The Eric Metaxas Show - #48 - Megan Basham

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

In this episode, I spoke with @megbasham about how lifestyle influencers shape political opinion on Instagram, why she says the 2020 playbook is returning, and why she is urging Christians to speak up instead of appeasing.📷 TIMESTAMPS(0:00) Megan Basham Joins(1:18) What Is Happening In Minneapolis?(2:09) Influencers Push Anti-ICE Messaging(6:14) Paid Propaganda And Covid Parallels(16:22) Is This An Underground Network?(26:19) Greenland, Trump, And Just War Theory

Welcome back, folks. It's my privilege to have as my guest right now, Megan Basham. Now, Megan, that's your real name, isn't it? It is. Ironically so. Providence had a hand. You bash him. You really know, but you do great, great, great work. You were the Daily Wire. You're the author of Shepherds for Sale. You're a truth-teller. You're very courageous. and I just, I'm thrilled that you're so prominent on X that you're putting the stuff that you do out there. But many people listening right now might not be aware of some of the things you've been talking about. So I thought I want to get you on here to talk about those things.

So where do we start? Because there's a lot going on this week. I'll tell you how it starts for me. I start covering something. I'll be in the middle of it. And then I get so mad. And I message your producer and I say, Chris, I'm so mad about these things. can I come on the Eric Mattaxas show and talk about it. And so that's usually how it begins.

And, you know, obviously all of us are closely following what has been happening with immigration enforcement and the harassment that ICE officers on the ground have faced in Minneapolis. And, you know, we've seen some really tragic and sad, unfortunate stories and results from that. And, you know, what's been difficult for me is to see all of the sort of grown-ups in the room who should be saying things like you don't interfere with the operation of law enforcement. You don't bodily obstruct them when they're trying to conduct an arrest. And you're not seeing that. Instead, what you're seeing is an entire class of people, both in the Christian sphere, but also in the influencer sphere. And sometimes those cross. So, you know, gentlemen,

like yourself, may not be aware of this. But if you go over to Instagram right now, women, including Christian women, are being flooded with messages about our Nazi authoritarian administration. And I mean, it is over the top, Eric. I can give you one example that really shocked me was Whole 30. Are you familiar with Whole 30? Whole 30? Yeah, it's an eating plan. It's a clean eating plan.

You're in good shape, so you probably never seen the book. but she has a huge following, you know, millions of followers on various social media accounts. And she has been putting out information to all of these followers saying, you need to oppose immigration enforcement. And so what you see is very much a propaganda campaign being waged by the big influencers. And that has included a lot of these Christian influencers. Some of them claim to be Christian women. They have enormous followings.

And they're putting out this. Like who? I have to ask you. Like who? So one is Jenna Coocher, if you're familiar with her. And you probably won't be familiar with these names. Another one, she's Mormon, actually, but Rachel Parcell. These are women who have enormous, huge followings, millions of followers. They tell you what to buy at the Nordstrom sale. They tell you what skin care line to get. And then this week, what they're telling you to do is to oppose the Trump administration's policies on immigration enforcement. So, you know, a pretty big whiplash. And they do it in these very emotional appeals. So they're not being practical.

But it has to be an emotional appeal. I mean, listen, what we're talking about is the feminization of American culture and certainly the feminization of the church. And it's always funny to me when extremely feminine women like you see through this nonsense. And many people don't, including many men, don't see through this. And they have adopted this emotional way of thinking that is not, I mean, there's, it has value, folks. It's not like it has no value, but there's a time when you're talking about law enforcement, when you're talking about dealing with evil, you need some manly men in the room. And if you have a culture that decries masculinity as inherently toxic, which is a fundamentally anti-biblical worldview, you're going to

have problems. And that's kind of what we're seeing right now, that any show of force is, oh, that's so unpleasant, why can't we hug each other? Why can't we? So to see the scene of these preposterous women blowing their whistles, I just thought, this is, this is extra, this was a nation that conquered, you know, the West, rugged pioneers. And we have now become a nation of people that are so soft and so emotional that we can't even deal with stress, that we, that we just, anytime, there's stress or conflict, we have to say, oh, that's, can't there be another way? It's like, well, no, when you're dealing with evil, you have to deal with evil. And that's what law enforcement is for. So that's exactly right. And so what you're seeing from these accounts, some of them will say,

I don't oppose immigration enforcement. I just don't want it done like this. Or basically, can we do it without hurting anyone? And ideally, of course, we could. But here's the reality that these women who are being very much emotionally led. They're not thinking through these policies because they're not being encouraged to think through these policies. And what they will do is say things like, yeah, I don't want anyone to get hurt.

And yet they don't realize that a law enforcement officer's position is that sometimes a suspect will resist. Sometimes he will run. Sometimes he will fight. Sometimes he will have a weapon. And so all of these things make it very difficult to do their job.

And they are not factoring that in in any way And then there's another element of this that I've really been tracking. And I'm working on a story on this. So stay tuned. But a lot of times these major influencers are actually paid in order to put out political propaganda. And so we saw that with COVID. So at the time, a lot of these major influencers. And again, this is going to be more of a female coded story because it's women who tend to follow these influencers.

But it's also women who tend to influence their husbands. And I think that's part of why you have seen just softness. in men as well because you have their wives and girlfriends getting in their ears. Thank you for not mentioning Jimmy Kimmel by name. Please continue. So, you know, like one of them, like this whole 30 that I mentioned, she is for clean eating. That is her entire brand. And yet during the COVID lockdowns, she was promoting vaccines to her audience. And we're talking about someone who's entire. Well, because you want to be healthy when you get a turbo cancer and die, don't you?

Right. Right. Yeah. So, and or if you have a heart attack, you know, if you're a young person. Yeah. Yeah. So I have not determined that she was one of those who was paid, but she certainly pumped out a lot of this COVID propaganda that conflicted directly with her brand of being healthy, eating clean, following, you know, smart nutrition. That all went out the window when COVID happened.

And so what you're seeing is a redux of what they did in 2020. You may not remember this. But in 2020, all of the influencers, when George Floyd died and Black Lives Matters were rioting the streets, put up black squares. So all over Instagram, all of these major accounts that normally tell you where to shop and who's got cute jeans on sale, put up these black squares with, you know, various statements along the lines of I'm listening or be an ally. And then they went silent. They didn't talk about politics anymore. And I think they got a lot of backlash. And right now, it is like they have forgotten.

So what I wanted to do was come on here as a woman speaking to other women because I know there's a lot of women in your audience. And you've heard of Malcolm X. I want you to think of me as Megan X right now because I want to fight the power of the big influencers among women. I have had it. So I am telling them, you know, go on Whole 30's account and respond. I know all of your women in this audience. They follow these accounts like I do. They follow these influencers like I do.

And so, you know, I have a little account on Instagram. I don't hang out there much. But when I saw it happening, I went, no, enough. I come here for home design, for recipes, for fashion advice. I do not come here to be told, and I am quoting directly from Jenna Coucher, who is one of these big influencers. I don't go there to be told I'm wicked for supporting ICE. And that is what she said.

She said, these people are wicked. Whole 30 account said, you cannot be a good person. if you support ICE. So this is the kind of messaging. I've not heard of Whole 30, but I'm going to make a point not to follow Whole 30. And Whole 30, I think, is the account that said you should only eat wild vaccinated salmon. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that's Whole 30.

Okay, so keep going. So anyway, that's really what I wanted to draw people's attention to. You know, Allie Best Stuckey has been talking about it as well. She and I have been talking about it privately. and we both recognize, look, there is a huge problem. And your political class may not be very aware of it because I don't expect that many Trump administration members hang out on Instagram following these major influencers.

But they need to know that this is the propaganda that is being pushed out and this is who it's being pushed out to. So if you push it out to all of these suburban moms and wives who tend to be by default fairly conservative because they're busy with their kids and their husbands and their lives and they don't have a lot of time to think through politics, they go on to Instagram as an escape. So there's something of a captured audience.

And so when they go on there and they see their favorite influencer telling them things like you need to get in the face of law enforcement and things like that, they need to speak up. But also for those of us women who are on that app, and there's a lot of us who are Christian, who are conservative, our tendency, I think, is to want to say, look, we just want to be liked, particularly on this platform. This is the platform we come, you know,

for tranquility, for cozy vibes, for home design. We don't really want to get into these battles here, except for the influencers are the ones bringing the battle. And so what I want is for women on that platform to speak up. I want them to push back. And look, if your favorite influencer blocks you, I think you can figure out how to find on sale pants and shoes at Nordstrom on your own. Or find some other influencer who does not post political propaganda,

but don't reward them for it and don't gloss over it. because it's destroying our nation. Well, folks, you should be following Megan Basham on Instagram. And if you follow me on Instagram, you know, that will help your algorithms push out these lefty lunatics. I mean, it's interesting, Megan, because as I'm, as I've been researching about the American Revolution, it's fascinating to me the role that women played. That obviously, folks, you know, women play a role in. culture and in influencing communities and influencing their families and their husbands. And during the revolution or in the run-up to the revolution, women were the ones who were

really behind this. Now, they were all conservative Christians, right? They were all like the British authoritarian stuff is wrong. So we're going to stop drinking tea. We're going to make a sacrifice. We're going to stop drinking tea. We're going to stop buying imported British cloth. and we're going to use, we're going to make our own cloth or we're going to buy domestic

homespun cloth. So even 250 years ago, you know, women played a role and had an influence. And so it is interesting that if you're looking to influence culture, of course people are going to try to pay off these influencers because they know that they're reaching women. Yeah, absolutely. And so that is really why I wanted to say, we have to speak. speak up over on that platform in particular and kind of raise the alarm for gentlemen who would not be aware that's going on and for, you know, women who do not feel emboldened to speak up. That was really what I wanted to do was to emboldened them because one of the phenomenon that you will see is you'll see an account like a Rach Purcell or a Julia Berylzheimer.

I know you don't know these names, Eric, but trust me, these are very fashionable, chic women. I'm a straight, I'm a heterosexual man, but go ahead, please. But you are very dapper and I appreciate that. Okay, well, good. But so what they will do is they put up these posts. And because we conservative women tend not to want to politicize that space, we don't respond. So what they get is huge applause from all of these liberal accounts and from all of the, you know, activists come on and they come into their mentions and their replies. And they're applauding it.

And it gives the impression to the women observing that, gosh, I guess everybody feels this way. I guess ICE must really be wicked. I guess we shouldn't be for immigration enforcement because I guess it's cruel to have borders. And so what's frustrating to me is that so often we, conservative Christian women, don't speak up. So, you know, that was really my message today is I just wanted to say, listen, I'm there. I know you other ladies are there. And hey, if you're a guy on there, speak up too. But what I think my overall theme for the week is I'm done with appeasement.

And that was something that you and I kind of exchanged a little bit on social media generally is that That also goes for the conservative commentators who are counseling appeasement. So, you know, that's the other thing that was kind of irking me this week. Well, I mean, I think it's a fascinating thing because I remember myself thinking differently, right? When you hear about some cops unloaded 20 rounds into somebody and you go, whoa, well, like, I don't get this or what's going on or whatever. And it doesn't mean that cops can't make mistakes or it doesn't mean. But you really have to understand when you're dealing with a war situation, folks. When you're dealing with violence, imagine putting your life on the line.

Most of us do not put our lives on the line. Most of us do not approach a driver who's been speeding. And before we ask for the license and the registration, wonder if I'm pulling somebody over who is a really bad guy. It's not Megan or Eric Mattaxas. It's a really bad guy who maybe doesn't want to get caught right now and may blow my brains out. I mean, imagine having a job where you do not know what is around the corner. And so when we second-guess people like the officer that shot Renee Good or the officer that shot this Alex Preti, you have no idea, folks, what it would be like to be in a situation where somebody has a deadly,

weapon. René Good had a deadly weapon and there's no doubt that Alex Pruddy had a deadly weapon and then imagine the mindset of a lunatic going into a law enforcement situation with a gun, with a gun. You're basically looking for trouble. You're crazy to do that. We would not counsel our children that that would be a wise thing to do. You'd say to them, uh, I would stay out of there. And by the way, if you're going to go there and blow your whistles like don't get on anybody's face and don't be i mean if you really believe in something you have a right to protest but to to mess with law enforcement while they're doing their dangerous difficult jobs i think we need to side with them that needs to be the default to side with them to understand

that this is not an easy fun job that they're doing and we need to give them our support yeah two points on that eric you know i would encourage everyone particularly these women that i'm talking about when you watch these videos and you're slowing down to watch the moment the shot goes off, watch the chaos before and see what the atmosphere is like that these officers and agents are working in because part of what you see, as you said, is not simply protesting. It's not standing on the sidewalk and making your voice heard. What they are doing, and this has been revealed in the last two days, this is an underground networked, well-funded antagonist organization. And so what they're doing is they are sending cars and people to track ice, to follow them in their vehicles, to block the roads,

to get in their faces, to interfere with arrests. And, you know, the whistles, we kind of laugh about the whistles, but I want you to try to imagine trying to think and do your job in the midst of someone screaming at you through bullhorns and whistles and everything else you're doing. And in that moment, it's also incredibly dangerous because you're trying to arrest someone and you're an armed officer and we have seen all of these political assassinations. We have seen what happened to Charlie Kirk. So certainly you know that you're in a highly charged atmosphere. And you don't see these women talk about that. They don't talk about these circumstances under which these ICE officers are having to do their jobs. And then, you know, further, when they're looking at this,

they're looking at it through an entirely emotional lens and they have forgotten all of the lies that were told to them by the media during Black Lives Matter, which, by the way, they don't talk about anymore. My impression is that they are embarrassed about the degree of political activism that they got into during the COVID era. So if you go back to some of their accounts, they were posting black squares to represent Black Lives Matter back in 2020. I have checked some of them. They've disappeared. Or within a few weeks, they stopped talking about that subject and they will never bring it up now. Same thing with their COVID propaganda. They posted all of the material promoting COVID. They don't talk about it now. So one of the things you can do is remind them. Remind them

how did this work for you the last time you did this? Are you proud of what you did the last time you did this? And do you want to take a minute now and consider that maybe you don't have all the information on this subject? And maybe in a couple of years or six months even, you're going to be embarrassed about the politicking you engaged in during this moment in history. And you don't see them doing that. So, you know, that's part of what another reason that I say, we have to start speaking up and pushing back because they have completely forgotten. They're a little bit like, goldfish. They go 10 seconds and they forget what happened yesterday. And what happened yesterday was the media lied to you. They lied to you about vaccines and masks and what happened to George Floyd. And now you're all a little like, oh, I'm embarrassed. Please forget that I did that except you're doing it all over again. And so, you know, that's that's really the frustration. But also, you know, they don't even have any room for complexity in these situations because I'm somebody that can look at that tape and go, I don't know if this was a clean shoot. I'm not positive, but what I know is this, if you create a chaotic atmosphere on the ground between two armed people, both Alex Prattie and this officer, what you're going to have

is an explosive situation where very bad things can happen. So the best thing to do is to encourage people do not actually become part of underground networks that are not there to protest. They are there to interfere. They are there to impede. And there is a very big difference. I am, you know, the biggest supporter of the First and Second Amendment, if you want to be out on the sidewalks of Minneapolis protesting and making your voice heard, even while, you know, legally carrying a firearm, I don't have an issue with that. The issue is when you bodily insert yourself into a law enforcement operation, when you obstruct arrests, at that point, it gets very messy. And if you get shot, I really don't think you have anyone but yourself to blame, even if it was not a clean shot and the

officer could have done better. And the fact that we don't have people saying that, including within the church, because I'm seeing a lot, you know, I always got to throw out a pastoral connection. And we are seeing so many of these pastors out there condemning the shooting, but they're not talking about the circumstances that led up to it or the atmosphere in which these agents are trying to do their jobs. The fuse has been lit. And tonight, while everything might feel the same, the ground has shifted beneath your feet. On this day, January 28th, 26, the U.S. dollar quietly crossed the line most Americans won't recognize until it's far too late. After a violent global sell-off, our currency has cratered to its weakest level in four years.

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Well, it's so fascinating to me. First of all, I always try to think what's the polite word for whore? They are just... They would have said jade in the 18th century. Jade, well, the issue is that there's so much, there's an infinite number of things to speak about. Why do they always go hoaring after that thing that everybody's talking about? It's virtue signaling. It's just trying to be trendy.

It's trying to be relevant. There's nothing more pathetic than pastors that want to be relevant. If you speak about truth, you're going to be relevant. But they are, they're sort of trying to make a connection with their audience or something like that. But what's horrifying to me is that they're very, very selective in what they talk about. How many pastors do we know? And folks, if you're going to a church like this, I'll just say it again and again and again. Shame on you.

You're part of the problem. You go to a church that didn't mention a couple of days after the president was almost had his head, you know, blown off. You didn't mention it because he thought it would be too political to mention it. The president of the United States was somebody shot at him and hit him and there was blood. Or you didn't mention it when Charlie Kirk was murdered. Or you didn't mention it when Roe v. Wade was overturned. You didn't say, praise God, this is a good thing, whatever. If you're going to a church that never speaks up when those things happen, that ought to tell you

everything you need to know. But then when they speak up when this kind of stuff happens, there are plenty people, I'm sure, listening to us right now, they go to these churches and then they lamely say, well, my pastor preaches the Bible. Your pastor does not preach the Bible. That's a lie. Because if you're not talking about courage, if you're not talking about living out your faith in a heroic way, you're not preaching the Bible. And but they claim that, oh, he's just preaching about he doesn't want to get political. Well, you know, when you, when you virtue signal about this kind of stuff, you're being political. And I just think that there's so many, I would like to think, Megan, then in the last few years, a lot of Christians have woken up, thanks to your book and my book and a number of books, Stockholm Syndrome, Christianity by John West.

There are a number of us who've been saying, hey, church, it is time to wake up and to get out of the churches that are playing this game. But of course, you know, and I know there are a lot of people going to those churches and thinking somehow it's okay. Yeah, I actually have a really perfect example of this just this week. And I'll probably get in trouble for this, but you know, that's kind of my brand. So let's do it. And I apologize for the dog. I happen to see on YouTube this week. I was following the Greenland negotiations

and what Donald Trump is doing to try to secure those military bases. And you and I know why they're so important, those military bases, because we need to have that presence in order to oppose China. It is very dangerous if China gets access to that region. We know that.

So Donald Trump has been carrying out a political pressure campaign to try to ensure that we have those bases and the resources that we need in Greenland. And that is the right thing to do as the president of the United States to represent the American people. So, you know, just this week I happened to pop on to YouTube as well. And what I saw was the popular YouTube apologist Gavin Orlans. And it was kind of a perfect example of the thing you're talking about right now in that he very, he will say, I'm not political.

I very rarely speak on politics, which is great. That's fine. I'm sure his apologetic material is really great. but when he does speak on politics, it is almost exclusively to punch right and to punch right at specific figures. He may, for example, speak out about abortion or something, but you wouldn't hear him attacking a specific political leader or specific comments instead it's more general. Whereas when it's Donald Trump, it's a very targeted specific attack. And in this case, it almost made me chuckle because it seemed like such a ludicrous application. He said that he had

to, for the sake of his conscience, speak out about what Donald Trump is doing to represent American interests with regards to Greenland through just war theory. And that, you know, we have to talk about just war theory and how Donald Trump may be violating just war theory. We're not going to war with Greenland. Nothing that Donald Trump said indicated that we were going to war with Greenland. Or Denmark or anybody. What a joke. What a joke. And so you have 10, of thousands of young men who follow accounts like this, who hear this and think, this is terrible. We have a leader who wants to go to war with our European allies. Well, no, what the leader was doing was representing not just our interests, but the interests of the West against China. And it's

incredibly important. And what he never did was discuss the reason that Donald Trump has an interest in Greenland. And it's, you know, he implied in his video that it's because he's going after Greenland because of the Nobel Prize thing, because Donald Trump wrote a funny thing. And Donald Trump is funny. And people miss how he's funny. And he said, ah, you know, I'm not even wanting to negotiate with you now because you didn't give me the Nobel Prize. I recognize that as Donald Trump kind of being cheeky and funny. Gavin Ortland took that as his motivation for wanting the military base. Or he didn't mention the military bases, but for wanting access to Greenland. And so that was a frustrating thing to me, too, is you have an apologist with

limited information who does not understand the political realities on the ground and what our interest in Greenland is, but he is speaking out on it, suggesting that Donald Trump is in some way pursuing war with Greenland and in some way doing it unjustly. Does anybody understand, I mean, nobody could possibly understand how funny this is. Greenland has 55,000 inhabitants. Ladies and gentlemen, imagine, imagine the town that I grew up in Danbury, Connecticut has 100,000 citizens. The idea of going to war with Greenland, like the whole thing is so ridiculous that it's funny.

And what's fascinating, Megan, and you and I have watched this is people don't get his humor. They don't get humor in general. They don't understand nuance. They certainly don't understand geopolitics or evil, but they weigh in, they jump in. You know, when we're talking about Greenland, nobody has mentioned this. No one has mentioned this, but I will mention it. A number of times,

President Trump, in his speech at Davos, seems to have misspoken. And when he meant Greenland, obviously, he said Iceland. I, Eric Metaxus, I'm here to tell you, he did that intentionally. I've seen him do this when he refers to people. He'll, he'll use a name or a word. word. He did it intentionally because he, if Scott Adams were alive, he'd be commenting on this, okay, that Trump is saying Iceland because he wants to put it in your mind, it's a hunk of ice. He even said that explicitly at some point, right? He goes a piece of ice and not very well-situated piece or something like that. But so when he said Iceland, this is Trump brilliantly, hilariously putting it out there like Greenland, Iceland. What's the difference? Like these are

These are rocks in the middle of nowhere covered with ice. I'm not going to build a Dubai type, you know, it's like a Trump hotel or whatever. This is utterly strategic. It is a rock. It's like saying we want to be on the moon. I don't want to live on the moon, but we need it strategically. So he a number of times said Iceland, and I thought, there's no doubt that he's doing this intentionally.

This is what he does. He's first of all, he's brilliant. but he also has this kind of branding thing. And I've seen him do this a number of times. I'm fascinated that nobody commented on that because it really is, you know, when you actually understand the situation, you understand why, what would we want Greenland for?

Because frankly, we're trying to protect the West. As usual, we're putting ourselves out there. And Trump is for the first time in basically, you know, pushing back at Doble. He's basically saying to the Europeans, he's saying like, hey, friends, allies, we've been paying your rent for a long time. And you know what? We kind of think like enough time has passed for maybe you to kick in a little bit or to say

thank you that we've been paying your rent because you're not the broken, war-torn Europe of like 1949. You are now, you know, it's been many, many, many decades and it's time for you to step up. And if you don't step up or if you don't understand the role that we, the United States, have been protecting you, we need a market revision here. We need a recalibration of the market. We need to see, you know, what's going on. And that's basically what he did.

And they are just terrorized that he would actually say, let's see what the market will bear. Let's see how will you protect yourself against China and Russia? How's that going to go for you? if you don't play ball with us. Because, you know, we've been pretty gracious to you over the decades. And then you have Mark Carney, of course, in Canada, sort of behaving like the Vichy French with Hitler

by kind of reaching out to China. You realize these are not our allies. These are not our friends. Right on our northern border, we have effectively an enemy, a feckless leader, misleader of a nation to our north that depends on us, that dares, to say, well, we might make a deal with China.

I mean, I predicted that Trump would do something, and sure enough, the next day he threatened 100% tariffs on them. But it's kind of like you're dealing with people that they've gotten away with murder for decades, and suddenly he's kind of calling him on it, and everybody's freaking out. I'm not surprised that Gavin Orland, you know, kind of took that bait. Right. And that, Eric, everything you just said is why I wanted to bring it up, because I want the people who maybe don't follow these things closely.

And all they hear is Donald Trump so insane he wants to start a war with Greenland and Denmark. You know, I don't want them to hear that. I want them to hear what is actually happening. And it's fine to discuss just war theory how that. But what was interesting is that this video didn't even really talk about just war theory. It simply sort of made the inference that Donald Trump is violating just war theory in his political negotiations over Greenland. And they don't have the political knowledge and the political background, at least from that one presentation, that you just offered there and that I've offered there as to, you know, what are our American interests? What are European interests? Why would we have, you know, broached this subject at all? And so none of that contextual information is presented. It just makes it seem like, you know, Donald Trump is a wild man out there just threatening countries with war, which is obviously not the case. And so, you know, that was my frustration is that I just went, wow, it's fairly irresponsible. to make a suggestion like that, but then not in any way discuss the political realities

around the subject. Okay, why is Donald Trump doing this? What is the motivation? And then, you know, further, I really want to encourage people when you follow someone, a YouTube apologist or, you know, a pastor or, you know, a ministry leader, a Christian commentator, if they only bring up politics in order to be a critic of the administration or to be a critic of the right or the GOP, I do think you should, I'm not saying they have to be cheerleaders, but I think you should be suspect of that. I think, you know, when you look at someone who works with Russell Moore, who is a ministry partner with Russell Moore at his church, and there, we know what activities Russell Moore has been involved in. Who is a ministry partner

with Russell Moore? Is Gavin Orland? Yes. God forbid. They are. God forbid. Yeah, at, at Emmanuel in Church in Nashville. They're both on staff there together. And you never credit. Wow. And you never criticize him. So, you know, obviously Russell Moore has done some wildly irresponsible things. And not only that, we know that he has been involved with all of this left-wing funding and he has deliberately pushed left-wing propaganda. If you're associated with someone like that and you never speak about their political involvement or you never speak about how they're handling these subjects and you attack an Eric metaxus, but you never discuss a Russell Moore, I think we have a problem. And I think you should be more discerning to go, you know, what is this YouTuber's purpose in actually bringing a politics when they say they're not political?

Is it truly to be gentle and charitable and gracious, even if you say it in those tones, or is your purpose to actually be political while seeming unpolitical and seeming like you're bringing just some doctrine out of the deep past of Christian history when really what you're doing is just using it as a hammer to attack the current administration? Well, look, it's all an awful game. We have seen, I mean, let's just break this down, folks. And again, if you're going to a church as supporting this, shame on you. Like, I don't really care if you listen to this program or not. I'm going to try simply to speak the truth.

But we're living in a time now of existential crisis. We almost lost the nation and we still could lose the nation. By the grace of God, Donald Trump was not murdered. By the grace of God, Donald Trump was reelected. even though people are stealing elections. We are right now at a moment of existential crisis where leftist, globalist, Marxist lunatics that hate you and hate your values and hate America

are trying to take over and they will do literally anything. They have no boundaries. They don't care. They just want to win. And you have a lot of people thinking, well, I would just like to sit on the fence. I don't really want to get involved in that.

I just want to preach my little dead little suit. pseudo gospel in my little cute church where we have a beautiful children's program. And if you're part of that, you're part of the problem. And we have all kinds of quote unquote ministry leaders. They've been able to play this game. And we're at a point right now. I mean, I was astonished in the last election. So a year ago, Mike Pence, the big Christian Mike Pence, and George W. Bush, the big Christian. You know, oh, he was reading Oswald Chambers in 2004. Oh, he's a big evangelical. they refused to endorse President Trump. Now, I think to myself, there are not eight candidates out there.

There are two. If you do not endorse the Republican candidate as a Republican, as his running mate, as a previous Republican president, as Bush was, you are basically saying, you know, if Kamala Harris wins, I don't care. It doesn't really make a difference to me. And I have to say, if you're that kind of a Christian, you're lost. Because if you don't care that Kamala Harris might have been elected, it means you don't care about all the poor people whose lives will be destroyed because of the policies that she's

going to put in place. You don't care about all the pro-life organizations that are going to be targeted because of the policies that she's going to be put in place. And that is the case with Mike Pence and with George W. Bush. both of whom I at one point thought were allies. But their actions, at a time when President Trump has become the leader of the party and a leader of the nation, they have revealed their true colors. And it's very ugly to me. But we have a lot of people in ministry and you've called many of them out and I have that they have revealed their colors, that they don't care or they're incapable of caring because they have some kind of other view, which they're not really willing to look at it logically.

It's personal. Yeah, I think probably in certain degree, certainly with Pence, possibly with Bush too, because, you know, Donald Trump was not particularly complimentary of the Bush administration. And so what I sense is that this was personal enmity and it was what I tend to think of now as the John McCain factor. Because, you know, I'm from Arizona and we loved John McCain. And then we found out during the Trump years that have been so revealing how arrogant, truly arrogant and personally selfish some of these leaders were because I will never get over watching John McCain who promised us, who ran. Remember, he almost lost his Senate campaign. The only reason he won that last time was because he went out and promised to be the vote to overturn Obamacare. And so we, Arizonans, voted for him. Now, I love North Carolina now, so no one accused me of fake news. But so we voted for him. And if you will remember, he went out there because he didn't like Donald Trump. When Donald Trump was able to work with Republicans in the House and Senate and they got a bill to start dismantling Obamacare, what did John McCain do? He had promised to be the vote to repeal it, but he didn't like Donald Trump. And he didn't like Donald Trump's attacks on him, which, you know, that's fine. Personal enmities happen. And I can understand that. But he betrayed his constituents. And he broke his promise. And he went down on that Senate floor. And I will never forget.

it. Thumb down. And he was the vote who could have made it happen. And because he personally didn't like Donald Trump, he didn't do it. And that's what we see. This is, this is petulant. This is unbelievable. And again, it really breaks my heart that Mike Pence and George W. Bush would be so childish that they could not endorse a president at a moment of existential crisis in the nation. It wasn't a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. It was a choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, one of the most wicked, incompetent,

I think for sure, the worst candidate ever to run for president in the United States of America in our 250 years, for sure. And they could not be the big man and do the right thing at a moment like that. And that's kind of where we are, folks.

And so if you're following a pastor like that, we've been talking about this, this is very important. This is very, very important stuff. Megan, we're just about out of time. Any final thoughts before we go? Yeah. Just the thing that you and I were posting about a little bit on social media,

I posted a statement, you boosted it with an additional statement. And that's what I want to say about, you know, with Bush, with McCain, with what you're talking about, with these influencers, with, you know, the YouTubers. There's actually a connection here. And that is we are no longer in an era when we can just sit back and play analyze. just play pundit, just play commentariat. We are in an era where we actually need to speak up and we actually, you know, people say, don't take sides. Well, we're actually in an era where you need to take sides. Because one side is not perfect, but it is leagues more moral and more aligned with biblical

morality than the other side. So the time for not picking sides to me is over. And the time for even the conservative commentariat class to just sit back and say, I'm just calling balls and strikes. well, that's not going to help my children and my grandchildren. So when you see what happened in Minneapolis and your purpose is to sit there and say, you know, why don't we just cut our losses? The messaging is bad. I don't think this is going to work out. And you black pill. And you're a cynic because you just want to be able to say, I was right. They're terrible. Look, they lost. See, I was right. How does that help you? How does it help your children to say, I was right? They lost. See, they're the worst. I can't stand that kind of cynicism anymore and I don't want to see it anymore.

So if you're not here with me to fight for our nation, then I don't want to hear your commentary anymore. So, you know, my final thought, speak up, pick aside, fight for good. Well, listen, you, I'm glad you reminded me of your ex post. And I did make a comment in my own post. These folks who, I mean, look, let's be blunt. If you're a black pillar, you're the person, that's P-I-L-L-E-R, you're one of these people that always says things like,

Trump's never going to do anything. nothing ever happens nobody ever accomplishes anything you I just want to be real clear you're the voice of the devil you're the voice of the devil because even though there may be truth in what you say there's always some truth

in every lie you are contributing to the idea that we shouldn't fight it's over we'll never win you have become part of the problem we have to fight we have to we know that there are people that sometimes justice doesn't prevail

that sometimes nothing gets done, but we have to do everything we can to see that something does get done. And when you virtue signal in that dark way by saying nobody ever does anything and so-and-so isn't arrested yet, that may be true, but be careful because you are feeding into cynicism and inaction. And we need to fight. Megan Basham, just great to have you, my sister. God bless you. Thanks for being with us. Eric. Hey there, folks. I want to tell you about a coffee company I genuinely admire 10 Boom Coffee,

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