The Chris Cuomo Project - Former Pastor John Pavlovitz On How Trump Took Over Christianity

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

John Pavlovitz (author, “A Bigger Table,” pastor, and Substack Writer, “The Beautiful Mess”) joins Chris Cuomo to examine how Donald Trump and MAGA have transformed conservative Christianity, why political identity has become so difficult to break, and whether Americans can still be persuaded out of increasingly extreme political camps. Pavlovitz argues that Christian nationalism has become a “Jesusless Christianity” built around power rather than the teachings of Jesus, and explains why he sees Trumpism as a cultic movement that has replaced traditional sources of moral authority with loyalty to one person. Chris and John also debate whether the left has its own problem with ideological purity, the rise of the DSA as an alternative to the Democratic establishment, and why frustration with the status quo continues to fuel political disruption. They discuss Chris’s concern that Islamophobia could become MAGA’s most effective distraction heading into the midterms, the difficulty of combating fear of Muslims in a country where many voters have little exposure to Islam, and what could happen if Americans lose faith in the legitimacy of the next election.   Join The Chris Cuomo Project on YouTube for ad-free episodes, early releases, exclusive access to Chris, and more: https://www.youtube.com/@chriscuomo/join Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you get to a better place when it comes to understanding our politics and what must win and what must lose? That is the fundamental. That is the fundamental goal. That is what is lost in the sauce of all of this. No, they're worse. No, they're worse. Well, there is a voice with a message that is both saleable and strategic and soulful. and spiritual and connected to the greater logos, the greater reality of what we say we want to be

as ethical humanists, as people of faith, as people of goodwill. And it comes in the vessel known as John Pavlovitz. John Pavlovitz. Now that may not sound like what it is as an entity, not by the name and not by your reputation or your understanding of it. But he has ideas that are gaining traction, and his platform is growing and growing. And I think it's because he is targeting exactly where most of us live in here and in here. And I wanted to talk to John about what he sees as the alternative to where we are in our politics and what will get us there, and what would that serve, and what is being served by where we are right now,

and what is truly our biggest challenge? This is the man who wrote the seminal work a bigger table, but then realized that he had to change some of who he would invite to that table. And why did he do that? John Pavlovitz is a leading voice. in social media's best, best areas of understanding and conversation. And I believe he is a good way to point forward. So I wanted to sit down with the man who is the author of The Beautiful Mess on Substack,

which you should check out right now. Well, right after you listen to this. John, thank you very much for taking the opportunity. How do you want people to know you? If they don't know your work already and they're being introduced to you, what do you want people to know? Well, Chris, I'm a former pastor, pastor in the local church for almost three decades. And my journey took me up until about 2015 when a presidential campaign. campaign started, and I began to see changes in my church and in the churches around me, and I felt

more and more compelled to speak out as to what I was seeing regarding race, gender, sexuality, and the political scene. And so that led me to where I am today, which is sort of being on that intersection of faith and politics, which is a really uncomfortable place for many people to reside. Is there such a nexus? Well, there is, and I think, think partially we're seeing because of the Republican Party's evolution into what they are now, politics and religion are now inextricably combined in that party. And so the rest of us have to respond to that, whether we're people of faith or not. And so I try to speak in a way and write in a way that is accessible to people, whether they have a religious background or not.

Do you still consider yourself religious? I do. I do. I'm sort of a spiritual mutt at this point. You know, I was raised Catholic and ended up wandering away from my faith in my college years. And I was a hopeful agnostic, I guess you could say at the time. And then ended up in ministry, which was a complete surprise to me, ended up as a pastor in the Methodist Church for about 17 years. And so that has been a really interesting evolution as someone who didn't plan to go into ministry and then finding out what ministry was really like. and the political nature with a small p of what it means to be a pastor. One interesting detail is one of the churches you were with said, yeah, this isn't the right fit for you.

It has never been the right fit for you. Why do you believe that that was told to you? Well, you know, Chris, that was a Southern Baptist church plant. And so at the time, it's a perfect storm of how to make the wrong decision on both sides. but I ended up in a church where previously I had an equity of trust in the church where I had been in this mega church in North Carolina. And so I could nudge the congregation. I could speak about issues in a way that was maybe a little more bold and more explicit than many pastors. And when I arrived at that new church, that was simply not what they wanted. And in fact, their politics was coalescing around this new movement with Donald Trump.

And so it was just, it was a terrible marriage. And so they, you know, after five months I say I was, I heard God's voice calling me to leave that church and it came in the form of my pastor's voice saying you're fired, which turned out to be beautiful thing because five or six weeks later, I write a blog post called If I have gay children. And that brought me to a national audience simply because I could speak with a clarity, with a specificity that I couldn't as a local church pastor. So that is where I was introduced to you. And we must discuss the great, phrase that you just threw out there, which is equity of trust, because I believe it's a metaphor for so much of the extremism and what is ailing us through the binary prism of our party politics. But the idea that you had to figure it out, you had to figure it out and what the message was going to be. and the original iteration was a bigger table,

which I like it because it is one, I always thought that the easiest reckoning of Jesus' message, no matter who he was, okay, was inclusivity. And especially to include those that others do not. So for me, the bigger table, your metaphor, was perfect as an extension of Jesus. And I think one of the big hypocrisies of religion is when they get judgy because that was clearly not Jesus's thing.

And then they start playing with the orthodoxy of the written word, which is only something that evangelical seem to be comfortable with. Okay, and on and on and on, people are sick of all that. However, however, isn't it interesting that both of us probably yearn for the days of explaining the people that gay is okay, that here, Here's what you do if you have a gay kid. Turns out you love them just like if you have a straight kid. And that now parents all over this country are praying for gay if they have to deal with something with a child because of how much more complicated things have gotten.

How do you understand that dynamic? Well, I think, Chris, when you refer to where we've been, I think at the time I wrote that piece, it was a, I think. sense that I wanted to humanize something that conservative Christians dehumanized. I didn't want them to see it as an issue, but as a human being. And I think that is still the fight because what we see about the worst of religion and politics is a dehumanizing of the other to the point where we will allow anything to happen to them. In fact, we will feel good about something horrible happening to them, perhaps even because of the story that we've been told. And so I'm always trying to make sure that we see, the humanity that trickles down from our political structure.

You know, this is not just political ideology. It's not just policy. This is flesh and blood human beings trying to figure out how to live. And I think if we can try to retain that in our religion and our politics, we're just going to be better humans. And I think you're right. The message of Jesus was this, you know, there's a story that all four gospel writers tell, and it's Jesus feeding the multitudes.

And whether or not people know that, there's this miraculous event, but people and myself even at the time, I focused on the how of the story. You know, how does this even happen? But really, the focus should be the who and the what, and the who is Jesus, and the what is Jesus feeds people. There was no litmus test for their theology or their past history. You know, their hunger and Jesus' compassion made them worthy to be fed. And I think that's just the impulse that most people have is that empathy is that at the core of really the best way to be human. I think too many people go into religion these days

because they wanna be better than someone else. And they want that as a symbol. They like to put that crucifix next to their name as if somehow it exempts them from the shame they should feel for all the shit they put out on social media. So I wanted to give people a taste of your background. And also of your name, most vitson,

I know are Jews. How do you have that name and be so Christian? That's a good question. Well, you know, my father growing up was Russian, at least to my understanding, throughout my life. And my mom is Italian, but we had very few relatives on my father's side. So culturally, I was raised in an Italian household, which of course was Roman Catholic, and my father was sort of folded in by marriage, I think, to that Catholic. So I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith with a really strong sense of that story as my default setting. So, and it is a Russian name, and there are a lot of Soviet Jews that wound up fleeing into the diaspora at different points. Right, right.

And that's why we have become familiar with that suffix, that ending of that name as being a nod towards Judaism, but that is a limited reckoning of the end. ethnic background of it. So now that we cleared that up, all right, so now we get into present day, and I wanted people to get a taste of John. Look, here's why I wanted them on the podcast, here's why I want them on News Nation, here's why I want them on the radio. You've got to get back to your best thinkers, okay? Our culture doesn't prize philosophy. It doesn't prize thinkers. It prizes effectiveness, and the ideas are getting more and more extreme, and it's all about targeting the other side. Is Mr. Pavlovitz getting drawn into that? Have you pulled a few chairs away from your bigger table as you seem to become more and more convinced that this is not a

battle of ideas? This is a numbers game and this is a good and evil game. Yeah, I think, Chris, I was just talking yesterday. I spoke in a local community and I talked about writing a bigger table and I wrote that during, you know, 2015 around that time. And I said, I wish you could have met me then because I was a different person. I was effervescent. I was bubbly. I was optimistic about the future. I think what's been happening, Chris, is someone like myself, I am privy to stories.

People give me a front row seat to their experience of being human through this platform. They write me, they send me emails, and they share with me their suffering and their pain. And you acquire, you accrue that enough over a decade. and you feel a responsibility you hold that, at least I do. And so that tends to bring out a defense posture in me for marginalized oppressed people. I'm still trying to retain the humanity of those who differ. But a decade into this, there are a lot of excuses or rationalizations that would have been fine eight, nine years ago, that I just don't think hold up anymore.

The body of work that we have seen is so, you know, so grotes. that I think people's morality has to kick in, and that's my frustration. It's how many people, whether it's through their actual beliefs or it's of self-preservation, they simply can't admit that they tethered themselves to this movement or to this man. Trying to ferret that out is difficult. So some days you win the battle, and some days you don't in keeping people together as opposed to driving through that separation. Why are so many Christians on the side of mega. Well, I think, you know, Chris, knowing what I do about, about Christianity, having grown up in it, I think for decades, people have been weaned on a faith that's based

on fear, fear of the other, fear of being replaced, fear of your neighbor. And when you're, you know, I say no one is at their best when they're terrified. And what conservative and religion and politics do is they keep people in a state of fear. And so you're not making good decision. And I think that's really at the root of a lot of this. And you talked about religion. When you're in a religion that says, you are part of this thing and nobody else is, or you are better than,

it breeds an easy contempt for people who are not like you, whose stories are not like your own, whose skin does not match yours. I remember looking at the back of the missile, M-I-S-S-A-L. I met with my father at Latin Mass 6 a.m. Agnos dei, quittoles peccato, Mundi, my father and his basso Profundo would be there. And I'm reading on the back of the missile,

and it says, to our Protestant brothers and sisters, you are welcome to come, but you may not take the Eucharist, to our non-Christian brothers. You are welcome to be here, and I was like, what the? And I remember asking my father,

because we would walk there, walk back. And we're walking back to Albany, it's freezing. And I'm like, what about this? And he stops and he looks at it and he says, ignore that. That is the work of men, not of God. It's not the faith. It's the religion. One is what men make it into, which is almost always flawed.

And the other is what we aspire to. Focus on that. And we never discussed it again, except for him to constantly dismiss people who labored under the illusion that their so-called religiosity made them better than anything else. I don't think that's a winnable battle in our current political situation. And somehow, the least religious president in my lifetime seems to be the biggest beneficiary of the religious vote. Yeah, well, what you've got, Chris, is, you know, I grew up in Syracuse, by the way. I heard Albany.

So my story is as a New York story. for me what you see is a Christianity. I really call it a Jesus-less Christianity, and it's one that is being, it's based on power, and that was never the Christianity of Jesus. It was always a movement of the street. It was always gathering people who were on the fringes and the outcasts and those in need.

And so you've got this opulent sort of power, Christian nationalism thing, if there's no resemblance to the teachings of Jesus. And that is why someone like Donald Trump can easily blend into that because it's no longer, it's no longer even evangelical Christianity. It's simply Trumpism. It's a cultic movement with religiosity, you know, sprinkled in. Another reason that I bring John to you is you do not have to have faith in anything bigger than reason to really benefit from what he says and writes. It's not about trying to get people to be

churched up or believe in any God or anything like that. He's, everything is consistent with ethical humanism that he argues and that he presents. That's right. Now, the, why is Donald Trump's administration, his presidency, a cult, in your opinion? Well, I think when you, when you find yourself replacing all of the previous systems or methods that you had for establishing your moral. or virtual or your center of virtue.

So in other words, I used to rely on the Bible, but I no longer need the Bible because I've got what Trump says. Or I used to rely on conservative values and that Trump is not really perpetuating. And yet, so I'm going to, I'm going to choose him. I'm going to choose him over people who are qualified and physicians and, you know, generals and people who I've respected, the moment they deviate from this, one human being, then they are persona non grata. And so once you find yourself replacing everything that you relied on for wisdom or understanding

or knowledge or compassion, that to me is a cultic movement. And so, you know, in trying to talk to people, they really, it's like talking to someone and having them change their football team. They're rooting for the jersey. They're rooting for Trump for whatever reason. Their identity is now tied to him. And they can't emotionally pull themselves away. See, I think that gets it.

That last piece. I don't think it's him the way, look, I've taken down quite a few gurus in my day, and I've done a lot of reporting on actual cults. And this is somewhat more sophisticated and difficult for me to deal with than those because it's not as simple as saying, you know this guy isn't who you think he is, right? because that's been done to anyone's satisfaction with Trump. So if it's not that they have a misunderstanding about his business acumen, his wealth, his character, his persona, his motivations, if they are somewhat almost frighteningly clear-eyed about most of that. And most of the magafoke I talk to, none of them want him to date their mom, okay?

None of them want him to babysit their kids, you know. And they may not even let him into their golf club because he cheats. But there is a tether. And you use the word identity. And we throw that word around, but I don't think we often explore it. And that's an opportunity that we have here now. What does that mean? So it's not just that, I just think Trump is the best and he's everything I want to be.

And I would just love. And he's just great. And he has a closer connection. to God. It is none of those things. So then what is... Right, right. Well, I think we all want to be seen and heard and known and we want to have someone who speaks on our behalf. And for whatever reason, Trump has been able to communicate that to people who have found a home nowhere else, whether in politics or religion. And I think that that feeling that people have as part of that movement, even if that movement is based on a grievance that they have with someone else,

I think whatever that does, that sense of community, even though that community in reality is harmful to them is something that they're drawn to. And I don't think they can even verbalize it and intellectualize it, which is why debating is really so difficult, because you can just sense that someone is not able to be reached through the normal ways we might usually reach someone, data, facts, you know, stories of marginalized people. And so that's the frustrating part about it. So let's deal with our frustrations, brother. First one is, and I'll do it. If people are looking, so a beautiful mess is the substack where you can find John. He's got well over 100,000 subs on there. Some are paid, most are free.

You can find him anywhere, but I'm telling you, he puts out a lot of work on substack. And if you're a reader, it's great. I actually think you're even better on video. But, you know, there is a respect that I have for the written word of taking the time to absorb, to absorb. The reason there are books all over my desk and I read things over and over again is that there's something about the pencating, the process that I think is helpful and I think you deliver it very well. However, Mr. Pavlovitz is struggling like the rest of us. Is it still a beautiful mess? Oh, it definitely is, Chris.

It's just a little more messy than beautiful right now. I think the... Where is the beauty? Show me the beauty. You know what? The beauty is in, you know, I stepped into this community yesterday, and I said, I inventoried the last decade, and I said, you know, I listed all of the losses and all the things we grieve over.

And I said, but yet here you are showing up today to say, okay, even though you said a million times, I've had it, I'm out, you show up. And I think that's what we do every day. And I think that does not trend. It does not make, you know, social media headlines. But there are beautiful, small acts of just beauty and goodness happening everywhere. I had a guy say to me years ago, you know, John, there are two news feeds in my life. There's the news feed of the news and social media.

That is the big and loud. And it's always going to give me the horrible stuff because that's what it wants me to see. But he said there's a smaller news feed. And it's in the community where I live, in the people. I know in the organizations that I'm a part of. And if I stay in that small news feed for a while, it's really easy to find hope. And so it is beautiful. I think we have the storytellers right now are part of this minority who want us to believe that America's worst days are over. And we just have to be defined enough to say, well, we're still here. So there's another option.

Our best days are over, which is an impossible thing to believe, by the way. It can't be. if you have any kind of intellectual curiosity. It just can't be. But the power of suggestion is strong. So Brother John finds himself in Italy, and he writes a very beautiful piece about how being there made him reminded him of certain realities that he wanted to bring back home

and pass to the rest of us. So you don't have to be in Italy sipping actually good espresso, to come to the realization that you did, other than coming back and saying, why is the pasta there so much better and it doesn't make me fat? So what did you bring back from your trip

that you want to pass along? Well, Chris, what I found was that this trip gave me what you said we can have anywhere, which is space to exhale, to breathe and to step away from the fray of an information ecosystem that wants to make us fearful and wants to bring up the anxiety and put us in fight or flight.

But when we do that, when we pull away, we begin to reckon with how much we've lost, you know, the people who we no longer are close to, the legislation that has passed away, the human rights that have fallen. And to realize that that's not normal, that it should not be the default setting of a nation to constantly have to wake up every day and to marshal every resource to prevent its own government from doing harm. And I think that's the difficult thing we have been immersed in this perpetual urgency, this relentless crisis for so long that it's altered our emotional systems. And we all need to figure out how to put a pause on that and stay human, you know.

And I think you talked about, you know, being a content creator, which I hate that term, but there is this idea that you've got to speak on this, you've got to talk about this, you've got to do this. And that keeps people like me in a place where we're not able to pause. and reflect and say, what's really going on here? And so I'm trying to be more wise about how I do that so that I can help others do the same. You said something as a persuader, which is a category I would put you in. You said in one of your recent pieces,

okay, stop debating, stop persuading. You're not going to persuade. Our hope is to outnumber them. Who is them? and how do you outnumber and what is the goal? Yeah, well, I think, Chris, if you look at, you know, my work, as you mentioned, you know, empathy is at the core of that. And so if we can create a movement of empathy and we can talk about politics, I think right

now the left continues to push something that's, we're not that thing or we're not, you know, we're pushing against something. And that needs to happen. You need to call it injustice. But we also need to build and create something that is compelling and that people want to take part in it. And so the them is people who refuse to see their neighbor as as valuable as them. You know, I always say Trump supporters are never threatened by me. I want them to be able to vote. In fact, I'm actually for them because I want health care for

their families. I want the great public school system for them, for their families. All of the things that I want for my people, I want for them. I don't think that's reciprocated by a certain number of people. They are living a scarcity mindset. It's a zero-sum game. Someone else's gain is my loss. That is them, the people who say, I refuse to allow a diverse humanity around me because I feel that is a threat. So that's what I'm trying to create is an idea of there is this better way to be human. There simply is. And so that's what I try to do. How do you deal with the simple logic of the other where they say, John, I'm totally with you. They're not here legally.

If they're not here legally, then they need to go. And that's all this is. And I don't understand anything else than that is just you being okay with illegality. And how do you have a just society if you're okay with people just not following the law? Well, that's where we run into. you know, I can have any sort of conversation with anyone about anything, but there has to be some sort of basis of objective reality. And so if I were to say, well, let's look at the people that ICE has incarcerated or arrested or harmed

and look at the number of them who are actually illegal immigrants. But that's where the person on the right, they just don't want to hear that. They want to make the statement that you made and they want that to be where the period is. And I think that works for theology, too. They have a certain number of scriptures. They know what those scriptures mean. They'll give you those. And when you say, but Jesus actually said this, it stops.

So that's the frustrating part is how can we keep making sure, how can we allow people to hear nuance or something that is not their default narrative? And that's been so ingrained that it's almost impossible to release them from. So I deal with that every day. I just put out a video about shock gloves. and it's missing the point. Put body cameras on, not shock gloves for ice. You don't need another way to hurt people.

And the pushback is immediate and specific, which is they're getting attacked because people like you, me, are making people hate ice, which is certainly not my inclination at all. And this is just about law. and order. They are arresting people who aren't here legally, and if you are not okay with that, then you want no laws and open borders, and everything's okay, and that's not okay. And I got to tell you,

I don't see the needle moving off that point. No, and when you have this idea that there is no, everything gets pulled to that, to the pole, everything gets pulled to the extreme. So you're right. So the moment, you know, I always lament, Chris, that as someone who was a pastor, decades, I've never been invited by a conservative Christian church to come and speak. I've been invited by progressive Christian churches, synagogues, mosques, humanist conferences. And yet, I think that conservative evangelical mindset, just like the political, you know, partner of it, does not want to actually have dialogue because it needs to control a very specific narrative. And once you invite critical thinking into that, it blows up. And that I think, you know, humanist conferences,

because there is an openness to dialogue. And I lament the fact that in that specific conservative Christian evangelical subculture and its political partner, that is not welcome. Because once critical thinking enters the picture, once people can begin to question the story that they've been raised in, then that's a house of cards for those who lead them. And so I've always been trying to help people kind of see the cracks in the system that they are part of. And as a, as a pastor, I entered the ministry not wanting to be a pastor.

And it gave me different questions. It gave me a different lens through which I saw the church and the ministry in general. And so I'm always trying to help people see that the story that you been raised in might not be the full story and there might be an alternative for you. Do you see yourself as political? I see myself political in the way that I guess, I would see Jesus as political. You know, when I started this, I had written for a while online as a pastor, and I never mentioned political parties or candidates specifically.

And it was only as, you know, I began to evolve through this that I said, I need to speak with some sort of specificity here because I think there's a dangerous ambiguity that we often speak in. So I could say to a Trump supporter, I'm for family. And they could say, I'm for family too. But if I say, but I'm for family, even people who are the same gender couples, well, all of a sudden, our ideas of family are very different. And so we think we need to eventually get down to those details. So naming what is, every church says that it welcomes everyone, but really they don't all welcome everyone.

But you also believe that, or you've evolved or you've changed, whatever, you know, you explained it the way you want, that, well, I have. have a but also. Everyone's welcome at the table, but you have a butt now, which is? Well, actually, the but was in the original book that said that the table is bigger because everyone is seen as a full-fledged human being morally equal. And if you can come to that table and see the other, not as lesser than yourself, then you're welcome there. And I think that's the, you know, if someone sees a Muslim as their moral inferior, it's going to be really hard to bring them together. Or I like to say, if I want to bring a 65-year-old Southern Baptist guy, white guy,

and a transgender teenager together to the table, it's a much bigger ask of the transgender teenager because their value is in question. So that's sort of how I try to differentiate it. When you look at our political state of play, where do you believe we are? Well, I think right now we're seeing that there is a deep desire for politicians who are for the common good. And I think we're not seeing that, certainly not in the Republican Party,

but many people are not seeing it in the Democratic Party. I think you're seeing a lot of unrest right now. There's a frustration with voters that is completely understandable. This is not working, right? Whatever, whatever's happening in our country, whatever allowed it, whatever is perpetuating it, it is not sustainable for a, a,

civilized society. So we need politicians who are somehow can pull themselves out of that systemic ill. Boy, I hope you're right. Because I think another idea is that they may feel that way, but the want is disruption of the norm and that the pendulum is swinging back the other way because MAGA is in power right now and the status quo is still unsatisfactory, which means. They now own the status quo as much as the president, you know, bridles against that thought. And that our history is equal momentum.

Like you had Obama and you wound up with Trump. And that suggests a velocity, a momentum that is difficult to go from here and stop here, which is what we really need. Instead, it tends to swing. And I think that DSA is seen as that swing. I think embracing Islamism is seen as that swing. By the way, I am not afraid of the S and DSA. I think it's misunderstood. I think it's propaganda.

But it doesn't matter. It's working as a wedge. The Islamophobia I'll also talk to you about. And I am very concerned that MAGA has found the best distraction for the midterms. which I thought was going to be socialism. I no longer think that. I think it's going to be Islamophobia. But let's go one step at a time.

That it's not, hey, this doesn't work. Let's get back to common sense. I'm not hearing that. I'm hearing disrupt. I'm hearing outsider. I'm hearing it doesn't matter that you say you're a progressive. You say you're a liberal. You're part of the establishment.

You're in office right now. You've got to go. And that's different than what you're saying. Yeah. And I think, you know, Chris, what this. whole like recent history of, you know, with the DSA is showing us. It's, it's illuminating a lot of things. One is the frustrations that people have with the DNC with the Democratic establishment, but it's also revealing the sort of how similar we on the left can be to the extreme right to say,

we're going to just throw the baby out with the bathwater. We're not going to allow people to evolve. I think the left has a purity problem. where conservatives, I think, were able to coalesce around Donald Trump, even if they despised him, they were able to see, we're accruing power here and we're getting political wins. And I think what the left is always in danger, we are an expansive entity. We do have a bigger table. We do have that big tent. However, we're not as willing to craft compromise as I think we should be. And so now you have some establishment people saying, we've got to push this extreme movement out of our party. You've got supporters of the DSA saying, everybody's got to go. We have to be able to,

you know, we can't sacrifice our political wins on the altar of our purity stances. And that's going to take some maturity. It's going to take some, all taking a breath and having conversations with one another and not about one another. Where do you think, so you consider yourself a Democrat? I don't. I mean, I've been, that's always the irony of this. I've been a, registered independent since I was 18, I think I've been placed in this position where some of the things I'm speaking on are more democratic-leaning values. I just find that I'm a person who loves humanity and wants everyone to have food and wants everyone to be healthy and have a chance. I hear we. And when you're talking about the right, I hear they. That's what, that's why I'm asking

you. Well, not to trick you or trap you. Just understand. No, that's, I think the we, but I think there are independence and there are Republican voters who would align with that. So I think MAGA is not Republican. It is not conservative. And MAGA is a very specific minority subset of the conservative movement that has hijacked it both politically and theological. And so I think the we is humanity. And I think wherever you line up, we all kind of want those things. The DSA and Islamophobia. So the connective tithe. issue here is that socialism is a bad word in America. Part of that is ignorance. Part of that is cultural attribution. But it is. And in American politics, axiomatically, we know. Empirically,

we know. If you have to explain your position, you are losing me. So as soon as you have to explain why socialism isn't a scary thing, you're losing. And it doesn't matter what counterfactuals you have that, well, first of all, socialism is the Trump accounts. Socialism is taking a government and equity stake in 30 different tech companies. Socialism is, you know, redistributive wealth where the tariffs are paid by the little and it's used to fund a tax cut that goes to the top. That's socialistic. It doesn't matter because Trump says I hate socialism.

And that's how simple and grotesque our politics is. So it seems that the left is setting up barriers that are perceived, at least, on one level. And I want to start with that and I want to move on to something I'm far more concerned about, which is Islamophobia. But I'll explain that. So what do you see as a mechanism of persuasion when it comes to DSA as alternative to MAGA? Well, the only thing I think you can do, Chris, is point out the things that people are already benefiting from that align with the DSA and say things that you love about your country that you take for granted that people show up when there's a fire or that your roads work or whatever it might be or the military. you can begin to say, there are ways you already benefit from this thing. It is not some boogeyman. It is not some mystery. You can actually point out the policy and the way that it impacts their family. I think we all want to know what's it going to do to me. And I think if we can make people understand, this is not just some invisible danger. It is actually a quantifiable way of doing government. We can point to New York City and say, look at how some of these things are unfolding. that you would have feared and condemned a year ago.

And so we've just got to educate people by giving them an experience, a real world experience so they can understand and wrap their minds around. I think that's hard. Of course it's hard. Everything's hard. That matters in life.

But yeah, let's take another step there. The next step is, yeah, but when they say, destroy the presidency, destroy the Supreme Court, destroy the Senate, destroy the police, destroy ice, What I gave them as a talking point is when Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation laid out a set of extreme ambitions, many people on the right said, yeah, okay, that's the Heritage Foundation. That's not me. It is what it is.

They do not give that rationale to the DSA of, yeah, we have these people who have their ambitions also, but that's not us in the main. It's just some of us. Is that a fair comparison and why isn't it being drawn by more people? Well, I think people, I want to say that the left in general wants to see itself as a group of people who are open to other ideas. But in reality, we are as fearful. We are as equally threatened by change as anyone else. And so now we're experiencing what that feels like. I think you see in some establishment Dems them saying, rather than saying, what can I learn?

about the failings of our party or the weaknesses or what we might be needing to listen to, rather than saying, okay, that incendiary rhetoric is just dangerous. I think we have to be different than people who are brought up, who are enveloped by MAGA because MAGA said everything is clear and simple, everything is a soundbite. We have to be willing to say, okay, those words, and that incendiary language, it's based on something else. It's a symptom of something else.

And what is that symptom? It's a frustration with the fact that so many people are in a nation like ours that can't afford health care or can't afford to feed themselves, don't have a living wage. We should be fighting for that. On the left in the center, anyone who's a decent human being. So can we do that? Can we put aside all this bombast? Can we get through that and talk about what this really means? So the immediate wave away is, oh, so.

Pavlovitz is okay with socialism. You'd be okay with us moving to a socialistic thing where all property is taken. Now, I know the answer is no, I'm not, but that's not the point. But that's the problem that we're in right now. I mean, it's almost Shakespearean that just when the country starts to galvanize instead of Balkanize around what is wrong, okay? I have a list on my show that I do on a regular basis. I'll do it tonight. We the people agree. And it has all of these points, that have at least three out of four of us agreeing on all these major issues. So how can we be so divided? It's because in Shakespearean fashion,

just when you get that, holy cow, this MAGA has been so off base on so many things, it has not delivered. We all get it. Here comes the DSA, which is like the only way to make people afraid of change. And I'm not saying it should be justified. I'm not saying that. But it does optically present that. way. Yeah, and I, you know, I'll tell you, Chris, you know, for the longest time, I've been trying to say,

okay, we can't be warring with ourselves. We can't just, we can't just because I wanted people over the last decade. I kept saying, vote strategically. We cannot vote emotionally. So if you're trying to reject one position by a candidate and you reject them outright, we're basically harming ourselves. But then there were people saying to me, yeah, but John, we have been living like this for decades and is just not working. And so you have to respect that frustration because, and I have to remember that I, as a white cisgender heterosexual man, my lens and my experience of America is far different from a Muslim and from a transgender person and immigrant. And so I want to make sure I'm, I'm valuing the outrage. There's something necessary to hear. And so I don't want to just dismiss it.

I don't want to be fearful of it. I want to be fearful of it. I want to. I want to be fearful of it. I want to want to listen. I want to learn. And I think, you know, one more thing, Chris, is that we have an uninformed electorate all across the board. And so we cater to the easy, the incendiary. And that's the other weakness, whether we're on the right, left center. People don't want to do the work to get deeper into an issue beyond what it takes them to read a tweet. Three things. When you describe yourself the way you did. You lose about one in three voters because they have reaction formation to the definitions. Uh-oh. Here's a guy who hates being white. Oh, here's a guy who doesn't believe in gender. Oh, here's a guy who believes that everything's okay. I guess he's that kind of Christian,

whatever that means. Sure. How do you reach those people? Well, at some point, you know, I used to work with students, middle school, high school students, and I used to think, well, I get one hour with them a week to give them whatever message wisdom I have. They have the other 167. They're in an environment that I can't control. I think that about the people that we're talking about. They can have those snap judgments. There's not much I can do about that. If you're in your 50s, 60, 70s, and you haven't tapped into that wider understanding of humanity, I don't know what I can do to change that. All I can do is say, here's my story. I was that guy. I was the conservative pastor. I was an evangelical church. I saw things differently. I got new experiences. My, my worldview expanded. I would like you to have

that experience because it's just made me a better human being. And that's really all I can do is offer that perspective. And then, you know, that's the other thing when I wrote that blog post, if I have gay children that started all this for me, I wasn't saying anything that people on the left that activists that LGBTQ people weren't saying, but I had a different audience and there was a weight, a gravitas to me saying that. So me saying I'm a white sister and a heterosexual guy, it's okay. I can, I should say that. That's my perspective and that's how I deal with it. How do you understand how an issue like what you're describing right now got boiled down to and decided upon the basis of, they are for they, they, them,

We are for you. And the idea of, you shouldn't have a high school girl who looks like me playing volleyball against your daughter. Yeah, yeah. I think the irony of all of this, Chris, first of all, is that for decades, conservative men belittled women's sports, and they didn't care about them. But that's suddenly they all are passionate about sports. I think what the conservative movement has always done is say, who is, who is the conservative movement? the monster. We need to create the, see, this conservative politics and religion needs an enemy to run. It needs an encroaching threat, someone to be defeated, someone we are threatened by.

So whether it was gay people, it's black people, it's immigrants, you know, it's Muslims. They will always find that other on which to place all of their fears. And so I think that's how we got here. And it's kind of ridiculous when you look at a group of people who've been saying, hey, we want to protect women, have spent, you know, the last decade keeping the Epstein files from public view. So there's just a really, there's a hypocrisy there. Yeah, we want to protect women when they're playing a sporting event, but not when they're actually being assaulted. And there's just something so sad about that. It's all advantage.

It's all advantage. And once you look at it, once that becomes your lens, like, why is this better for one side over the? other, then the game, it's like Neo and the Matrix, when all he starts to see is the code. That's where I am in political analysis, have been for many years. I've never liked politics. I would never enter politics. I can't believe that I'm even covering politics the way that I do. But, you know, I'm as flawed as anybody.

But I understand it in a unique way because I was raised in it. I've been in the room when there's no media around. I know what they think of people like me. So that's what it's all about. And now we have the new boogeyman. And the new boogeyman is the old boogeyman, but it's coming back at a time where there have been some different circumstances. We have the 25th anniversary of 9-11.

And we do have Muslims presenting themselves as matriculated Americans and running almost exclusively on the left, which has created a convenience. of making the left own Islamophobia. And Islamophobia, I think, has more potential than people are saying right now, which is like, oh, we've been here before. Look, not all Muslims are terrorists, okay? Trump already tried the Islam hates us.

He tried the Muslim ban. It's not a thing. I got to tell you, it's feeling. like a thing right now. And how do you see it? Yeah, Chris, you only need to create that sense of urgency for enough time to pass through an election cycle, right? So the immigrants are eating pets. That's ridiculous. But for just the right amount of time, at the right time, it galvanized people against, you know, the left. And so you're seeing that now, there is this perfect storm and what you've got with Iran. That's just a way to perpetuate that evil versus good narrative that they run on.

I personally think, you know, bringing back to you, I think white Christians are going to need to be the ones to say, hey, this is BS. Okay, this is ridiculous because that's the voting block that he's going for. And we have to be smarter than that. We have to say, you know what, right now, the greatest danger in America is an inside job. And it has been for a decade. And let's stop with this nonsense. whether we are able to do that. They don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear that we're the terrorists. I can't tell you how often, like, I'll describe a crime and say you'll be interesting to see whether or not this meets the federal definition of terrorism like Luigi Mangioni. And people will be like, Luigi Mangione, what are you talking about?

He's an American. He's an Italian American. And I'll say, yeah, but I think that he used violence to advance a political agenda. And that's terrorism. They don't see it because he's not a Muslim. And he doesn't have a beard. He's not a jihadi. And so there's a little bit of a cultural adaptation problem.

But I'm looking at these ads. So Dr. El-Sayyad says in Michigan, in front of a care audience. Now, I have problems with that organization. All right, but let's put that to the side. He's in front of what is almost decidedly a Muslim congregation. And he says they want to outlaw Sharia law. I don't even know what that means, he says.

But they are targeting you in a way they don't target other faiths. That is true. Okay? It is being used to mean he wants Sharia law as the law in America. And that is working. And I am getting hit with wave after wave of why, are you defending these people after you lived 9-11 you said you had all these people die you got blown up in Iraq covering the war how can you defend these crazy people you know it's hard to fight

intellectual ignorance and and fear so you have to what can you do you can say well let's look at some Muslim politicians who are actually in office let's look at what they're they're actually doing how their communities are being impacted are these Are these things actually playing out? Are your fears being manifested? They're not. And so, you know, you can take that 10 second clip and or you can say, let's actually talk about what's happening here in our country. What are you for? What are you for your family, for your community? Can a Muslim carry those things out? Of course they can. I think it's you've got to be able to see a Muslim as a human being who is freeformed and not part of a larger group. If you can do that with Christians, you should be able to do that with Muslims. It's really, really about humanizing a group of people whose faith is not ours. It's really about demonizing a group of people and this underlying conceit that this is a Christian country. And my father dealt with this, you know, my father's entire political career was defined by two speeches in six months when he was younger than I am now. And it's always

remarkable to me when I think about it. The speech that meant the most to him, without question, was the one he gave at Notre Dame. The keynote speech he did not believe was any magnum opus, but he spent a lot of time dealing with the other one because he had a cardinal say he should be excommunicated because he said he had to respect. You should watch or read my father's Notre Dame speech, 1984, on being a Catholic politician.

And it defined the debate over, choice. My father said, I live in a secular society. I can't put my faith on all of my constituents. The other side said, yeah, you can. That's what your faith is, is something that you see the world through. And he said, but I live in a secular society. I got to respect the secular law. It's not a religious law. And it was a real tension. And he definitely lost with Christians. And today, they're looking at Muslims and say, but they want to make this a natural religion. My father's answer would have been and was, if you go after them now, when they outnumber you, it will be returned. So either you stick to the rule that no religion wins in American society because it's secular, or you create a preference and you set yourself up for that preference to be changed. I don't think we've learned that lesson.

No, we haven't. And I think also, but that that is almost threatening someone to make sure that you don't, it still says those people might want to harm you eventually. You know, I think it's better to, you know, we're trying to say to these people, you have your religion. You are able to practice it. What we want is for them to be able to practice their religion individually. You know, they're not alarmed by someone like Trump who has basically said

the evangelical right is the agenda. They're fine with that. But they don't want to realize how that damages people of color and people who are of different religions. So for me, I think, Chris, we've just got to get to the point where we realize this is a diverse community

and there are going to be tensions in there and we can't have one group speak for the entire country. It's just ridiculous. They say, hold on, John, we're not talking about Protestant versus Catholic, which was enough of a problem, by the way. Exactly.

But these people, they cover their women. They kill people for no reason. They hate LGBTQ. They hate you, by the way. And they are a bunch of murderous marauders. And they are incompatible with Western values. And they do not want to assimilate. They want to come here and dominate just

like they are in Europe, and you are a fool. And I'd say, you know, who is the they, and how are you coming to this conclusion? What do you know about the Muslim faith? What do you know about the Muslim text? I see all the covered women. I hear all the stuff about what they do to people in Afghanistan, and I've seen the terrorists. That's where I'm getting it. And we can say that if we're in a Christian nation, look at what's happening to trans kids here

or to women here with their rights being repealed. So if we're a Christian nation, why are we dismantling human rights? Why are people being rounded up by the color of their skin? Maybe we have to look at a society and say there are ills of religion and then there are practitioners of religion who just wake up every day trying to be a decent human being. So again, we can't caricaturize or cartoonize Muslims and then see Christians as this beautiful, complex thing. Where do you think it goes in November? And are you afraid, brother Pavlovitz?

Well, what I think, Chris, is that the Republicans have basically said, we're going to make it as difficult as possible to have a free and fair election. We're gerrymandering. We're culling down polling sites. We're, you know, doing more harsher voter ID laws. You know, we're going to make it as difficult as we can for you to vote. We're going to try to disenfranchise you. And if we still lose, well, we're going to cry fraud.

and they're preemptively doing that. My fear is that, regardless of what the outcome is, November is going to place us in a place of national consequence and crisis that we've never been. So have a sitting president say, I am not leaving, even though this is my second term. And I think we're all just going to- You believe that that may happen, that he may not leave?

I think, well, when you look at what he says, if you take him at his word, which is kind of difficult to do, but I think with the 2028 rhetoric and all that, I think we have to be prepared for the thought that J.D. Vance has basically said, you know, they're not going to lose. And I don't know how you deal with that as a nation, but we just have to say we have to participate in the political process, as if it's sound, we have to do all the work,

we have to show up, we have to vote in numbers that cannot be manipulated, and then we have to see how it plays out, but we have to all be prepared for something that we thought could never happen. I think in January 6th, we never imagined that would be happening. And it happened, and we all had to respond. So I still believe in what the American people can do together. It's just right now we're dealing with an adversary who is power. How do you deal with the fact that a lot of the message you just delivered, which I agree with, by the way, kind of sounds like what MAGA was saying after the election that he lost to Biden,

which was, look, we know they did something. You know, we got to just accept the process of where it is and try to move forward together and try it and just overwhelm. It was a phobic, paranoid perspective that I think is now moved to the other side. Well, I think a couple things. We never had the experience of someone saying that beforehand. You know, Biden wasn't saying, hey, we're going to win even if they cheat. And so you have that. But you also had, following the election, you had 60 plus court cases where Republicans were allowed to challenge that and they failed. We had recounts. So we had all the measures and systems taking place and that still proved that this was a legitimate election. Can we get that with what Trump has done to the election commissioners and all that? That's the real question.

And so I think the justice system will, could bear that out in a previous iteration of America. I'm a little concerned about where we are. But again, we just have to work with what we have. I believe the American people favor balance of power. The problem is manyfold. One is the house, the retention rate is redonculus, okay? it is well over 90%. Why? Because of gerrymandering and money and constituency, et cetera, et cetera, et and a lot of that has already baked in because of the way the districts have been put together.

These are fine cuts that they're doing now. People think that these are the initial cleaving. It's not. These are fine cuts because the districts already look like a jigsaw puzzle. incumbency effect is a thing. Primaries are everything. And the binary has put us in a place where even though the national mood has trumped deeply underwater, that may not manifest itself in outcomes because they are so site specific, meaning race specific. Another overlay on top of that is that if you are running as an extremist in people's opinions on the left, you may not benefit from the desire for change the same way. Yeah, that is a very real possibility.

And, you know, I think that that is the sort of a mystery in all this. How many people are peeling away, you know, we see the leaving MAGA movement. We see Christians who are, you know, Christian groups like Vote Common Good, who I've worked with, who are seeing Christian people saying, okay, this has been a bridge too far. What does that population do when they're actually walking into the voting booth? You know, they can feel what they feel. They can have the discomfort that they have. But in the end of the day, will they still vote Republican just because?

I think that's the secret sauce here. That's the thing we can't quantify until everything's done. It is. What is the stronger poll? One, what matters to me here at home? Hard with Congress. People don't even know who their member of Congress is most of the time. They're voting for a type.

They're voting for a side, a jersey, as you suggested. Two, what scares me most? That's why this Islamophobia thing scares me. It's tough. It's tough to battle. Because remember, we don't have the cultural exposure. We do not have a huge Muslim population here. It's like, you know, when I first started traveling this country 30 years ago doing this job, you know, I don't know.

But more often than not, people would say to me, oh, you're, for, you're, for, you. Is that an Italian? Yes. Oh, are you in the mob? I used to meet people on a regular basis who thought that Jews had little lumps on their head from where horns had been. Not that they were bad people, but isn't that a thing? So we're there now with Muslims. People don't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to Islam. They don't know the difference between Islam and Islamism, which by the way is a stupid way for us to describe the difference between these perverse jihadi, mentality and just the faith, but we are where we are and words matter. It's which one of those things matters most going into the election. And unfortunately, we're not going to know until a couple of weeks before. We're not going to know about what the most heavy exigency is. And that is just

going to be fuel. That's what I just said is true. Okay. We're not going to know because of how mercurial it is and how small the margins are. Because everybody's already in their corner. that actually fuels the mania, that reality actually fuels the mania that creates a surreality. Yeah, when you're, when you're, see, the goal, as we said earlier, is to keep, make someone terrified. And once you do that, there's nothing, you can't talk them down. Once the adrenaline of a position is sort of injected into the bloodstream, there is no listening to reason. So when Trump says people are eating pets, well, oh my gosh, that gut feeling. is all they need. And so, yeah, we're just going to have to see if the storytellers on the left

can be better about presenting a wider, more expansive understanding of who Muslims are and hope that people are receptive enough to spend some time and to listen. And that's again, I mean, the American people are who they are and they're willing to do the work that they're willing to do. That's the scary thing. Do you think we're getting better or worse? I think we're exactly who we've always been. I think the narrative, the storytelling has changed. I think we live right now in a time when everything is curated and it's targeted. And so we're getting a skewed understanding of the world through our media.

Like I said earlier, if you go out today, there are still people doing just amazing stuff on behalf of humanity. And that's what we have to live. I wrote a children's book called Here and Now and Small and Close, and it's about that idea of that's where we have agency. We always have proximity to pain and agency to alleviate it. That's never going to change. And so we just got to get up every day and live into that. Do you have hope?

You have to. I mean, hopelessness is not an option, Chris. You know, we've inherited this nation and anything that we're losing or feel like we're losing is because people fought for it to begin with. So hopelessness, to me, is an insult to them. It's resignation. So Hope is saying, yeah, it's pretty dark, but this is what we were made for. This is why we exist. As people of faith, morality, and conscience, however we view ourselves, we're here to be human. What is your goal? My goal is to get more people to give a damn

about the people around them and say, you know, we're all trying to figure out this life. It's difficult to be a human being, and I just would like us all to make it easier on one another. That seems to be what politics and religion should do. We should be able to carry each other through this. And that's what I want. I want a place where empathy is not an oddity and where cruelty is not the default setting. Well, I love what you add to the stew. I think you're a critical thinker. I think you're coming from a very definite perspective. And I think that it is resilient and persistent. And I think that that's good. I also think that you're very open to the idea that you've changed. over time, not in your principles, but in the application of them to the kind of pragmatism of the

moment, which, you know, is another thing that is so frowned upon. Like if I were to say, I don't know, if I were to say anything that I had changed my mind about, one, it would be informing a false narrative, which is that I have opinions about things that are so sturdy, you know, like people will say, well, you're a big vaccine proponent. Well, compared to who? Who wasn't saying you have to take the vaccine when the government was saying you have to take the vaccine if you want access to certain services and areas who was saying anything else nobody was saying anything else you know so very often there's a false narrative at play but if i would have changed that and say boy i wish i hadn't taken the vaccine all i would get is attacked for the change there would be no consideration of why it was

changed which is really anathema to critical thinking um you read any philosopher the one thing that they embrace is changing a position as what you understand or no changes. That was a big thing that got us in trouble and continues to plague us in our politics. Science is not politics. Wear a mask. Don't wear a mask. How could they change? That's so confusing. It makes me lose trust, equity of trust, as you said in the beginning. No, the facts changed. They thought it was transmitted by touch. They learned it was transmitted by aerosolized particles. That's different. You do different things. Not accepted in politics, obvious in science. Yeah. Well, the beauty of doing this every day, writing every day for over a decade is you get to argue with your former self in

public. And I get, you know, when I put the expanded version of a bigger table out, I had wrote a new chapter. I said, here, this is a great book. It's really got some good stuff. But here's who I am now. That was the guy I was. Here's some things I'm going to argue with about what I wrote. And if we can't do that, we are refusing to grow. We have stopped evolving as human beings. And that's, nobody should want that. But in this extreme thing, look, this is why I wanted to platform you. Everything's extreme. You know, Trump is a Nazi or he's heaven sent. And that is just nowhere where to live. And that's where so many of us are. And even if you can't escape to Italy, you can escape that Thunderdome, that crucible. And remember that most people don't fit into one

of those two boxes. That's the reality. And you're certainly one of them. And I appreciate you. And I would love to talk to you again. And I'll give you my number. You can text me whenever you want to weigh in on something and I can platform you. I do a radio show in the morning. I do a cable show at night and I do a podcast a couple times a week. So I'm here for it and I appreciate what you're putting in to the infosphere. Thanks, Chris. Really enjoyed the time and the conversation I hope other people benefit from it. Thank you for subscribing and following. John is a smart guy. He's taken a lot of time to think about what he believes and what he understands and why. and how? And I think the more we're like him, the better will be no matter what your conclusions are.

I mean, you could apply his same reasoning and come to a lot of sympathetic reckonings of different aspects of the Trump administration's policies, but I don't know if it would relate to its practices. But that's for you to decide. Here, the job is to give you food for thought as a critical thinker. That's what we do. I do it in the morning on Sirius Radio, SXM, Channel 12, seven to nine every morning in the summer I take some days off but I'm on there most of the time news nation at night 8 p eastern right and they replay it I think at midnight and of course I have the podcast here and I have Cuomo crime time and you should subscribe to it it's free and I'll tell you why trials are some of the best examples of what matters in our society our constitution

our law, our justice. And sometimes each of those is different than the other. And I believe it's the safe space to really debate what's happening in our society without the overlay of right and left, where you can really almost focus exclusively on right and wrong. And this is not part of my merch, but I'm selling merch to help you brand back against all of these extreme fringe ideas. that you are an independent. You are a critical thinker. You are different.

You are a free agent. You're not some lemming, mouth-breathing, partisan, you know, just particle. You're something more than that. Brand it. Crowdsource the money. We'll give it away to people who need it. Take care of yourself. Try to take care of each other.

The challenges are real. So let's get after it.