The Eric Metaxas Show - The Babylon Bee Interviews Eric (Encore)

Episode Date: November 27, 2021

Eric sits down with the fun and funny guys over at The Babylon Bee and proceeds to reveal a few things about himself that have not come out in other interviews -- yikes! (Encore Presentation)

Welcome to the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. The weekend is here, everybody, and we are ready for it. I'm Elbin Seder, one of the producers of the program. And in this hour, we are airing Eric's interview from a couple weeks back with the fun guys over at the Babylon Bee. You should be checking out the Babylon Bee website daily and watch outstanding creative videos and subscribe to their YouTube channel. Hey, let's get started with Eric at the Babylon Bee. Oh, here we are at the Babylon Bee interview show, and we have a very special guest, Sir Eric Pataxus, in person at the Babylon B. Not literally in person, but yeah.

Not literally? I think it is literally in person, isn't it? Well, I guess technically that would be true. We're off to good stuff. If you want to be literal. If you want to be literal about the word, literally. Yeah. Have you noticed people like, you know, English major.

writer. So when people misspeak and say literally, it's like, you know, you, we literally blew up. You know, it's like, no, that's the whole point. You didn't literally blow up. You blew up. The numbers blew up. But that's not literally. But no, I actually, I got to confess, I am literally here. Well, speaking of literally blowing up. Great transition. You've written books about Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhofer, William Wilberforce, and you also wrote a commercial for X-Lax. Can you tell us about that commercial? I did write it right. Actually, this is not insignificant in a way.

It is totally true that I, during the worst periods of my life, I had to take a job as a copywriter for gray advertising. So if you think advertising is cool, like anybody in the advertising business who thinks it's kind of cool, they think, yes, but if you sell out, you go to gray advertising. like they do the stuff that no one else will do, like X-Lax. Okay. And so I was working with an ad director who was so evil seeming to me that I asked if I could be switched. And they said, yeah, well, sweet you have serious to Mark Schwatke. He does, you know, pharmaceutical, blah-da-da-da. He was a really cool guy.

And my first assignment was X-Lax. And the X-Lax thing, it's so weird because some commercials, like, it's so, they kind of write themselves. Like, they tell you what they want. And they just need someone physically to, like, be there and to say, like, okay, I rock. I wrote this. But so they had this whole thing, you know, somebody comes home with a bag of groceries. Hey, mom, you see, you got your X-Lax, you know, blah, blah, blah, right? So I wrote that.

But the point is I... Is that what people? Do they ask their parents? Hey, I see you got your X-Lex. It was somebody, no, no, it was sis. Like a slice of life. Hey, sis. So you got your X-Lax.

But here's the key to the whole thing. The key to the whole thing is that at that time, X-Lax was either being sued or something because it was such a powerful. laxative. Let me say that again. It was such a devastatingly powerful laxative that it sometimes gave people unbelievable cramps and this and that. So they were moving over to an herbal formula, which, of course, couldn't be nearly as effective, right? So the commercial that I did for Xlax was the last actual Xlax commercial. After that, they switched over and it became, you know, Xlax in quotes. Oh, okay.

Because the brand, so for 90 years they had this formula. So I wrote the last X-Lax commercial. Wow. What an honor. Glory to God. Yeah. Now, in your Wilberforce book, you talk about how he felt called by God to sort of become a politician and end the slave trade. Did you feel called by God to write this X-Lax commercial?

Well, it's interesting because the answer is no. Yeah, and it was a horrible year. I was, I mean, it's like I have to go back in time to explain that. I was, you know, my parents are, you know, European immigrants. So they came here, they're working class of European immigrants. So to get to go to a place like Yale and to be an English major and to want to be a writer, like sort of doesn't make sense, right? And so it was very difficult for me.

It wasn't really working out. I wrote a lot of comedy. I was the editor of the Yale Humor magazine. And at age 25, I had this unbelievable born-again experience. And I don't want to go. go into the details, but I was in a cave with some susquatches for like two weeks and time stopped. But that's the only part that's not true. So I had an amazing experience.

And I knew I still wanted to be a writer, but I still kind of floundered in this or that. I wrote a little bit for Veggie Tales. I worked for Chuck Colson. I did this. I did that. But just as I was getting married, I realized, like, I need a job, job. And somehow, freakishly, I got a job as a copywriter at Gray Ever. advertising. And it was absolutely awful. And I knew that I didn't want to be there very long. And

after that I went to work for Chuck Colson and stuff. But the idea that I spent a year in New York advertising, it was no fun. And if you've ever wanted to know if you weren't called to do something, you do something like that and you just go, this is, this is agony. I don't, I don't even care. I don't even want to be successful in this. Let me out. So the Lord let me out. I had a similar feeling when I was writing Veggie Tales What the? You went from Veggie Tales to wanting to write for X-Lex. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, so you went from VeggieTales to X-Lex Lacks? No, I mean you. You did. You decided you want. How can we tie this all together? We can't. I wrote Vigetales for three years, and that was the only thing I did a new episode. We wrote a new one every week.

Yeah, but here's the key. At a certain point. I worked for VeggieTales for two years, and they were so poorly. managed that they didn't use me at all. Like I wrote a ton of stuff that they never produced. They never, it was really, it's kind of why they went in the tank because they're paying me well to do nothing. And so I only ended up writing half of Lila Kindly Viking. The only thing I do is the Hamlet Amelette Parody. And Mike Naraki, aka Larry the Cucumber, let me be the voice of the narrator on the Esther video. And I wrote some books and stuff for them. But we've got to move on.

You said you wrote for the Yale Humor magazine? I was the editor of the Yale Humor magazine, The Yale Record. Yeah, Michael Gerber, you mentioned, followed me years later. And I never thought I'd be a comedy writer. I mean, when I was a kid growing up, I'd watch TV, I'd watch the Dean Martin Roast or whatever night. And I had an affinity for it, huge affinity, but I never thought I would go write this, because I didn't live in a world where people could even think about something like that. And so when I got to Yale, I happened.

I think I got there really early because I transferred in and I got there like the first day you could get there. And there was almost no one there. And the people that I was hanging out with were like, yeah, we were on the humor magazine. I said, what? I want to do that. So I sort of learned how to write comedy because everybody thinks they can write comedy because they laugh at jokes. Yeah. But it's kind of like everybody thinks they can write a kid's book.

But it's not so easy. So that's where I got my beginning, where I started writing comedy. and then eventually, you know, I wrote, I wrote a bunch of pieces that the New York Times Magazine bought. I sold the humor piece to the New Yorker, like, I don't know, five years ago. And, you know, I've always wanted to write the pieces that Woody Allen and before him S.J. Pearlman, and, you know, they used to call them casuals or benchly, you know, the stuff that nobody does anymore, really, except sometimes you guys do. So it's, but, yeah, writing comedy was really something I always, you know, I want. wanted to be a serious novelist, you know, like Thomas Pynchon or John Cheever or John Updike or something. And I also wanted to be a writer of goofy comedy.

And normally those things don't go together. But you know what? Normally Greeks don't marry Germans. And, you know, I just, here I am. When you were at Yale, was there like the political kind of pressure? Oh, my gosh. It was already like a Marxist training camp. was there in the 80s. It really was. I mean, it was, I mean, if you were, if you're in the humanities.

Yeah, yeah. You know, if you're like a jock or an econ major, you could have avoided that. Uh-huh. But if you're like an English major, you know, Derry Dada was on campus. I actually walked Derry Dada. I wrote a poem about, about walking Derry Dada across Calhoun College Quad. It's now been named Rupal Quod or Caitlin Jenner Quad or something. But it was, you know, and there was deconstruction and critical theory and all that had already come there. And basically it was extremely politically correct. And I, coming from a working class normal background, you know, going to church on Sunday, whatever, I was like, what's this?

I guess this is how the elites think. So I kind of drank the Kool-Aid. And I never became like seriously liberal or whatever. But I was, you know, I certainly wasn't any kind of a conservative or Christian. I was just kind of drifting along. But it was very much the case there. In my memoir that I came out earlier this year called Fish Out of Water, I write about that, about a few instances of where you realize that this is the way you're supposed to think now

and how it was kind of, you know, it was an interesting moment to suddenly be that young kid realizing like, oh, we don't think this way at home, but I guess we're supposed to think this way now. And, of course, wonderfully, now the entire country is that way. Thank goodness it all worked out. Hey folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners Pete and Seth Talbot have never made a big deal about, but I think it is a big deal. I really do. They sell the three-week quick start pack for just 1995 to anyone struggling from pain like

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8-800-800-800-500-8-384 relieffactor.com. I use it. It works. We continue now with Eric's interview at the Babylon B. I'll have to ask because you said that you were friends of Larry David at one point? Yes. I had dinner in his apartment. When I was writing these humor pieces, the Atlantic Monthly published a couple of them.

And there was a humor reading. This was like 1987, and somebody got me to do a humor reading with Ross Chast's husband. You know, Ross Chast's husband, you know, Yorker cartoonist, whatever. Her husband did some stuff, and there was somebody, I can't remember, but I was one of these, like, two or three people who in it

something, like in a basement in New York, did a comedy reading, and this friend of mine that I met at one of these writers' colony says, you got to meet my friend Larry, he will love you, he'll love you, and he's so funny, he's funny, this is before he became famous, like right before. So he came, and he loved what I did, like the humor pieces. I think these humor pieces

are on my website, Ericmetaxis.com, Ericmettaxas.com. Ericmatexis.com. But the humor pieces are still there. And I, so anyway, so we became friends. And he really loved what I was doing. And he connected me with his manager, whom he eventually married. And she was only taking, like, she had him.

She had Chris Elliott. You know, like, really, I was like, I've made it now. Yeah. And then I became a born-again Christian, and I threw it all in the garbage. I burned all of that with my ELO albums and all that satanic stuff. Because humor is of the devil. No, I never really overtly turned away from it. I just kind of drifted away.

So Larry and I became friends. I remember he had a dinner party in his apartment. And like the actual Kramer came in. But at the time, I didn't realize he was the actual Kramer. Did you know he was racist? That's a funny. of me. That's a funny question. That's a funny question. I would kill to meet Michael Richards. I just loved that man so much. But I, yeah, so I think when I became like a conservative Jesus freak,

Larry David probably had problems with that, which is a pity because, of course, I'm right. But it's interesting how I tried to write for Seinfeld, and he loved what we wrote with a friend Carl Tiedeman, who had originally written for Letterman. And we wrote some stuff. that I know that if they had produced it, it would be like, like, it was really that good. Yeah. And I can show it to you some time. But, you know, they didn't really need more writing. But Larry David was very, very complimentary of what we did.

So I didn't end up writing for Seinfeld. And I never was elected president of the United States. But, you know, if people want to say that I was, that's fine with me. It's cool. Because, you know, we can be in America. You can be whoever you want to be. There's nothing to stop you. No one can question what you believe about yourself.

No one can question whether you were elected or maybe not or whatever you did. God bless America. If you can keep it. If you can keep it. Just plugging. I'm helping you plug your books. Thank you very much. So, okay.

So I want to try to talk about... I hate you for noticing that. I want to try to talk about this topic. And it's kind of that elephant. that elephant in the room, but I want to talk about it from a perspective of somebody who I feel like I'm in the same boat. You're going to love my answer. Go ahead. Yeah, it's going to be great. So, you know, the narrative about Eric Metaxus is that he's gone from this intellectual Christian guy, and now he's this right-wing, spoke mouthpiece. Right. I sold out, man. Yeah, sold out.

I needed bread, man, and I sold out. So I'd love to hear the Eric Metaxus side of that story. And also, but also because we make humor at the Babylon B. We also make things online. And it feels like in the climate that we're almost forced into preaching to the choir. Yeah. And that's kind of the point. And should we fight that or is it a fight worth giving up? Or like, I want to kind of get into that topic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, look, I live this every day and I hate you for bringing it up. But seriously, no, no kidding. look, first of all, most of what people perceive we know is idiocy. Like, you know, people say, Eric was the intellectual Christian. They don't know anything about me. What did they do? They watched Socrates in the city, and they read my Bonhofer book.

And so you think you know me because of that? You know, as Walt Whitman said, I am large. I contain multitudes. I mean, I'm a complicated, strange guy. I've written tons of humor. I've written 30 children's books. I've written biographies. I mean, I'm eclectic or scattered or whatever you want to call it.

I went to Yale. I live in Manhattan. But I was raised by working class European immigrants, whom I love and treasure. And I grew up among working class people. So I didn't become a globalist, Yale-educated elitist like Barack Obama or like all those people. But I know how they think. And, you know, if I'm given an opportunity. to be friends with somebody on the other side of an issue, I treasure that. But what's happened in this

country in the last like five or so years is that there are people saying, no, unless you agree with me, I'm going to cancel you. And that probably started with the gay thing when people said, like, I identify as this. And I don't care if you love me. You have to tell me what I'm doing is good. And you'd be like, listen, I'm a Christian. I believe what the Bible says. I can love you. I don't have to agree with you. Exactly. But I can't affirm what I think. is wrong, right? So if somebody says, oh, I'm sleeping with my girlfriend, I can't say, like, that's awesome. I'm going to say, if it comes up, I wish you wouldn't do that. That's not going to be good for you or for her. But if the person says, I identify as a fornicator or identify as a whatever,

suddenly you've been canceled. You have to shut up and go away. So that idea kind of crept into the culture, I don't know how, but it got to the point where if you show, you. showed sympathy for the other side. When Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel, I guess both of them, had kind of cute moments with Trump while he was running for president, it was as if they had said, Heil Hitler killed the Jews and blacks. And you thought, wait a minute, they were just being polite. They never said they agreed with him or they would vote for him. That's what we've done in America from the beginning of time. Like we never played this game. So, Suddenly something happened.

And so I was naive because, first of all, I was a radio host, and, you know, I'm trying to speak to everybody, to liberals, conservatives, whatever. So I thought, since I'm kind of a public figure as a result of the radio program, I would have to say that I'm, you know, pro-Republican stuff. Like, I believe in life. I believe in this. I believe in that, whatever. So to me, the idea that Trump comes the nominee and you go like, okay, you know, whether I love him or not, I'm for him. But people acted like there was some magical third choice that I refused to accept, like not voting so that Hillary Clinton could come in and usher in the end times.

And I said, I don't get that. I mean, Trump is for this. He's for this. We'll see how good he is, but like I can't even imagine. But the most bizarre thing happened, and it's interesting sitting here talking to you all, that it revolves around comedy writing. When Trump was running, and I didn't know where I stood really.

But he said some stuff. I watched him on the stump a couple of times, and I began to have almost like a slight affection for him because some of his stuff was so funny. I said, I've never seen anybody on the stump be this funny. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. He was an interview with somebody. Remember he'd made some mistake from the Bible.

And so some, I think, see, an interviewer was like sitting down with him and is like, so, you know, Mr. Trump, so, you know, you said you're, read the Bible. And it's funny that they're really serious about this. Like, who thinks he reads the Bible, right? So they say, you've read the Bible. And he says, so which, which a testament do you prefer? Now, could anybody dream of a stupider question? Like, it's the world's stupidest question. But he asks it, he goes, which testament do you find yourself preferring? And Trump, with a level of genius that we've never seen in public life, says, I think I'd probably say, you know, about even. And I said, I don't know where he came up with that, but that is freaking genius.

I'd say about even. He says it's so matter of fact way. Because you could unpack that theologically a thousand ways. It's just the funniest thing. But anyway, it was around that time that I got the idea of writing a humor piece of, you know, because he was tweeting out of Trump Bible verses, right? So Bible verses that he gets wrong in a kind of Trumpian way, right? So, you know, a good woman who can find, I found three.

hashtag Trump, you know, or a man will leave his parents and cleave to his wife for a season. Hashtag, hashtag Trump Biblevers. So I came up with a ton of these because I'm conversant in the scripture and in the kind of queen. I grew up in Queens, New York, so the kind of Trumpy way of thinking and stuff. But also as a comedy writer, I could kind of intuit his voice. And so I began almost writing these in his voice, like the way you'd write for Jackie Mason or for Bob Hope or whatever, you kind of get their voice and their way of thing. So I wrote all this stuff. And as I was writing these ostensibly making fun of him, I found myself developing a strange affection for his humor and for his way of speaking. And I sold that piece to the New Yorker magazine. And as a result of that,

I kind of changed from just saying I'm going to vote for him to saying, I really like this guy. Hey, folks, Eric Metaxis 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, increase regulations, and skyrocketed an 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 metals. Gold gives you control over your wealth and protects you from market volatility, inflation, and a weakening dollar.

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them shame on you that's disgusting that's an american these people are the salt of the earth I know them. I love them. I would die for them. These are my friends and my relatives. And for you to vilify them and say that if they like Trump, they are bigots or they're this or that or they don't like brown people. Like this stupid stuff, I reacted to that. It really made me angry in the same way that when I was writing Wilberforce, I was angry against the slave traders. Injustice makes me angry. And I saw this injustice of being done in the country. And the funny thing is, I mean, I wrote a 600-page biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is all about, you know, trying to, you know, giving your life for the Jews of Europe, right? Somebody who had been a friend, a journalist,

wrote a piece effectively saying that my support for Trump made me out to be an anti-Semite, a secret anti-Semite. And I thought, the world has gone crazy. You can't have a meaningful conversation anymore. I mean, I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't don't care what you think of Trump, he picked three Supreme Court justices who actually value the Constitution. That's a pretty good accomplishment. And imagine if Hillary Clinton had picked three Supreme Court justices, we would all be, you know, in the American gulag probably today. So I will never understand this. And people have tried to mischaracterize me. And I think I've almost leaned into it. I've said, like, I don't care if you want to be that way, if you want to be that shallow and that

That's an ugly word, but I've just coined it. Write that down, I just coined it. If you want to be that cancely, I don't know what to do. And so I think half the time I'll even tweet stuff just to troll people because you can't even crack a joke. I mean, many times I've said stuff giving speeches or wherever clearly is a joke. And some pious journalist has quoted it as though I said it. Seriously. So we've gone through the looking glass. It's madness. And if, you know, I think anybody reads what I write, I mean, the new book that I have called Is Atheism Dead and the book that just came out in February, which is a literary memoir of my life and my coming to faith. And where can people order these books? Ericmetaxis.com. Let me mention, by the way, if you don't mind, let me mention my website, Ericmataxis.com.

and but I just thought to myself, I thought to myself, we're living in such weird times, but the more people who would lean toward Trump were attacked, the more upset I got because I said, look, I know I'm against racism and I'm against whatever you would accuse me of. So you can accuse me of those things,

but the fact that you're accusing like the unwashed people who created this country and saying that they're this and they're that, it just feels really dark to me and I'm not going to stand for it. And sometimes I felt myself becoming like a little bit of a voice for those people. And I literally thought, listen, if Bonhoeffer can give his life for what he believes in, I can give up my career or the well wishes of some woke ex-vangelical in Wheaton or something like that. I mean, I just believe that I'm at a point in life where I really have to worry about what God thinks of what I do and what I say. That's all I can care about. And there are going to be people who are going to get what I'm trying to do and the people who won't. And all I can say

is, I know that I stand before God and I know that I care what he thinks. If you aren't convinced of that, I can't help you. But I know that those, I mean, people really know me know that. So we are living through bizarre times. And I think, you know, Ethan, what you were just saying, like, you know, you try, you want to, you want to have friends on both sides, but can we do that? I think there are good people with whom you can still be friends and disagree. And I go out of my way to be friends with them. But there are other people that, unless you say what they want to say, and God bless Dave Chappelle. for telling them that they can pee up a rope.

He's not going to do it. Yeah. Yeah, what do you think of that? It feels like Dave Chappelle is like the last comedian, and he's getting it right now. I mean, I don't even know what you make of Dave Chappelle now. He was beloved by L. And now he's...

But then it's also the conservative embrace is interesting because it feels like there's so many things he says that you think they'd not be so crazy about. But see, this is the beauty of it. And doesn't it tell you, it's kind of like Solomon and the baby. Like, you want to know who's the good one, who's the real mother? You'll find out.

This is the one that says, no, no, no, don't cut the baby in half. You take the baby. That reveals the heart of the mother. I really believe at this point, you see who is sane and who is insane. You see who has sold their soul. I will stand with Dave Chappelle. I will stand with Naomi Wolf. She was in my class at Yale.

and my whole show was canceled from YouTube because I had her on. She is a lifelong liberal Democrat, super feminist, but she understands the horror of like vaccine passports and stuff. So she's speaking about this. I had her on my program a couple of times. Because of that, I was canceled. But I would gladly go to the death camps with those people rather than, you know, survive, like those who in Germany said,

you know what, I don't want to lose my job. So if a few Jews disappear, I'm going to keep my mouth shut. Everything will be fine. I have written books about people who did the opposite of that, so I have to live it. And it might look weird,

but, you know, I'm not responsible for what everybody thinks. Hey, folks, all you out there know that my pillow doesn't have box stores or any shopping channels. They've been part of this canceled culture, and they want to pass the savings on directly to you. So you can get the lowest price in the history of MyPillow for the classic

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That's Mypillow.com promo code Eric or 1-800-9783057. Dressin black. Why you never see bright colors on my... We continue now with Eric's interview. you at the Babylon B. Yeah, I feel like just, you know, because when I think about the question I brought up with you,

even in my own life, I started off as a comic artist, making animation that was beloved by so many people. I had friends on, Nick Offerman did the voice, huge comedians of our time, loved me, I got reached out to by all these people, and I get the same criticism. They see Babylon B, and they go, oh, what's become of Ethan? They think that I've

gone through this transformation. Like, no, that's been me the whole time. But think how, how insulting and stupid it is, what's become of you. Literally nothing. You're exactly who you were. The question is, what's become of them, that they judge you by one thing, or that they don't have the intellectual expansiveness. Right.

It's amazing. What I found, because, you know, working in Hollywood, like, when I was at Ellen and Conan and stuff and personal friends, it's even more so, like, as much as cancel culture is a problem, where it really, like, hurts and is difficult to comprehend, is when it's people you know personally, people that knew. you. And it's like you say, like you're saying if somebody, you know, calls you racist or says, you know, you don't like brown people. It's like they, they could have known you for years, know that you will work with black and brown people and Jewish people and gay people. They will

know that you can get along with these people. They know your sense of humor. They know your heart. But then you say one political thing that they disagree with. And that changes there. They throw out everything else they know about you. And it's now you're a racist. Now you're a homopold. Now you're a beautiful person. To say, I think, that I want to say about this. Number one, it kind of shows that it's a spiritual issue. Something weird is going on because it makes no logical sense. Number one. Number two, isn't this precisely what happened in Germany under the Nazis? You had people, they knew each other forever. If you dared to criticize it, it's pure fear. They will throw you, they are throwing you under the bus. They're throwing you out of the sled to the wolves to save themselves.

what is more horrifying than that, that they will not stand with you, they will not defend you. So those who do become my heroes and best friends. And that's why anybody who's out there, I want to stand with them. And by the way, Francis Chan, I did a thing with him, Mike Bickle and Francis Chan and we were at, we were at IHOP in Kansas City. And, you know, we differ on a number of things. But he said, I'm going to stand with you. and I know that I'm going to inherit all your enemies and whatever. That's what it's all about.

If people had done that in Germany in the 30s, none of that would have ever happened. But people made these foolish, selfish decisions, and one by one, they were picked off and the Nazis took power. That's how evil works. And it's happening in our time. And this is why I've been going everywhere. I say to the church in particular,

wake up now. because Bonhofer was saying, wake up now. And they said, yeah, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow. By the time they woke up, they had no power. We have a lot of freedom in America. And again, this is not about, you know, comparing ourselves to Bonhofer. It's the principle. You've never seen it illustrated more clearly than in Germany in the 30s,

that they had a measure of freedom and power, not just the church, but all kinds of people, but they were outmaneuvered into saying, take him, take him, take him. So it's the famous Martin Niemuller poem, right? You know, when they came for the, whatever, the socialists. I didn't speak up because I was not a socialist. When they came for the communists, we've all got to stand together. It's an American value. It's certainly a Christian value that we stand together.

We're sinners. We're broken. But we support each other. We stand together, even in our disagreements. That's what America has been all about. That's the beauty of this nation. So the fact that ironically liberals have become more. Marxist soldiers and have pulled in evangelicals, some evangelicals and some rhinos and people all across

the spectrum in Hollywood. Like, it's an amazing moment we're living through. So when you see somebody like a Dave Chappelle or anybody stand up, you're thinking like, wow, now I know what that guy's made of. I didn't want to know what all these other people were made of. I thought they were my friends. So it's a clarifying moment, but I believe the Lord stands with us as we stand with him and for truth and whatever. And at the end of the day, the older you get, the more you realize, like, that's all I can care about.

And I'm a fool to care about anything else. So let's just say these are interesting times. Yeah. And I think another great thing about what Dave Chappelle is doing is it takes a stand, like you said, before it kind of progresses to that horrible point in culture. But it also shows that that power that these people are gaining, they don't, like when you see someone like Dave Chappelle stand up like that, I think everyone knows that this is probably a very small but powerful and loud community of people that are tearing everyone down.

And when you do actually stand up to them, it exposes that their power isn't, you know, indestructible. By the way, that happened with Phil Robertson and Duck Dynasty. I don't know if you remember that. Yep. Like, he made some statement or whatever, like, and they just came after him, like, And I thought to myself, what did he do? He has a biblical view of sexuality, so he needs to be canceled. Well, thank the Lord that Duck Dynasty by that point was making enough money for somebody that they weren't able to take it down.

And I really believe that's the difference between America and Nazi Germany. We still have a few pockets that, you know, we're not going down. There's still enough freedom. We're going to be loud. I mean, we're basically, maybe Charlie Kirk or somebody quite, the term anti-fragile. Like the more you become, the more you attack us, the more we go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what you have gone way too far. I think this morning I was on Dave Rubin's podcast or show or whatever. And I said, this is like, you know, when Merrick Garland comes

after parents, it's like, this is like the Stamp Act of 1765. Now you've ticked us off. Now, King George, you're going to get it. Now you're going to get it. Now you're going to get a revolution, you went too far. You went too far. So a lot of these politicians, a lot of these folks, they're just going a little too far, and it's like, now you made everybody angry, and we're not going to put up with it. So I think ultimately plays in our favor, and ultimately it's God's plan to wake us up, because we have been sleepwalking, and we need to be shaken and to understand what's at stake. America doesn't keep itself to plug my book if you can keep it available at at everycom. And also at my store.com, my store.com, use the code, Eric.

Thank you. One thing I thought about when I think about your Wilberforce book was that he was seen as kind of a loony religious guy. He was part of a religious sect that was seen as kind of the nutty Pentecostal types, I guess. And that made me think, like, does it take somebody who is okay being seen that way to make real change, to fight fashions? But the flip side of that is how do you do that without actually? actually becoming a crazy person who actually is just kind of part of us in loony movement that is completely wrong. Well, that's a tough one.

We continue now with Eric's interview at the Babylon B. I do think, look at somebody like Wilberforce. Wilberforce, and this is again, gets back to Solomon and the baby, Wilberforce actually cared about the African slaves. So he's thinking like, you know, the rest of these people can go to hell. I'm going to stand up for the African slaves. God appointed me to stand up for the African slaves. And if you want to throw me out or you want to make, I mean, he would have been prime

minister if he hadn't taken this on. But he thought to myself, like, I don't care. I want what God wants. And I really think that this is just the story of every human life. We get to choose, will I do the right thing or will I go with the flow? We see in history, a lot of people just will, most people will go with the flow. God forbid we're one of those people. Well, I would like to read some of these Trump Bible verses since we got them on the screen.

I don't know if I can read. I want to read them. Okay, you're going to do them in your... Can you read some of them? Yeah, yeah. I only want to do the ones that I consider still funny. Okay. And Jesus went out into the desert, but he should have invested in hotels there.

I mean, I'm killing it in Vegas, a lot of money. See, that's not funny to me anymore. Um, love covers a multitude of sins, sure, but you'd be nuts not to get a pre-nup. I mean, come on. You know, a lot of these, uh, and afterward Joshua's son of none died at the age of 110, full of years and with a prostate the size of Shechem and Gilgall combined. All right. Um, but, but a lot of these, you know, were referring to stuff that was funny, like right then.

Like topical, yeah. Um, but, some, um, but, uh, some. Some of these are not, anyway, whatever. But it said, Ericmettax.com, Ericbratx.com. Yeah, so it's, it is funny, though, that here I am writing a humor piece for the New Yorker, which they loved, because I guess it criticized Trump. But it was in writing this that I found him somehow charming as a character. At places like Yale and Manhattan, loving America is something that,

tacky people do. Loving America or loving God or whatever, like that's tacky, middle American and stuff, they sneer at it. And so people who aren't educated enough to go to places like Yale or Manhattan,

whatever, they aspire to that level of elite sneering. And so they're trying to outdo each other, you know, who hates Trump more or whatever. And I think, you know, just the fact that he interacts with working class people. I mean, again, this is the great irony, is that there was a time when liberals were the champions of the working class, okay, when, you know, Montgomery Burns was

oppressing the minors, you know, that's Simpson's reference, you know, when all the captains of industry had no virtue and were crushing the poor workers, thank God we had unions and that kind of stuff come up. But it's 100 years later. And now the people who talk about caring for the poor or for blacks, in reality, don't. They care about what their friends think of them. Because if you actually cared about the urban poor, you would preach against socialist policies and big government till the day you died. So we're living in weird times. But I see Trump as somebody who just kind of, he saw problems, he wanted to solve them. And the idea that, oh, he's so declaise, we're going to sneer at him. We're going to use our, you know, cultural bona fides to make anyone

who associates with him feel like scum. That itself is so un-American. And so, so, yeah, so the liberals have become the party of the elites. And those Republicans who aren't rhinos, and there's just a handful of them have become the champions of the working class. And so I really believe that if we fight, America has a future. But we really have to fight and we have to understand that it's going to, you have to pay a price. But we've paid prices and you realize you can't out give God. Whatever you give, he's going to give you more. Thanks to the Babylon B. Check out and subscribe to their YouTube channel for fun videos and Nutrametics, 35% off if you use the code Eric.