the Crusades to go fight in the Holy Land and they come home 30 years later.

Yeah. And I mean, they certainly went away for a couple years. There's no doubt about that. Many of them stayed and formed kingdoms and things like that. But I think the real important part is that the warfare itself was not the main thing. that it was just always fighting, always fighting. There was so many examples of Muslim and Christian leaders trying to create, you know, if not peace,

at least prosperity for the kingdom they ruled. And guess who lived in those kingdom? Christians, Jews, Muslims, all living there. Now, were they all friends? I'm not going to say that. That's not the case. But were a lot of communities trying to get along? Absolutely.

And we see that in the evidence. Is there, are we capable of saying that somebody or one side won a particular crusade? Or is that language not applicable? If you want to frame it in purely Islamic Christian didactic sense, like just the two sides, well, I guess the Islamic side won because, of course, it became eventually the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic powers ruled that region for many, many, many years. But win loss is a difficult one because this is the key here.

Islam and Christianity aren't too homogenous. entities. They're not two teams that always work together. You have Islamic and Christian forces working side by side. There's many examples of that. And you have Islamic and Christian forces fighting each other as well. So it's a bit difficult to say one side one in that regard. As a classic historian, which I know is always annoying to people listening, there's more nuance and complexity to the answer than that, right? Is there, were there moments in the Crusades? I mean, if we say that it was, you know, the Christian, the Christian force is going into the Holy Land to fight.

Were there moments where the front shifted to Europe itself? I mean, in the crusading period, not really, though it's worth pointing out that the Ottoman Empire, who will eventually sort of emerge in centuries after the crusading period, they expand their control into southern Europe. I mean, there are Muslim populations still to the stay in southern Europe that have been there for centuries. And that's a product of the expansion of the borders of this Islamic kingdom,

this mighty Ottoman Empire. But I wouldn't call that as necessarily part of the crusading period. And certainly in our episode, we're really keeping it tight to sort of that 11th to 13th century focus on the Levant. It's really fascinating because we reference the Crusades. And it's pulled up by politicians all the time, always to make a point about, you know, good guys with white hats and bad guys with black hats.

And I'm very much looking forward to this episode because history is rarely, rarely about good guys and bad guys, except with Nazis. With Nazis, I think we can all agree, black hats all the way. But it's really interesting. Definitely. Yeah, but it's really interesting that you're attacking this through such a nuanced lens. I'm really looking forward to it. When can people listen to the episode and where can they find it?

The episode drops Wednesday early in the morning and it will be on all your podcasting platforms, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, et cetera, et cetera. So we hope everybody checks it out. It's going to be a great one. I'm excited to hear the response. David Boris, the host of Hostel History. Thank you very much, my friend. Thank you, buddy.

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