Hello and welcome to a very special edition of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I am here with the Canadian Ian Wilkes. Ian, how are you, sir? I am really good. Jim, how are you? I'm all right. I mean, I know you're not originally Canadian. But the fact that you are Canadian now figures into what we're going to be talking about. And I want to let our listeners know. So usually we drop these episodes on a Friday. And we had recorded an episode earlier in the week. I think it was Tuesday. And the focus was the same as what this episode is going to be. But somebody, I don't know who, I'm not pointing fingers, could have been either one of us. Actually, it was me. forgot to click record. So we had a very, very great, passionate discussion about the election, and me being the idiot that I am, it was not recorded. So Ian, you have graciously agreed to meet on this Saturday morning to record again, and I'm going to put this episode up right after it's done. So if we didn't record this one, we'll find out much more quickly than we did last time. But Ian, I'm going to read you to begin with here. This is from the Deseret News. Deseret News, as you know, is, or I don't know if all of our listeners know, the Deseret News is one of the two major metropolitan newspapers in the Salt Lake City area, but it is unique in that it is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And for roughly five years, I was not an employee of the Deseret News, but I wrote a column for the Deseret News, mostly focused on entertainment and media. But I was also an editorial writer for the Deseret News. When newspapers used to be a thing, you would open the editorial page and there was an article there right at the beginning that said, In Our Opinion. And it was an article that was not signed by any one individual because it was supposed to represent the opinion of the newspaper at large. This still happens. Newspapers are printed with the same regularity. The Deseret News now, as far as I know, only prints a print edition once a week. but they still have daily online editions and they still have these editorials. And I was in a group of about three or four other people who would write these editorials. I wrote about two or three of them every week. So I would represent the opinion of the Deseret News. Now, one of the difficulties and challenges of representing the opinion of the Deseret News is that It's owned by the church. So everybody looks at the opinion of the Deseret News and assumes that it's the opinion of the church. And the Deseret News tries very hard to say, no, no, that's not the case. But the reality is they recognize that association. They recognize that responsibility. And the likelihood of printing anything in the Deseret News opinion section is under the unsigned editorial banner that would go fly in the face of what the church believes, the likelihood of that is nonexistent. It would not happen. Now, because of this also, the Deseret News does not endorse candidates. Salt Lake Tribune, the other major newspaper, does. In this election cycle, we are seeing a lot of controversy over the fact that newspapers like the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, which traditionally have endorsed presidential candidates, are not endorsing presidential candidates. So it's very unusual for newspapers to not endorse, but the Deseret News never does endorse. So I'm giving this a lot of background here, but I think it's going to pay off as we get here. One of the things I discovered when I was writing editorials for the Deseret News was that the goal of a Deseret News editorial is to offend the least amount of people possible. Because they recognize that they're scrutinized for their association with the church, they don't want to go out on a limb on anything unless the church has already gone out on a limb on it. So publishing anti-gay articles marriage editorials back when I worked for them was something they were more than happy to do because that was at a time when the church was campaigning actively against gay marriage. Publishing pro-immigration editorials was easy to do because the church had stuck its neck out on immigration. People don't often realize that the church's position on immigration is really directly contrary to the Republican Party's position. So those were the two issues where you could actually say something substantive, but on everything else, it was always guarded. It was always, I remember once being assigned to write an editorial about how human trafficking is bad. And I remember saying when I got the assignment, so what's the flip side to this? Are there people arguing that human trafficking is good? Of course not. So I had to come up with 450 words saying essentially nothing. And I had that experience. That was the most egregious experience I can remember. But I had similar experiences on a regular basis. It was often difficult to fill the space because I wasn't given the latitude to take any kind of a strong position. Okay, so all that background, I'm going to read you an editorial that was just posted by people on Twitter today. And it says, in our opinion, Donald Trump should resign his candidacy. For 80 years, the Deseret News has not entered into the troubled waters of presidential endorsement. We are neutral on matters of partisan politics. We do, however, feel a duty to speak clearly on issues that affect the well-being and morals of the nation. Accordingly, today, we call on Donald Trump to step down from his pursuit of the American presidency. In democratic elections, ideas have consequences, leadership matters, and character counts. The idea that women secretly welcome the unbridled and aggressive sexual advances of powerful men has led to the mistreatment, sorrow, and subjugation of countless women, for far too much of human history. The notion that strength emanates from harsh, divisive, and unbending rhetorical flourish mistakenly equates leadership with craven intimidation. The belief, okay, I'm going to go through this. I'm not going to necessarily read the whole thing. But there's a twist to this story. The twist is, this is not a recent editorial. The twist is that this editorial was published On October 8th, 2016, this was published in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape where Donald Trump was recorded bragging about assaulting women and talking about how you can do anything, you can grab them by their genitalia, he used a less appropriate word, and they let you do it. And since that time, About 28 women have come forward to say that Donald Trump did exactly that. There are ads running now that have these women telling their story. And most significantly, there was a woman by the name of E. Jean Carroll who took Donald Trump to court and sued him for defamation because he had insisted he'd never met her, he didn't know her, and she had accused him of raping her in a department store dressing room in new york city and in the course of the trial they investigated that charge and a jury of 12 people the jury of donald trump's peers determined that he had sexually assaulted her and that he had defamed her when he had lied about it and then a subsequent case increased the penalty because donald trump still couldn't shut up about it and still couldn't stop saying that he didn't know who this woman was, that she was ugly, that she wasn't his type. And the thing that destroyed him was in a deposition, he was shown a picture of himself with her and identified her as Marla Maples, his second wife. He said, oh yeah, that's Marla. And they said, no, that's E. Jean Carroll. That's the woman you raped. So the reason I thought it was interesting is that I'm seeing a lot of articles today talking about the fact that that Access Hollywood tape, so many of us of our generation see it as old news, but first-time voters are hearing about it for the first time. And when I saw this article from the Deseret News being posted on Twitter, a lot of members of the church did not realize that it was not a contemporary article, didn't realize it was from eight years ago. And They were all aghast that the church, even though it's the Deseret News, it's not officially the church, but the church allowed its church-owned paper to publish such a strident opposition article to Donald Trump. And when this came out, I remember, because this came out not long after I had stopped working for the Deseret News. In fact, I... I started writing. I was a ghostwriter for Gary Johnson, who was the libertarian candidate for president in 2016. And they said, you can't be doing that and also be writing editorials for the Deseret News. So I think I took a hiatus, and I think I may have come back after this and started writing again. And then I think I stopped writing for them when I ran for Congress in 2017. So this was written not while I was there. But I remember the Deseret News people saying, well, the first presidency must have approved this. And they said, oh, no, no, no, no. We did this on our own. And I remember I still don't believe that that's in any way possible. The idea that the Deseret News would stick its neck out this far in opposition to Donald Trump and not run it up the flagpole. seems ludicrous to me. I don't have any hard evidence. I've talked to the people who were involved in this editorial. They insist up and down that that did not happen, that this was entirely something that the Deseret News did on their own. But the reality is, I just don't think that if giving them the benefit of the doubt, if in fact they ran this without getting explicit approval, they did so knowing that that the brethren would be okay with it, knowing that there would be no pushback from church leaders. And as we come up on election day on Tuesday, and I'm cautiously optimistic, except I hate using that word because I'm not cautious, I'm panicked. I recognize that Donald Trump has escaped accountability so many times and he should never have been elected in the first place, and yet he always seems to find a way to squirm out from accountability. He was able to postpone all of his criminal trials, except for one, and that one was the least significant one, and he's managed to postpone the sentencing until after the election. He's managed somehow... Despite the fact that Trump-supported candidates have lost in all these elections since 2016, Republicans lost in 2018 in the midterms, Republicans lost the White House in 2020. In 2022, all the polls said it was going to be a red wave and the Republicans were going to dominate, and the red wave didn't materialize, and all Donald Trump's hand-picked candidates lost. The guy's a loser over and over and over again, except for in 2016. And everybody, so the race is, I don't think the race is as close as some people are saying it is or as the conventional wisdom says it is, but that isn't stopping me from panicking and from worrying because the consequences of a Trump presidency are almost too devastating to consider as far as I'm concerned. So this is not a political podcast. And the reason I raise this and the reason I want to frame this in terms of the Deseret News editorial is that this election, in terms of how Latter-day Saints are responding to it, is a really telling election in terms of reflecting the values of the church, reflecting the political positions of the church, and demonstrating A lot of the pretense suggesting the church really is just sort of politically neutral and nobody cares which way you vote. And even if you look at the church statements that talk about neutrality and talk about the fact that we shouldn't criticize anybody for their vote, in practice, in reality, on the ground, this church, in terms of its membership, and not necessarily its leadership, not even the highest leadership. I have received a whole lot of people telling me who would know that the Brethren are not Trumpers, and this editorial in 2016, I think, would demonstrate that. I don't think anything's changed. If anything, Trump has gotten worse since 2016, and I can't imagine that the Brethren are falling in line behind him. But the general membership of the church, the church as a whole, is a Donald Trump church. So much so that people consider you not just wrong politically, but wrong religiously if you decide you need to oppose Donald Trump, as I have. And I discovered this. So when we last recorded this episode, we were focusing on a lot of things that had happened. And in the interim, Donald Trump has stepped in it even further from when we last talked. So we went over last time the whole garbage thing that Donald Trump held a rally where there was a guy who said, I think there's a floating island of garbage in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I think it's called Puerto Rico. And I think that has done a great deal of damage to Donald Trump. electorally among the Latino community. But as I was getting ready for trying to put the episode together and discovering that it hadn't been recorded, I thought, oh, jeez, we should have done this after Donald Trump essentially called for a firing squad to murder Liz Cheney. He went on Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, incidentally, who just recently said that he was attacked by a demon in his bed and that it left claw marks. I mean, the number of loons that are in Trump's orbit are just astonishing. But he talked about the idea that Liz Cheney ought to be executed. And now everybody's trying to scramble and say, no, no, no. He didn't really say that. Here's what he really said. But I'm going to play the words for you, and I'll let anybody else make the decision here.
SPEAKER_02She's a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained to her face.
SPEAKER_00Twitter has a function called Community Notes, where... people in the community essentially can write a note on a post to point out when somebody is lying when somebody is giving false information and every single post about this where anybody takes any issue with it even when all they do is just post the audio without comment there's a community note he didn't mean that he wasn't trying to say he was trying to shoot Liz Cheney or that Liz Cheney should be shot he and And it's just pathetic and sad to watch as people scramble to try to say that this is somehow acceptable political discourse. And rather than apologize for it, or rather than clarify it, because the defense that people are trying to offer is he's just saying that Liz Cheney wouldn't be so quick to send people to war if she were going to war. But the way he describes it is let's put Liz Cheney in front of nine rifles aimed at her face. And instead of apologizing for it, instead of clarifying it, Donald Trump posted or re-truthed on his Truth Social account a picture of Liz Cheney and said Liz Cheney ought to be tried for treason before a military tribunal. Well, when you try somebody for treason before a military tribunal and you find them guilty, what's the punishment? Very often, the punishment is death before a firing squad, which is exactly what Donald Trump was describing. So rather than try to sort of tone down the rhetoric, I mean, I've got a friend who talks about how, jeez, the heightened rhetoric, particularly from the Harris campaign, is what led to Donald Trump's assassination attempts. Give me a break. You're going to say that and then give this a pass? and tell me that this is an absolutely acceptable thing for people to say. And not to be outdone, but if we had recorded that episode and had been able to get it up, it would have gone up before we woke up this morning to find out that Donald Trump had a complete meltdown at a Michigan rally last night and started simulating oral sex with his microphone. I mean, this is a guy that is so far out of the bounds of decency and normality that we ought to reject him. So, okay, so that's politically, but so I posted this and I got, there was a guy named Tom Tominey. He is apparently running for governor of Utah. He has a website, tomtominey.com. I don't even know if he's on the ballot, so maybe he's a write-in candidate, but he insists that he's a gubernatorial candidate here in Utah. And here's what he said to me, Jim, You need to quit the choir. Someone who spews such hate towards another child of God surely cannot represent his church in such a capacity. You are totally misrepresenting what Trump said, taking it out of context. And it went on to the point where other people were talking to him and said, he's not taking him out of context, that even if I The idea that somehow the choir, my first response to him was, you think either the church or the choir would endorse what Trump is saying here? Do we live on the same planet? It's bizarre to me how this has worked and how people have gone. And it looks like he's taken down some of the later things that he posted. Because... At one point, it devolved into a murder threat against me. Somebody else had said, Jim, you know, he said, I'm going to call the choir and I'm going to tell them about you, which is such an empty threat. The idea that the choir is going to say, oh, geez, Jim is opposed to murdering Liz Cheney? Well, gosh, we ought to just give him the boot. I mean, these people who try to get me kicked out of the choir don't seem to realize that The choir leadership is aware of the extremists online, and they are horrified by them. They are not on the side of the people who are embracing extremism. But that's neither here nor there. Somebody else was talking to him, and he said, well, I can live with the fact that he hates church teachings, which of course I don't, but I can let him live with the fact that he hates church teachings, but I can't let him live with this kind of slander against Donald Trump. And I'm saying, we're in a discussion about murder threats and you're telling me there's something you can't let me live? And I ended up calling the police and talking to them and they said, well, it doesn't sound like you're in immediate danger, but we'll give him a call. And so I'm assuming there's been a phone call there and they've bagged down. But Looking at this election going forward, seeing just how manifestly unfit Donald Trump is, whether he wins, whether he loses, the thing that breaks my heart more than almost anything is how much Donald Trump has broken my faith community and has broken the moral compass of so many people who desperately ought to know better. The Deseret News told us in 2016, this is a man who was unfit for the presidency, and nothing has changed since then. He has become more unfit. He has become more morally depraved, and he's also deteriorated both mentally and physically to the point where he does not have the capacity to function as president of the United States. And yet, every poll shows that Donald Trump is going to win not just the majority of the Latter-day Saint vote, but an overwhelming majority. In 2020, when Trump lost, he won 70% of all Latter-day Saint votes. In 2024, the most reliable polling shows him winning by a 40-point margin over Kamala Harris among Latter-day Saints. And I just look at this and I look at the pushback I get when I speak out against this. And I'm speaking out against this, not just politically. I'm not saying, oh, geesh, I am a Democrat and therefore, because I'm not a Democrat. I never have been a Democrat. And You know, I'm not saying, you know, this is my candidate, my party, and so that's why I can't stand Donald Trump. I'm saying it's a matter of morality. I'm absolutely a Liz Cheney Republican in terms of what I believe. And Liz Cheney has said over and over again things along the lines of, we can live with a president with bad policies. We cannot live with a president with no respect for the Constitution, who will end constitutional governance. And she has told her Republican colleagues that there is a day when Donald Trump will be gone, but your dishonor will remain. And when Donald Trump is gone, and I, again, I'm optimistic that he will be in a week or in a few days now. We're recording this on Saturday. We're going to release this on Saturday. And he's The election is on Tuesday. And I'm hopeful that that's when Trumpism ends. At least that's when Donald Trump's political career ends. But Trumpism and what Trumpism has done to Mormonism, to the church, that will continue. That will remain. And I don't see a way to heal that. I don't see a way where all of these people who have embraced a patently immoral evil man, in that Deseret News editorial, they call him evil. They call the recording evil. I want to see if I can find that phrase. But they talk specifically about the fact that this isn't about politics. Where is it? What oozes from this audio is evil. We hear a married man give smooth smug and self-congratulatory permission to his intense impulses, allowing them to outweigh the most modest sense of decency, fidelity, and commitment. And although it speaks volumes about sexual morality, it goes to the heart of all ethical behavior. Trump's banter belies a willingness to use and discard other human beings at will, that characteristic is the essence of a despot. And that's the church I believe in, is the church that finds this kind of behavior evil, this kind of behavior to be the behavior of a despot. And yet, that's not the church in which I sit in the pews next to people who are giving this a pass, who are giving this man, giving his threats, giving his bile, giving his totally... amoral, immoral lack of character, free reign, and they want to hand him not just the future of the nation, but the future of the church. And at one point, and I realize I'm rambling quite a lot here, Ian, and I'm going to turn this over to you in just a second here. But at one point, I pointed out that The people that hate, and we talked more about this last time we recorded this episode, but the people who hate Latter-day Saints the most are the other people in Donald Trump's orbit. They are the evangelical Christians who believe, and we encountered them in Scotland, people encountered them here in the United States, they believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an evil, wicked, satanic cult that And they stayed home in large numbers in 2012 when the nominee for president was a Mormon, because they hate Mormons more than they hate Democrats. And they think we're a cult. They think we're wicked. And people in Trump's orbit, there's a guy named Michael Flynn, who was Trump's national security advisor, who spoke about how important it is that when Donald Trump is in office, We can't just have one nation under God. We have to have one religion under God. And I posted a thing where I said, okay, Latter-day Saint Trumpers, what do you think is going to happen to the church when they don't need your votes anymore? Donald Trump has said to Christians, just vote this time and you won't ever need to vote again. And we've seen Donald Trump has said that he wants to run for a third term, even though the Constitution prohibits somebody from running for a third term. This is a guy with no respect for constitutional norms. We're the church that says that we are going to save the Constitution. And yet here we are handing the reins to a man who has said he who has explicitly said that we need to we need to terminate the Constitution. He tweeted the importance of he said we need to terminate all the rules in the Constitution in order to put me back in office because of all of the non-existent fraud in the last election. So the consequences, and I believe the brethren can see this, and I wish they would do more about it, but the consequences for the church, if Donald Trump wins, are going to be absolutely devastating in a lot of ways. It's going to damage the reputation of the United States. It's going to damage the reputation of the church, which unwisely threw in with Donald Trump by sending the Tabernacle Choir to perform in his inauguration. And the numbers of the church's voters that are voting for him just give the essence that we're tied at the hip, whether we want to be or not, with Donald Trump. And the amount of damage he's going to do and the kinds of people who are going to surround him are people who are not at all interested in supporting the church and helping the church and would love to see the church destroyed. So that's who we've thrown in with. And I just, no matter what the election results are, I think the church has been damaged in a fundamental and profound way. And I don't see how we recover. So there we go. My opening rant is, Do you have a counter rant or a supplementary rant?
SPEAKER_01I have, I don't think I have a rant, but I have some positions and I have some opinions on what we're talking about here. So context is very important. And so I just want to give a little bit of background here. So Inside Out podcast is not a political podcast. We talk about the church, you know, the Mormon faith, the church of Jesus Christ, like the saints. It's the great things that it does. There's many, many great things. We talk about the quality of the members. For the most part, the members are extraordinary people, good, kind, serving, loving, Christlike people. But we also talk about many of the issues in the church and how that impacts mostly rank and file members. And of course, people who are post-Mormon, people who've been in the church on the left or people who've navigated the church. And that's the primary focus is to look at the church in an honest and a very balanced way, hopefully. And anything where the church is, we think, is making a mistake or it's perhaps taking the wrong path is to talk about it with the intent of trying to improve it. I'm not sure how much influence we have on that, probably little or nothing, but notwithstanding, it's important, we think, that's the reason why we set this podcast up, is to talk about these issues with the church, the good and the bad, but also to help people navigate their faith, essentially to help people, to talk about these issues, and to provide a safe platform where people can talk and express their views without fear of being labeled or criticized for expressing their opinion or free speech, because we talked about in the church, it's difficult to go to church, and this was my experience, and talk about certain things. There's certain things that are off limits. And I mentioned when I crossed the threshold of the church, when I was active in the church, and I had questions on anything, including politics, well, there were certain subjects, topics that were off limits. You couldn't and shouldn't talk about those things at church. And church, I felt in my own experience, on certain topics, certain subjects, was not safe. And Inside Out is trying to create a safe space to talk about these things. So why are we talking about politics? And that's the context bit. Well, the politics, whether we like it or not, whether we follow it or not, or discuss it or get into it or not, affects everybody's lives across the planet in very profound ways. And there's a distinct relationship between politics and the church, which I want to talk about briefly. If we look at the geopolitics that's happening right now, there are some very serious... things happening on the geopolitical stage. We have a war that's seemingly getting out of control in the Middle East. It is out of control. You've got Israel, which has been attacked by seven other organizations and regimes, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other state-sponsored terrorist organizations. that situation appears to be continuing to escalate and the church does have a relationship with that event and goes to Israel and is pro-Israel. The church is pro-Israel, is pro-Christian. The church is a Zionist religion and it is pro-Israel and the Evidence of that is extensive. The church officially or unofficially supports Israel. And I think that's right. I think it's important. So the church does have a position on Israel and these events. If you look at the other events happening in the world, we're now seeing further escalation between Russia and Ukraine with North Korea sending what appears to be 10,000 troops who are now at the border and have actually now entered Ukraine. We've got the East now fighting wars in Europe. And we see that situation escalating. We see Putin do some dummy tests with missiles, seemingly reminding the world that he's got nuclear missiles. Essentially, I think the deterrent, that nuclear deterrent for him, at least, is working because Ukraine is fighting the European war. This war is Europe, as you know. And we're seeing a huge amount of instability in that country trying to protect its democratic values and rights. And we're seeing involvement from NATO, from the West, in the form of equipment and military help and training and stuff like that. They're still not willing to end the war in fear of escalating the situation further. These are major global events. There are other major events that happen on a domestic scale that impact the world. What happens in the UK politically has, in my opinion, very little impact on the world stage. UK's now, certainly post-Brexit, has got limited influence on the world stage, in my view, in many ways. But the decisions that the Labour Party are taking recently in the UK, where they just announced £40 billion sterling in tax hikes, tax raises, is going to have a significant impact on the cost of living in that country, which is going through a very serious period of austerity. And that's affecting the Brits on a very, very personal level in very profound ways. So these are political decisions that are impacting people's lives, regardless of the religion that you follow. And then, of course, we come to the U.S. election. And the U.S. election matters because The U.S. economy is the biggest in the world, and the U.S. military capability and contribution globally, and so is NATO, is by far the biggest and strongest. The amount of money spent by the U.S. on military budget dwarfs everyone else. And the influence that the U.S. still has on the world stage is extremely significant, albeit that appears to be diminishing to some extent. We had a recent summit in Moscow hosted by Putin of the BRICS countries who are now trying to set up a counter currency to the US dollar and are looking at building a trading block of significance between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and there are some other smaller countries who are now participating, including Iran, of course. And so we're seeing these major events happening on the world stage, geopolitically, military, economically, and we should be concerned about what's going on in the world. And so this affects everyone in very profound ways. And the question I have, or the thoughts I have, is what is the role of the church in all of this? The church claims that it is the only true church upon the face of the earth, and I've reference that frequently because I take that very seriously and if that's true and President Nelson at this time represents God, Jesus Christ on the planet, the mouthpiece of Jesus Christ and the Heavenly Father who's got way more power than anything on this planet and can seemingly do things and control things and influence things for the better and bring humanity back from the brink of what looks like an exponential risk and threat to humankind over the next 100 years or so with wars and climate change and famine and all these issues. And boy, if we ever needed help, we need help now. If the second coming is real, I think Ian's little opinion here, I think now is a good time to kind of press that button to bring Christ back. Do we need help right now? And we do. We're desperate for help. We're desperate for leadership. And we're desperate to bring us back to save us from what looks like the, not immediate, but potentially mid-long term in the next years, 10, 50 years, whatever, coming back from the brink of extinction on these major events. So these are really important critical issues and events that are taking place. In my mind, my question is, what's the role of the only true church upon the face of that represents God? What's the role of the church and the church leadership in the events that are happening in the world that affect rank and file members? If you go to the church newsroom, the church has on the church website, so I'm not making this up, it's not anti-Mormons who posted anti-Mormon information onto the church website. This is a section they call Political Neutrality and Participation. And this is really important to be aware of this, to read this. He says here that the work of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, strengthening individuals and families, and caring for those in need. The Church does not seek to elect government officials support or oppose political parties or generally take sides in global conflict. So there is evidence where they've done that with the events that happened in California and the gay rights movement that took place down there. And there's other examples where the church has taken certain positions. Nevertheless, it says here the church is neutral in matters of politics within or between the world's many nations, lands, and people. However, as an institution, it reserves the right to address issues it believes have significant moral consequences or that directly affect the mission, teachings, or operations of the church. You said a few moments ago that a re-election of Trump would have a significant negative potential impact on the church. So presumably that Trump's behavior, actions, who was a convicted felon, by the way, as you know, And I think people outside of America, certainly within America, I'm sure, but certainly outside, a puzzle why a convicted felon is even running for office. I just can't get my head around that. I just can't understand how America, with so many smart people and established systems and processes and institutions, can even allow something like that. Presumably, this has come up in the first presidency, that Trump is a convicted felon. running for office. I'm fascinated, amazing to learn a bit more about that conversation with the first president, what they think about
SPEAKER_00that. He says he's at the church. But convicted felons are generally excommunicated. Convicted felons, don't they go to jail? Well, they go to jail, yeah, but the church, I think it's in the handbook that a conviction, a felony conviction is considered Sufficient evidence to demonstrate unchristlike conduct worthy of membership withdrawal. Absolutely. Without being able to be a member of the church as a convicted felon.
SPEAKER_01So there are serious consequences for convicted felons if they're members of the church, right? Right. Absolutely. And rightly so. And presumably there are serious consequences in U.S. law. In other words, UK is the same, Canada is the same for convicted felons if you break the law. You know, there's a penalty, there's a punishment in some form, right? And this is where I'm struggling here with what the church is in its position. It says here that the church does not endorse, promote, or oppose political parties and their platforms or candidates for political office. Setting the momentable require to the Trump 2016 inauguration, I think he said, you know, is that taking a position? Well, I think it is. It does not allow its church buildings, membership lists, or other resources to be used for political purposes. I think that's false because I think that's when they shipped Utah members down to California to campaign for the position of the church. I think that is taking the position, and that's okay. I'm all right, by the way. I'm very comfortable. In fact, the way I'm going with this is I want the church. We said earlier, we talked earlier about What's the whole point of Inside Out? Why are we doing this podcast? We said one of the things is to see where, understand, and talk about where the church could improve. Well, as a non-member now, but I was in the church for 35, 37 years, I want the church, Jim, to take a position on things of morality. That's the point of the church, is to, as it's said, to implement physically in actions and beyond rhetoric the principles of Jesus Christ, of goodness and wholesomeness and integrity and honesty, which is what I believe the church stands for, is trying to stand for, at least. It says it does not advise its members on how to vote. I think that's in question on some of its activities as well. I think where it suits the church, it has done that. It does not direct government officials or party leaders in the duty of their office. It does not typically issue statements regarding disputes in or in between nations, lands, or peoples. Rather, it teaches the gospel of Jesus Christ with the knowledge that living these principles limits contention and hostilities. The church does believe and teach that members should be servitude to kings, presidents, rulers, advisors, churches, obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. Although the church has been breached of the law because it set up these funds in these hedge funds, tried to hide its wealth, there was an investigation by the federal authorities in the US and I think the church was fined for two things, I think. Hiding its wealth in these hedge funds and reporting that they weren't making as much money. If that's incorrect, please correct me. But the church did receive an official fine from the federal government about a year ago in respect to where it was investing its money and the rules around investing and disclosing its money and the amount of money that it has and reports. It does recognize the universal right to free exercise of conscience and believes all individuals and institutions should be able to express publicly their views on issues facing society. That's a really important point, that. And that's good. It does encourage members to play a role as responsible citizens in their communities, including becoming informed about issues, voting elections, participating in governance processes as they desire, and seeking for elected, appointed, or voluntary office. And you are, my friend, you are a great example of that, where you've tried to run for office because you want to improve things. Emphasis on tried. Well, it still doesn't distract from who you are and the kind of person that you are. That you're trying to improve your community in your neighborhood by getting involved in politics and improving the quality of decisions to achieve that. It does encourage its members to engage in the political process in an informed and civil manner. And one of my notes and my points here on my notes is that it's important to, it's really important to have conversations about politics because that we can influence, we should influence it for the better, for the betterment of the people. We've just said that. But it's also important to do that in a way that's kind and respectful and that the level of discourse, the type of discourse is not hateful or threatening. You've said earlier that you've been, you felt at risk, you felt threatened and you've had to call the police. That is where someone who's behaved against you like that, they've stepped over the line and perhaps even broken the law. And I think it's very sad when, you know, we can't express a political opinion view without the threat of, you know, without receiving those kind of threats. I think it's terrible. And we're living in a time now with so much division, so much hatred, where even online, on social media, it's almost impossible to express an opinion without someone at some point becoming hostile are behaving in a threatening way. I'm reminded of the January 6th event where Trump incited violent behavior and tried to overthrow the election. I don't know where we are with that January election investigation right now. I think that's still ongoing, but the evidence seems to be that he broke the law and actually incited violence and tried to-
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah. The investigation is done. The charges have been filed and it was supposed to go to trial before the election. If Trump loses, it will likely go to trial with, I'd say, before the end of the year. because it's ready to go, and we're just waiting for the election to play out, because if Trump is reelected, he can either pardon himself, which we're not quite sure if that's legal, but I think given the Supreme Court, it will be legal, even if it's not now, or he will simply fire the special prosecutor and get his new attorney general to just drop all the charges. So the January 6th charges are federal charges. And so he can do that and he can pardon himself and he can affect those. There's another federal case that right now was dismissed wrongfully. This was the classified documents case. And there was a Trumpy judge that dismissed it based on a weird technicality that she didn't think the prosecutor was appointed appropriately. The prosecutor is appealing that and is very, very likely to win that. And that case is likely to be reinstated. And that's the most open and shut case against him. But I don't know that will go to trial because right now it's dismissed. But there's another case out there in Georgia. where Donald Trump tried to overthrow the election in Georgia. We have recordings of him calling the Georgia governor and the Georgia secretary of state and saying, look, you guys need to find me 11,000 votes. 11,480 votes is the number. And that trial has gone through all kinds of gyrations because the prosecutor's kind of a doofus who was having an affair with another prosecutor and they tried to get her kicked off the case. And that whole melodrama has ended up postponing that case, and I'm not even sure where it is, but it hasn't been dismissed. It's still out there, and it's a state case, just like the case where he's been convicted, meaning as a state case, the president cannot pardon, cannot dismiss it. So that case will continue. It will likely be postponed until after Trump's presidency is concluded, but the charges aren't going away, and Trump is going to be sentenced. He's scheduled to be sentenced on November 28th for the convictions he already has. And each of those could see he's probably going to get maybe a year or two of jail time altogether. But the idea that a former president is going to go to jail, we're just acting like this is normal, that this is acceptable, that this is a guy who ought to run. So anyway, sorry. I jumped in. I think I may have... No,
SPEAKER_01I'm under that. And I just want to, Gavin, just kind of conclude on these official statements by the church, because it's really important to understand the relationship between the church and politics, and the relationship of the church and the geopolitics, all the events happening in the world. He says here that the church does request that candidates for office not imply that candidates or platforms are endorsed by the church. It does want to provide humanitarian assistance around the world, including in areas of international conflict, where while political strife may be a factor in causing the need for assistance, the church will generally not comment on the conflict itself. Rather, the church focuses on the two great commandments, to love God and your neighbor by alleviating suffering, etc. Relationship with government, and this is an important statement. Government officials and political representatives, who are Latter-day Saints, make their own decisions, period. They're not expected or asked to agree with one another or even with a publicly stated church position. So the church has said that, right? They just have publicly stated positions on certain things.
SPEAKER_00Well, and to their credit, that's accurate. My father, I remember talking to him about this. My father never once, he says, the church never once came to me and said, you need to vote a certain way. And he said when he first got elected, he met with the church's governmental relations director, who said, you're probably not going to hear from me very much. And that ended up being true. And while my father was in the Senate, he was a Republican in Senate leadership, and the Senate majority leader was a Democrat and a Latter-day Saint. And they were diametrically opposed. And Harry Reid... is arguably not not even arguably he is the most powerful high-ranking elected official in he was and still is in terms of this history the most high-ranking latter-day saint ever to be elected to high office and he was a democrat
SPEAKER_01democrat and then to to that point he says he says here while the church may communicate its views to them these are people who are members who are really for office As it may to any other officials or representatives, it recognizes that these individuals must make their own choices according to their best judgment and considering the constituencies they were elected to represent. And then just to close out the statement here, there's a... comment at the end, the conclusion. I do recommend people read this because it's a really important official statement of the church on the newsroom here, on the website. It says the conclusion, to navigate the application of these principles of political neutrality and participation in an ever-changing and complex world. The first presidency of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will continue to seek prophetic wisdom and revelation on these matters. And that's the thing that I have a problem with, Jim. I would... Love to see the church take a position on certain things, to come out and to stand up for what is right. If we look at this election on Tuesday with Trump and Harris, matters not only to Americans, but it matters to the rest of the world. It is probably, arguably, the most important election in American history, or one of the most important elections in American history. It will have a profound effect domestically, economically taxed. Trump's talking about raising tariffs. That's going to have a profound impact on its economy, a profound impact on the geo-economies happening in the world there. And there'll be a profound impact on the moral principles of the country. I think the world, not the world, I think there are actors in the world, and I'll name them, Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, There's a few of us that would absolutely love to see America weakened. It would love to see America divided. They're rubbing their hands, seeing the division in America. Putin wants to break up Europe. He wants to expand his colonial reach, taking over Ukraine. He sees Ukraine as part of Russia. It's official. He said that. China sees Taiwan as a renegade country. They're trying to pull Taiwan back in. Putin won't just stop at Ukraine. I think he'll continue. Moldova, he also sees that as a renegade breakaway from Russia. And to achieve their objectives, their aims, they need a weakened America. With a divided, weakened America, speaking as a Brit, a non-American, the world is in greater crisis, greater trouble. We need a strong, fair, balanced America with all of its powers, all of its resources, to uphold those fundamental values and principles of decency and honesty, a respect for law, a respect for life, I want to highlight that because there are countries out there that don't respect life. They don't value life. And America and countries like America, Britain, Australia, Canada, and other countries who respect the democratic laws and process, respect life and have fundamental values. And a weak in America is bad for the world. And so Tuesday matters to everyone on this planet, certainly Americans, and certainly with the rest of the world. Just to conclude my comments at this stage in our conversation, I am disappointed that the first presidency hasn't done more to take a... position publicly on the principles of what Christ taught of decency and kindness and goodness and integrity, on those fundamental backbone principles that the church rests on, that the divinity of the church rests on, that the whole point of having the church that relies on and rests on, on that foundation hasn't come out and talked about the morality of this election, the morality of someone like Trump. you know, we talked on the first time we did this, you know, I talked about why people voting, you know, for, why would they vote for Trump or why would they vote for any office? Someone, vote someone into office who doesn't have or have certain moral values, et cetera. And one of the reasons I mentioned is that a lot of people, and I include myself to this extent as well, And I'm not saying that I, if I was an American, I certainly wouldn't be voting for Donald Trump by any means, even though he does some things that I agree with. But a lot of people, I think, and I'm one of them, and this is my experience in Canada and my experience in the UK, where I've lost confidence in the traditional conventional political system and process. And I'm not alone. If you look at the, just trump aside for a moment, if you look at the traditional conventional political system that the UK has, Canada has, America has, Australia, et cetera, and it's not perfect, I understand that, but I've lost confidence in many, many politicians who I don't trust, I don't believe. If you look at the Labour Party there, who's now been elected in this last election in the UK, they're now going back on a lot of their promises that they made in their manifesto prior to the election. I think in some ways, I think they have to because there was a massive hole in public finances in the UK and they had to raise tax, albeit not to that extent, I don't think. But anyway, A lot of people, including myself, have just lost confidence in the political process. And the guy in the street, the little man in the street, feels probably disenfranchised and disconnected and helpless and somewhat useless in terms of being able to do anything. These events, these political decisions and events, these political parties, we can't influence them, we can't control them, we can vote, etc., but they're going to come into office and do what they want to do. however they want and when they want and how they want, etc. And so there are many people out there who've lost confidence. And so they look at an alternative. If you look at Germany prior to the Second World War, Germany was in the toilet economically. And it was weakened militarily previously and in other military conflicts prior to the First World War. And it was at an intersection. And they voted in this extreme fascist, Hitler. And the definition of fascism, I've got it here, is so when a country is in a very difficult position and it's lost confidence in those traditional conventional political leaders and processes and systems, the danger is they swing extreme to the other end. And this is what happened in Germany. And I think this is what could happen in America, where they swing from that established system, because they're not happy with it, Jim, for different reasons. And rightly so. They've lost confidence, lost confidence in some of it, that they're not represented. They can't afford to live. They can't afford to pay the bills. Can't afford to pay the mortgage. Cost of living is out of control. They haven't got access to good health. These are all basic principles of trying to live a decent life with access to these services to improve the quality of life. And for many, it's not happening. They don't have access to those opportunities or they're not prospering or progressing financially or personally in some ways under the current established political system. It's just not working for them. And the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. The divide between the rich and poor is getting wider and growing faster, and they feel disconnected. So what do they do? They opt for an alternative. In America, they're opting, looking at something quite extreme. I think Trump is a very extreme individual and unhinged. His behavior recently in this campaign is increasingly worrying and increasingly unhinged. And if you look at the definition of fascism, And you ask yourself if this fits with Trump. This certainly fits with the Nazi party in Germany at that time. And you can decide whether this fits Trump or not. But fascism is a far-right authoritarian and ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a neutral social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and economy. Well, that describes Nazi Germany at that time very convincingly in my mind. Does that... describe the character of the baby of Trump. I think some of it does, for sure. I'm not for one second saying Trump is Hitler by any means. But Trump is wanting to throw out all those political institutions. He talked on the first point, the first time we had this conversation, and this is the point I want to hand back to you, actually, because I'm pretty much done with what I want to say on this. But we talked about normalcy. We talked about... We talked about some of the values of the established system, which is not perfect, and I've said that. Nevertheless, there's a level of normality that the established system, the processes where people are expected to behave and conduct themselves within that lane of normality, which is that traditional, conventional political thinking and mindset, albeit, as I mentioned, some people have lost confidence in that. But when we first talked, Jim, you talked about Trump's behavior being well outside of normalcy. So I want to hand that back over to you and ask you to comment on that because people will vote for him. It appears that if you look at the polls, it appears from some of the polls that it's quite close, albeit I think that Harris is probably ahead by a little bit, by a smidgen, I imagine. But could you talk about the issue of normalcy in the current political climate in the United States?
SPEAKER_00Sure, sure. Yeah, this is something I talk about a lot when people ask me, how can I vote for Donald Trump? I'm sorry, how can I vote for a Democrat having been a lifelong Republican? I left the Republican Party when Donald Trump received the Republican nomination in 2015. But everything I believed when I was a Republican, I still believe. And I look at Liz Cheney and I think, yeah, this is somebody. I share a common set of beliefs with this woman who is taking so much heat for putting country over party. But I always tell the story of P.J. O'Rourke, who was a very funny conservative writer. He wrote long-form... He wasn't just like a columnist. He wrote books. I have several of P.J. O'Rourke's books. I'm looking at them right now. All the Trouble in the World is one of them. Eat the Rich is another one of them. And he wrote from a very broad perspective and a very conservative perspective. He's since passed away, unfortunately. But in 2016, P.J. O'Rourke endorsed Hillary Clinton. And he says, this is not a joke. I'm doing this unironically. And when asked why, he said, I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton because she's going to be absolutely wrong about absolutely everything. But she's going to be absolutely wrong about absolutely everything within normal parameters. And that, to me, is kind of what this entire election comes down to. And again, to emphasize, I'm talking about the church as well as the nation. What Trump has done is erode the boundaries between what's acceptable and what is not, and things that would have been ludicrously disqualifying just even as recently as 2012 if Mitt Romney had done anything like what Donald Trump has done. If Barack Obama had done anything like what Donald Trump has done, they would have been laughed out of the campaign, laughed out of the race, if that Access Hollywood tape that the Deseret News editorialized on in 2016 had come from any other candidate at any other time in our nation's history, it would have been the end of that candidacy. And you see, if you go through Twitter, you can see things like, early on Donald Trump, there was a reporter who had a withered arm, who was disabled and had this arm that he had this strange look to him. And Donald Trump went out at a rally and made fun of it and made fun. He did the, nobody can see me, but I'm doing, he did this thing with his arm. Oh, and made fun of this reporter. And I see a picture of that side by side with this reporter. And the caption is always, this should have been the end of it. You know, if anybody else had done that, mocking a disabled reporter, they would have been laughed off the stage, off the political stage. In 1984, Gary Hart carried on with Donna Rice on a boat. A woman who was not his wife. And that was enough for him to be booted out of the Democratic primary. And Bill Clinton was impeached because he had an affair with a 21-year-old intern. And that was this huge national scandal. And now we have a rapist who was convicted of 34 felonies. Just go down the list of the number of things that Donald Trump has done to obliterate Not just the legal, but the moral norms of how this country is supposed to behave. And it just, it brings tears to my eyes. And no more so than in thinking about what it's done to obliterate moral boundaries within the church. The idea that this man is somebody that my fellow Latter-day Saints not only feel that they can embrace... but feel like they can question my faith when I refuse to embrace. I get angry. I've gotten, I'm going to be very vague here, but at one point I got criticism through official church channels from church leaders who have ecclesiastical authority over me. And the criticism was, you are too critical of Donald Trump. And I pushed back as hard as I could and said, you are way out of line. I have made no covenant not to speak evil of Donald Trump. But as I talk to people in the church, I mean, at this point, I don't talk politics with people in the church because it's too painful. But I can remember in 2020, I was walking my dog and one of my neighbors was walking her dog and she turned, hey, Bennett. Hey, what are you going to do when Trump wins? Because you know he's going to win. And this same person has spoken up in gospel doctrine class about how Trump is the chosen vessel to do the Lord's will. And that kind of vibe circulates throughout the church. After the Trump assassination attempt, I had a neighbor stick up this huge, massive Trump flag. And this is a neighbor that I've known for a very long time who is, you know, he has a position of responsibility in the church. And I just look at all of this and I just, yeah, everything you've said, Ian, about the importance of a strong America, of an America that has integrity, that has the ability to lead the world in so many ways. All of that is true. But at its core, the thing that breaks my heart the most about Donald Trump is that we need a strong and faithful and kind and decent church. And Donald Trump has done more to erode the basic human decency of Latter-day Saints than anyone I have ever seen in my lifetime. If I look over the course of the church... the history of the church. I can't point to anybody else that has done more to erode just basic decency and moral norms within the church than Donald Trump. So when you talk about normalcy, what's normal, what is not normal, that's the most painful legacy that Trump has left us as a nation and as a church. He's allowed us to live in alternate realities You can talk to people. Donald Trump, as we're talking, I've been scrolling here a little bit. He's been speaking and he's talking about how the United States is in the midst of a depression. The United States right now has the strongest economy in the world and one of the strongest economies it's ever had. We have unemployment well below full employment. The standard for full employment is something like 5%. And we have unemployment around, I don't even think it's 3%. We have... You know, Joe Biden has created so many new jobs and inflation is now down to target levels. The economy is strong. And here's Donald Trump saying it's interdepression. And the people who are listening to him believe him. And Donald Trump has said crime is running rampant throughout the United States. No, crime is down in the United States. Well, immigrants have taken 100% of the new jobs. That's one of his lines. That's absolute nonsense. All of these things are provably false. And yet, not only is Donald Trump allowed to say them, but huge numbers of Americans and huge numbers of Latter-day Saints believe them. And they are not true. And that is not normal. When we were missionaries... the thing that we would do to challenge people to join the church would be to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. And we would read them Moroni chapter 10, verses 3 through 5. And the fifth verse, I think, is the most powerful. It says, "...and by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." not meaning you will know all truth, but you will be able by the power of the Spirit to discern truth from error, to know what things are true. That is a gift, that is a birthright given to all of us as children of God. And as Latter-day Saints who have the gift of the Holy Ghost, we have more power and authority to call upon that gift. What we say we do, that we have that authority that nobody else has. You keep talking about this is the only true church. We say, well, we have the gift of the Holy Ghost. We have the ability to discern truth from error. And we have allowed ourselves to be siloed in an alternate reality where truth no longer matters and where outright lies are accepted as reality. And that has to stop. And so no matter what happens on Tuesday, I am optimistic that Harris is going to win for a number of reasons. One, she's run such a great campaign and Trump has run such a nightmare campaign and such a shambolic mess. He keeps screwing up. She hasn't had a bad day as far as I'm concerned. And all the polls show the enthusiasm for Democrats is way above enthusiasm for Republicans. I don't think it's going to be as close as people say it is, but of course I could be wrong. I have been wrong. So my prognostications aren't worth anything. But no matter what happens, the fallout, the damage from a church that has allowed itself to sell its soul to the most evil person ever to run for president of the United States, that's going to be damage that will linger. And hopefully, Ian, you will be here with me to try to clean it up. But it really is heartbreaking. And I just implore all of my, anybody who's listening to this, no matter where you are on the spectrum in terms of your faith, please, please, please search your heart. I think you know deep down what the right decision is on Tuesday, who you ought to be voting for. And I beg of you to trust that. Don't trust people who lie to you. Donald Trump has done nothing but lie to you since he came down from that escalator after announcing his candidacy. Please, if the truth matters to you, it doesn't matter to me where you are in terms of your membership in the church, your faith in the church, your belief in the church, please believe in truth. Please believe in decency. Please believe in kindness. And please reject Donald Trump. And that's my final word.
SPEAKER_01Jim, thank you. Just a couple of real final thoughts here. Well, one thought, actually, to keep it brief. I... still have high expectations of the church. I still believe in the goodness of the church and the goodness of the leaders of the church. And they do. I think for the most part, they make good decisions or try to make good decisions and try to do right. And I think basically, fundamentally, the good people, sometimes in certain ways, on some things for sure. And I hope that the church leadership will um especially on things like this on on issues of morality and truth and honesty and integrity will take a more obvious position on these things and come out and speak up and take a position it does that and it has done that on issues that it is concerned about and as the only true church upon the face of the earth it has a obligation a moral spiritual emotional obligation to state his position on critical issues that are impacting not just rank and file members of the church, but every living soul on the planet. The church reminded that the prophet is not just a prophet for the members of the church, but is he not the prophet for the whole world? I think he is. I think that's what the church teaches. And so it's important I think to vote for people with integrity and honesty and decency and I will leave it on that and I hope my prediction on Tuesday is that Harris will win there'll be four to five four to six point margin I think when people are going to the polls going to the ballot box rather I believe in the goodness of people and that they will think very carefully as they're going to discharge their obligation and vote for someone, I think that will ultimately make a decision on morality and the basic principles. Even though you'll have people who will go into the ballot box who are like me, Americans, who probably have lost confidence in that established system. Nevertheless, I think they will ultimately vote for the status quo and because that's a lot better frankly than voting for Trump so anyway again we're not political podcasts we never or rarely have these conversations but I think it's important that we did important to talk about these things and we have hopefully to our listeners we've kind of hopefully put it in context in regards to the church and the role of church So I really appreciate this conversation. They're very important things. And I hope for America to be reunited and to get back to what it is best to be a balancing force and power for good in the world because we need it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. And thank you all for listening. Thank you for your patience with this political digression here. But we very much appreciate you sharing this time with us on Inside Out. Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can be notified when new episodes drop. And until next time, thank you for listening, and we hope to see you next time on Inside Out. Thank you very much, Ian. Thank you, Jim.