You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
Good morning, welcome, welcome to Matt and Air on Air.
Jane Matt and Air, Craig Mock and Kevin Butenoff coming to you live from our home at Radio Park in Racine.
You can always join us, call or text.
The number is the same.
855-752-4842.
You can also leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.
Busy, busy show coming up for you today.
Andrew Watkins is a best-selling at New York Times author.
She has a great sub-stack called For Such Times As These.
I highly encourage you to check it out and subscribe.
Andra Watkins grew up in a Christian nationalist household, so she has some interesting perspectives on what is going on among some members of the Trump administration who are Christian nationalists.
Rust vote.
Guy who wrote Project 2025.
And we're gonna talk to Andra about SNAP benefits and cutting these programs, which is a big part.
of Project 2025.
So, Andrea is gonna be here after the 9.30 news to give us some perspective on that.
In hour number two, Dr. Kristen Lyerle, friend of the show, host of the Dr. Kristen Lyerle show on weekends.
She is gonna join us.
Big news about women who are going through menopause and some potential hormonal relief.
That was just announced.
Also, Ozempic.
Ozempic for everyone.
Osempic for all
yeah,
and that was another announcement made by the Trump administration this week Bob, Jr Who says who's our who's the head of the Department of Health and Human Services who says don't I don't don't ask me about medical advice Don't take it for me.
Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about But yeah, Osempic for everybody and he had some interesting comments about how Osempic is gonna be for good for people who live in food deserts
I don't understand why he gets to talk, but you know, he's
yeah, so we'll we'll kick that around along with many other things with dr. Liarley coming up in hour number two Then we will lighten it up after the 1030 news with audio sorbet.
That's where we talk about Everything other than news.
Yeah, we have some fun have some fun have some laughs
Just to lighten things up a little bit.
Today's audio sorbet question.
When did your body start betraying you?
Yes.
Well, let me tell you something, boy.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I would say this is a sorbet slash a community gripe.
Community gripe.
I'm not sitting here yelling at the clouds.
I'm just sad about the fact my body's like, hey, Greg, guess what?
Things aren't as easy as they were maybe even last week.
So when did those first
twinges start hitting you?
We can also call it lumbago corner, which I kind of like.
When did your body first start betraying you?
Were you in your 30s when your knee went out?
Were you in your 40s when you finally got that shoulder twinge?
When did your body begin to betray you?
That is our audio sorbet question after 1030.
And then we'll wrap it up as we always do with this shouldn't be a thing.
Today it is the
Crock Drop and Roll Edition.
There you go.
I had to practice that like five times.
That was
hard.
It took me quite a few
attempts this morning.
Also, some breaking news this morning about the Epstein files.
The Democratic House Oversight Committee has released a couple more emails between Jeffrey Epstein and Jelaine Maxwell.
Interesting stuff.
Yeah, I want people to never forget this but I'm so tired of talking about this topic because it feels like we're just walking ourselves into the greatest disappointment that no one is going to be surprised by.
Yeah, we'll have some updates with Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, is going to swear in this representative from Arizona who's been waiting weeks to be sworn in and that could bring about the release.
of the Epstein files.
Sure.
I know, we'll see what happens.
But that update is coming up in just a little bit.
I did want to start off with this though.
So we're gonna, we're in the cliff of reopening the government.
Possibly.
Possibly.
Yeah.
Guess what they did though, when they were putting together this reopening package, they slipped in this little thing.
This little little tiny thing.
I thought this whole thing Jane was based on this is a clean CR There's nothing in there to be there's nothing untoward.
Everything is hunky-dory Why can't the Demetra Democrats just walk in and do the work and vote for this so we can open the doors back up?
But then now there's like I guess you call it a Rebate program.
Well, it's a provision Yeah, they're calling it of the package that will end the government shutdown this allows
Eight senators, including Wisconsin's very own senior senator, Ron Fiscal Responsibility Johnson.
This would allow eight senior senators to bring lawsuits if federal law enforcement subpoenas data without notifying them.
This goes back to the investigation into January 6th and the attack on the US Capitol.
And yes, there were some senators, they were looking at their phone records because
They were making phone calls on the day of this attack.
And one wondered, maybe they had something to do with this attack on the US Capitol.
Now they want to include this that would allow these senators potential damages of $500,000 per violation.
That could add up to a whole bunch of money.
Who would be paying that money, Greg Buck?
The Argentinians.
No.
The Chinese.
Try again.
My great-uncle Mike.
Is he still alive?
No.
Okay, yeah, he's not paying either.
This would be on us, the American taxpayers.
This little provision they slipped in there, I'm sure Ron Johnson had nothing to do with this.
Nothing.
We have a little clip from C-SPAN.
This is representative Teresa Legger Fernandez.
talking about these eight senators who just want to be able to get a little money back.
Is that so bad?
Take a listen, please.
And we keep saying eight senators.
I'm going to say their names.
Yeah.
We have eight senators, Senators Graham Johnson, Senator Blackburn, Senator Loomis, Senator Hagerty, Senator Hawley, Senator Sullivan, and Senator Tuberville.
Let's say their names.
Yes.
Let's make sure the American people know.
who will get millions of dollars, because each violation will give you $500,000.
And so they can claim violation.
And when we say violation, that sounds like something went wrong.
Let's make sure the American people know.
These were subpoenas or inquiries by the FBI that were authorized by the courts that were authorized by grand juries when they were looking into
What happened around the January 6th insurrection?
And the American people saw that this place was over won by violent attackers.
We were here.
We were here.
There were 140 law enforcement officers who went to the hospital.
140 police officers went to the hospital.
And now we're going to pay senators.
These eight senators that I have called out, we're gonna pay them millions of dollars instead of providing any money to the veterans, instead of providing any money to the children, to the families.
It is outrageous and it is horrible.
Yeah, what she said.
Yeah.
Pretty much what she said
we are not talking about the FBI sneaking into data and to Illegally recover information.
This was all done Once again through the process through the process of the courts and was permitted by the courts and Now they get to go back and say I have been harmed by the fact that I try to harm the United States of America Give me my money
And I'm very, well, I'm not, let me rephrase that.
I'll be surprised what Senator Hawley does.
Because Senator Hawley in the past year has been kind of a back and forth figure.
He's been sticking it to business a lot.
Who on the matter of how much money they make.
I mean, recently talking to his CEO
about getting
a 45% raise over one year to like, what was it?
1% over eight years for the workers.
Exactly.
And having us and the CEO of Boeing being a little snarky about it too, but it'll be interesting if this goes through, if he takes part in that, in those lawsuits to get that money, because it will kind of then undercut everything he's trying to be, which I personally see as a bit of rebranding because do not forget that on January 6th, he is walking to the building before those
Traders and insurrectionists stormed the capital and he raised his fist to them, not giving a middle finger, not shaking and saying, get off my lawn.
He's doing it in concert, in support of those people who tried to overthrow our election.
One of the people who was there, by the way.
Wisconsin congressman, Derek Van Oren, right?
He was there.
He was there and new.
And if you watch the daily show on Monday, a great term I've learned from a two congressman got congressman Ryan and I can do Zeno.
I believe his last name is please forgive me if I'm wrong.
Oathbreaker.
That's what I will refer to him as, but I'll be interested to see what Josh Hawley does with that.
But this Jane honestly does not surprise me at all.
This
is
crazy.
If you're just joining us, we are talking about this sneaky little provision they added into the package that will end the government shutdown that essentially allows eight senators, including our very own senior Senator Ron Johnson, to sue law enforcement and look at potential damages of half a million dollars per violation.
Now, we talked about this last week, the president, Donald Trump, he doesn't want to hear about affordability.
Don't talk about it.
He doesn't want to hear about it.
He doesn't want to hear about anything.
At that time, we suggested you call your representatives and talk to them about affordability and then maybe they can pass that along.
But since this is being debated this morning, because they're talking about it now, this might be a good time to call Ron Johnson's office and tell them what you think about the potential that we as taxpayers
We'll be paying him, Ron Johnson, who is worth somewhere between 20, 25 and $130 million.
There's a
pretty big, it's a pretty big stretch there.
We tried looking it up and it said anywhere between like 23 and $110 million and we're like, oh, well, I just put it this way.
He's way richer than me.
He's way richer
than
a lot of us.
And even if his taxes went up, he'd still be really rich.
Exactly.
He'd still be really, really rich.
PJ also on the live stream,
drops this in, which is something to keep an eye on too.
The other sneaky thing they put into the bill, the Senate has rejected an amendment to a critical spending bill that would have taken out language to ban hemp products containing THC.
So
they took it out?
Yes.
Okay.
Rejected an amendment that would have removed language to ban hemp.
So they're still looking to do that.
If you want to call Ron Johnson's
office in DC,
how would I find that number?
I got it for you.
I looked it up for this number.
You can go to myvote.wi.gov to find this information anytime you'd like.
You put in your information and it tells you who represents you.
But I'm going to give it to you right now.
It's the DC number.
It's 202-224-532-3202-224-5323.
Call it.
Tell them what you think.
Be kind and respectful because Ron Johnson's not picking up that phone.
No, it's going to be an aide, an intern, somebody who's getting paid next to nothing or nothing at all.
Uh, but yeah, two zero two, two, two, four, five, three, two, three, call them up right now.
Tell them what you think about this amendment or provision or rebate or whatever you want to call it.
Just want to remind them.
He works for us.
And that they've been telling us for months now.
There's no money
for anything.
There's no money.
There's no money.
Laurie from Hayward texting in, Jane, this is really no different than Trump trying to make the U.S.
taxpayer give him millions of dollars because he broke the law during January 6th.
You're
absolutely right, Laurie.
Thank you so much.
When we return, some new tidbits are out about Jeffrey Epstein.
This is...
Quite something.
Stay close.
You're listening to Matt and Air on Air.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
We'll be right back.
Good morning and welcome back to Matt and Air on Air.
Jane Matt and Air, Greg Bach, Calvitini on the board, coming to you from our studio at Radio Park in Racine.
You can join us, call or text.
The number is the same 855-752-4842.
Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.
And don't forget, if you have the Civic Media app, you can also leave a voice note.
Absolutely.
whether you like us or not.
Or not.
We do listen to all of them.
So yes,
get the Civic Media app.
It is absolutely free.
And I believe what's that?
What rumblings?
Rumblings.
Titterings oh my goodness.
Yes, that there could be another text state what multi-state text to win contest Yes, that's just a text that is a state the multi-state text to win contest coming soon intergalactic text to win contest So download the civic media app that will be the way to play if and when
yeah
that next fabulous contest comes around This breaking as we came on the air this morning Seems important.
Yeah
House Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released some emails overnight regarding the Epstein files.
They released some emails between Jelaine Maxwell, who is currently serving 20 years, 20 years for her role in trafficking and raping these young girls.
Doesn't seem like a lot in my opinion.
All right.
These are messages between Jeffrey Epstein and Jelaine Maxwell.
In one of the messages, Epstein flatly asserted
that Donald Trump knew about the girls, many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage.
In another email, Epstein wondered how to address questions from the media about his relationship to Donald Trump as he was becoming a national political figure.
This was like in 2011.
Yeah.
So this was before he ever announced he was going to run anything like that.
Yeah, this seems bad.
It's all
seemed bad.
Yeah.
It's very bad, but we now live in a bizarre world where there are zero consequences for what it seems zero consequences for anything.
And the only thing I could rely upon, Jane, I hate saying this, is Congress, that people in Congress will step up, not just the Democrats,
But Republicans
will
step up and say, no, this is, this is what we've been fighting for for years.
This has been a central pillar of our platform.
As far as releasing the Epstein files, finding out the truth, you know, it started as take down the lives, you know, pizza gate, blah, blah, blah.
But there are people out there who want to know these names from the side of mega included who want to know about who's on that list.
And I'm hoping that those voices prevail and those voices that are standing in Congress saying,
now release them now
well four o'clock this afternoon yeah this representative from arizona who has been waiting four weeks yes to be sworn in uh representative grahava will have the deciding vote she will be the 218th vote on this release petition yeah to release the eps or to to release the epstein files yeah
And this is what Mike Johnson has been avoiding, like the plague.
The other thing about this is, and I've seen some things on social media this morning, there are little snapshots of people doing stretches and stuff.
Yeah, these are the Republicans preparing to claim that they never saw it and they have no idea what it is.
And they've just been so busy, they didn't have a chance to see any, they never, what emails?
We have a lot of leaders right now and they're on both sides of the aisle who
Don't know what's going on.
They haven't heard things, whether it's, you know, it's Mike Johnson, Hakeem Jeffries, maybe the governor of a state we live in who say things like, I don't know what's going on.
You are leaders and not just elected officials.
You are in leadership roles in your elected officials.
Don't tell me you don't
know what's going on.
Yeah, that's not comforting.
Yeah.
855-752-4842.
Cassandra from New London is joining us.
Good morning, Cassandra.
Thanks.
Thanks for calling in.
What do you want to say?
Hey, good morning guys.
Um, I actually just got done reading, um, Virginia Guffrey's, uh,
her book
called Nobody's Girl.
Yeah.
Um, and I, the fact that there are these people that are still being like, well, I don't know anything about it.
I don't, you know, and that woman was smeared when she finally came forward
and
just to like read her story and everything and
the pushback that she got and how she was taken advantage of by some people in the media.
It's heartbreaking to see that and the fact that it came to the point that she actually took her own life is absolutely devastating and it is so infuriating that these people... I mean, we're used to people just capitulating to Trump.
We're
absolutely used to that.
But you have to put your foot down somewhere.
This is disgusting behavior by these people.
And I have to think Cassandra because Thomas Massey, who is a Republican and he has been pushing for the release of these files, he says that they're going to have more than enough Republican votes to get this done.
And I can't help but wonder whether or not this is a way for some Republicans who are too afraid to stand up to Trump in public.
This is a different way for them to get rid of them.
Yeah.
And Cassandra, you bring up a fantastic point that we've been talking about for.
a while now, which is when you get past all the yelling, the screaming and the, you know, the hooting, the hollering from whomever is, whether it is for it or just like, oh, whatever, I don't, don't worry about that.
That's not important right now.
This is about the justice that those victims, those survivors, those families deserve.
The justice that our system is supposed to provide any time when there is evidence showing there was wrongdoing and crimes committed.
That file belongs to the people.
It belongs to those individuals who are harmed so they can seek redress, retribution in the way of the courts, and justice.
That's what it's all about.
Appreciate it, Cassandra.
Thank you so much.
Don't forget, keep it in the back of your mind, he is going to pardon Jolaine Maxwell.
Yes, absolutely.
That's going to happen.
Don't, don't be surprised.
We have news coming up next on the other side.
Bestselling New York Times author Andrew Watkins will join us.
You're listening to Matt Nair on air.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Good morning and welcome, welcome to Matt Nair on air.
Jane Matt Nair, Greg Bach.
Calvinator on the board coming to you from her studio at Radio Park in Racine where you can join us.
Call or text at 855-752-4842.
You can also leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.
She has a great sub-stack called For Such a Time as This.
I highly encourage you to follow which.
She's also a New York Times best-selling author.
Andrew Watkins is here.
Good morning, Andrew.
How you doing?
Good morning.
I'm great.
How are you?
We are good.
Good to see you.
Thanks for joining us.
Lots of things that we're going to talk about this morning.
I wanted to start off.
There's just so much.
It's such a big sigh, isn't it?
It is.
Yeah, it's a big sigh.
A lot of
oxygen being taken in with that sigh.
Many sighs.
Let's talk about snap benefits.
It's on, it's off, it's on, it's off, it's on, it's off.
This is part of the playbook of Project 2025.
Getting rid of these kinds of social programs, right?
Yes, I wrote about it in great detail last year while Project 2025 proposed taking all welfare assistance, including things like SNAP benefits.
and turning them into religious Christian nationalist indoctrination in exchange for that assistance.
They used the words religious organization, faith-based organization, et cetera, almost 200 times throughout that document, and every time they were using it in large part was to talk about how
those kinds of organizations needed to be eligible for public money so that they could do the job of disseminating help to communities, that it wasn't the government's job to do that, that faith-based organizations and charities, but primarily faith-based charities, should be the ones who are distributing that money so that they want to do away with SNAP.
is just a step toward making people desperate enough to go to a church and say I'm hungry so that the church can say well here's our contract of conduct that you have to sign and agree to do all these things like
go
to church come to chapel here meet with a non-licensed counselor that's just some Christian here and talk about your life and you can't
do things like fornicate or date or, you know, things that we can find out about your life that are violating the Bible because we're not going to subsidize you to keep sinning.
So that's what this is designed to do.
And if you're from the South like I am, you're used to this kind of thing, you know, gospel missions exist all over the South and are funded by religious organizations and they have to comply with all kinds.
of religious rules to have a bed and a meal in these places.
So this is not something that's not commonplace already.
So again, in essence, if you need assistance, if your family needs help for a month or two months after somebody lost a job or you had a medical crisis or something, this is a way to get people to acquiesce.
to these religious institutions and say, yep, I'll follow your rules, please help me.
Yes, exactly.
I have a question.
I even covered, go ahead, Greg.
Oh, no, no, no, you continue.
I have a question after that, but you continue.
I even covered last year, a gospel mission in Indiana that a man got a job, you know, getting a job is one of the things that these people harp on, you know, you can't just suck off of us.
You need to get a job.
So he got a job.
but it was a third shift job.
So it conflicted with the required chapel time that he was supposed to be in chapel.
So they kicked him out of the shelter because he was missing chapel, because he was at work.
He was working.
So, but I want people, I want listeners to understand that's how extreme these people are in terms of you will follow our rules.
in order to get help.
And that is what Project 2025 wants to force every American who needs that kind of assistance into in exchange for help.
I was born, baptized, raised, educated Catholic, which means, according to a lot of people, I know nothing about Christianity.
But in Matthew 14, Luke, Matthew 14, Mark six, Luke nine and John six, they all talk about Jesus fight, feeding the 5,000 with the loaves and the fish.
could not find anywhere in there where Jesus told anyone in all four of those books where he said, I'll feed you, but first you gotta dot, dot, dot.
He never said that.
There was never a teaching from Jesus that there was no condition for his love
or
for his help, because God's love is unconditional.
Now there's a definite argument to me made that God's love is definitely conditional on, you know,
You know being jealous of other people loving him more but Jesus word was love your neighbor feed thy neighbor close thy neighbor How do these groups andra get away?
With trying to espouse the word of Jesus specifically Jesus yet put these conditions on people that make it so hard.
I mean this sounds
Please forgive me.
I do not want to say this, but it sounds like what cults do, too.
They make you sign contracts.
They make you live by their rules.
And if you can't, you are shunned.
You are out.
You are done because you're not good enough.
And oh, by the way, you're not good enough for Jesus.
How do they square that?
Well, we've talked before on this program about how Christian nationalists do use cult-like tactics to indoctrinate people.
I was indoctrinated that way.
So to call it a cult, to call the various types of it a cult is not a stretch.
But we've talked before about how they use Jesus as a fire escape.
Yay, I have my salvation.
Jesus paid it all.
And now we're going to go worship vengeful, angry, smitey Old Testament God.
That's who they love.
You know,
we talked about smitey God a lot.
So that I coined that phrase here, actually.
It's one of our favorite turns.
Spidey God sounds like a band I would never listen to.
It's just
a
bad, terrible band.
But I mean, and that's the thing is, but at this point, Andra, why aren't they just brazen?
I mean, I feel like there are so many people.
From the whether we want to talk about Maga or from the Christian nationals who are now just so brazen to say Yeah, I'm a Christian nationalist and I don't care.
I'll tell everybody Why do they even bother invoking Jesus anymore?
Like it's like they've used him for what they need now They can go on to say well, we just actually like the God that serves floods and kills our first
born
and the pillar of I love the pillar of salt things
especially the punishing women
ladies That's great, but I just why are they even why it feels like they're just they're
just um they're rejecting jesus
well
they're rejecting jesus but using him as window dressing
well you know jesus still has nice things to say you know so he's a good thing to use to sell people up front with you know they scare people to death with hell and the fact that they might go to hell if when they die if they don't believe in jesus so you know and that i've written about on my sum stack is part of how they
persecute your amygdala and scare you to death so that they make you open they make that part of your brain open to this kind of indoctrination and and you know hell was a big thing they talked about a lot when I was growing up they dragged it out very often because they had to keep resetting that horror for you so that you'd keep being indoctrinated so you know that's what Jesus is good for Jesus died so you can avoid this horrible
fate
So accept that and then they really, you know, don't need him anymore except to drag him out to talk about it in that context.
Otherwise, it's Old Testament somebody got all the way.
Who doesn't love a good Smitey God?
Smitey God, Smitey God.
I can see T-shirts and I know there's just animation.
Walking down the street with a sidekick, Todd.
Sorry,
he's got a song now.
He's got a song now.
If you're just joining us, New York Times bestselling author and creator of a great sub-stack called For Such a Time as This, Andrew Watkins is our guest and we're talking about...
Project 2025 the Christian nationalists who are a big part of that including the author Russ vote and some of the things that were happening with snap and Those kinds of cuts and wanting to get rid of those kind of social safety nut pro social safety net programs is all part of project 2025 2025 to push people force people into churches
I even covered last year
There was a guy in Dane County in Wisconsin who voted against a public homeless shelter and how shelter for men because they didn't get to the root cause of homelessness.
Which is
which was sin.
And he was very adamant that they needed to sit down and go through their lives in detail and figure out what sins they were committing that were causing them to be judged by God and lose their homes.
And it was all, I mean, he said all this openly.
I don't know how he got elected in Dane County, but he did.
And
they're not, they're not perfect either, Andrew.
They're not perfect either.
So well, so.
The question I have then, if I'm thinking from, I'm thinking honestly from a business standpoint then, if this gentleman was voting, if this gentleman said we need to look at the root cause, it's sin.
These individuals need to go to a religious leader.
I'm sure at that point he says that religious leader is located at my church.
My church is this church.
They have
to then go there.
And they might get some counseling for free at first.
It reminds me of Scientology.
You might get some free classes, some advice.
But then if you really want to be a part of it, then you have to sign the contract.
Then you have to tithe.
Then you have to give it yourself.
Getting nothing in return other than your hard earned money and your labor practices.
And that's what it sounds like to me.
It's like we don't care about sin.
You care about getting one more parishioner into my church because we need more money.
Yeah, and and I mean I even covered last year There's a program in Texas and these are common also to do this religious indoctrination in exchange for not going to jail So they did a stain operation
and had women posing as prostitutes to entrap men and then offered them the choice of going to jail or going to this lust eradication program in the basement of a church that they had to pay hundreds of dollars for out of pocket and could not miss if they missed they had to go to jail.
And so for eight weeks they had to be screamed at in the basement about their lust problem.
at their own expense.
So it's not just things like SNAP that they wanna do this with, it's also punishments and avoiding jail time by entering these programs.
Does anyone else find it ironic that they're being yelled at about their lust problems in a church basement?
In everything that we have learned in the last 20 years about predators and where predators
are and are groomed and are groomed.
And oh my God.
Also now lust problems is a sentence.
Every time you come on the show, Andrew, you have these wonderful white Christian nationalist tidbits, these lust problems.
And honestly too, the thing is is.
A lot of these individuals who get arrested most likely believe in God in a God because most people on this earth believe in some form of a God so they want to be loved by this God so what better way to beat someone into submission verbally at the start by saying
You need to do this because God won't love you.
You won't be good enough.
So of course they're going to say yes.
We're going to continue our conversation with Andrew Watkins, New York Times bestselling author on the other side, woman on TikTok, asking for help from churches to help feed her infant some very Christian responses.
We'll kick that around next.
Stay close.
You're listening to Matt Nair on air on the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Good morning.
Welcome back to Matt Nair on air.
Jane Matt Nair, Greg Bach, our resident young person, Calvin, on the board coming to you from our studio at Radio Park in Racine where you can join us.
Call or text at 855-752-4842.
Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream.
Good morning, live stream on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.
After the 10 o'clock news, Dr. Kristen Lierly, host of the Dr. Kristen Lierly show, Weekends Across Civic Media will be
joining us.
We're going to talk about, among other things, Ozempic for everyone.
Apparently, he's going to fix all our problems, even if you live in a food desert.
Yeah, we'll talk about that.
coming up after the 10 o'clock news.
Right now we are joined by New York Times bestselling author and creator of a great sub-stack you should subscribe.
It's called For Such a Time as This.
Andrea Watkins is here and we'd like to talk to Andrea because you grew up in a Christian nationalist household and you have a lot of perspectives that I think
A lot of us don't have, especially when we're looking at the Trump administration, Project 2025, Russ Vote, who is a Christian nationalist.
I wanted to get your reaction to this.
This TikTok influencer, Nickali Monroe, called 30 different churches down south, posing as a single mother with an infant who ran out of formula.
And she called all these churches,
And most of them had all kinds of excuses as to why they could not help her.
There were two or three.
One was a mosque that responded that they could help her.
And two other, I believe, were black churches, African-American churches.
And I saw this response on Twitter, Andra, from this Steven Anderson, who is a mega pastor.
at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona.
Here is what he had to say about this influencer and her experience.
That's a pastor.
Amen.
But that's what was baked into project 2025 that we were talking about before the break this notion that we can't help single mothers because they're single mothers either because they spread their legs and let somebody knock them up when they shouldn't have or
They weren't good enough wives and their husbands divorce them or they left their husbands because they're terrible women who you know to use his terminology I'm not going to use it, but you read it there So, you know, that's what they believe about single mothers single mothers are always single mothers because they somehow sinned they somehow committed Something terrible that is against the Bible and therefore they do not need to be helping single mothers
you know, because they have to have consequences for these bad choices.
Where is the corresponding punishment for the penises involved?
Of course there isn't
one.
Oh, there isn't one.
Oh, oh.
This is always where I feel very weird.
But I mean, I'm just asking.
That's not an unreasonable question.
Well,
and that was my question too, is, and I wasn't going to invoke a bodily
members and whatnot.
But it's the way you frame that, Andra, is that whatever happened was the woman's fault.
And even though if, to me, like in the Catholic Church divorce is a bad thing, I can imagine what divorce looks like in a Christian nationalist community or church.
But if a man is just so just driven to madness by the woman that he has shared a bed with,
He has no choice but to divorce her because she is so awful and so irredeemable and And she should she deserves everything she gets and frankly what you read from that one pastor was nothing was was way worse than the one that I was looking at from a gentleman who said that That they were witches that she was a witch
But that's a thing Andrea much like much like Christian nationalists believe believe in a literal hell They literally believe that witches walk the earth
Yes, they did and and all of them are women and and many of them are single mothers.
Ah, so
Well,
it
just makes sense because the men would be wizards, please I've seen Harry Potter Come on more capes more more hat more caps.
Yeah more wizard heads.
That would be great
But at what point then I just I mean this is for another time because this is a nine-hour conversation But at what point do people become tired and just say I can't do this anymore.
I mean
I don't under I guess because I wasn't raised in it I don't get it but to me there comes a point where your body just can't take anymore and you have to walk away I mean you did that you walked away you escaped but I just don't understand why there aren't just more people in droves leaving because these such thin line reasons that require their adherence and
absolute
Obedience but when your community does nothing but reinforce those messages, right?
Yeah, that's all you know, right?
That's all you know.
Yeah
But there's also the problem of you know 60 some percent of Americans identify as Christians in the most recent PRRI survey that they released 23 years ago.
That was over 90 percent of Americans So these policies actually do drive people away from churches in droves.
Yeah
And so that's part of their problem now.
They have to find some other way to get people to come and so coercing them.
It's not go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature anymore.
It's go ye into all the world and force the gospel on every creature.
Well,
because again...
Yeah, and we don't have, we don't have enough time to get into this, but everything bad that happens in the world is the fault of us non-believers.
It's important to keep that in mind as well.
Andrew Watkins is a New York Times best-selling author, has a great sub-stack called For Such A Time As This.
Subscribe, it's incredible.
Andrew Watkins, thank you so much.
We'll see you next month.
Thanks.
Bye, everybody.
Take care.
News is next.
When we come back, we'll be here with Dr. Kristen Lirely.
Stay with us.
You're listening to Matt Nair on air on the vast statewide countrywide.
You can pick us up around the globe on the Civic Media Radio Network.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
