Allen Jackson NOW

Allen Jackson: Good evening and welcome to Nashville. I'm Allen Jackson. If the midterm elections were held today, Democrats would be in a strong position to compete for control of the Senate.

What is revealing is that in Michigan and Texas, Democratic candidates are gaining significant momentum, despite statements made by these candidates, statements that are anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-parental authority. Look at what voters are being asked to evaluate. After a man with terror connections attacked the Temple Israel synagogue outside Detroit earlier this year, he rammed his truck and opened fire.

El-Sayed said, "hurt people, hurt people." The FBI concluded that the attack was a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism, deliberately targeting the Jewish community. El-Sayed also campaigned with Hasan Piker. He's the progressive streamer who infamously said that America deserved 9/11.

Recently, El-Sayed said the government should not restrict gender mutilation surgeries, arguing that doctors like himself should be allowed to make their own determinations for patients' treatment plans. Then look at Texas. James Talarico has faced renewed scrutiny over past comments suggesting that a parent's refusal to acknowledge a child's stated gender identity could in some instances be considered abusive.

Before you shrug it off as crazy, consider this: recent polls have shown Talarico neck and neck with Republican Ken Paxton. The race is very much up for grabs. Why aren't these candidates and their radical positions disqualifying to more voters? Have moral boundaries shifted so dramatically that views that once would have produced enormous political backlash now barely move the needle?

In our culture today, there's a concerted effort to diminish a biblical worldview and to replace it with completely different standards. The objective is not to just introduce new ideas, but to remove a biblical worldview from the marketplace. By celebrating gender confusion, redefining family, and creating sexual ambiguity, those things today are called heroic, and a biblical worldview is often denigrated.

But I believe to understand what's happening in our world through a biblical worldview is a part of our assignment as the people of God. We can't look at our world simply with a secular worldview that's given to us by those who report current events. We need biblical perspective.

We have been witnesses to a recent trial of a woman who acknowledged that she strangled her three young children. Her attorney acknowledged it. All involved in the trial acknowledged it. But she said that she was suffering mental illness and therefore shouldn't be held accountable.

The trial took several weeks and the jury deliberated for several days, and at the end of it, it was dismissed as a hung jury. There was one juror who reportedly said he just couldn't get around the fact that a mother had strangled her three young children, and for that, he's been vilified.

I believe as a culture, it's another step in our lack of concern for human life. I did a little work on the numbers. There are 61 million Americans who acknowledge a struggle with mental illness. There are over 15 million who have serious mental illnesses. That's one in 18.

If acknowledgment of mental illness gives you the right to do something as heinous as strangling your children, then no one is safe. I would submit to you that we can have compassion for people who are not well, but we have to be willing to protect those amongst us who are vulnerable.

During the Biden administration, there were more than 400,000 children trafficked across our border. Over 200,000 of those children are still missing. We don't know where they are or what's happened to them. I'd submit to you that children deserve more from us than to be considered objects of fulfillment for our dreams and ambitions.

We have to have compassion, not just for our own children, but for all children. There's a new policy being advocated by our current Vice President. It's concerning to me. The policy suggestion was for federal subsidies to be given to stay-at-home parents. Sounds good, right?

I'm concerned by this because we all know that government money is accompanied by government policies. Where government money comes, government policies are attached with it. While in the moment you might agree with the individual's worldview who is suggesting the policy, the reality is their term in office is short and somebody will come along with a different worldview and they'll write a new policy.

The last place we want the government involved is in our homes between the authority of parents and children. We have to understand this season in spiritual terms. We have an assignment to stand for the truth, to search for it, because the solution to society's ills isn't political. It's not a piece of new legislation. The solution is spiritual.

To move forward, we as a church must decide to engage, to use our voices and impact our culture with our biblical worldview and biblical truth. Let's not leave it up to a politician. That assignment falls on us. Let's spend our time and energy being advocates for Jesus and His kingdom, one heart at a time, one home at a time, and one community at a time.

Coming up next, we're going to visit with the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart News, Alex Marlow. He'll join us from Los Angeles right after this short break. I'll be right back.

Tonight, we're joined by the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart News, Alex Marlow. Welcome to the show, Alex.

Alex Marlow: Pastor, always great to see you, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in a couple of days in Nashville.

Allen Jackson: Absolutely. It seems impossible that it's been 25 years since Islamic radicals flew planes into the World Trade Center. But it's even more startling to me that in our public schools, we can't figure out how to talk about it. In Texas, they recently passed some legislation that the students can be taught that Islamic radicals were behind the attack. In Virginia, they have just the opposite. How do we find ourselves in this place?

Alex Marlow: We could have predicted it. We could have seen this coming. That's why everyone talked about "never forget" 9/11, that this is a radical ideology that's trying to infiltrate our country and trying to subvert it from within. There are way too many Americans who are content to watch it happen.

Just think about how many public officials have been refusing to name the name of radical Islamic terrorism. How many of them justified October the 7th and allowed for these campus protests and street protests and actually thought maybe these people have good ideas? Of course they have horrific ideas.

Now the latest, Abdul El-Sayed, one of the candidates on the Democrat side, saying it was just "hurt people hurting people." That's completely false, and it's a lie that supports the terrorists. Of course this was inevitably going to happen unless we have a stronger, more robust nation of people who are willing to fight back against this ideology.

Allen Jackson: The Republicans just completed their midterm convention, something of an anomaly for them. And President Trump, in a very typical way, came up with a new policy. He's had an idea for a $5,000 dividend for all Americans if the election goes the way he would prefer. We're $40 trillion in debt. That doesn't seem too wise to me. What do you think?

Alex Marlow: It's not my favorite of Trump's policies. I do find it endlessly amusing because he never stops giving us content to talk about, and I admire the brazenness. This is the closest I've ever seen to trying to buy votes, though we saw Obama give out those phones, those Obama phones. But I've never heard a candidate say, "Hey, you're going to get money if you vote for me."

There is a strained logic to it because the Democrats are so bad for the economy that you could easily say if Republicans win, it is justified giving us an extra five grand. But taxes are so high anyway. We do have so much debt, as you noted. Just give us the 5,000 if you want to.

The main thing for me is it's inflationary. One of the big monkeys on Trump's back right now is inflation is still too high. He's done well on inflation, but not well enough in the eyes of the voters. This would be wildly inflationary, it would lead to higher interest rates, so I just don't think it's good.

Allen Jackson: The one thing I did think was positive, there's something straightforward about it. Every American gets a $5,000 check. The system we've been under where fraud has been so rampant, they just put a trillion dollars in a bucket and then everybody gets their snout in it and tries to see how much they can get. Trump's plan seems a little more forthright.

Alex Marlow: It is. It's more honest, it's more open about what's going on. I find this also interesting because does that mean all the deadbeats who don't work and are already on welfare get 5,000 too? But then I think that they're getting money anyway. We saw what goes on in Minnesota and California. They're just cutting checks to people who don't work anyway, so that wouldn't be new.

Allen Jackson: Let's turn to Iran for a moment. President Trump's strategy is focused on economics at the moment, trying to cut off any economic flow to Iran. Do you think that's going to be enough to bring an end to this conflict?

Alex Marlow: I think it's a very good strategy because it does minimize the loss of blood and treasure. It has been very crippling, and I talk to a lot of people in the National Security Council and Senate Foreign Relations, and they're pretty confident that this is the best approach amongst the approaches we have.

I'm inclined to believe them. It's just very challenging on a political basis because the people in general don't like the war and they think prices are too high, and this does prolong all of that. But it does feel like, short of a ground troop regime change invasion, which I don't think the public has any appetite for, this is the best way to squeeze Iran the most effectively with the least amount of effort put forward by us.

Scott Bessent's a brilliant guy. He knows exactly how to wield the treasury to do this, so I'm inclined to let it play out a little bit more.

Allen Jackson: We're 50 days away from the midterms. One of the races that's capturing a lot of attention is in Texas between the Attorney General Ken Paxton and James Talarico. Talarico has had some statements that we could say were a little bit off-center. He's trying to repurpose those and say he'd missed the mark just a bit. Seems to me he did more than just miss the mark. What do you say?

Alex Marlow: He's a Christian who hates Christianity. That's not my quote. That's his quote. That's what he said. So if you think that God is non-binary comment was off, he literally said he's a Christian who hates Christianity. Pastor, this wasn't like a hundred years ago. This was 2021. This was five years ago.

He was a grown man who was holding elected office at the time. The guy is just a blasphemer. I think he's a charlatan. But just pay attention to what he's doing. He's framing himself as kindly and as nice and to try to contrast himself on a personality basis to try to motivate certain people who think our politics have gotten too coarse.

I think he actually is a version of coarseness, just a different version of it. But that's the strategy and let's see if it works. I don't think it will, though.

Allen Jackson: Political polls, at least in recent cycles, have been wildly erratic. When the polls say a race like this is so close, is that believable? It seems difficult for me to believe that Texas can't make that choice.

Alex Marlow: I don't want anyone in Texas who may be watching to feel like it's in the bag. Ken Paxton carries a lot of baggage. He's actually one of my favorite American politicians because he's very effective, he's a true leader, but he's got a lot of personal baggage.

If the Democrats do feel like they can win this race, they're going to fundraise a ton. They're already fundraising a ton on this race. Overall we've got a radical candidate, a guy who uses the gospel to try to justify abortion, which should be appalling. Don't rest on our laurels, but to your point, Pastor, I haven't trusted the polls this cycle.

It seems like some cycles they get it, some cycles they miss. They've been missing this cycle. I don't think they're correct here. This reminds me a lot of Robert Patty "Beto" O'Rourke, the fake Latinx guy who was actually an Irishman. This feels like this is the exact redux of that where we were told he was going to win Texas and then he got his clock cleaned.

Allen Jackson: Alex, we need to take a short break. Can you stand by for another segment?

Alex Marlow: Would love to. Thank you.

Allen Jackson: And for those of you watching, if you've got a phone nearby, log on to ajnow.com. Send us an email. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this conversation. I'll be right back.

We're back now with the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart News, Alex Marlow. Alex, we're talking about some of the key races in the upcoming election. In Michigan, they're going to choose a new senator, and the Democratic candidate is Abdul El-Sayed. I've got a comment from him. I want you to see and then we'll follow it up.

Abdul El-Sayed: As an epidemiologist, I've spent my career studying the worst things that happen to people to understand how to stop them from happening. I'll never forget one of the simplest lessons I learned while on my psychiatry rotation in medical school. Hurt people, hurt people. We can and must condemn the attack on Temple Israel. And we can and must condemn the violence 6,000 miles away. And we can and must condemn the broken politics that allows leaders to make war that they pretend has no consequence.

Allen Jackson: It just seems unbelievable to me. He's establishing a moral equivalency between a terrorist attack where innocent people are murdered and government policies on the other side of the world. Will the voters of Michigan really tolerate that?

Alex Marlow: I sure hope not. He's way better off when he's talking about things like they're going to do Medicare for all and we're putting Americans first when it comes to jobs and we're getting out of foreign wars. I think that's better messaging. When he's on that messaging, I understand why Michigan is at least listening.

But when he talks like that, Pastor, it's so historically illiterate. The worst terror attacks of modern times, including 9/11, including October the 7th, were not hurt people hurting people. These were people with radical ideologies that seek to wipe Israel and the United States off the map. These are affluent people. These are educated people. These are not people who've been hurt. These are people who believe toxic things.

So for him to say that is just such baloney that I pray, I literally pray that Michiganders see through it.

Allen Jackson: And to tolerate that lack of sensitivity for the victims and their families. If something like that had been said around the George Floyd death, it would have been completely unacceptable. We can't just concede to Islam and their preferred view of the world.

Alex Marlow: Absolutely not. It's a great analogy because we would have laughed at it if anyone who thought that maybe George Floyd wasn't a saint and wasn't a martyr, if anyone had said, "Well, it's just hurt people hurting people. That's why the cop knelt in his neck."

You would have been laughed off of the internet. And yet this is what's passing for a guy who's running for a Senate seat for the U.S. Senate in a purple state. Pretty crazy that we're here and disappointing.

Allen Jackson: The tech world continues to fascinate me. The latest page seems to be tech leaders sounding the alarm on the potential dangers of AI, which they're building. And they want more government regulation. They don't seem concerned that China might outpace us if the government, as is their habit, slows us down. What do you say about this?

Alex Marlow: There are so many layers to this, but overall, in general, this is a big hoax that's being put on by the two giants in AI, which is ChatGPT, which is OpenAI, and Anthropic, which is run by a guy named Dario Amodei. These guys have their companies run by Obama and Biden alumni, and they're trying to back Trump and Vance into an impossible electoral corner by announcing they're the good guys, we're the ones who want regulation, we're the ones who want to take care of the people.

They're not the ones who want to take care of the people. What they're trying to do is they're trying to lock competition out of the marketplace. They're trying to score cynical political points. And who would be doing the regulating? It would be the exact people who already work at these companies and are on the take of these companies.

I think this is very cynical. I do want to beat China in the AI race and the AI war that's going on. I think there are a lot of reasonable objections to AI, but these are not the guys to raise it. The way they're doing so, if they want to slow down, they could just slow down on their own. They don't need to get anyone's permission if they want to slow down on AI. But the truth is that's not what they want to do. They're trying to play a political game, and it might work.

Allen Jackson: It seems to me to be another very thinly veiled push towards globalism again and another attempt to derail Trump. Am I completely missing it?

Alex Marlow: No, you're exactly right. That's where this begins. The next conversation is going to be: well, should the regulation just be throughout the United States, or should the new regulation actually come from some sort of global government, some sort of global tribunal?

How well have those worked out in the past? Where we outsource our national sovereignty to unelected elites halfway around the world. That's a horrific idea, and it actually is worse than no regulation. There's going to be some regulation. They're going to have to update some of that. It's too lax at the moment.

But I really don't trust the guys who are putting it forward now at this specific timing, 50 days from an election. I don't buy it.

Allen Jackson: The Supreme Court has handed the Trump administration something of a defeat, limiting their ability to implement the mail-in ballot regulations. Election integrity's a big deal. Is there anything we can do to help secure the elections this fall?

Alex Marlow: I really like Trump's approach on this, and I'm very disappointed that all of the justices aside from the stalwarts Alito and Thomas dissented on this because in my home state of California, we proactively send out about 10% extra ballots that we already know cannot be cast legally. That's how crazy it gets if you want to take it to one extreme.

We do automatic mail-in voting and we send out ballots even to people who we know are ineligible because they moved or changed residences. We send them out anyway because the Democrats have figured out a system that they know that the more ballots you send out, the better chance they have to win. If that sounds like cheating to you, you can answer that question on your own.

The fact that Trump is trying to stop it by having a check and balance with the literal post office, we don't even have to build any new infrastructure to do it. It's just the post office checks to see if these things are legitimate. That seemed like a great idea to me, and it boggles my mind that seven justices thought it wasn't.

Allen Jackson: The Save Act and citizens voting in our elections is an 80/20 issue. When the overwhelming majority of Americans want something to happen, how do politicians maintain their jobs and oppose that as fervently as they have this cycle?

Alex Marlow: It really is something. This has been a huge fumbled football, and I'm nervous about this as I do want Republicans to win in the election, even though they're always disappointing. But the alternative is so much worse. You play the El-Sayed clip as a perfect example to illustrate that.

This is one of the things where passing the Save America Act, for my audience at Breitbart, this would have been just such the most absolute no-brainer in human history. It didn't get done. It didn't get done maybe because there was too much in the original text of the bill, and then they tried to revise it and then that made other people unhappy.

But we need to be able to have proof of citizenship and a voter ID to vote in this country. It's insane that we don't, and it does fall on both parties to not figuring out a way to get this done considering, as you say, how popular it is.

Allen Jackson: Alex, I thank you for your time today, for your clarity. It's always helpful.

Alex Marlow: Same to you, Pastor, and look forward again to seeing you soon.

Allen Jackson: See you at the conference. In a moment, we'll be back with your emails.

Thank you for spending a few moments of your day with us. Just a reminder, if you ever miss a live episode, you can always go to ajnow.com. There's a full archive there of all the programs. You can watch them at your leisure, share them with a friend. Thanks for your emails.

Brenda L from Texas said, "I'm a furious veteran. We've gone all over the world to fight and die to stop communism. Communism is the enemy of the United States and all soldiers take an oath to fight and defend the United States against foreign and domestic enemies. Why are we allowing America's enemies to be able to take office and talk about destroying our Constitution?"

Well, I think there's many, Brenda, that share your angst and frustration. The obvious reality is while we were defending freedom around the world, we failed to defend our educational system and institutions. It's time for a change.

A recent viewer on the YouTube episode with John Malcolm said, "Thank you, Pastor, for an outstanding show tonight. I love learning about our founders and the documentation that they created and the fact that we need now constitutional law experts to decipher them."

Well, I think one of the things that we have realized in recent years is the judiciary's in trouble. It's not just Congress. We need judges who will be originalists. They'll take the language of the Constitution and treat it for its original meaning. We don't need people making up laws based on their personal preferences. We've had enough.

And finally, Harry from Texas: "If every Christian in the country would go to the polls and vote a Christian worldview, we would improve our country almost unbelievably overnight. Staying at home this time is anti-American and anti-Christian. Please vote a Christian worldview."

Harry, I'll join you in that note of encouragement. We all need to participate in the system. There's an election coming up. If you're not registered, be sure you get registered and then make the effort to participate. Every vote matters.

In between then, use your influence, use your voice. Talk to your family, your friends, your neighbors. If you go to the ballgame, talk about what's happening in the world. They say in polite company you can't talk about faith or politics. Folks, we better change. We need faith in the midst of politics. God's moving in the earth. Let's join Him. Good night and God bless.