The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Starting point is 00:00:04 It's Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024. I'm Albert Moeller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, last night, the Vice President of the United States was interviewed on NBC News by Halle Jackson, and she was interviewed in her capacity as the Democratic nominee for the Office of President of the United States. Now, the Vice President's been giving a lot of interviews, and that's the case for just about all the candidates, and it is impossible and frankly unreasonable to give attention to each of them. So if we are giving attention to them, it's because something of particular importance happened. And in the NBC News interview last night, the two big issues to which I want to draw your attention are the vice president's responses on the transgender question and on the abortion question.

Starting point is 00:00:53 And as the campaign goes further on, one of the things we need to note is how the candidates reveal their positions, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not so intentionally. And honestly, the big game in the national media is catching one of these candidates and saying something which is at odds with what they have been saying. But on the side of Kamala Harris, let's face it, most of the mainstream media are leaning to the left anyway. And so they're not really trying to ambush her, but they are trying to get her on the record on several issues. And the agenda behind that could be varied. It could be people on the left who want to make certain that the Democratic nominee is committed to certain things publicly, before the election date.

Starting point is 00:01:35 Because once the election takes place, honestly, it's harder to get the kind of agreement you might be able to get in return for support before the election. So there are other issues that were addressed in the interview. I want to look at the issue of abortion and then the transgender question. So first of all, the issue of abortion. What has the vice president been saying? Well, what she has been saying rather insistently,

Starting point is 00:01:59 somewhat less consistently over the course of the last summer, several months, is that what she wants and all she wants is national legislation that would codify Roe v. Wade. So taking that at face value, it means that you would take the legal structure of the Roe v. Wade decision. Remember, that wasn't legislation. That was a Supreme Court decision, lamentably so, in which a majority of the justices simply invented a woman's right to abortion. But they declared it to be rather unlimited in the first trimester, tentatively, maybe more restricted in the second trimester. And they said the state, intervene in the third trimester. Now here's what we need to note. Consistently, the vice president

Starting point is 00:02:38 has tried to say two things at once, and they are contradictory. Consistently, on the stump, she has gone on to say that she believes that a woman's right to abortion should not be restricted. It should be entirely the woman's decision. Then she comes back and insists that what she wants to do, all she wants to do, as if this is a small thing and as if this is an honest thing, she says, is simply codify Roe v. Wade into law. Now, one of the things I want to point out is that those two statements are not the same thing. Seen correctly, those two statements are actually contradictory. Because as bad as Roe was, Roe did acknowledge the right of the state to restrict abortion in the third trimester.

Starting point is 00:03:18 But Kamala Harris is saying that she doesn't believe that it should be a question beyond a woman's control of her own body. She's not talking about trimesters there. She talks in code about Roe, codifying Roe, but what she's actually talking about when she describes her position is not row, it's way past row, and it would basically mean legal abortion all the way up until the moment of birth. And we'll just have to wait and see what comes thereafter. In the interview with NBC's Halley Jackson last night, Jackson asked the vice president about what concessions she would be willing to make in order to get, quote, something done on abortion access as soon as possible. The vice president responded. Well, first of all, look at what has happened since the Dobbs decision came down,

Starting point is 00:04:00 a decision that is a direct result of the fact that Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe. They did as he intended. And now in 20 states, we have Trump abortion bans, which some make no exceptions for rape or incest. She goes on and she issues words, but she doesn't answer the question. She doesn't say, as Jackson asked her to say, what concession she might put on the table. And the vice president came back directly, quote, I don't think we should be making concessions when we're talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body, end quote. Okay, she's talking about people who can get pregnant here, and that means, as we know, women.

Starting point is 00:04:42 But what I want us to note is the absolute categorical nature of what the vice president said. She said, I don't think, this is a direct quote, I don't think we should be making concessions when we're talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body. I want you to know what is absent there. What is absent there is any concession to the actual structure of Roe. What she explodes here, she just demolishes here. She blows up on the table in this interview the fact that she really even wants to limit the new legislation or whatever action would be taken to basically the enactment or reenactment of Roe. No, she's talking about unrestricted abortion throughout the entirety of a woman's pregnancy.

Starting point is 00:05:25 she continues to imply that. Again, she simply says, I don't think we should be making concessions when we're talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body, end quote. Fundamental freedom means a freedom that has a particular status in our constitutional system. Now, let's just state the obvious. The Constitution includes no right to an abortion. As a matter of fact, I'm in agreement with those who argue that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution does exactly the opposite. So then Hallie Jackson came back and simply said, well, what if you can't get legislation through, say, the Senate, or for that matter, through the House of Representatives in the shape you want at what concessions are you willing to make? The vice president came back and said, quote, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole with you right now. So in other words, the vice president of the United States, the current Democratic presidential nominee, unsurprisingly, we need to note, but with the complicity of so many in the media and beyond, she has basically called.

Starting point is 00:06:25 called here for absolute unrestricted abortion right up until the moment of birth because she acknowledges nothing else as a legitimate restriction. She talks about Roe, but then she runs as fast as possible from the actual structure, even of Roe v. Wade, as horrifying as it was. The other thing I want to point out is that this has been a consistent pattern. But then Hallie Jackson turned to the transgender issue. Here's the question. Quote, on the question of your beliefs what you believe in. I'll just stop there. It's interesting. She's saying here, I really want to know what you believe. She repeats it. She uses the word believe twice. What you believe in, quote, let me ask you this question. Very broadly speaking here. Do you believe that transgender Americans should have access

Starting point is 00:07:08 to gender affirming care in this country? End quote. Now, why are we talking about this? Well, we're talking about this. There are several reasons. Reason one, this is a pressing issue in the society, and we all know this election is going to have a great deal to do with what policies the federal government pushes, enforces, puts in place, etc. Two, we also know that this is a particular issue with Kamala Harris, the current vice president of the United States, who previously was the Attorney General of California and U.S. Senator from California, and who sided with extreme transgender rights when it came to her previous experience in previous office. Furthermore, she's offered no limitations on what would be

Starting point is 00:07:48 claimed by the transgender community as, quote, transgender rights. She's offered no constraints on that. The vice president responded, quote, I think we should follow the law. Well, that's an evasion. By the way, that's never wrong when it comes to this kind of context. It's never wrong to say you're going to follow the law unless the law is unrighteous. She doesn't believe the law is unrighteous. So when she says, I will follow the law, it means she supports the law. That's the same kind of evasion that was tried back in the 1970s by former president Jimmy Carter on the issue of abortion. He said, it's not so much what I think about abortion. He even issued some statements about his personal moral reservations on abortion, but he said, after Roe v. Wade, abortion is the law of the land,

Starting point is 00:08:30 I'll uphold the law. And that's kind of similar to what you have here from Kamala Harris. It's an evasion in this sense. But as you and I both know, that's not really the limitation here. It's not really just an evasion. It's an outright smokescreen from her actual position. So, Halley Jackson came back and said there, that means the Republicans are trying to define you on this. Quote, I'm asking you to define yourself, though, just broadly speaking, what is your value? Do you believe they should have that access? And quote, that means to, quote, gender affirming care. You know what that means.

Starting point is 00:09:01 The vice president then responded, quote, I believe the people, as the law states, even on this issue about federal law, that that is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary. I'm not going to put myself in a position of a doctor, but let's also understand, that Donald Trump is running tens of millions of dollars in ads to talk about two cases to distract from the fact that his policy and plan is also to take away the Affordable Care Act, which provides health care for tens of millions of people in our country. So I just thought in the spirit of fairness, I would go on and read through that, but what that is is an evasion. It's a smokescreen. The fact is that the vice president is already on the record, even in previous offices and in previous election cycles, as pretty avidly in support of the entire LGBTQ revolution. and agenda. And in this case, the evasion didn't even pass the test of NBC's Hallie Jackson. She came back saying, quote, I will move on, but I don't know that I heard a clear answer from you on the

Starting point is 00:09:58 issue of gender affirming care, end quote. Well, in this context, that's quite a thunderclap. I don't think I heard from you a clear answer. Well, that's because it was on purpose that she did not hear a clear answer from Vice President Harris. Hallie Jackson went on to say, quote, it sounds like what you're saying is there should be something between trans Americans and their doctors. It feels like that's a long way from, We See You and We Love You, which was your message to trans Americans in May. What do you want the LGBTQ plus community to know as they're looking for a full-throated backing from you for trans for trans Americans? The vice president said, quote, I believe that all people should be treated with dignity and respect, period, and should not be vilified for who they are and should not be bullied for who they are. and that is a true statement for me, my entire career, and that has not changed.

Starting point is 00:10:44 End quote. So, in other words, that evasion continues. But what that evasion tells us is that the vice president and current Democratic presidential nominee really does ideologically hold to what she has been saying all along. And remember that the specific context in which this question arose with her just one time was about taxpayers paying for so-called sex reassignment surgery when it comes to state. prisoners in California. So let's just say this. Up until the confusions she has offered of late, the fact is she's been stunningly clear on this issue. But one of the thing we need to note along

Starting point is 00:11:22 these lines is that the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal issued an editorial statement with the headline, Transgender Sports is a 2004 sleeper issue. We've discussed this issue before, but I do think it's important in light of all this to say that the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, a very considerable political and journalistic force in this country, has come out saying that the transgender sports issue is a sleeper issue in 2024. And what they mean by that is that it is likely that a vast number of Americans are more concerned about this even than they're letting on. This has come up, by the way, in the Ohio senatorial race in which incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, very liberal, by the way, is now being challenged even by national

Starting point is 00:12:07 organizations running advertisements against him, saying that he is, quote, too liberal for Ohio and that he had voted, quote, to let transgender biological men participate in women's sports, end quote. Now previously, already on the briefing, I've discussed this issue related to Senator Brown, and I pointed out the fact that when he says this isn't true, he's really not being honest, because he has basically supported legislation that would cut off federal funding unless people get along and follow this program. So in other words, it is indeed exactly what it's being presented to be, which is support for the transgender revolution when it comes to, for example, males participating in female sports. The fact is, the vast majority of Americans have a problem with that. We are living in a

Starting point is 00:12:53 very confused age, but it should be at least somewhat reassuring to us that creation order shows itself in such a way that a lot of voters, and I think probably a majority of voters, if they are acting consistent with their own moral impulses and instincts here. They're not going to support that, at least not yet. We have to hope that could represent at least some good news on the moral horizon. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board mentioned that last year 69% of Americans told Gallup, quote, that transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that can form with their birth gender. End quote. Now, that's pretty candid for the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal and pretty courageous in one sense. But they go on and say,

Starting point is 00:13:35 more. They say, quote, this isn't bigotry. For most Americans, it's a matter of fairness as well as the equal opportunity for women in sports enshrined in Title IX. They then go on to say, quote, not long ago, most Democrats believed in that principle, but these days the hard edge of the transgender movement has dictated that its view of gender must be imposed nationwide. Senate Democrats have towed that line, end quote. Sherry Brown has been one of the Democrats towing that line. Now we can only hope that voters in Ohio draw a very different line for Senator Brown. But next, as we are talking about the election, we need to focus, as I promised on the so-called swing states, what that means where they are and why folks in those states are besieged with an overwhelming amount of political

Starting point is 00:14:20 advertising and messaging and other people around the country. Not so much. It's why the two different tickets on the Republican and the Democratic side are spending so much time in these seven states. there isn't much chance that the Republican candidate's going to show up in Alabama because the Republican candidate's going to carry Alabama. There's not much chance that Kamala Harris is going to spend much time in her home state, speaking of California, because there's frankly no doubt which way California is going to go. But when it comes to seven states, these seven states are right now at the very center of political activity because these are the so-called swing states. What are they? Well, I'm going to give you those states, beginning with Pennsylvania, then Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona.

Starting point is 00:15:08 Now, the swingiest of them all is the state of Pennsylvania. And the fact is that Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes, well, that turns out to be absolutely crucial in all likelihood to either one of these candidates putting together a winning electoral college map. It's really hard to come up with a way to get to the magic number. 270 plus unless you carry Pennsylvania. And that's because when you look at these states, and I'm just taking Pennsylvania as the most important and strategic of them at the moment, it's because this particular state and the other so-called swing states are really the only states that are now

Starting point is 00:15:46 in play at this stage in the election. And thus which way they go amongst everything. Now, one of the things that former President Donald Trump was keen to point to is that when you had the claim, which is true, by the way. Hillary Clinton was telling the truth when she said that she had more votes in the general election than Donald Trump in 2016. True or false? It's true, but it's irrelevant when you understand that our constitutional system for electing presidents is not a nationwide general election with a popular vote. It is the electoral college. I think, by the way, that that is a very good thing. Otherwise, some of the states were talking about being the swing states, getting so much attention right now, if we went to a national popular vote, wouldn't be getting much attention at all.

Starting point is 00:16:29 If all we had was a national popular vote, then the two nominees could just spend all their time in the most concentrated areas of population, just roll up as many votes as they can get and let the rest of the country just watch. But the fact is, with the Electoral College, you've got to put together a winning map, and that electoral college is based upon representation and population. And just to put the matter clearly, you look at a state like California, Once the Democratic candidate has a clear plurality of votes in the state of California, she or he really doesn't need any more. That just adds up the numbers, and of course, history will record them.

Starting point is 00:17:05 But those numbers aren't important. The Electoral College numbers are what is important. And to get to the Electoral College magical figure of 270 plus, you really have to go through Pennsylvania. And increasingly, you have to go through Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona. Now, two of the states, there are interesting because they had been red states and they are now considered at least somewhat purple. That is to say, they had been leaning Republican, not necessarily with absolute consistency, but they have been leaning Republican. And honestly, both the Republicans and the Democrats thought that would continue longer than it did.

Starting point is 00:17:39 Those are the two states of Georgia and North Carolina. Now, here's something else to watch. That doesn't necessarily mean that a lot of people in North Carolina and Georgia have changed their minds. it means that there are a lot of new people in North Carolina and in Georgia. A changing electorate means a changing behavior of the electorate on Election Day. So if you're going to talk about swing states, North Carolina and Georgia might be the swingingest, but you have to add to that, interestingly, the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, because they're both Bellwether states right now. And remember that when it came to the 2016 election, Donald Trump was the

Starting point is 00:18:16 surprising winner in that region. And Hillary Clinton was. was the surprising loser. Just take the state of Wisconsin. Remember that infamously, it was remembered that the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, didn't visit Wisconsin once in that capacity. And guess what? She lost the state. She lost the election. What makes a state like Wisconsin or Michigan interesting in this respect is that a near neighbor is the state of Illinois, and it's just really solid blue, at least in terms of the population and the electoral college. And also neighboring is the state of Ohio, and the state of Ohio was once a swing state, but now it is pretty much, at least in its behavior in presidential elections, it is a red state. How red? We're about to find out. So Pennsylvania

Starting point is 00:18:59 stands alone, the Keystone state, in terms of its crucial nature. At least we think it does at this point in the campaign, but it's also clear that the two parties also apparently think it does. Citizens of Pennsylvania are being absolutely inundated with political messaging. As some citizens say, they dread going to the mailbox every day because they're not hearing from their cousin. They are hearing from a candidate. But once we leave the east and the Midwest, we really do have to go to Nevada and Arizona. And those are very interesting states. Nevada is very interesting not only because of its population distribution and composition. It's also interesting because it has so many workers in the gambling industry, in entertainment and hospitality, and they tend to be highly unionized. And so it's

Starting point is 00:19:47 just an interesting addition to the political factors there in Nevada. Arizona, Arizona, what's so interesting right now? Well, one of the things interesting in Arizona is that it is a state that is, at least in some cycles, seem to trend Democratic. It's also a state that has to face an awful lot of challenges with illegal immigration. It's also a state that has tended to elect, at least to the U.S. Senate, some very interesting figures, some of which have been and sometimes even called themselves Mavericks. In the later part of his career, you'd have to include the late Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. You'd have to add to that, of course, the late Arizona Senator John McCain, and now you'd have to add to that the now about to depart Arizona Senator Kirsten Cinema.

Starting point is 00:20:31 And so there is a tradition there, at least in senatorial and other statewide elections, when it comes to the presidential election, well, the sign that it is a swing state is the fact that Both parties, both tickets are spending time there. It's not because they like the climate. But, okay, looking ahead, tomorrow we're going to discuss on the briefing just how thin the undecided part of the electorate is anywhere in this country at this point, including the so-called swing states. That also will tell us something.

Starting point is 00:21:01 Finally, I want to turn to the issue of abortion and a letter to the editor that recently ran in the New York Times on Monday of this week. It was sent in by a woman from Guilford, Connecticut. Her name's not important to this, but her letter really is important. She's responding to an editorial that had run in the paper earlier. And she says this, quote, I find it difficult to understand why the heart has become a determinator of fetal life and abortion discussions and law when it's the brain that makes us truly human.

Starting point is 00:21:31 This letter writer goes on to say, quote, according to much neurological research, the brain doesn't reach its major development until the end of the second trimester about 24 weeks into a pregnancy, also known as viability. The brain then continues to develop through the ninth month of pregnancy, and certain parts such as the frontal cortex are not fully developed until adults reach their mid-20s. The final sentence? Quote, all of us, even lawmakers, should pay attention to the neurological science instead of emotional reactions to sounds, end quote. The sound meaning there, the heartbeat. But let's just look at what she says in this letter. This is

Starting point is 00:22:04 an astounding statement. It's why I take time to look at the letters to the editor. because sometimes they are, like this one, simply astounding. Notice that the logic, this woman says, we should depart from the heartbeat as any indicator of fetal viability and abortion before and after in some kind of line. We should leave the heartbeat and instead go to brain activity. And she says that brain activity doesn't reach its major development until the end of the second trimester. So is that when she's going to draw the line? But then she goes on to say the brain then continues to develop to the ninth month of pregnancy. Well, is that where she's going to draw the line? And then she's she says, and certain parts such as the frontal cortex are not fully developed until adults reach

Starting point is 00:22:43 their mid-20s. I simply want to ask the obvious question. Is that where she would draw the line? In the mid-20s? I point to this just to underline the fact that for Christians, we need to understand there is a bright line, and that bright line has to begin at the very moment when God says let there be life, and that life is detectable, period, and that life is present, period, whether it's detectable or not, whether it's known or not. The fact is that God has said let there be life. And at that point of conception, that's true conception or fertilization, we have a human person who must be recognized as such, whose life should be treasured as such, whose life should

Starting point is 00:23:21 be protected as such. At the end of the day, I can't even tell you exactly what this woman is arguing, but it was the lead letter chosen by the editors of the New York Times for Monday's print edition. That tells you something. It is a letter that rejects the heartbeat as a determinative moment and says we should turn to brain activity, but then turns out to say that brain activity continues through the entire process of pregnancy in terms of its development. And then it continues to develop. And by the way, she's right about this point until adults reach their mid-20s. Did she understand what she was writing

Starting point is 00:23:52 here? Was she at all aware or cognizant of the moral point she's apparently making here? She doesn't argue for drawing the line at some other point unless that some of their point is the mid-20s. Okay, this is the lead and it's the deadly. fallacy of the pro-abortion argument. But this underlines the big issue in the abortion controversy. We as human beings have no right after conception, after fertilization to say, oh, here's where we're going to draw the line. Before that, you can abort it will. After that, there'll be some restriction. We live in a political reality right now that is quite limiting, daunting, and frankly frightening. But if we're frightened by the current situation, just understand how frightened we should be,

Starting point is 00:24:35 if the logic of this letter writer to the New York Times prevails even a little bit. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on Twitter or X by going to Twitter.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsketeS.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boyscology.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.

The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, October 23, 2024

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.