Mahmoud Khalil’s Detainment: Fighting Terrorism Or Speech? | Candace Ep 158

All right, guys, happy Wednesday. Here's what I can say on both the left and the right.
It seems

that we have people that are playing a game of checkers and not chess. So to my liberals,

who exactly are you winning over to your side when you attack Gwen Stefani for supporting

a fellow Catholic because he's speaking to Tucker Carlson? Okay, we're going to talk about that.

She's being attacked online for sharing an episode that was about faith. To my conservatives,

I don't know who

exactly we're winning over when we applaud the arrest, or rather not the arrest, the detainment

of a green card holder, three days now, a legal resident of the United States for speech that we

don't exactly like or agree with. That's what at least it appears to be on its face right now.

This is one of those fun episodes where no matter who you are, there's something for you to be offended about. So let's jump right back in.
Welcome back to Candace. Okay, so one of the many things that I miss about the 90s, you know, if you watch this show, I always say the 90s was the golden decade.
Everybody was happy and saving up for Disney. And there were a lot of comedians and comedians who were very offensive, right? They would get everybody into a room, people like Chris Tucker, Chris Rock, and it would make fun of every race and every person.
And by the end of the standup

routine, everyone was a little bit offended and also was better for it, knowing that,

OK, like you're not that special. You don't deserve special considerations.
And I'm kind

of bringing that back. I feel that today both sides just need to be roasted for being a

little bit ridiculous, starting with conservatives, obviously, because this has been trending

everywhere. People that are looking for reasons to support Mahmoud Khalil's detainment.
Okay, so we discussed this yesterday. If you need to get all of the facts, depending on leading up to this moment, please go back and watch yesterday's episode.
But essentially, he is a Palestinian green card holder, also a former student, graduate student of Columbia University, who was detained three days ago. That's important because he has still not yet been charged, despite all of the rhetoric online, people digging up social media posts like we're in the UK, social media posts that are not attributable to him.
We don't know who's running these accounts. Some of them have been doctored.
Some of them are fake. The Trump team and the Republicans are struggling to give a clear and concise answer as to why they were pursuing his deportation.
Right. And that's very unusual.
I want to be clear. Typically, one of the things that you love about watching these press briefings is that whether it's Kayleigh McEnany or Caroline Levitt, when the press comes to them with questions, they're able to slap them down with facts.
And this time, it just seems like we're getting emotion. Okay.
Any crime, any arrest, any reason that they had arrested him for breaking a crime would have sufficed. That's how I am.
I'm tough on this stuff. And I totally agree.
Again, just to reiterate that if you are here, especially on a student visa, not even a legal resident, and you are caught breaking the law, you've opened yourself up for deportation. That's why we're like, yeah, the illegals, they broke the law.
They're not here legally. You can go home.
OK. But instead, we're being told by Caroline Levitt that it had something to do with him being a part of a group on campus that distributed flyers that were pro-Hamas.
So she's not actually explicitly accusing him of distributing any flyers. So the language here is interesting.
And she can't show us the flyers because it's beneath the dignity of the office to show us pro-Hamas propaganda. But she's telling us that he helped to organize a group that distributed things that were terroristic.
And before I tell you what is wrong with that argument, we should just listen to how she described this again. Does the administration believe that it needs to charge a green card holder with a crime to be eligible for deportation? Well, in fact, Secretary Rubio reserves the right to revoke the visa of Mahmoud Khalil, and I'm glad you brought this up.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Secretary of State has the right to revoke a green card or a visa for individuals who serve or are adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America. And Mahmoud Khalil was an individual who was given the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation's finest universities and colleges.
And he took advantage of that opportunity, of that privilege, by siding with terrorists, Hamas terrorists who have killed innocent men, women, and children. This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda.
Flyers with the logo of Hamas. That is what the behavior and activity that this individual engaged in and I have those flyers on my desk they were provided to me by the Department of Homeland Security I thought about bringing them into this briefing room to share with all of you but I didn't think it was worth the dignity of this room to bring that pro-Hamas propaganda but that's what this individual distributed on the campus of Columbia University and this administration is not going to tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and then siding with pro-terrorist organizations that have killed Americans.
We have a zero tolerance policy for siding with terrorists, period. Okay.
So she, again, is not saying that Mahmoud himself distributed or that he even created the pro-Hamas material that we aren't allowed to see because it would be beneath the dignity of the office. But rather, he helped to organize a protest.
And these groups, some people that were in these protests, then harassed Jewish students. They have not been arrested.
Maybe they have been arrested. That's not clear.
They distributed materials that she says are pro-Hamas propaganda. Someone within the group did that.
Again, why aren't we arresting and using those individuals to set an example? So I would be very comfortable with that. But she also reminds us in the beginning that it is the Secretary of State that has the right to revoke a green card for any person that acts against the national security and foreign interests of the United States.
So the argument is essentially, just to make this clear, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. Because it's going to change the definition of terrorism, the definition of what are our national security interests.
That's going to change from administration to administration.

And that is what makes me so uncomfortable about this. And I want to explain that and also to offer something to you guys that is quite personal, but it is why I am just so enraged about this,

because no one understands how slippery that slope can get better than me, okay?

First and foremost, I am not immune from this discussion. Let's not forget I married an immigrant, OK, who, like me, supports Donald Trump, who has supported Donald Trump through two, three elections.
Now we attended many Trump rallies, many Trump speeches. And there's one day that I will never forget.
And that day is January 6th, 2020, because there is something that happened that sent a chill down my spine. Okay.
On that day, I was nine months pregnant living in Washington, DC. I was actually overdue.
I ended up giving birth to my son seven days later on January 13th, 2021. Pardon, let me correct that.
And I lived just a couple of blocks away from the White House where Trump was due to speak. This, you know, save America, stop the steal, this whole thing that was gathering, all of our friends were going to hear him speak.
And naturally, I would have been a part of this had I not have been overdue pregnant. So it really was just a God thing that I didn't attend this rally.
And what ended up happening, obviously, was suddenly I started getting all these phone calls. Are you OK? Are you OK? What's going on? And I'm like, yeah, I'm just home.
There seems to be nothing going on. Next thing I know, I'm seeing images on CNN, MSNBC talking about how there's been this insurrection, showing images of people pushing past police barricades.
We're getting so much information, a lot of it which wasn't even true. We're being told that officers were killed, were bludgeoned to death.
Things that were clarified later that nobody even remembers were clarified as being wrong because it's all about selling the emotion on that day. And what followed thereafter was genuinely like the secret police, like I said to you guys yesterday.

So we would have been in attendance.

People who didn't even go into the Capitol building had FBI people on their door.

People were being encouraged to snitch on their neighbors.

And what happened to me in my personal life was I had signed a deal with Hachette Publishing for my second book.

And they called me up and they were telling me essentially that I was being put into a holding pattern because they weren't sure if they were going to revoke this book deal, this book offer, rather, for my second book, the one that is finally in my hands. I told you guys that this went through a lot.
And they basically kind of wanted to have an interview with me to see what I thought about the quote-unquote insurrection and were pressuring me to distance myself from Donald Trump, who I supported very much, and the arguments that were being made at that time sound remarkably similar to what Carolyn Leavitt is saying. Well, Donald Trump's team organized this rally, so anything that happened, people storming the Capitol building, people walking in the Capitol building, anything that happened that day is now attributable to Donald Trump.
And this is an insurrection. It's a day that will die.
You know, democracy is dying today. It was a huge deal.
If you remember at this time, we were being called domestic terrorists. Even people who weren't there were losing in their lives, potentially losing a book contract because I supported Donald Trump.
What was that about? Actually, it was about chilling speech. I wasn't even there.
I was not there. And I was still forced to go through this process.
And by the end of it, a week later, they called me and said, after I gave birth, we're going to let you keep your book deal. You know, we talked about it and it's fine.
And I actually went back to Hachette and I said, I don't want to keep the book deal because there's something about this that bothers me. There's something about the fact that my book, which is not even about Donald Trump, it's about feminism, which that's the other thing.
It was extraordinary because the book wasn't even about Donald Trump, had nothing to do with politics. And yet I was being threatened to lose a contract because they wanted me to just say something that was against Donald Trump.
It was against the national interests of, you could say, the incoming administration to be a Trump supporter at that time. And I'm sitting here going, what if I hadn't been pregnant? What if me and my husband went down the street like we always did to attend a bunch of political events and that one went sideways and the media trumped it up and said it was this, and domestic terrorists, and terrorism was the number one word that was used, would my husband have had his status revoked? Would my family, new family, by the way, because I was ironically, like I said, nine months pregnant with our first child, have been separated because of new definitions for what it meant to be a terrorist, which could even include not even being there that day, but someone that the public recognizes as being a supporter of Trump.
That's what it means when I say that terrorism as a word that's being overused a lot by the left and the right is in the eye of the beholder. This is why I am passionately demanding that we are just given a real explanation as to why this individual, Mahmoud, is being detained.
That's it. I just want to know why this family is potentially going to be separated because he had a legal status here.
He was not just here on a student visa. He had a green card.
Okay? Very different implications here. He actually does have free speech rights.
He can't vote, but he has free speech rights.

And I'm watching conservatives who have apparently forgotten about all that, forgotten about all the harassment that we endured. I mean, I've been called a terrorist so many times in my political background.
It's kind of amazing. Domestic terrorist for supporting Donald Trump after January 6th.
I've been called a domestic terrorist for seeing my grandparent during the time of COVID for not vaccine my children because the national security interest was all about COVID. So they had to, what did they do? They squeezed speech on social media.
Remember that? You couldn't even publish something. You couldn't say, I got the vaccine and my arm hurts before they would take it down.
But they did that, remember, because of national security interests. This was for our health.
Now conservatives who have spent years combating the persecution of speech under the guise of terror are turning to what looks like obscure social media posts and claims that green card holders shouldn't have the right to speech or rather speech that is against quote-unquote national security or national interests. It's like I said, seems to be a bit of a moving target.
You know, a few years ago, like I said, that would have meant deporting people who spoke out against COVID policies. That's what you have to think about.
That would have meant deporting people who spoke out against Dr. Fauci.
OK, talking about actual things that they lived through by having a bad reaction, maybe going outside during lockdowns. Some people are even suggesting that criticizing any U.S.
leader when you're not a citizen is wrong, which brought up a very interesting point. It was a good back forth between Glenn Greenwald and Mike Cernovich, two people that I respect very much who have different positions on this.
Mike Cernovich, by the way, I'm grateful that he's actually consistent. He's like, yes, I would say Jordan Peterson should have been deported.
He's Canadian because we shouldn't be hearing his political perspectives. He's not a citizen here.
And Glenn Greenwald then pitched that question. I will show you journalist Glenn Greenwald.
He asked this question. He said, actually, this is a good point.
Jordan Peterson is not a citizen. Yet he frequently not only criticizes U.S.
political leaders and U.S. policies on U.S.
soil, but also participates in various forms of political activism. I'm not suggesting it's illegal, but should this be allowed?

And he also asked this question.

He said, if this is the principle, and that's what I kept hearing all day, that non-citizens in the U.S. should keep their mouths shut and not engage in political protests, then you would have been fine if the Biden administration deported Jordan Peterson for criticizing Biden White House policy.
Are we OK with that? OK, do we agree with that? I think there might even be a third tweet from him asking that question. So if Jordan Peterson went to an American college to protest that school's promotion of gender ideology and multiple genders, do you think that he should be deported for engaging in protests at American universities because he is a foreigner? Your answer might be yes to that.
Okay. My only thing that I've been asking for is for someone to give me a concrete reason why this individual is being detained while his wife is eight months pregnant.
I think that's fair. And anybody that's reacting like that's crazy, like it's a crazy ask, that to me seems a little bit extreme.
And what better person to ask than the person who did it? Marco Rubio, the Secretary of state, surely the person who actually coordinated this detainment, Marco Rubio, can clearly or should be able to clearly explain what the crime is that he committed. So I'm going to show you what he had to say about it.
Here is Marco Rubio on the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil. When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is, which is how this individual entered this country, as a visitor's visa, okay, you are here as a visitor.
We can deny you that visa. We can deny you that if you tell us when you apply, hi, I'm trying to get into the United States on a student visa, I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages.
If you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this, and if you tell us when you apply for your visa, and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, anti-Semitic activities. I intend to shut down your universities.
If you told us all these things when you applied for a visa, we would deny your visa. I hope we would.
If you actually end up doing that once you're in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it. And if you end up having a green card, not citizenship, but a green card as a result of that visa while you're here and those activities, we're going to kick you out.
It's as simple as that. This is not about free speech.
This is about people that don't have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa.
No one has a right to a green card, by the way. So when you apply for a student visa or any visa to enter the United States, we have a right to deny you for virtually any reason.
But I think being a supporter of Hamas and coming into our universities and turning them upside down and being complicit

in what are clearly crimes of vandalization, complicit in shutting down learning institutions.

There are kids at these schools that can't go to class. You pay all this money to these

high priced schools that are supposed to be of great esteem and you can't even go to class.

You're afraid to go to class because these lunatics are running around with covers on

their face screaming terrifying things. If you told us that's what you intended to do when you came to America, we would have never let you in.
And if you and if you do it once you get in, we're going to revoke it and kick you out. So the first two minutes of that is just pure hypothetical.
He's like, oh, well, if you apply, you say that I support Habas and I support terrorism. We have we have a right to deny you.
That's not the question that's being asked of you, Marco Rubio. We're not asking.
Clearly, that could not have been what was on his application. He was accepted.
OK, the second piece of that is he is basically saying that his crime is that he is complicit, complicit. The word complicit.
I remember this so well because that was the mainstream media charge against Ivanka for four years. This is why Ivanka Trump was harassed for four years.
She was complicit in rape, sexual assault, a war against women, you name it. What did she actually do? Well, she supported her father being the president of the United States, but that didn't stop people from making fun of her and calling her complicit every turn.
She never returned any fire, but that was it. They hated Ivanka Trump for being complicit.
So that's what that is, is his excuse. Thus far, thus far, he's not been able to name a single thing that he did other than be complicit, meaning maybe he organized these protests and they felt that that made him complicit.
So if somebody at the protest and there's 2000 people decides to spray paint something on the wall while he's saying we're hanging him for that, because, you know, protesting is just not something that we should be doing in the United States, which even though I think it is something that we are allowed to do, we are allowed to peaceably assemble. And if somebody that you're peaceably assembling with does something that's crazy, you're not complicit in that.
You have to just not do that and speak out against it when it happens. So now we are learning, by the way, and something that seems even more strange to me, that Mahmoud Khalil, who we are just being told is complicit, he's a terrorist sympathizer absent any facts, that actually he worked as a diplomat of sorts, right, on a diplomatic mission as a program manager at the Syria office in the British embassy of Beirut.
So he was a person that was helping to establish peace. And a British diplomat named Andrew Waller has come out and given a statement regarding Mahmoud.
He said, quote, he went through a vetting process to get the job and was cleared to work on sensitive issues for the British government, Waller said. It is outright defamation what Trump has done.
Mahmoud is extremely kind and conscientious person, and he was loved by his colleagues at the Syria office, he added. Maybe that guy's lying.
Maybe he didn't know that truly and this person really did just want to get in the United States because he wanted to support the activities of Hamas. But is it wrong for us to ask for the information that led to this? It's been three days, he's been detained, and he has not been charged.
So everything is just rhetoric online, which is like, why wouldn't you at first have the charges ready to go before you did this, before you publicize this on the White House website, making fun of this. Shalom.
We got him. And now people are asking questions and people are chasing their tails.
And then there's this one other piece that I can't figure out. Why did ICE move him from New York, where he was arrested, detained, to Louisiana? They moved him away from his family.
And his attorneys are speaking out against that, alleging that the move from New York metropolitan area to Louisiana was just a retaliatory transfer that was intended to just restrict his access to his lawyers and to his family and to position him somewhere where essentially we would be more favorable to Trump's administration's policies. They're accusing ICE of essentially deploying the transfer as a way to disrupt court proceedings in New York.
Now, there may be a valid reason that they did that. I couldn't think of one.
I looked at this several different ways, asked the team, why would you move him if this happened in New York? It's pertaining to Columbia University. Why would they detain him and then move him down to Louisiana? On Sunday, his lawyer had filed an initial petition for his release in New York in the hopes that it would be argued in New York where she could continue to represent her client.
And she said, quote, the government just willfully ignored it to disrupt the natural education, edudication of that and sent him 1000 miles away, said her name is Bahar Azmi, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. She says, quote, now his wife can't visit him.
His attorneys will have a hard time visiting him and his long term immigration attorney can't represent him in that jurisdiction. So I don't understand really what is happening right now.
I don't understand who exactly this benefits. This feels to me like someone just made a call and said, go after this guy.

I don't know.

I just don't get it.

There were so many students

that they could have plucked from.

Like I said, I have never been against the idea

of any students that broke the law

and did something, forms of illegal protesting.

I've never been against the idea

of those students being deported

if they were here on a student visa,

because I agree.

I tend to agree with the fact that if you are here,

you need to respect the laws

and you know that you're putting yourself at risk

when you are not respecting the laws.

And so none of that would have flagged me as odd,

but this is something else.

Already, people are saying that, of course,

this does not make things safer or better

for Jewish students on campus.

So if that was the explicit aim, you failed.

You have failed. People are now riled up about an issue that they actually weren't riled up about recently.
Here is an aerial shot, by the way, of all the protesters outside of the city hall that were waiting for an announcement pertaining to what was happening in the courthouse. And I'm also going to show you some of the speeches that were being held this morning outside of the courthouse.
This is the legal director for the Center of Constitutional Rights, the woman I just mentioned, Bahar Azmi, speaking about—sorry, a man, the professor—oh, sorry, Bahar Azmi is a man, not a woman, and here is what he had to say about this not being a matter of security, but rather an issue that's about repression. Take a listen.
Mr. Khalil's detention has nothing to do with security.
It is only about repression. The United States government has taken the position that it can arrest, detain and seek to deport a lawful permanent resident exclusively because of his peaceful, constitutionally protected activism.
In this case, activism in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The government takes the position that because the Secretary of State finds his dissent unacceptable or contrary to US foreign policy, he can be deported.
As Ramsey suggested, it's largely unprecedented save for ugly historical precedents, including the Red Scare and McCarthyism. That's what we're talking about.
We're also talking about a period of repression that the Center for Constitutional Rights knows well, following 9-11, when we were in the courts trying to get people out of secret detention. One thing that's different now is the legal infrastructure is so much stronger and everyone out here on the streets knows that we cannot hide in the face of this amount of repression.
We will be fighting in the courts and fighting in the streets to bring Mahmoud home and prevent this level of repression from spreading to many others as the administration has threatened to do. Like I said, I don't see how this benefited Trump supporters.
I don't see how this benefited Republicans. I don't see how this benefits us in the future.
And this is going to be drummed up and shown that, oh, you guys always say that you're free speech, but it looks like you squeezed speech. And I don't see how this benefits Jewish people and their safety.
If Jewish people are walking through the streets and now seeing all of these protests that are mounting, they're going to go, okay, what just happened just reinforced this idea that there's Jewish supremacy because no one's been given a reason for why this happened. And I'm seeing that already online.
There have been Jewish people who are anti-Trump, who are left leaning, who have said, I feel less safe because of this action. So who did this benefit? Was it just like a friend who called and said, this guy? I just don't get that.
Everyone would have been like, OK, well, this person was arrested for smashing in a window at Columbia. So you got to go home.
Adios. You know, everyone likes to see a criminal get locked up.
That's what used to be tough on crime, not tough on speech. And now you have Jewish professors who are speaking out about what's happening on campus.
And it allows people to lean into this lie that Republicans and conservatives are fascists. We're not.
We are not. And this is not a good look.
If we are not fascist, we should say the reason this person was arrested was because of this specific crime that he committed. And here is evidence that he was actually linked to Hamas.
He was funding them through bank accounts. So that's why we deported him.
And then you will have my support. And maybe it's coming down the line.
But right now you are having Jewish professors who are essentially saying, well, you know what? We told you that they were fascist. And he also, by the way, I think he's wrong about that rhetoric about conservatives.
But he also is making some valid points about the fear that people have of being conflated as a Hamas supporter or a terrorist sympathizer if they simply speak up and acknowledge that too many Palestinian children and women have been killed in this war. Take a listen.
It is always dangerous to speak in public for Palestinian rights, safety and freedom with your face uncovered and your name declared. You can be sure you will be harassed, doxxed, terrorized.
People will try to get you fired from your job. For speaking here, I will receive a new round of death threats, slander, complaints to my employer.
When I step down from here, I will publish these remarks to protect me from the inevitable attempts to misrepresent my words. And Mahmoud, as a student negotiator, took these same risks and many more.
Mahmoud is a man of decency, honor, and kindness. He has distinguished himself in his work as an advocate and negotiator, as someone committed to peaceful resolution of difficult situations.
He is a consummate diplomat in his disposition and his character. What the Trump government is doing to Mahmoud is obscene.
It is unreasonable, intolerable, unconstitutional. So why do they think they can get away with it? The Trump administration is betting that Americans will happily look the other way as one more Palestinian is victimized here on American soil.
They are betting that when you

hear Mahmoud's name or the word Palestinian, the parts of you that make you a thinking and rational

and caring person will switch off and you will believe the worst about him and you will turn a

blind eye to these grave violations of his rights. And after what I've seen over the last year and a

half, I'm not sure they're wrong. Anti-Palestinian groups have spent all year casually leveling

I'm not going they're wrong. Anti-Palestinian groups have spent all year casually leveling the most dangerous accusations on the flimsiest grounds, and members of our own community have repeated them.
Don't like seeing a kafia? Call them a terrorist and call the cops. Don't like their views? Call them anti-Semitic and get them expelled.
Don't like that your Jewish colleague has a chutzpah to say free Palestine? Report him for Jew hatred to a university task force. Don't like seeing a broad and diverse movement of courageous young people standing together against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza? Call your friends in the government and send the feds to their door.
As an educator, it disgusts me that anyone who wants to be taken seriously in association with the university would deal so ignorantly with language and truth. But more than that, I am ashamed as a Jewish person that this kind of slander has found currency in some parts of my own community in service of the racist and anti-Semitic Trump agenda.
Trump's claim that this atrocity combats anti-Semitism is insulting. I tend to agree with a lot of what he said there.
And I think that that is a feeling for many of us, like I said, who have lived through the smears of just saying something that's so plainly obvious, like obviously we should be trying to fight to protect innocent life. And I remember the reaction that Tucker Carlson got like, yeah, it's evil to kill, intentionally kill women and children who are innocent and people trying to go, oh, that's crazy.
That's anti-Semitic to suggest that. You know, it's gone too far.
And I think that that's why people are not accepting this narrative and believing people at face value when you just call somebody a terrorist sympathizer. We need actual evidence of what exactly we're speaking about when we call somebody those names, because too many of us have been called those names, whether it pertains to Palestine, whether it pertains to deciding not to get the vaccine and not to back your children or to go see your grandma during Thanksgiving or to simply go support a President Trump speech.
And no one should know this better, by the way, than the Trump administration. No one should know how quickly an administration can designate somebody a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer than the Trump administration who lived through that very much in that moment of 2021 and January 6th.
So I am disappointed in conservatives who seem to have lost the threat on this issue, who are believing online rhetoric, who are not pursuing clarity and truth.

Like I said, as soon as that information is presented, I will present it to the public. I just have not seen it yet.
And like I said, we are on day three and nobody seems to be winning from this. Not Trump, not the Republicans, not the Jewish people, certainly not the state of Israel.
I'm sure that the Gallup poll, if it was taken today, would have plummeted more because people don't like unchecked power. People do not like smears.
They do not like libels. Eventually, they wake up to the game of smearing and libeling people who disagree with you.
And it doesn't look like it has provided any deterrent. It doesn't look like this has made people go, well, I better support Bibi Netanyahu.
I would say probably quite the opposite. Anyway, that's all I'm going to say on that topic.
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All right, guys, now onto the left, it's your turn, okay? Because like I said, everybody's just doing too much. And I don't know why.
I don't understand why everyone can't just be normal and rational and ideologically consistent. And I really can't comprehend this repeat outrage because people found out that Gwen Stefani is Catholic.
She actually always has been Catholic, okay? Now, to my lefties, you can own this or you can not own this, but there seems to be some sort of a visceral reaction always when celebrities display any kind of remote appreciation for jesus christ i don't know why that is truly i mean a couple i didn't cover it but i think it was like last month nicole scherzinger from the pussycat dolls she commented under russell brand's post historically a leftist by the way russell brand and he had like make jesus great i I know something, a cap that looked like a MAGA cap, but it was a message about Jesus Christ, and they were outraged. How could you like this? The hat is red, and it looks like a MAGA hat, and she had to apologize for it.
And why? Why, guys? Why? If you're going to say that this is really about who they're platforming, Russell Brand, is he problematic? Gwen Stefani, just so you know, she's been Catholic always, even when she was on tour. She attended the mass while she was touring with No Doubt.
When she filed for divorce from Gavin Rostall in August of 2015, after 13 years of marriage, she actually made sure to get that marriage annulled by the Catholic Church. It's something that you have to do because you're not actually allowed to get divorced.
If you are a Catholic, you have to get that marriage officially annulled. And she had reportedly put off the idea of marrying her fiance, Blake Shelton, until that annulment was finalized due to her religious beliefs.
So she's a firm Catholic. And a source at that time told Page Six that it was, quote, a huge relief for Gwen because she wanted to get married by her priest and have the marriage recognized by the Catholic Church.
And then, of course, we know that her and Blake Shelton got married in a chapel on their Oklahoma ranch on July 3rd, 2021. I mean, she has bothered no one, right? And so obviously, when you are a Catholic, you pursue Catholic content.
It just kind of comes with the territory, you know, obviously, especially if you're attending mass, if you are a committed Catholic and you attend mass every Sunday, as she allegedly does, you are going to pursue additional content. And Jonathan Rumi, who played Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ, stopped by Tucker Carlson's program.
Not exactly anything that should blow your mind, given the fact that Mel Gibson, who created that movie, has been on Tucker Carlson. And Tucker Carlson routinely has people on to discuss faith, which you may not know because maybe you've fallen for a caricature of who Tucker Carlson is.
I can tell you from knowing him, he is one of the most genuine and wonderful people out there. And yes, he has similar to me, had the media paint him as this or paint him as that.
I mean, he is a wonderful father. He doesn't even like respond to emails and text messages because he just likes to be fishing out in Maine.
And so it makes perfect sense that Jonathan Rumi would be on his show. And yeah, she tweeted after watching Jonathan Rumi on the show, she tweeted to Jonathan Rumi, you are a powerful, inspirational human.
What an enlightening, intelligent, beautiful interview. Thank you for being you.
So this tweet was directed to Jonathan Rumi, not even Tucker Carlson. And people were really angry.
I'll show you what people said to her. They said this to her.
This is just in a row. You honestly need a reality check.
God, this is heartbreaking. Like they don't even appreciate the fact that saying God is just kind of a little bit ironic there.
Oh, Gwen becoming a right-wing grifter. Taylor writes, hard, normalize not promoting Tucker Carlson.
Gwen, as a longtime fan, you're making it harder and harder to keep supporting you. Please don't platform Tucker Carlson, the Russian propagandist good Lord.
So glad you love the guy who plays Jesus, but do you realize you are also promoting Tucker Carlson? Tragic Kingdom was my first CD at age 11. Hollaback Girl was my college anthem.
You hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama. Gwen, what has happened? Knew she was a right-wing grifter when she started promoting a Bible app.
The horror! Right-wing grifter because she's promoting for people to read the Bible. What is so horrible about that, guys? Somebody then writes, Gwen is in her Trump era.
So you would probably go, what was this conversation that has people freaking out? It was totally sensible. It was obviously talking about the need to have a relationship with God throughout these crazy times.
Take a listen to what she was responding to. This is a small clip, but you should go watch the entire interview.
The power of prayer, the power of being in a constant dialogue with God. It's what we were made for.
We were designed to worship. We were designed for that relationship.
It's in our DNA. And the more we try to ignore it or squash it or bury it or ignore it or pretend it doesn't exist or that it's not there or replace it with something else, the more we just run in circles, the more we try to fill that hole with something else, with some other vice, some other endeavor, some other, you know, righteous indignation of something, some other effort that will never substitute, never replace our need for God.
It'll never replace it.

Oh my gosh, the horror of her enjoying this conversation. Also to correct, I said he was in The Passion of the Christ.
I meant to say that he is in this series, The Chosen, which people are enjoying tremendously. We have everything else offered to us on TV.
So much filth that is available at our fingertips. God forbid Gwen Stefani is watching The Chosen and then listening to that actor speak across from Tucker Carlson about the need to have God in your life when there is so much chaos surrounding us.
And she's being attacked and it's just super wrong. And again, who do you win by doing that? Why is there? I want to understand it.
Why is there such a visceral reaction in Hollywood? You accept everything else, it seems, from people that are in Hollywood. She's like, oh, I loved her.
Hollaback girl. Me too.
I loved Hollaback girl too. Is there nothing sacred? Can we leave her alone? She gave us Hollaback girl.
She gave us If I Could Escape, but no, they attack her for this. Hollywood, they're routinely selling us drugs, rock and roll, people that are in and out of relationships, people that are struggling with various mental conditions that are having breakdowns and doing drugs.
And all of that seems to be fine. And they'll support it.
They'll get behind those people. Oh, I love it.
You're so beautiful. You're just being you.
And yet you have a woman who's like, hey, I thank you. I enjoyed this chat about Jesus Christ.
And there's outrage. That's gotta stop.
Not gonna win anybody over to your side. It seems like you just don't like people that had different opinions.
And again, to those of you who think you hate Tucker Carlson, you're watching this show, and you're starting to realize that you've been lied to about people, and maybe the media doesn't always tell the truth about things. Like, maybe they weren't telling the truth about Justin Baldoni.
There's a chance they haven't been telling you the truth about people like Tucker Carlson either. And maybe sitting down and listening to his content and understanding why his podcast is so big is good.
Like break that barrier. You don't need the media to tell you about people.
Actually go directly to the source, listen to them a couple of episodes. And if you still feel strongly against it, that's fine.
But at least you formed your own opinions, didn't have your opinions being formed for you. That's what I would say.
I also want to add, I think it's really deeply ironic when speaking about this topic that I was speaking about earlier about anti-Semitism. It's really funny that I kind of have dealt with that as well as Tucker Carlson being called an anti-Semite for speaking about various issues in the Middle East and maybe not aligning all the time with Israel when at the same exact time I'm doing an entire series trying to free a Jewish man who donates to the ADL.
He's probably given millions of dollars to the ADL, Harvey Weinstein, and also defending Justin Baldoni and Steve Sarwitz. So there's nothing authentic in the media, guys.
It's just a bunch of name-calling and ad hominem attacks to dissuade people from getting to the source because they don't want people influenced by ideas that they're not controlling. And I'm affirming to the mainstream media.
They like to have a stranglehold on ideas, and they brainwash people into hating one another. So everybody let it go, okay? It's going to be totally fine.
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Okay, let's see what we have under some of your comments that are coming in. Let's see what you think about these topics.
Savvy Sassy writes, Canis, do you think that our government and the deep state are instigating World War Three, getting people riled up and emotional as they prep us psychologically to manipulate us into accepting another World War Three since our military is prepping? I have been saying for years, war with Iran is on the agenda. And I hope, I wish I could just put together just me saying that for like the last five years.
And now, and it really kind of all came together with Trump, the assassination attempt. We see this like scrawny white guy on a rooftop and they're like, this was Iran.
Iran planned this. Oh, really? Does Iran have a cell in Pennsylvania? Wow, just never thought in the middle of Pennsylvania with this kid.
And that just kind of gets wiped from the press

like intelligence tells us that this was Iran. Come on, guys.
Clearly, you know, Bibi Netanyahu

wants war with Iran. They're prepping us for war with Iran.
And I would not send my children. They're

not old enough, but I would not send them if they were. Brian writes, Canis, do you suspect that

Khalil's detainment falls under a conflated, ever-widening umbrella of anti-Semitism? Yes, that's what I suspect. And I'm willing to be proven wrong.
That's what makes it even more suspicious to me is the fact that we're basically saying, please, somebody present some facts like, hey, here's a video of him caught on camera. Hey, he was transferring money to Hamas group.

And then we'd all go, okay, this is totally fine.

But that umbrella has been expanding.

Pardon all of us for noticing.

You're calling everybody anti-Semitic

for opinions that you disagree with.

And people are getting tired of it.

Similar to when we really wore out the term racism, right?

Everyone was so sick of it by the end of BLM.

Everything was racist.

Somebody wore their hair

in braids it was racist it was cultural appropriation and then the fatigue set in

and the anti-semitism fatigue has set in okay we get it okay not every single person can be a pro

hamas sympathizer most people tend not to support murderous groups of people who harm citizens and

harm children and so we need to start arguing with facts and not with so much emotion robin writes

I love you, Candice, and I support free speech. However, these protests are the same as Antifa, BLM, January 6th, etc.
It all needs to stop, and I'm okay with sending all of these people to jail or deporting them. I'm tired of watching people burn our country and flag, and if you weren't ashamed of your behavior, you would remove your mask.
So we are not disagreeing. I have said I support legislation that doesn't allow you to wear masks.
If you're going to protest, you don't need to cover your part, your face so that you can't be identified. That already lets me know that you're trying to do something illicit.
Some people might argue, well, you have to do that because then you might get harassed for protesting a thing. But we didn't see that during Antifa.
I don't think it's necessary for people to hide their faces. I support people being jailed and deported for illegal protests.
So everything you're talking about, people that are burning down the country, people that are, which, by the way, burning the U.S. flag is not illegal.
But point being is that people that were quite literally during BLM protests burning things down. I wanted people, I wanted them to make sweeping arrests of these people because who gets harmed are the people, first and foremost, who have to pay for their cities to be fixed up after these sorts of riots.
But these things are already illegal. And so that's what I said.
If he had already been arrested for any of these things and then faced automatic deportation, I wouldn't care. But he wasn't arrested.
That's what made this this anomaly. I don't think you disagree with that, right? Like we shouldn't just be arresting people for peaceably protesting.
If that's what he was doing, he may not have been doing that. We haven't gotten any answers, but we should be definitely arresting people who are illegally protesting and being violent.
So no disagreement there. Abigail Borough writes, thank you for speaking your truth, even when it goes against the Republican administration.
Justice and truth are not Democratic or Republican. I agree.
And it is not fashionable. Do you say anything against Trump and any decisions that they make? But I'm not digging it, Marco Rubio.
I'm simply not digging it. I don't like it.
I don't like now gaslighting and saying, well, why do you want details about this? Let ICE do their job. Because you were so braggadocious.
You posted it. You made this.
You publicized this. You don't get to do that and then say, mind your business right after.
If this was still an investigation that was happening, that's totally fine. But you've already detained him.
So don't you have the proof? Are you looking for the proof? Just calling everything anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas is not an answer. We are asking you to clearly state what it is that Mahmoud Khalil did, not people who were at the same protest at him, who went crazy and did something.
What specifically did he do that you are alleging is a good enough reason to revoke his permanent residency and leave his wife to give birth by herself. Tiana writes, it's unfortunate that an entire government is stepping in to limit not only someone's right to free speech, but to make human decency subjective.
Listen, I don't know. I don't know who is to blame here.
If this was just bad advice, maybe Trump didn't have all the details. Maybe one of his advisors came to him and said, this kid was distributing and he said, go for it.
You know, he has to be able to have generals that he can trust to do the vetting. I don't even necessarily know that it is Trump's fault because all day people are coming at him.
They've got things for him to sign, things for him to look at, and they tell him this is going to be great. And they give him a briefing, literally a briefing on what exactly it is that they're doing.
Were they just using rhetoric absent any fact and told him that this is going to be great for publicity and showed that we were going to be stamping out, you know, stomping out these illegal protests? Maybe he genuinely thought that. And now it's not that.
And now they're facing a PR disaster. So you have to surround yourself with good, honest generals.
Matthew Alvarado writes, hey, I've been watching you for four days and never failed to truth. Keep fighting the fight.
Thank you guys so much. Reminding you that on our website, CandaceOwns.com, a new Shot in the Dark episode is now available.
This week, it is the flu shot. You can head there to watch it to moms and dads that are learning about all of these shots that your kids have to get.
And by have to get, I mean actually do not have to get. If you would like to opt out of them, you can.
And they sometimes make you forget that when they're, well, calling you a mommy terrorist or a daddy terrorist and making you feel that you are harming your child. A bunch of rhetoric absent very little facts.
We like to provide the facts and excuse ourselves from the hyperbole so that you can make informed decisions so all of us can think rationally and not emotionally. That is always the exercise, by the way, of this podcast, of what we're always trying to do is to remove emotion from things, remove crying, remove people crying in courtrooms, a la the Harvey Weinstein, Jessica Mann breakdown, and to present to you just what the facts are so you can decide whether or not a good decision was made.
Same for Shot in the Dark series, you can actually make good decisions that are guided by the knowledge and the history of how these vaccines came together. Plus, knowing what those ingredients mean.
There are many ingredients they don't even hand to you, which would be insane. You couldn't imagine going to the grocery store and we can't tell you what's in this food, but it's good for you.
You'd be like, what? That sounds crazy. I need to see ingredients.

You need to know if I'm allergic to this stuff. Well, that's kind of why we did this entire series.

So if you're a mom or dad looking to start a family or restart a family, maybe want to make different decisions for your next kid, head to CandiceOwns.com and sign up for a Shot in the Dark