Democrats deflect with attack on prayer (08-29-2025--Hour2)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to vpekclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, And again, thank you so much for your support. I'm going to give you a quote here from Walter Kern. He is the editor of County Highway to Publication and the co host of America Week. His co host, Walter Kern's co host is Matt Tayebi for that podcast or YouTube show or whatever it is. Anyway, Walter Kern quote, the anti prayer refrain is a talking point. Clearly it is being recited verbatim all over the place. In that sense, it is itself a sort of a prayer, perhaps the worst one ever. It should be noted also here that Jesus was praying as he was killed, and he went on to have great influence. But I thought this was very interesting in that it's a mantra that the democrats and media. But I repeat myself, have been using after school shootings. It's a slogan, but they say it so many times that it is sort of a prayer. Your thoughts and prayers don't mean anything. Thoughts and prayers are not enough, And what that is meant to do is to deflect the conversation and to accuse their political enemies of not doing what they want done. And so they have adopted this mantra, this prayer. As you hear from Jen Pisaki, she of the Circling Back fame former press secretary, she went on to the Twitter machine in the wake of the school shooting up in Minneapolis and she said, quote, prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back enough with the thoughts and prayers. No, no, I'm not going to listen to Jen Pisaki. I'm not going to adhere to her demand that I stop thinking about or praying for the families that were involved in this horror. And by the way, not for nothing, the families have asked for prayers and are grateful for those prayers. Here a statement from Annunciation Catholic Schools Church in Minneapolis, signed by the school principal, Matthew de Boor and the church's pastor, Father Dennis Zerin. We are navigating an impossible situation together at this time. No words can capture what we have gone through, what we are going through, and what we will go through in the coming days and weeks, but we will navigate this together. Tragically, we lost two of our beloved students before the scene was secured a number of other children and parishioners were wounded, and they are being treated at area hospitals. Some have been treated and released. All staff are physically safe and accounted for. Please lift up these families and these children in prayer and surround them and each other with your love during this cold time, in this time of darkness, let us commit to being the light to our children, each other, and our community. We will rebuild our future filled with hope together. So they appreciate the prayers. They're asking for prayers. This is what Christians do. They believe in prayer. Do they believe prayer is going to stop the bullets like Neo in the documentary The Matrix. No, they don't believe that prayer is going to stop all of the bullets from flying. Maybe it might work at some point, like I can't believe I survived that, you know, it's a miracle like that sort of thing. Maybe, But most Christians don't say prayers for particularly other people after a tragedy like this. They don't say prayers in order to like go back in time change the terrible thing. It's a prayer for comfort, it's a prayer for strength, for peace. It's to show the other human being that you feel for them and that you hope that they feel better soon, not that they forget, not that the pain goes away, but that you can go on living, that your life doesn't end now as well. And honestly, how dare you tell anybody that they can't say prayers, they can't think about the victims' families. How dare you? Here's Guy Benson, he was on Fox News last night. I believe he had a great response to all of this. And in the face of senselessness and despair, prayer and the presence of God can be a source of strength and comfort when little else is available. And the thing is, I understand that some people blow on the left think that thoughts and prayers are not enough. But I don't know anyone across the spectrum who's making that argument, right. Who's saying thoughts prayers and that's it? Nobody, no one, It's thoughts, prayers and action. The difference is we don't necessarily agree on what the actions ought to be, what would be constitutional, what would work. If we're talking about gun control, for having uncomfortable conversations about the trans community, whatever it might be, there will be divisiveness, there will be disagreement. Politics will come in to play fine. I understand that's part of what we do in a free society, but the starting point could be should be prayers and denigrating or demeaning that in any way I think is just so counterproductive and deeply off putting to most Americans. Correct, absolutely correct. That's why I call it a deflection. The Democrats are attempting in the media, butter it be myself. They are attempting to deflect away from the underlying ideology that was obvious and spelled out literally with all of their leftist talking points on full display in the shooter's manifesto, journals and videos that he posted was all laid bare, and so there's this deflection, and so they are projecting out this posture of do something, and you let this happen because you won't do what I want done, And so they are trying to use this emotional appeal at an emotional time to advance an agenda. And it's grotesque because Benson's exactly right the action part what you're demanding, and you're saying, we need to skip over the thoughts and prayers portion, but go right to the action. And by the way, not have any debate on the action. Just do what you want them to do. But we don't agree on the actions because there was a whole there's a whole bunch of stuff that could be done, but you don't want to do what we want done, and we don't want to do what you want done. See, and so where do we go? What do we do? Tulci Gabbard responded to Posaki. She said, those who criticized like Pisaki and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Free or Frey or Fry or whatever his name is, who criticized prayers in the wake of the Minneapolis tragedy, are expressing the same anti God sentiment that motivated the shooter. He aimed his wrath at God by trying to stop people with his bullets from praying to God. Now is the time for us to come together and join hands in prayer for the children who were killed, they're loved ones, and those who survived this horrific shooting. There's a reason people target children, right, They're innocent. Right. It's the thing that hurts God the most, and that's what they're trying to destroy. So, yes, evil exists, all right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. 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It is that time of year again where we do the walk to end Alzheimer's and we've got walks going on all around the state of North Carolina. We got our first walks coming up on September twenty seventh. That's a Saturday Iredelle County and Lake Norman Walk. That's Saturday, September seventh. It's going to be at Liberty Park in Mooresville. All right, Liberty Park in Mooresville. If you want information, you want to join the walk, you just want to make a donation, you can go to alz dot org slash walk and if you wouldn't mind, if you want to make a donation, make a donation to my team, my walking team called Pete's pac You do a just search on the alz dot org website and it'll pop up Pete's pack. You can make a donation. We're trying to get to our goal. I meant to check on this. It's like five or six thousand dollars, which we did last year. So I think we hit five grand last year, and so I think I upped it to six. I think I did that, So please, please please make a donation to petspac at alz dot org slash walk. And by the way, if you want to join the team and be part of the pack as all the cool people do, then you can show up on October eighteenth and Charlotte and walk with me and the rest of the pack. We'll all walk together. So go to alz dot org slash walk. Here's a message from Mammituded. I didn't make the name. Very interested in what the parents had to do with his mental health. Since the evident shows that a parent aided in his underage name change. I hope that is explored, but we probably won't hear much about that angle at all. Didn't his mom work at the school she did? Was it a cry for help towards her? Just speculating I don't know she did. She did work at the school. I think she was a secretary at the school that the shooter attacked. He attended that school, graduating to K through eight school. So he graduated from that school and then went on to public high school. And she signed off on the request with the state to legally change his name as part of a transition, which he then in his journals and his YouTube videos, he talks about that he regretted that and he doesn't want to doesn't want to be a girl, and he said he felt brainwashed. The response from Democrats is expected, although they are almost gleefully piggybacking onto the fact that the kids who were murdered and attacked were praying in a church, and so they're using this as some sort of a marketing hook for their line of thoughts and prayers are not enough, which they've been saying after school shootings and mass shootings. They've been saying that for years, but with this case, it's like, oh, get it, they were literally praying at the time. Enough with your thoughts and prayers. I mean, it's just it's antagonistic, it's unnecessarily antagonistic. They think this is a they think it's a good hook. That's what's really amazing about it. They think this is going to work somehow. Let me get Liz on here. Hello, Liz, welcome to the show. Thank you. There's a lot going on in the media and the perspective of this, And as I've been listening to different reports across the last year and a half about all kinds of topics, obviously, I think that what's not happening in our culture is conversation. Right, Like, everybody's got their opinion, and their opinion is what they're standing on, and there's no conversation to evaluate the validity or the practicality or even if it makes sense. And I think if children, and I'm not necessarily children praying, but in school had more diverse conversations about life and choices and all that kind of thing, there being more permission to be wrong and evaluate your perspective and maybe change your mind. Yeah. So well, yeah, I mean, and here's the thing. You don't know your own position unless you know what your opponent's position is. And as far as like a debate or an argument, but to your point, you know, a conversation is more than just throwing out your talking point. I mean that's not a conversation, right, that's yes, that's pointless. Like the mayor in Chicago or wherever, that the one guy and he's like, oh, I don't know if more cops, you know, he's not going to even address whether or not more police officers on their streets would be helpful. That clips from CNN that Joe Fella. It's like, no, well, you're not going to talk about it, so we're just going to pretend like not talking about it is the answer, right, And so that puts politicians in a like right now, it seems to me like they all are in their position and they can't move off their position to look bad or be wrong, and so we've got the same cycle just repeating. And well, yeah, so I think this is why I am encouraged by the rise of the digital media content because if you want to hear actual conversations with between people that disagree on stuff, you know, you can go to YouTube and see so you can find all sorts of actual discussions and debates and conversations about important subjects and controversial subjects. It's a good thing that's not happening on your mainstream legacy media channels, Liz, I do appreciate the call. Have a great weekend. Yeah, take care. No, it's a great point. Well, I'll tell a story when I come back. I'll tell a story about a conversation I had that people didn't want me to have. Okay, all right, you hear me talk a lot about incentives, right, Well, let's talk about incentive trips, the kind that companies offer employees to fire them up and reward their teams. 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Before the break, I mentioned a conversation that people didn't want me to have. I will protect all names and relationships to protect the innocent, but let's just say there was a young person that is in college now and is on the left, and her parents are liberals as well, and any time any kind of political topic would come up, there's the parents would always kind of like, you know, shut it down. We're not talking politics, no, no, no, whatever. So I can't ever have any conversation, and I don't ever prompt the conversations. I'm not the kind of person that when I'm out at an event or whatever. In you know, real life, I'm moving through the world, and I'm not the one that starts the conversations. But when people find out what I do, they want to talk with me about politics and philosophy, current events and stuff like that. Like it's like if your family member was a doctor, you know, like the doctor's not going to start talking about their procedures that they're they were doing, but you know, everybody else starts asking for diagnoses, you know, so it's sort of like that. Well, recently I was visiting and I had time with this with this young college student and we engaged in like an hour long conversation and there was some hovering from the parents to make sure it all went okay whatever, But it was just a conversation because she's not exposed to any alternative thoughts. Right, the fish doesn't know it's wet, and so she has the bumper sticker slogans committed to memory, right, that's been drilled into her, and so she just wants to say these things and she doesn't understand first of all, what they mean in totality, but also more importantly, doesn't understand what the counter argument is. And so I would just, you know, not argue with her, but have a conversation to the previous caller's point. And she's in college and that's the first time that she was able to engage in that kind of a conversation. She's surrounded by everybody that's come through the same K twelve system, and they are all agree. So I agree, I think there does need to be more conversations like that message from Russ, who says Sharon brought up an interview she saw with a Columbine teacher about prayer. He was challenged about prayer not saving lives that day, and he responded by saying it absolutely worked. The shooter's plan was to set off bombs and then pick off survivors as they came out to kill every single person in the school. He believed they failed because of prayer. Thoughts and prayers don't work quote unquote is connected to the whole fish doesn't know it's wet, as well as the unchallenged. Ideas are easy to hold. When people say that they it shows that they are in siloed circles amongst people who do not have a serious faith. They think everybody has the same skepticism or disdain for faith that they do, so they think it's a winning slogan. I think you're exactly right. So the Vice President JD. Vance says, it's shocking to me. Actually, hang on, yeah, I got time. It's shocking to me that left wing politicians attack the idea of prayer in response to a tragedy. Literally, no one thinks prayer is a substitute for action. We pray because our hearts are broken and we believe God is listening. Right, So the former Why House Press Secretary Jen Circle back Pisaki. She was on MSNBC as she is now regularly with her show, and she responds very emotionally here. And all they should be hoping to do is have someone to sit with at lunch or someone to play with on the playground, and they should be waiting to hear an update when they get home. And that is not what these parents of the school experience today. Sorry, this is a tough one. Having her child killed while they are sitting in a pube for a morning prayer service is not what any parents should have to worry about. And I have felt a mixture of anger and a lot of anger and emotional exhaustion about this today is I'm sure many of you have, because we have been here so many times, so many times, and yet again, like clockwork, half of the politicians in our country have little more to offer than thoughts and prayers. That is all they are offering us. All join all of us in praying for the victims. Was Vice President Jannie Vance's response today. That's what he said. That's it. Please join me in praying for everyone involved, Trump wrote, we have seen this play out over and over again. There is a shooting, then come the thoughts and prayers, and then comes the attempt to shift the focus. This is what always happens. You're going to start seeing narratives. You're already seeing them. They're already out there about how the shooter was trans. You're going to see narratives about how the shooter appeared to be anti Trump and anti Semitic and clearly was in the midst of a mental health crisis, there's no question about that. But here's the thing. There are trans people all over the world. They're anti Semitic people, unfortunately, all over the world, and people filled with plenty of political hate all over the world. And mental health issues are not unique to the United States, and yes, we should do more to address them, but it's also an issue all over the world. But this is the only country where shootings like this this would happened this often. The United States not only has the highest rate of gun violence of any country in the world, it's become a leading cause of death for young people and teen in this country. That should make everybody angry. Weaponizing the shooter's identity is meant to distract from what matters. That is what they are doing, trying to distract from what matters. Here's what matters today' shooter bought the rifle, handgun, and shotgun they used to do what they did today. Legally, we live in a country with more guns than people, where there are not universal background checks, they're not bands on assault weapons, and it is far too easy to buy a gun. It's the guns everyone, It's not really a secret. Okay, So much wrong with her stayment. There so much wrong this stat that the left has been using about the leading cause of death among children. I've broken this fake data down repeatedly since it came out. It has to do with the way the CDC collects the information and what they rule out, and what they rule in. Suicide, for example, is included in that number. Also, eighteen year olds, nineteen year olds are included in that number, and the vast majority of it is gang violence. That's most of it gang violence. But they use this kind of a shooting, which is super rare, in order to advance what gun confiscation. That's what they want. Which again, if this is what you want, then you have to do two things. Number one, you need to propose a constitutional amendment to repeal the Second Amendment. That's first, because that's the law. So there is a way to amend that, and you should go ahead and start that process. Number one. Number two, you need to tell me how you're going to get all the guns, not most, not some, all of them. How are you going to get them all? Are you going to go kick indoors and take people's firearms? Because you know what happens when you try to do that. Those people that you're kicking the door in on they've got guns. That's why you're there. They want their guns. They believe it's their god given right to protect themselves from the kinds of people that are kicking in their doors to take their weapons. You're gonna have a whole lot more gun deaths, a whole lot more, if not an outright civil war. So i'd like to hear your plan. Two things. Here's a great idea. 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This is from Tennessee in number The answer is for people to get closer to God, to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to be in the Word and to pray, and to follow the Lord's command to love each other in the same way that he loves us. Steve from Charlotte, Evil is anything aside from Christ's sacrifice, don says Pete. No one who believes in God believe that thoughts and prayers are going to fix the problem. I do propose, however, a different type of prayer, and that's the prayer that the people that are mentally ill are healed, and that would do more than any other amount of gun control. That could exist. Perhaps that's what the Democrats could be talking about, is praying for those that have the hatred. Those mocking God's children are hea then spawn in need of prayer, says Bob john from Jersey says. The people who disdain prayer publicly are just evangelical atheists who are every bit as tedious as religious zelots. South Carolina Number says there is no gun crisis. There is a crazy people walking around freely problem and pet these these people who are mocking prayer and don't believe in it or completely without hope in this world or what comes next. Universal background checks is an insidious buzz term aka backdoor registration. Nobody's a bigger fan of gun confiscation than the cartels. If guns are banned, the cartels will become the world's largest arms dealers. It will more than replace the profits they lost when POTT was legalized in half of America. All right, so let me play for you. This is Caroline Levitt, the White House Press secretary, responding to jen Psaki's comments. I have two questions for you. Are Democrats, including former White House presh Sary Jenzaki and Minneapolis Jacob Ray attacked Prairie pushed to gun control in the aftermath of yesterday's shooting. What's the White House's response to their comments. Yes, I saw the comments of my predecessor, Miss Saki, and frankly, I think they're incredibly insensitive and disrespectful to the tens of millions of Americans of faith across this country who believe in the power of prayer, who believe that prayer works, and who believe that in a time of morning like this, when beautiful young children were killed while praying in a church, it's utterly disrespectful to deride the power of prayer in this country, and it's disrespectful to the millions of Americans of faith. And I would encourage Miss Saki to pray for these families themselves, who need it right now more than ever, and who. Have asked for them. They've asked for prayer. There is a writer at Newsweek bought to ya Ungar Sargon, and she was on Chris Cuomo's show. Yes, he has a show on news Nation, and I thought she nails this perfectly. I think it's really important for people to understand why people on the right got so upset by the Democrats response. What happened was a person who seems to be a trans person murdered praying Catholics, and the Democrat's response was to rush to attack prayer and then defend the trans community. So there was a reversal of the victim and the perpetrator, which, by the way, was exactly what the shooter had written on his guns. He wrote where is your God? And that was what a lot of people on the right heard when Democrat after Democrat after democrat came out and said prayers are not enough. Those children were literally praying. They associated the victims of this horrific act with their political enemies and ran to the defense of who they thought the killer was and the community they believed he came from, so much so that they wouldn't even identify him as trans because they didn't want to besmirch what they view as a protected category. And this is unbelievably hurtful and offensive and pathological Chris, especially in a moment when a community is mourning. Bingo, she mentioned reverse victim and defender. That's the RVO in the acronym darvo. You hear me talk about it often. This is what narcissists use. Psychopaths sociopaths. They use this as well as empathy. They use your empathy against you to get what they want. They don't have empathy, they cannot feel it. Use yours though, because that's what they do, so darvo it's a manipulation tactic. It stands for deny attack, reverse victim and offender. So when you are the perpetrator of an abuse, sometimes institutions do this as well. You use this pattern to shift blame, to avoid responsibility for your own actions, and then to try to discredit the victim. So the abuser first denies what they did, then they will attack the person who is holding them accountable, and then finally reverse the roles by portraying themselves as the true victim and the original victim as the offender, reverse victim and offender. Darvo I talked about this also with the situation in Gaza. It's the same thing. This is the same. Once you see this pattern, you can spot it, immediately deny, attack, and then reverse victim and offender. Another way to look at it is every accusation is a confession, right, It's another way to look at it. When Jensaki is up there saying that the Republicans half of the political leadership that they're all trying to distract away from the gun issue. Again. All Republicans are happy to have the gun controlled debate. You know why because they are actually skilled at that debate because they've been having it for so long in trying to push back on all your efforts to take the guns. They're happy to have the debate. They just don't want to agree with your proposed solutions because they disagree. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my patreon on page or go to thepetecalanarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.