The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's Wednesday, August 12, 2006. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. The Art and Ethics of Deception. All of that comes to the fore with the news that broke just yesterday in the mainstream media that the president of the United States, leaving a major summit event in Ankara, Turkey, was basically smuggled not only out of the country, but smuggled off of Air Force One in the United States. to a food container and then eventually onto a modified military jet that took him to England simply because the threats made credible threats in the judgment of the Israelis and the Americans threats against the life of the U.S. President originating in Iran. So it's a big story. It's the kind of story that would be in a James Bond movie or something similar. It's the kind of story that seems more likely upon first hearing to be fiction than fact,

Starting point is 00:01:00 but it is fact. and it turns out it's not unprecedented in American history. As a matter of fact, there have been repeated deceptions about the physical location of a president of the United States in the modern age. And this is a big story simply because of the national security ramifications, the sheer drama of it all, Americans and others understanding what's at stake in all of this. And then there is the entire issue of the ethics of deception, which by the way becomes involved in a larger ethical context. So, for example, let's just look at the facts that we now know. And we know this because senior government officials confirmed to the mainstream media, at least first in this, I think may have been the Wall Street Journal and then also the New York Times, basically then the Washington Post and just about everybody else is in on the fact that something big has happened here. And we're talking about a president of the United States appearing to go up the stairs into Air Force One, thus in order to take off. And actually the story is even more complicated because you now have the new presidential jet with the gift of the big 747 extended

Starting point is 00:02:08 and upgraded in terms of the accoutrements and the seating and all the rest. And not only that, the pattern, even the red, white, and blue pattern on the outside, it's in the presidential fleet, but it lacks, and the president's upset about this, but there have been military authorities who have acknowledged that it lacks some of the defensive capability against threats that the other two older 747s have. But in this case, the president didn't actually move to one of the older Air Force One, as they're often referred. It's actually only Air Force One when the president's on it. But those special mission jets known familiarly as Air Force One, he not only appeared to shift to it,

Starting point is 00:02:46 but we now know he shifted immediately off of it and doing so by walking through the plane into a food container, food service container, and then being put on a modified 757, military jet and then flown out of the country. The credible threats in terms of the killing of the president were very much here in the four. Now, at this point, let's just again remind ourselves of the facts. There was deception. There was intentional deception undertaken by the United States government to basically misrepresent where the president of the United States bodily was. He was not on the new plane. He was not on the older plane, often referred to as Air Force One.

Starting point is 00:03:29 He was in a special military plane, a modified 757, and that was not known until just the last 24 hours or so. Now, when you look more closely at the story, the deception becomes even more deceptive. Because the president went up the stairs. He turned and greeted with his wave and thus went into the jet. That was a very clear indication that the president was on the jet. it was also known that there were special security arrangements to the extent that the press on the plane, which they thought was Air Force One, the press was asked to lower the window shades and not to open them because of the security threat. They thought the president was on the plane they were

Starting point is 00:04:10 on. Later they discovered the president was taken off for special security considerations, which led some people in the press to say, well, we were a part, right, of that special security situation. our lives were endangered. We didn't know that the danger was so high. The president wasn't even on the plane. We thought he was on with us. All right. The special security situation, by the way, is not just in the context of the latest hostilities with Iran, although that's clearly a part of the background. The reality is the threats against President Trump on the part of Iran. Go back to the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, which was undertaken in January of 2020. Ever since then, there have been Iranian threats to assassinate President Trump. very bona fide, very clear, credible threats. And that was a factor we now know in the 2024 presidential election when the Secret Service had to undertake special security considerations because of that threat. And given the more recent hostilities, that threat has only grown. We now know, and it's been confirmed by military intelligence, that there were credible threats

Starting point is 00:05:13 against the president's life when there was this meeting there in Turkey. and thus the special security considerations, including sneaking the president off the jet, onto another jet, and all that became necessary as security considerations. All right. So it was a deception, right? It was an intentional effort to deceive those watching and observing right down to the press corps, by the way, and some members of the administration. They were deceived thinking the president was on that plane marked as Air Force One,

Starting point is 00:05:43 when actually had been taken off and is on another plane. Okay. So is it ever right to deceive? Now, you know that it's possible to lie with words, but it's also possible to lie with gestures and actions. So is this in the category of thou shalt not lie? This is one of the most difficult issues. And Christian ethicists and military ethicists have struggled with this for centuries. And this is a very long moral consideration. During World War II, when you had the allies over against Nazi Germany, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said that the truth is so precious it has to be guarded by a bodyguard of lies. In other words, Prime Minister Churchill said the only way we can conduct war is in circumstances in which we deliberately seek to deceive. We have to lie about our intentions. In the preparations for D-Day, the Allied invasion of Germany, the Allies undertook to deceive Adolf Hitler right down to inflatable tanks, made to look like tanks, in terms of military intelligence fights,

Starting point is 00:06:49 to put them in such a place that Hitler would miscalculate about where the invasion would take place. It turns out that was stunningly successful and crucial to the allied cause. Okay, so we know it is a sin to lie. But this comes down to the question about when you have deception in order to, say, do something that is righteous.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Now, clearly, this is not something that is at the level of, let's just say, parental admonitions to children. This is in a dark world in which we understand there are real threats, and Christians, I just want you to know, have been struggling with this for a long time. It's been a part of Christian ethical consideration for a very long time. In the Western Christian tradition, it has been understood that there are circumstances in which under extremists in order to protect lives, for example, and to protect liberty, you might say, just in the course of a war, that kind of struggle, there are inevitabilities in which the truth would be misused in such a way

Starting point is 00:07:51 as to bring about death. And so there is what just has to be admitted to be some form of deception. In Christian conversation, there have been open debates about whether it is possible and morally right to deceive someone who intends to do harm against another human being. And the basic Christian consensus in the midst of that excruciating moral condition is that it is not absolutely certain that such a thing would be right, although the protection of life is at times an overriding consideration, which is to say that there are people who would say deception is not right under any circumstance who probably would not tell someone who intended harm where their child was hidden. Churchill's statement also helps us to understand that in the moral extremity of war,

Starting point is 00:08:38 sometimes, and this is just an honest Christian statement, the Christian agent has to be committed to do the least thing wrong in the circumstance, the thing that is least wrong in a circumstance. And when it comes to something like hiding the president of the United States, I think most Americans would say, okay, that's pretty uncomplicated, given the threat, the credible threat. On the other hand, you have members of the press corps that are openly saying, hey, we were put on that plane when we are told there was a credible threat against the president's life,

Starting point is 00:09:09 but if there was an attack against the plane, it would have taken us as well. there's another aspect of this in which you have members of the press corps complaining that not one of them knew about the deception. And thus you go back to March of 2000 when the president on the plane or not on the plane was Bill Clinton. And it turns out that on a flight at that time in the year 2000 between India and Pakistan, the president, in that case, President Clinton was basically smuggled off the jet. but there was one member of the press who was told about it in order to have some press knowledge about where the president was. Now there is the complaint and the Washington Post is running this in terms of headline. Trump and Clinton both did plane switches, but only one told the press corps. And it turns out in this case that the Secret Service in the White House just made the determination that under this circumstance,

Starting point is 00:10:00 they could tell no one where the president actually was. It is also evident that it's a matter of frustration that this story is now out in public and confirmed by government authorities. There are people responsible for the president's security and for other security matters who are not at all happy that this has been disclosed. All of this gets back to something very interesting just in terms of worldview consideration. So here's a statement might not appear to be inherently connected. I assure you eventually it is. And that has to do with the fact that if you look at the entire, category, the entire genre of spy literature and espionage fiction, here's the most interesting thing.

Starting point is 00:10:42 That did not emerge from a secular source. It emerged overwhelmingly from a deeply Christian source. And you're looking at the fact that it was a good number of Roman Catholics, and it was a good number of others who were very much trained and educated in the Christian tradition, who understood the moral issues of spycraft in such a way that they created an entire genre of literature out of the political and moral crises of the 20th century, in which case you had spy fiction, you had Jean Le Carre and any number of other authors, Graham Green, and others who were writing famous work,

Starting point is 00:11:16 some of them made into movies and all the rest. So why did that emerge from a Christian context? And the answer is because in the Christian context, there is an understanding that truth is to be maintained and any deviation from truth has to be, justified under extraordinary circumstances. The extraordinary circumstances become the intensity of the plot in terms of not only the literature of espionage, but also of the craft of espionage itself. This moral issue was taken head on by Ralph McEnnerney, a Catholic professor of literature at the

Starting point is 00:11:52 University of Notre Dame. He asked the question openly, why is it that detective fiction in one sense, but in particular espionage fiction, why do these things emerge from a Christian context? And it is because the Christian understands these are issues of grave moral concern. That's what makes them most interesting. That's what makes them so excruciatingly interesting. And you know, it is simply a matter of Christian honesty. We have to admit there are some situations in which moral extremity is simply something we have to admit. I think most American Christians would say it was a righteous act to deceive would be assassins about the location of the president of the United States. I think those same Christians would say it is a sin to lie. And that raises

Starting point is 00:12:39 what at least some Christian moral theologians have is a distinction. And it has to do not only with the context, but also the motivation. But it's just a reminder to us that there are issues of moral extremity. These tend to show up, especially in conditions of extremity like war. So that's where you're going to find these kinds of things. And in terms of international politics and ongoing military action between the United States and Iran. This is a fallen world in which horrible things are plotted and credible threats are made. And we can understand, I think, why the United States government undertook extraordinary action to be absolutely unclear. Let's just state it most charitably about where the president of the United States was. It's also interesting,

Starting point is 00:13:24 just one final observation. When you look at the press coverage, the press coverage has to be a bit hedged itself, simply because they're not sure exactly how to say this. So, for example, the New York Times headline earlier yesterday was this, Trump said to have secretly used military jet to leave Turkey amid threats. For the Times, that's a pretty complicated headline. It's morally revealing in itself. Trump said to have secretly used military jet to leave Turkey amid threats. That's the other thing in this kind of context. The government, for reasons that are quite understandable, wants to admit at least the claim that comes down to plausible deniability. In a fallen world, that comes with moral consequence as well. Next, while we're

Starting point is 00:14:08 speaking about deception, we need to look at a related story, and this has to do with the big headlines about the resignation of a professor at Cambridge University. The professor's name, now former professor, Jason Arde. And just as a matter of interest, yesterday, his memoir was released in the United States for publication entitled Great and Unfortunate Things. Jason Ardey has been very much a figure of the ideological left, and he was celebrated in 2023 by Cambridge University, which claimed him as the youngest black professor in its history. He resigned, however, just a matter of days ago, saying, quote, I no longer wish to feel as though I'm living under a constant spotlight where every aspect of my life is subject to public examination and judgment. That came,

Starting point is 00:14:54 even as Cambridge University had been steadfastly defending him about claims that he had plagiarized and misrepresented his story and claimed false documentation and all the rest. Cambridge defended him until there was so much information out in the public square that Cambridge University

Starting point is 00:15:11 one of the most respected, one of the oldest, indeed most ancient universities in the entire world. It had to come back and say, now we're launching a formal investigation. Jason Arte did not want to go through that investigation, thus he resigned. But, you know, the story is going be investigated in the press and elsewhere for a very long time because it is a very big story.

Starting point is 00:15:31 Okay, the story of Jason Ardei was very much a part of his hiring at Cambridge University. And so even as he had been hired by one of the historic colleges there, even as he was given what basically is the rank of full professor in a very accelerated way, he was celebrated as the youngest black professor in history. And there are all kinds of overtones here just in terms of representation, identity politics, and all the rest. But it's also interesting that he largely was hired on the basis of his story. So it was a remarkable story, a story about a boy who was autistic and non-communicative until he was something like 12 or 13 years old. And then when he was, in his own words, just days shy of his 12th birthday, he spoke. And this was because we are

Starting point is 00:16:19 told that even as he's the son of Ghanaian immigrants there to the United Kingdom, he was raised in public housing in southwest London, he grew up struggling with autism. And quote, but miraculously, just a few days shy, my 12th birthday, I spoke. And that was in an exchange where I told with the speech therapist, quote, it was at the start of one of my sessions. Katrina just said, hello, Jason. At that moment, I was fiddling with my hearing aid, which is bothering me. Then I took it out out of my ear and said hello back to her. So that was supposedly the first time he communicated verbally. He said that he overcame these massive

Starting point is 00:16:52 learning developmental challenges that it would take him, quote, an hour to read and absorb a single page. He says he could not read or write until he was 18. He decided to go to college, had to have a friend, girlfriend, as he says, fill out

Starting point is 00:17:08 his application. He also got involved in other things, supposedly an attack. There was a severed animal head that supposedly was sent him as a threat. None of these things, it turns out, were verifiable. And then he ends up going into higher education. He ends up doing a doctorate in a lesser-known British university and then being hired by Cambridge, which, as I say, is one of the most illustrious academic brands,

Starting point is 00:17:35 rightly so in terms of history of the world. And so we're looking at a story. It just appeared to be remarkable. And it was remarkable in other ways as well. So, for example, in telling his story, and even in presenting himself to the press, he was a hero, according to his own record, in terms of public service and all the rest. He claimed to have completed 30 marathons in 35 days raising... He claimed to have completed 30 marathons

Starting point is 00:18:06 in 35 days raising money for charity. He claimed in the millions of pounds, millions, multiple millions of dollars. And, well, number one, let's just say, he also claimed that at least in the course, of those 35 days in which he, we're told, ran 30 marathons in 35 days, he also fractured his leg and it swelled twice its eyes and he continued running. Now, under any normal circumstance, that would be a very dubious claim, just to state the obvious. That doesn't sound right. He stated

Starting point is 00:18:37 it over and over again. It also appears in his book. But that becomes a matter of public record when you look at the money contributed and no charity came up with any kind of money like he talking about. There's no record of him being in these events. It turns out that he claimed to have held some academic post that he did not. And he also had written things that were published, and he did not, and they were not. And so it's just one of these massive stories. It's a house of cards, and it exists, and it holds together, and it celebrated, and Cambridge pointed to him over and over and over again, and then the house of cards began to fall, just a couple of cards at first, and before you know it, the entire structure falls.

Starting point is 00:19:17 that's a huge morality tale. And it also has to do, in this case, with a situation that's in the larger context, the worldview issues here are massive. One of those larger contexts is identity politics. And it is very interesting that in the pressure on Cambridge University, before the hiring of Jason Ardei, students in the education programs there, 152 current and former students in the faculty of education called upon, they demanded that Cambridge make basically reparations to decolonize.

Starting point is 00:19:49 This goes back to the British Empire and the claim that, you know, there's enormous prejudice and enormous oppression that came by means of the colonization. And thus, this is a part of the woke culture in which the claim was the university, the elite university, like Cambridge. It was overwhelmingly committed to white privilege. And by the way, there's still very few black professors in the elite British university system. it's one of those things that created a political context. Jason Ardey's hired.

Starting point is 00:20:20 Again, he's celebrated. It turns out no one did the adequate checks of the obvious to find out if the story was even credible. And when we're talking about this story, let me just refer to the fact that we talk about the claims about autism and reading and all the rest, you know, not to mention the marathons and even more, it's one of those things in which you just have to say, this sounds like a fantasy. It sounds like in literature, what is called fantasist literature.

Starting point is 00:20:43 It sounds like something you're supposed to recognize as ridiculous, but it was presented as true. The Times of London admits that there are just huge problems. Quote, the Board of Electors that appointed him has come under scrutiny after the head of the faculty claim that his research was the best in the world. So he was presented not just as having adequate academic background, but among the best in the world. Quote, a Times. So this is the Times of London, very respected newspaper. A Times investigation has found that his journal articles contained impossible data and evidence of fabricated interviews. Okay, so this raises a whole set of issues in many disciplines in, say, the old arts and sciences curriculum, as it was known, and I think rightly honored in the world of higher education.

Starting point is 00:21:32 There were very limited, focused ways of conducting research, and it has to do with complete documentation, intellectual, a credit given where it is due, analysis based upon historical texts and all the rest, or in the world of the sciences, you follow the absolute rules of whatever is the respective science. You have to document your research. When it comes to the social sciences, everything has always been softer. The ideologies have always been much closer to the bone, and not only that, very evident on the skin. And so when you look at something like this, you recognize, okay, this would be in this kind of school of education, This would be in the realm that's often defined as sociology, and we're going to be talking about that more in coming days because there is a huge controversy now in the field of sociology in the United States as well. I think most Christians don't understand how ideologically committed that field of study is.

Starting point is 00:22:27 And you can look at this and you can understand that even in that world, there's still competition. You still have people who are in the field and they're going to at least question your work when it comes down to just the statement. things such as the collection of data and the publication of interviews. It turns out if they were impossible, let's just take the obvious, that should be a problem. The Telegraph of London, a more conservative but major influential newspaper in London ran an article just in recent days the headline the Jason Ardei memoir that's put in quotation marks for reasons we now understand that now appears to be more fiction than fact. That raises another issue, which is if you're writing what is supposed to be your story, you're writing in the first person, and you're making claims, you know, that's a

Starting point is 00:23:14 morally significant enterprise. And if it's presented as a memoir, it better not be a fantasy. And again, when you're looking at human memory, I think all of us would give a certain allowance for the fact that when you're looking at this, you'd understand that, you know, things that happened long ago and other things you'd understand, it's difficult, you know, to document in the same way. But when you are talking about staking your entire reputation on a story that includes 30 marathons and 35 days and money that was raised and never showed up anywhere in places you didn't go and positions you didn't hold, that turns out even in the world of higher education still to be a problem. Okay, as is almost always the case. When this

Starting point is 00:23:54 kind of story breaks, there's an immediate shock and then people begin to talk about the story. They begin to investigate. Other journalists get involved. I think a really important article was published at the New York Times about this is by Jesse Single. Headline, A Top Scholars Fall shows that universities don't get it. And one of the things he says is that you have these elite universities, and they basically cut themselves off from an awful lot of criticism and even open, honest questions. So, for example, listen to this.

Starting point is 00:24:24 And it's about Jason Arday, quote, the British publication Times Higher Education. By the way, it doesn't get more elite than that. That's like it is the main news vehicle about higher education in Britain, is associated also with the Times. The Times higher education was preparing a story on Mr. Ardey in 2025, so that's a year ago at least. And this group Retraction Watch reported that it had happened, quote, which was to include evidence of extensive plagiarism in his 2015 PhD thesis from Liverpool John Moore's University.

Starting point is 00:24:57 Mr. Arde then hired the prominent British defamation firm, Carter Rutte, that's a law firm, which sent the outlet a threatening letter that appears to have killed the story. the scandal broke only when the philosopher of biology, Nathan Koffness, published a lengthy substack post last month, dragging everything into the open. So let's just say that that also brings another angle to this, which is that this man had successfully used a law firm to sue or threatened to sue an organization for working on a story that turns out to be true. I guess one other observation as we look at this is that eventually the truth will

Starting point is 00:25:32 out. Eventually, in most cases, it does. certainly did in the case of Jason R. Day, and perhaps with more global consequences, even with the travel, recent travel of a president of the United States. That's something else we just have to keep in mind, and that is that even if in this life, even if in this entire historical epic, such things are not known, the day is coming when before the sovereign judge of all, all things will be disclosed. Finally, let me just say that we're waiting until tomorrow in order to have a

Starting point is 00:26:04 adequate election results to be certain. We know how to talk about the results of the voting on Tuesday. That will come tomorrow on the briefing, and we've got big issues to discuss. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsd.u. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing. Thank you.

The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, August 12, 2026

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