The Eric Metaxas Show - Ambassador David Friedman

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Ambassador David Friedman, who negotiated the Abraham Accords under the Trump Administration, weighs in on international current events from his vantage point in Israel.

to the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks, it's Eric Metaxis. I hear an echo. Is that good? It's, I'm back. Welcome back. You had quite a trip. Where was I?

You were everywhere and nowhere, I think. I got a tan, but this is just a cheap spray on 10. You're on the West Coast. I got the J-Lo Glow. No, I got this out of Dwayne Reed, man. But, no, seriously, I have been everywhere. Yes. And, okay, before I tell you where I've been today, who is our first guest today?

An ambassador. Ambassador of David Friedman. That's right. Wow, I've met him before. He's really extraordinary, so we're going to have some fun talking. He's the ambassador, the American ambassador to Israel. And we have kind of an important relationship with Israel. So I'm going to ask him the tough, the hard-hitting questions.

Like, do you believe Netanyahu were to pay? You knew him. You were close. you tell? You know, that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then in our two, we're going to talk about this new movie. We may have aired this before, but it's very exciting. C.S. Lewis, it's a story of C.S. Lewis's life, directed by my friend Norman Stone, starring my friend Max McLean. Yeah. And I play Joy Davidman in it. Yeah, it was very progressive casting choice there. I was surprised they went with that. Okay, so I want to

tell about what I did on my summer vacation, which is really what I did in last two weeks. Yeah. And I'm going to try to say this quickly before the ambassador shows up, but this is not going to be easy. It reminds me of in the movies like Indiana Jones where they have the plane going over the map, and in your case, it would have zigzagging. It's zigzagging. It's zigzagging.

But it's even more complicated than that because my dad, by the way, is back in the hospital or still in the hospital. It's a tough time for our family, so we do covet your intercession. And at the beginning of this whole thing, so we had to drive up to Connecticut to pick up my mom to drive to my nephew Nicky's wedding in rural Connecticut. It is so far out in Connecticut that it's like almost Nova Scotia, like you could see Nova Scotia. It's so far out. Like you just go past Hartford and you keep going and there's like whaling ships and scrimshaw. And it's that far out and a lot of cows.

So Nikki and now his wife, Lauren, were married, incredibly moving to be there to see the family. But that meant that to go to Wichita, which is where I needed to be, I had a leave from the Hartford Airport. I've never been to the Hartford Airport. And you know how you know I've never been to the Hartford Airport? No, how? Here. I put it into my phone.

Hartford, where it comes up, Hartford, whatever starts with the B. And we drive there, and we've got a little time, so like we're not rushing. We get to the airport. It's a tiny local airport, and it's closed. Maybe Siri has a... And I realized there's another Hartford Airport. that also starts with a B. That's the one that I wanted to go to.

Oh, no. How far away was that? So that was about another 30 minutes. So now I'm late. So I go to the other Hartford area. But I mean, what are the odds that there are two airports in Hartford, both with B? It's like the Hartford B something airport. It's like Bentley or Bradley or whatever. So I went to Wichita, Kansas, incredible event.

After that, I flew to Phoenix, Arizona. because Charlie Kirk's T.P. USA headquarters are there. Now that's Turning Point USA. And I launched my book. Yeah. I co-hosted. I didn't co-host. I guest hosted Charlie's show.

Yeah. I did some events with Charlie, Turning Point events. I was on his show the next day. And then I had no plans the next night. And he was like, yeah, I can't have dinner. I'm going to California. I was like, oh. And then the world that Charlie,

lives in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, so you want to come? And the pastor of the King's Church here in New York City, do you know these folks? Yeah, I met him. I met him. Nice guy. Well, we flew in a private propeller plane.

Wow, because I was thinking it was like one of those train car deals. It wasn't that fabulous because it was a propeller plane. Oh, I see. I see. And no, it was, it was amazing. That's like bicycle. But it was unbelievable. We flew to California for this dinner event.

I don't live that kind of life. So I was like, this is crazy. And it was me, Buddy Holly, the big bopper. I thought if this plane goes down. So anyway, we have dinner there. Then we fly back to Phoenix. Then I go from Phoenix to Colorado Springs because Jim Dobson every year has a big event at the Broadmoor.

That was amazing. Suzanne met me there. but I thought, I'm losing track of like, where am I? What state am I in? Right, right. But it was absolutely fantastic. Did you meet anyone at that event? At that event, Michelle Bachman was there, but at that event, Pompeo spoke, Mike Pompeo.

And it's hard not to be impressed by Mike Pompeo. He was first in his class at West Point. Yeah. Big deal. Come on. So, but he was there. I asked him a very tough question about election fraud, and he was a little bit diplomatic. And I thought, I don't know, Mike. I really like everything about you, but I don't know if he was a little too diplomatic about it or if he had to be diplomatic because the whole world is looking at him.

Yeah. But it was incredible. He's amazing. And Dr. Ben Carson was there. And Ben Carson is one of these people that whatever speech he gives, I could give it in a quarter of the time. Because he talks like, he talks. like a brain search. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's very methodical. Any false move and somebody forget Spanish, you know. So, but I love Ben Carson so much. I can't even, I don't know where to start. So after that, we flew to San Diego.

And over, as you're landing in San Diego, you could see dozens of container ships stuck in the bay. And I thought, remember Trump had boat parades? This is the Biden boat parade. gazillions of dollars of rotting cabbage in container ships. It is absolutely unbelievable. But I thought that's the Biden flotilla. It's nice in a way because they're getting ready for the holidays.

It's beautiful. It's like the Spanish Armada. It's the Biden Armada. A million container ships stuck in the harbor. So then we met our friend Greg Denham. He's a pastor of the church called Rise in San Marcos. He and his wife, Stephanie, basically drove us everywhere, hosted us. They spoke at his church.

I spoke at other churches. I mean, I spoke at all these churches in the area from our Carl's Bad base. Our hotel was the base. But this brings me to a weird story. Suzanne went home on Friday, and I had to stay because I went to Rob McCoy's church up in Thousand Oaks to speak this weekend. So I stayed behind in the hotel, and I was doing a million media hits from my computer. And the most important of all was Dave Rubin. I was on Dave Rubin's show.

The Rubin Report. So I'm on Ruben's show, and I got to say my piece, and it was really fun. And you were on with a couple people. And I was on with spicy. Yeah, Spicer. Spicer. Spicy, spicy, spicy. I was on with Spicer, and I don't even remember who else was on.

It was somebody that I'm really fond of. No, this is how tired I am because of what I did last night, which I'll tell you later. I'll tell you at the end of after talking to Friedman, I'll come back and the rest of this, but the bottom line is, I was, no kidding, just about done saying my piece, and the internet goes down. And I'm on a live show with Dave Rubin. And I thought, what's going on? And I tried to get back on, try to get back on. Evidently, since that was our last day and, like, checkout was like 10 minutes before, they just shut me off without realizing that they're shutting off live TV, Dave Rubin.

So whatever it was that I would have said, it was probably God's will that I not say it. And I couldn't even get on my hot spot, so I was cut off Dave Rubin. But anyway, the bottom line is I then got up to Thousand Oaks, spoke at Rob McCoy's church, and that was unbelievable. And what happened after that?

I'm going to tell you after I talked to Dave Friedman. You heard me after. Okay. Oh, ADF. This is our last week. stretched to the week. If you haven't yet given and shame on you, we need you to go to Metaxistock.com. Folks, this is important. We need everybody to buy in and obviously not everybody is given. Go to Alliance Defending Freedom. I'm begging you ADFmetaxis talk.com. Please,

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I use it. It works. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. I promised you that I would be speaking to Ambassador David Friedman. promises made, promises kept. I coined that phrase, by the way. Trump doesn't give me credit for it. And you know what, that's fine.

I like him. I'm not going to take credit. Reagan said that you can get a lot of stuff done if you don't care who gets credit for something. But I just want you to know secretly, I did most of the stuff you hear about. Listen, I have, from Jerusalem, this is exciting. Technically, former ambassador, David Friedman,

welcome to this program. Just thrilled to talk to you. Thanks, Eric. It's great to be with you. I know that being on the other side of the world, it's a different time. There's maybe a delay or something like that. I want to jump right in and ask you, describe to my audience, many of whom know nothing about it, what President Trump's extraordinary success with the Abraham Accords, what that is, the mainstream media hardly mentioned it because it was positive. Tell us, from your point of view, what it was and what your role and his role were in that and the significance. Sure. Well, you know, since 1948, maybe even before then, since Israel

was founded, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been considered the single most insoluble diplomatic conundrum in the world. People would talk about solving the odds of solving the Arab-Israeli conflict along the lines of, you know, a total eclipse of the sun or a royal flush. And so we came into office undeterred, really wanting to see if we could make some progress in this area. And, you know, very little, very little optimism surrounded us among our colleagues and our predecessors. But, you know, we saw that things had really changed in the Middle East. We saw that Israel had changed. Israel had become a regional superpower. We saw that people were growing tired of the perception that the Palestinians had a veto over all the progress

that could be made. And so from the very beginning, you know, President Trump first went to Saudi Arabia. He spoke with the heads of 52 Muslim countries. And he said to them something, you know, very, very different than what they had heard from President Obama eight years earlier. He said, radical Islamic terrorism is all of our problems. It's not just a problem in the United States. And we'd like it to be solved before it ever crosses the Atlantic Ocean. And he challenged those Arab nations to really look beyond the grievances of their grandparents and start thinking about the future of the grandchildren. And over a series of years, beginning with moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel's sovereignty over its parts of its biblical heartland,

to really standing with Israel both for itself and against some of its most implacable enemies like Iran, we began to demonstrate that America could be a good friend of a good ally when it chose to be. America could be counted upon to stand with its allies. And, you know, the Arab world took notice because we said to the Arab world, we want to be allies with you too if you'll let us, if you'll provide us a basis for mutual trust. And if you'll give up this ancient grievance against Israel that nobody even remembers why it exists.

And it led to years of discussions, but we kind of came up with the view that we could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict more from the outside in, meaning all the great minds before us that said until the Palestinians released their veto on progress, Israel was in a complete stalemate. We said, look, we don't think that's right.

And we began to forge relationships both strongly with Israel and then with some of our other allies, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco. And what we found was at the end of the day, there was an opportunity here that we seized upon to create peace between Israel and five Muslim nations, warm peace all around. hadn't been a peace agreement between Israel and an Arab country since 1994, right, since 25 years. And we saw the opportunity and we ceased upon it. And we now have these normalization agreements, peace agreements, that have withstood significant stress, have withstood violence between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors. And they are moving the Middle East to a much better place.

I guess my question is, what was the wedge issue? In other words, what was it that other presidents had not tried that the Trump administration working with you, Jared Kushner, that you did try. In other words, why did you appeal to those five nations? Did you effectively ignore the PLO and say we're not going to deal with them? What was the way that this worked? So I think we came about it from two important new directions. Number one, we stood with Israel, you know, unapologetically. we gave up this idea of being a broker between Israel and the Palestinians. I mean, why would we be brokering an agreement between one of our most strategic allies in the world and a people, a non-state that have contributed much to our global terrorist footprint?

So, I mean, the idea that there was a symmetry here that we should be observing was something that we just, you know, we gave up on that made no sense from the beginning. But the other thing is when we stood with Israel, we also let it be clear that, you know, when the president kept his promise, for example, to move the embassy to Jerusalem, the president could also be counted upon to keep his promises to Arab nations of good faith

that want to join us in normalization with Israel, join us in the global fight against extremism. And so signaling, I think it was almost a, simple as signaling both to Israel and to the Arab nations, we're here to be your friends, if you will engage with us in good faith in fighting what really is the battle of the 21st century, the battle against radical Islamic extremism. And we've had a very receptive reaction, both in Israel and both in the Arab world. So where does the PLO stand today? Have they lost power because of this? Are they still, are they furious about this? Where do they stand in this?

Look, the Palestinian leadership is, they've been furious for 25 years. I mean, I don't know if they're any more furious now than they were 10 years ago, two years ago. The Palestinian leadership, you know, was divided between Hamas, which is, you know, a global extremist group that almost every country recognizes as being a terrorist organization. And the people, you know, a people. PLO or the Palestinian Authority, which has almost no popular mandate at all, you know, maybe a 13% approval rating and a record of massive corruption. So, you know, from our perspective, we're not going to chase people that are corrupt. We're not going to chase people that pay terrorists to kill Jews.

We're not going to pay, we're not going to chase an organization that has no interest in really working to make a lasting peace. So look, we're not anywhere with the PA. I think they've grown weak, and they've become a much weaker organization because they realize they've lost their veto on the Arab world. You know, 10 years ago, if the PA said no, PLO said no, everybody else just kind of stopped in their tracks. And, you know, they're getting a lot less money from the Gulf.

They're getting a lot less support. And I think most people are saying, look, enough, you know, this is a problem that can be addressed. rest, you know, reasonably by reasonable people. You got to give up on this, you know, this idea that you have a veto over progress. Most countries have plenty of problems of their own to deal with, and I think they've grown weary of the Palestinians kind of threatening the rest of the region. And who do you think led the way in this? In other words, not from our side, but on the side of the Arab states. Was it Jordan? Who was the first one to give an ear to the

idea of a solution? Well, look, the breakthrough came between us and Muhammad bin Zayyad, who's the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates. I mean, they jumped in first, and they showed, I think, tremendous courage and vision in doing something for which, you know, they knew they were going to take a lot of heat from the radical groups within the Arab world. So they, I think, were our initial partner. Our initial deal was made, Israel, U.S., and the Emirates. Once they jumped in and people saw that this was an attractive outcome, we got Bahrain, we got Sudan, we got Morocco, we got Kosovo. But I would say that, you know, the guy that goes first really requires the most courage, and that was the Emirates. Well, that is so good to hear. Yeah, leadership is not easy to come by. So when you see it, you have to applaud it.

Do you think that the Biden administration is letting it ride, or are they working over? over time to undo what has been done? Look, I don't know that they're affirmatively trying to kill it, but a lot of the things they're doing are not helpful. Look, in every one of these agreements, whether it was Israel and UAE, Sudan, Bahrain, Kosovo, Baraka. There was a bilateral component between the two countries, but in every case, there was a strong America

standing behind the two countries and giving them support and cover and a lot of assistance and a lot of encouragement. And that really was the glue that brought all these deals together. Now, if in turn the United States is going to bend over backwards and chase Iran for a deal that's going to make the Middle East more dangerous. We're going to have to leave it there. Forgive me, Ambassador Friedman. I hope the next time I interview I will be with you in Jerusalem. Thank you for all you have done, not for this country only, but for the world.

God bless you. Thank you. Hey, folks, Eric Mattaxas here. Joe Biden and the Democrats have laid out the most socialist, agenda our country has ever seen. Instead of following President Trump's blueprint that had the economy booming, the Dems are going to raise taxes, increased regulations, and skyrocket and already outrageous national debt. If your retirement is in traditional investments, it is in jeopardy. Americans should be diversifying their investments with gold and precious

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These guys are heroes. I don't want that to become a cliche. They are actual heroes. They are doing work for you and me defending religious liberty at a time when it is seriously under attack. If you're paying any attention to the news, you need to know this is serious. We need brilliant lawyers to defend religious liberty for you, for me. And the Alliance Defending Freedom is doing that spectacularly. They need our help.

They do it for free. These lawyers are making a fraction of what they could make doing other kinds of law. So it's really tremendous that they exist. I want us to support them in any way we can. So I thought, let me get Matt Sharp on with ADF to talk a little bit about what they're up to. Matt, welcome. Thanks for having me. What should we talk about?

Yeah, I think one of the big issues we're seeing right now is the battle over pronouns. We're seeing story after story of these teachers, public school teachers. You talk about people that have given up a lot to help students, to pour their lives into them. And yet they're losing their jobs. They're being fired because. they don't want to be forced by the government to use inaccurate pronouns. They're showing compassion to these students. They're working with them. They're using nicknames and other things like that, but they just don't want to be forced to speak something that they believe in is false.

And for that, they're losing their jobs. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, if you're not paying attention, here's all you need to know. The world is going insane. And if you don't do anything, it's on you. You deserve an insane. world if you don't do something. Perhaps the easiest thing you could do is give some money to the Alliance defending freedom. They are on the front lines of the lunacy so that you don't have to be. Let me give a phone number out. Now, by the way, you can go to our website, metaxis talk.com, not to be confused with my personal website. My personal website is ericmetaxis.com. You should be going there every single day, of course.

But the radio website is metaxis talk.com. When you go to metaxistock.com, you'll see the banner for the Alliance Defending Freedom. If you want to give monthly, if that's easier for you, give a smaller amount monthly than a big amount, or maybe you want to give a gigantic amount monthly, whatever you want to do, you're effectively helping your country and yourself because this is happening. And without ADF, there are very few people in this. battle. And so we need to step up. I'm asking you for your country, for your family, for your kids, your grandkids, this is very serious. We're at an inflection point in the culture. You know that if

you're paying attention to the news. So go to Metaxistalkysotoc.com or I'm going to give you a phone number 855-5-4-7-53-83-8553-855-5-4-7-53-33-33. Matt, did we ever dream that it would come to this point? It's like we've all, you know, it's like the Kimer Rouge has taken over or like we're in 1930s, Stalin's Russia. It's a level of madness that most Americans can hardly conceive that something as stupid as pronouns. I mean, five minutes ago, nobody knew what a pronoun was. And suddenly now we're being told, well, you better be careful. nine-year-old thinks she's a kitty cat. So you have to say me meow, me, meow, me, me-miao, Linda, or you have to say whatever they tell you to say, as though this is where your job as a teacher, it's madness. But you guys are fighting this legally, and we're so proud of you. It's why we're thrilled to partner with you. What else do we need to know about the battles you guys are fighting right now? Well, I think what's key is when we take these cases, when we do

these like of the Peter Vlaming, the teacher in Virginia, beloved teacher for over a decade that lost his job, we defend him free of charge. We don't charge a penny for his defense when he lost his job, when he did not want to be forced to speak a pronoun that violated his beliefs. And to your point, you know, some people may say, what's the big deal with a pronoun? Well, that pronoun has a belief. It has an idea underneath it about what it means to be male and female. And so if the government can force Peter Vlaming, a public school teacher, to use this inaccurate pronoun, to speak something he believes is false, what else can the government force us to speak and believe? And that's why we're standing with him and defending him free of charge. But that's why these donations help

us, because they enable us to take cases like Peters and others like him. I mean, I want to be blunt. I haven't talked about it on this program, but I am being sued on something completely ridiculous right now. And the amount of money that it is costing me in this program is insane. You would not believe it, folks. This is, it just happens. Suddenly somebody decides to go to war with you because they don't like you. And the legal bills are gigantic. These things are happening right now. When you get in a religious liberty situation, the Alliance Offending Freedom for free will come to your aid, can help you. I just want to say that this is, it's like insurance.

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855-5-4-7-53-8-55-5-4-7-53.5-5-4-7-53.5-3-3. I go to our website with Taxest Talk.com. Hey, folks, you've all helped build My Pillo into the amazing company it is today. Mike Lundell has an amazing offer for my listeners on his standard My Pills. You'll get a standard My Pillo regularly 6998, now only 1998. You'll also receive deep discounts on all MyPillow products such as My Pillow towels, mattress top or my slippers, and so much more. Go to MyPillow.com and click on the radio listener square to receive Mike's standard MyPillow for

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promo code Eric. Hey there, folks. We're back. It's just me and Chris Himes. Hello. I'm sorry it couldn't be more people, but this is who showed up today. I'm playing the role of Albin Seder today. Albin, by the way, is a he's a caregiver. his lovely wife, Anne, she had some kind of a, I don't know, dental procedure or something.

He won't share it with us. But I believe the medical term is Goiter. Do you know what that is? Yeah. And so he wants to be there for her. And so he's not here now so we can make fun of him. There's nothing he can do about it. Well, I always felt like the Goiter was the medical condition you would want to have around the Thanksgiving time.

because to me it's kind of a turkey. It makes you look turkey-ish. Now, by the way, Turkey-ish is not a word. It's a neologism. I've just coined it. So if you use the word turkey-ish, just remember Eric Metaxus. I feel like they use that word in Iran, because I feel like Iran is turkey-ish. You know, there are countries that are turkey-ish.

Yeah. But anyway, the bottom line is I coined the term, and I won credit. Okay, we've got to finish my story. story because I was away on summer vacation. Actually, it was not, it was my extended summer, my endless summer. I was at Carlsbad, you know, beach near San Diego, which is a surfer beach. Right. But I don't surf.

So, hey, hey, Charlie don't surf. So anyway, as I was saying, we were there. Suzanne had to go home, and I decided to stay, and I got cut off from the Ruben report. Yeah. So the Ruben report, I did so much media. I did, oh my gosh. I mean, I did Dinesh D'Shea. In the same day, I did Dinesh D'Souza's podcast and his daughter, Danielle D'Souza Gil, her podcast. So a double D'Souza day. Like in media world, that's unbelievable. That's unprecedented. And, and of course, I performed her wedding. You did. Yeah. It's the only wedding I've ever performed in my life. Wow.

And Danielle and Brendan wanted me to do it. And I thought, I'm so touched by that. This is Danielle. This is Dinesh's daughter, Danielle. I was so unbelievably touched by that that I couldn't say no. But I was very nervous about it. So I shot gun on a beer like right before it started. It takes the edge off.

And it took the edge off. And I was so mellow. So after you perform a wedding, what obligations do you have then as the person who was, you know, kind of the witness officiant? Bob kiss. No, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Okay. You get your check and you move on with your life.

Anyway, I want to say that I was, so I was cut off from my Dave Rubin interview. Right. And then, but wait, but I was on Newsmax a bunch of times. I was on Greg Kelly. I was on, like I just, oh wow. And Sean Spicer. Yeah. He was on with you.

Who was on with me in the day. They've Ruben podcast. What are they calling? Rubin Report. The Rubin Report. Yes. And I just, yeah, so it just got cut off. But so anyway, so I'm doing a lot of media around the book.

Is atheism dead? Yeah. Right? Well, I want to cut to the chase, but we don't have time. Actually, that's funny. I want to cut to the chase, but we don't have time. Somehow, I want to write that down and use that again. But here's the issue.

I go to Rob McCoy's church. Now, Rob McCoy is a hero. He would not shut his church down. Gavin Newsom came after him. And Newsom wears a lot of gel in his hair. He does. He's like an 80s villain character. You could shoot him with an armor-piercing bullet, and it won't make a dent because he has so much.

It's just like steel. And he's heartless, I should say that also. So he tried to shut down all these churches, and Rob McCoy led the pack in saying, I don't think so. And as we know, all of the churches have prevailed. And not only have they prevailed legally and so on and so forth, but Rob McCoy's church, which is called Godspeak and all the other churches, John MacArthur's church, Jack Hibbs's church, all these churches,

their numbers have increased very dramatically because people are hungry for freedom and courage. So there are lots of people who go to these churches. that are not Christians. They're just kind of checking it out. And if I'm preaching in a church, I would like some of the people not to be Christians because I believe in evangelism. That's just me. I'm crazy.

So I spoke there three times, and I want to say that, first of all, huge thanks to my friend Greg Denham on his current wife, what's her name, Stephanie. Yes. They were the kindest hosts. They drove us all over the place to all these different churches,

inland, California, inland, like Mississippi, a river. And we just had a wonderful time and got to experience Carl's Battle a little bit. And, you know, that's a misnomer because it's a really nice place. I don't know why they call it. Carl's good. Well, yeah. So to call it Carl's bad, I feel like that's just, you know, they're getting a bad rap and it's not right.

So we had a nice time. And but when I was in Rob McCoy's church, people come up to you in the, in the, in the line when you're signing books, and you never know. It's kind of, it's really fun. It's like Christmas morning because you don't know who's going to come up. It could be like a really odd person who is. Maybe they have a beef to pick with you. They have a beef.

They've got a bone to pick with you. Or it could be, you just don't know. Or it could be a friend you haven't seen in 10 years. And, you know, you finally get your $40 back. Right. So I got to tell you one of the most shocking things, I was in line on Sunday. I preach three sermons on Sunday morning, which is too much, frankly.

But after one of them, I'm signing books, and a woman comes up to me with a copy of my previous book. His Atheism Dead is the new book. The previous book is Fish Out of Water, which tells my story of growing up. And she puts the book on the table, and she looks at me, and she says, I want you to know,

I think you were a little hard on Mr. Siambas. And I said, excuse me? Mr. Siambas is the Greek teacher that I write about in the book who when I was in second grade, when I went up and asked, can I go to the bathroom politely? And in second grade, I skipped a grade, so I was six. And I was very small for my age. So I looked like I was one.

And I said, can I go to the bathroom, you know, please? And he slapped me in the face. Like this happened in my lifetime. This is not like in medieval times they treated kids this way. The hardcore Greeks, and he was like, you know, when I say he was a Greek teacher, he was like imported from Greece. Right. Like he's smoking in the classroom.

Like, it was that level of Greekness. He might as well have been slapping a baby. And he whacked me across the face. And I went back to my chair and wept. And I don't think I ever told my parents about it because I think my mother would have purchased a gun and murdered him. Yeah. Not that there's anything wrong with that. No, it's fine.

but when we come back, there's more to the story, folks. It's crazy. And I normally don't do this, but I thought so much has happened in these two weeks. I got to share what happened last night when I got home from California. All right, we'll be right back. Okay, folks, we are in hour two, we're going to talk about C.S. Lewis, Max McLean. We had him on once before, but even if you missed it, you want to hear it again because there's a movie coming out. We've got to talk about that.

I also want to say before I get to the rest of my story. story. Alliance Defending Freedom. Now, this is actually funny. We know that we're part of the Salem Radio team, okay? We got, you got Charlie Kirk, you got, uh, Prager. You got Dennis Prager. Elder. You got Hugh Hewitt. You got Larry Elder. Larry Elder. You got all this gang of, of stalwarts, veterans in the radio business. And they're also raising money for the Alliance Defending Freedom. But the new kid on the block, Eric Metaxus, is kicking their tuccasus. Do you understand what I'm saying? They're behind.

We're ahead. And that means you, our audience, you win. You win. And you're making this happen. And they're so ashamed of losing to the new kid on the block that they said, why don't we do this another week? It's kind of like, okay, what about double or nothing? Yeah.

How about three out of five? Because they don't want to lose. And I understand that they're feeling ashamed. Especially Sebastian Gorka. He strikes me with someone who does not like to lose. He will take you out military style and no one will ever know. So, but I just said, you know what, if you want to do another week, I don't think you want to do that because you'll lose even worse because my audience is just that generous. So this week, Alliance Defending Freedom, we can still raise money for them.

Right. They extended it. Yes, they extended it because of all the losers, all the cry babies. So this is a great organization. If you have not yet given, folks, that might mean one of two things. It might mean it slipped your mind and you're going to give now generously. Or it might mean maybe you're not really a listener to the Irkman, Texas show. Maybe you're a Hugh Hewitt guy.

Maybe you're a Prager guy. Maybe you don't belong to this generous audience. Maybe you belong to their audiences. And I don't think you want that to happen. And so no matter what you give today, you go to metaxistock.com and you give to the Alliance Defending Freedom. Now, we joke around, but it's such a great organization. I was trying to think the other day, is there any one else that's even remotely close to doing it? Well, look, there are other folks that are in the business, and some of them are friends of mine, and they're doing, but there's nobody that can really compete with Alliance of Fending Freedom.

What they're doing is they're protecting our religious liberties, and I have to tell you, someone on my staff, I won't mention her name, but it rhymes with Katie Madonna, and I, in other ways, have been attacked. And where do you go? You go to the Alliance Defending Freedom. And so I want to say to you, folks, your tax money works against religious liberty in this day and age. So we're asking you to go to the Alliance Defending Freedom. Please go to the Alliance Defending Freedom. Please. It's at Metaxistalksotoccom and give generously. We had someone give $10,000, which means now I have to have dinner with them. Oh, boy. Seriously, I love that so much that if there's anybody out there who's able to give $10,000 to one of the greatest organizations, you know, sounds like hyperbole, except it's not.

What they're doing is vital. They take cases to the Supreme Court. They're a big deal. They're defending religious liberty at a time that it's an, unprecedented attack on religious liberty. You actually have folks like the New York Times using religious liberty in scare quotes because they don't really believe in it anymore. They think it's code for like conservative values. Folks, that is a lie. It's in the Constitution. Religious liberty extends to every atheist, every Buddhist, every Muslim, everybody, notice I didn't say

behind. To everybody, that's what religious liberty is. And I want to tell you, if you care about America and you care about freedom, please give something. You can give monthly. That you can only give a 12th as much this month. I did that in my head. So metaxistock.com. So speaking of unprecedented attacks, you had been mentioning there was a stranger who came up to you in the book line,

mentioned the teacher who had attacked you. Oh, yes. And guess what? You can have to wait till the next segment. That's right. You can hear it at metaxis talk.com where you can just stick around. But it's fascinating.

Oh, it's fascinating. We'll be right back.