Best of the Program | Guests: Allison Eide & Matthew Continetti | 8/15/25

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Got a great podcast for you today.

It's Friday going into the weekend.

We talked to John Solomon, try to get an update on the latest that has come out on the FBI and Russiagate scandal.

He says something big is breaking very soon.

I mean, it's just, it's relentless what's coming out.

We also talked to Matthew Contanetti.

He is from the free press and we were talking about Donald Trump up in Alaska and negotiating with Donald Trump.

Don't expect much from this negotiation period, but why is Donald Trump doing it?

How did he pull this off?

And is he caving

to Vladimir Putin?

Or is this all part of a really master

negotiation?

You'll find out yourself coming up.

Also, Also, Allison Ide, she is a new Christian artist who is, I mean, she is

really spot on with the sound.

She is not your typical Christian artist.

And she talks about how life is really messy and, you know, you struggle all the time.

And that's what her songs are about.

And it's really great conversation and great music.

Allison Ide joins me also on today's podcast.

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Now, let's get to work.

You're listening to the best of the Blackback Program.

Well, welcome to the Black Back Program.

Glad that you're here.

Thank you so much for tuning in.

I want to play something from 2017, a quick flashback.

from a Senate hearing with FBI Director James Comey.

Listen.

Director Comey, have you ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?

Never.

Question two on relatively related.

Have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?

No.

Has any classified information relating to President Trump or his

associates been declassified and shared with the media?

Not to my knowledge.

Is there an investigation of any leaks of classified information relating to Mr.

Trump or his associates?

I don't want to answer that question, Senator, for reasons I think you know.

There have been a variety of

leaks.

Well, leaks are always a problem, but especially in the last three to six months.

And where there is a leak of classified information, the FBI, if it's our information, makes a referral to the Department of Justice, or if it's another agency's information, they do the same.

And then DOJ authorizes the opening of an investigation.

I don't want to confirm in an open setting whether there are any investigations open.

Wow.

Listen to that.

I mean, this guy is in deep trouble.

We have John Solomon with us from Just the News.

John.

Good to be with you.

That, I haven't heard that.

My staff put that together.

I remember it well.

Uh-huh.

That is not good.

That's everything that he said.

We now know verified is a lie.

Yeah, listen, I think it's going to get worse.

I think there were in the documents I put out last week some information information that was redacted by the Justice Department from the FBI documents.

I think the redactions on that information could be lifted by the end of next week.

And I think we will see even more evidence of Comey's media and leaking strategy.

And it may come from some of the most surprising sources.

So we already have his right-hand PR man,

Mr.

Richmond, who was a...

lawyer at Columbia University, very clearly saying that he was asked by Comey to burnish Comey's image and to work with the media.

And he clearly had a conversation with the reporter about classified information.

And he gave one of, I think, one of the greatest non-denial denials we're ever going to remember in Washington history, right up there with Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky denial, depending on what the meaning of the word is is.

We all remember that famous Dodge.

When Richmond was asked, did he leak the information that the reporter published right after he talked to him and right after Comey had given Richmond the intelligence.

He says, I'm pretty sure I didn't confirm it.

And I'm sure, comma, with a discount, comma, I didn't give him the information.

I'm sure with a discount.

I guess what does that mean?

What does that mean?

Yeah, the FBI clearly thought it meant that you're going to have to give me a little wiggle room on my answer here.

So, and that's not what, you know, that's what it means when you, you know, I'll buy that.

Sure, I'll buy that for a discount.

Yeah, you've got to take a little bit off of it.

So

that's how the FBI took it it at the end of the day.

There was a Justice Department both under

President Obama and President Trump one that wasn't willing to pursue the evidence that sits in these leak documents.

And I think most of those leaks are going to be unpunishable at this point.

Hey, John, Jason Budgell here.

I'm Glenn's chief researcher.

Huge fan of yours.

I was reading through that document.

I think it was like 266 pages.

And it was talking about leaks from Adam Schiff.

It was talking about leaks through you know, Daniel Richmond, that Columbia University professor.

All these different leaks.

And the FBI would end those different segments within that document with, we decided not to go forward.

We decided to close the investigation.

How?

How in the world were they just closing all these investigations and not finding information that would lead to an indictment?

Does it make sense to you?

It makes no sense to me.

Well, it makes sense in this respect.

Every time they went to the Justice Department, the U.S.

Attorney that had prosecutive authority that our prosecutors wouldn't prosecute, right?

I mean, that is, I started my career as a sports writer, and I remember one of the great defenses of all time, the steel curtain of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

There was a steel curtain around James Comey and anyone who went after Trump, any Democrat that had a criminal problem, whether it was Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, his classified documents.

Every time the FBI went to get the sort of normal prosecutive help they get all day long from the U.S.

attorneys, the answer was, no, we're not going to to help you.

See you later, decline.

And you see now in these documents a very powerful dual system of justice.

Does this have anything to do with the fact that we cannot get new U.S.

attorneys confirmed?

I think

I don't think this is most of the crimes here are beyond the statute.

There's one statute that allows a 10-year willful prosecution on classified information, the Adam Schiff, Schiff

money, the legal experts I talked about based on the whistleblower.

If that whistleblower's account could be verified, Adam Schiff might still face an knowing and willful violation.

But most of these are done.

So the Democrats aren't putting their foot out to trip up these U.S.

attorneys because they think these guys are going to get prosecuted.

They're putting their foot out because they don't want Donald Trump to succeed at anything.

They would love to see chaos on the streets and be able to blame him for that.

So what better way to do that than not allow him to have judges and prosecutors who could do the job that the American people need done?

And so I think

their obstruction is much larger than just protecting themselves on the 2016, 2017 racket.

But does this testimony, while it's out of statute of limitations, doesn't this play right into the grand conspiracy?

That is where there's a strong possibility.

Listen, that's a complicated case.

You never know how a grand jury will digest it.

But there is a strong

already underway.

I confirmed this this week.

There are grand juries currently collecting evidence in multiple jurisdictions in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, and in New York.

So the work of gathering the evidence and securing it, which sometimes is missing.

In the Adam Schiff file, one of the most extraordinary things, the FBI clearly had grave concerns.

They interviewed the whistleblower four times.

They knew this was serious stuff.

But when

they went to go say, hey, Adam Schiff, we got to get your staffers to talk to us, they said, we're not going to talk to you.

We were protected by the bait and speech clause.

And the Justice Department wasn't willing under Donald Trump to pierce that claim, which I think is pretty tenuous from the legal experts I've talked to.

So you just see every time the FBI follows the lead, they get to a certain point, and then it's the Justice Department that really is the Department of Injustice.

It is simply not allowing FBI agents to complete investigations that would embarrass the deep state or the Democratic elites or their friends in the government who carried their water in 16 and 17.

I just talked to the author who exposed Raven 23 and got those guys out of prison.

And, you know, I said, what happened to all of the prosecutors and the FBI and the people in the State Department?

She said, oh, they're all still there.

Nobody's learning any lesson at all.

Is the DOJ doing enough?

There is a transition underway in the Justice Department, and I think the jury is out on Apam Badi's tenure.

Obviously, Bumpy start with Epstein.

I think in the grand conspiracy case, there is a sign that they're doing it just the way they used to do it in the 1980s when the Justice Department was at its heyday and it took down

the mob and it took down the early drug cartels.

When you have a grand conspiracy case, you start with an FBI predicate.

That happened.

Then you create a strike force, something we haven't used in a long time, but strike forces are very effective prosecutive tools.

She did that, and then she authorized the use of grand juries.

So they're following the playbook, the non-political playbook, the way the Justice Department is supposed to act.

Whether she succeeds or not is a long way out on the investigation on cleaning out a house, they've cleaned out a lot.

They're very short of prosecutors right now.

There are career positions that are open, and almost all the U.S.

attorneys are open.

So until those positions fill in a little bit, there is a limitation to what can be succeeded.

But you see in the last couple of days in the District of Columbia how quickly the Justice Department and the FBI could clean up some pretty bad guys off the street real quickly.

They're doing a lot of things.

They're being asked to do a lot more than what they have resources for now.

And I think over the next six months, we'll know whether they get resourced enough and whether they have the toughness, the tenacity to fight this fight.

They're going to go up against the best lawyers the Democrats can throw at this, the $1,500 an hour lawyers.

And the question is, can the government defeat them in the courts?

And that is

a verdict yet to be written.

FBI cleaned up enough?

They're moving pretty quickly.

Yeah, there is.

I will tell you, there is a significant

tenor in the voices of the agents I've known for a long time when I talk to.

They feel like they're allowed to go investigate crimes and that there's no politics anymore.

And when they predicate a case, it goes.

And I think that Cash Patel has very quickly changed the mindset.

They're still craning out people.

Sometimes, you know, one of the interesting things people ask me about this, why those two guys, why was Cash Patel holding on to the two guys?

Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my best friend, which is you want to know for a while from people you got on the meat hook, where are the bodies buried?

What was going on here?

Your job depends on you telling me the truth.

And so some of the people that I think Cash Patel kept around for a while was to really interrogate them and find out how bad was it.

And it was those efforts that found the secret room where some of the evidence was, the burn bags that they found.

So that was a productive time.

And then when I think when

that exercise was over,

those agents leave as well.

But there is some really significant signs in talking to people that the FBI is a different organization today than it was just a few short years ago.

And

last question on this.

What's coming next?

And when should we expect it?

I think round two of what we're going to learn about Comey is going to be pretty eye-opening.

I think we're going to get a strong sense that maybe there was better evidence and more explosive witnesses against him.

It's just an inkling I have based on the way the documents are redacted.

So we're going to keep working that to get those redactions lifted.

I think the Justice Department's going to do the right thing for the public.

And that's going to be important.

We'll be able to get the complete picture of James Comey.

And then I think there are a couple of other big shoes to fall.

I think another place that has to be cleaned out is the intelligence community.

That has been a slower process.

The FBI is cleaned out much quicker than the CIA and the ODNI.

But I would be watching for Tulsi Gabbard to unleash in the next couple of weeks the most sweeping cutback of the U.S.

intelligence committee I've ever seen.

You're going to shrink it down so that they don't have time to do politics.

They only have time to do national security threats.

That's going to be a major, major moment in the history of our intelligence weaponization concerns.

Hey, John, John, Jason, again, Glenn's chief researcher.

I haven't felt this overwhelmed with the barrage of information we're getting since I think I was looking at your Ukraine leaks.

You gave me about

probably two weeks straight, 24 hours a day straight of just going through all the stuff you were foying and everything.

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with all these releases like since then?

It's just been insane.

Yeah, listen, the velocity of action in Washington is unprecedented.

I've never seen in the 35 years I've been in this town this much speed, this much things going on.

There are major news stories every four to six hours, and there are major releases of documents.

What it tells you is that when the president said he believes in transparency and is going to impose it, which, by the way, he said all through the first campaign, first presidency, but he didn't have people around him who had the courage and tenacity to overcome the resistance and do it.

He's got that team now.

Tulsi Cabert, Cash Patel, Pam Bondi, to her credit,

she's not afraid to release anything that will give the public a a sense of how bad it is.

Ratcliffe has been a little bit more hesitant.

I know he resisted on some things,

but they have a group now that is really committed to getting the story out.

And the beginning of the process is if you're going to prosecute your old enemies who did these terrible things, you've got to build public will behind it.

You've got to make the case to the public so that they're not hoodwinked by the Democrats to think, oh, this is just retribution.

They're doing it in a very sophisticated way, but it can be overwhelming.

It's a lot of paper.

For me, it's like being in an amusement park.

I mean, it's an amazing operation.

No, it's Christmas every day.

Christmas every day.

It is.

John, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

I love it.

Yep.

God bless you.

You bet.

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Welcome to the table.

Now back to the podcast.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

All right, Matthew, welcome to the program.

How are you?

I'm well, Glenn.

Thank you for having me.

You bet.

So, I mean,

a great article, really

I think going contrary to what everybody in the mainstream media is saying, they're saying, oh, he's bringing him over to Alaska and that's such a win for Putin.

I don't think it's a win at all for Putin.

And it has taken him more than one day

because he had to change the dynamics of American policy and I think the policies of the world.

And you point that out in your article.

You want to go a little deeper into that?

Oh, sure.

Absolutely.

No, I think that Trump is going to this summit today in Anchorage with a lot of leverage over Vladimir Putin.

And you're right.

The mainstream media wants already to characterize this as a win for Putin because there's a meeting taking place at all.

But I think this fundamentally misunderstands President Trump.

President Trump wants to meet.

anybody.

He doesn't care.

He's happy to talk to anybody.

The question is always what will come out?

And if you remember, he met with Kim Jong-un

twice.

And in Hanoi, when Kim Jong-un just wouldn't give up concessions on his nuclear program, Trump walked away.

So that could easily happen this time.

But I think the overall dynamic changed in just the past few months.

The first step was getting Ukraine on board a proposal for a 30-day ceasefire.

on the ground and in the air.

And as we know, you know, Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, was reluctant even to sign on to that before that Oval Office dust up earlier this year.

But Zelensky got on board, and that meant that Trump could then go and say to Europe, let's get additional leverage by agreeing to increasing our defense budgets.

And then

Trump agreed to this deal where NATO will purchase weapons from the United States.

We're not spending any money.

We're getting the money from Europe for these weapons.

And then Europe would hand the weapons weapons to Ukraine.

That definitely got Putin's attention, as did our successful strike against Iran's nuclear program

in June.

Remember,

Iran is a Russian ally.

Iran has been supplying a lot of those drones that are raining down on Ukrainian cities.

And we basically took Iran out.

Israel helped quite a bit, of course, in the 12-day war.

So we've slowly ratcheted up the pressure on Putin thanks to President Trump's policies.

The most recent one was this 50% tariff on India.

Now, we might say, well, what does that have to do with Ukraine and Russia?

Well, India is a huge purchaser of Russian energy.

And so when Trump says, look, we're going to punish third parties that are financing the Russian war effort.

Well, that's when Putin said, look, I'd like to talk to you directly.

Wow.

You know, I've been trying to figure out the

India angle, because India is a huge trade partner.

We really want them on our side.

That makes a lot of sense.

So if they stop

purchasing the Russian oil, then that trade barrier comes down.

Absolutely.

I mean, this is how President Trump uses tariffs.

Sure, he likes them for a variety of reasons.

They raise revenue for the government.

They want to incentivize foreign investment to build factories in the United States.

But he

likes them in particular because they're a way that he can use America's economic might to get results in the foreign policy sphere.

And in this case, you're exactly right.

The tariff is going on India because of the purchases of Russian oil.

If they said we're going to reduce those purchases, then the tariff would come off.

Let's not forget, too, the energy sector is hurting in Russia.

That's really Russia's main source of economic growth and government revenue.

And oil has declined some 19% year over year since Trump has taken office.

That's partly because of Trump's energy policy, the drill baby drill policy.

That's freed up supply.

And of course, more supply means lower price.

And that hurts Vladimir Putin as well.

They have like, I think it's when it goes, what is it, below $80 a barrel, they can't, they have to start dipping into reserves.

They can't afford it.

Yeah, and I think when it crosses 60, goes under 60, then they really start to hurt.

Right.

Hey, Matthew, Jason Butchell here, Glenn's chief researcher.

There's been a lot of,

I guess, word from the Europeans, Ukrainians, even the Russians talking about territorial concessions.

And like, that's everybody's red line.

Do you think with some of the setup discussions with Witkoff, with Putin earlier, do you think that there's any

room for

leeway here?

Do you think that possibly Trump might have an upper hand with that as well?

Or will we see anything when that's always the huge red line between the two?

Right.

Well, I think

the

administration may have gotten a little bit ahead of itself right after Witkoff's meeting when you heard the president mention these land swaps.

Very quickly, President Zelensky said, oh, whoa, I'm not ready for that.

And then the Europeans also said, well, we need to be part of the tables.

Well, since then, in the days leading up to today's summit, Trump has been very careful to lower expectations.

He's said that this is a feeling out meeting.

Caroline Levitt called it a listening session.

Trump has said, look, if Putin's not ready for a ceasefire, then I'm going to leave.

And he's also said this is just the first first meeting.

He's been very clear in the past several days that any settlement, a settlement that would probably include some type of territorial lines being drawn, would only happen in a meeting between Russia, the United States, and Ukraine.

And then, as President Trump said the other day, maybe he'd invite some Europeans to the meeting as well.

So I think that's we heard that land swap talk early on, but in the days since, I think the President has had a much more realistic view of what might be attainable.

In this first meeting with Vladimir Putin, remember, he hasn't met Putin in person since 2018.

So I think he wants to get a direct sense of Putin's body language and psychology.

That's important for the president, you know, because

I've kind of studied some of the deals that he has done in the last, you know,

15 years on land and as, you you know, Trump,

you know, as a company.

And there's a story about when he was trying to sell the New York Plaza and he met with the Japanese people and it was all arranged.

All they had to do is just close the deal with him.

And he got into the room and he spent maybe three or four minutes.

talking and listening to them.

Within five minutes, he had changed the deal and said, you know what, I'm building something over on the East River or the West Side Highway that I think you're really going to like.

And he started, and everybody on his team, when they broke, they said, what are you doing?

He's like, they're not interested in

the plaza.

He's like, I can tell right away.

We're not going to be able to close that deal.

I switched to this deal.

So him face to face, there's something about him when he's negotiating face to face.

He feels the room clearly that even his closest advisors can't translate and can't give him.

Do you agree with that?

Oh, I agree completely.

I mean, he makes very gut decisions based on people's appearances, based on people's body language.

Are they fidgeting?

What sort of health are they in?

And these are things that are hard to assess over the phone and even hard to assess when you have an intelligence briefer there.

Trump, of course, always wants to see for himself.

And so that's why I really do think that this meeting will be exploratory.

Remember, too, you know, Trump has had this string string of diplomatic success during his second term.

Just last week, he presided over the deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the White House.

That was very important as well, because that part of the world, the Caucasus, has always been considered part of the Russian sphere of influence.

And here we have two nations from that part of the world not going to Moscow, but going to the White House and shaking hands with President Trump to arrange a a deal.

And that Putin there too is saying, okay, I'm losing my influence not just in Europe, where, of course, NATO has expanded rather than contracted since the Ukraine invasion, but even in my own backyard, we have these nations, Armenia and Azerbaijan, looking to Trump.

And then, of course, we have the recent flare-up between Thailand and Cambodia that Trump was able to stop from escalating out of control.

Earlier in the year, India and Pakistan, the same thing.

These sort of agreements that Trump has been able to marshal, preside over, use our economic leverage to obtain, I think is one reason he wants to have this meeting with Putin because he's beginning to understand his method of bringing the two sides to the table and forging an agreement.

We're talking to Matthew Cottonetti.

He's with AEI.

He's a senior fellow and also a columnist for the Free Press.

Matthew,

I don't think anybody today really gives him the credit that he deserves as a master negotiator.

You know, he was known as that, you know, in business, but what he's done in the last seven months to the world and changing the dynamics of the world and bring all these people together.

You know, he's never going to get a Nobel Peace Prize.

You know, everybody's like, somebody's going to nominate him.

Well, yeah.

And, you know, let's watch that happen.

Do you think

at some point,

assuming all these things continue to hold and he continues this trend, I mean, he could be one of the greatest peacemakers in American history?

I think so.

I think he's taking a real lesson from Theodore Roosevelt, you know, who

won the Nobel Prize 100 years after he died.

Exactly.

And, you know, Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy was gunboat diplomacy, right?

No regime change and nation building.

Gunboat diplomacy, you have a strong military.

You might have to do a raid every now and then, like we just did against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, but also mediation.

Theodore Roosevelt wanted the United States to mediate between different powers and get them to the table.

And I see that working in Trump's foreign policy as well.

You know, and let's not forget, even in his first term, he had the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab nations.

And so you're right, Glenn.

He is a peacemaker.

And I think even though he won't get any credit from the liberal media now, the test of time will, I think, ensure his legacy.

Because You know, going back to the first term with the Abraham Accords, the Biden administration, which followed him, never really gave Trump any credit, but they also didn't do anything to disturb the Abraham Accords or and in effect wanted to try to expand them just as Trump wants to do right now.

So I think what he's doing is building a foundation that will last.

And I also hope

he's teaching lessons that future presidents can take to heart.

America can use our economic power in a way to obtain peace agreements, to make sure that our position is maximized in different negotiations.

We don't always have to resort to military force, even as we keep it as an option in a case like the Iranian nuclear threat.

Matthew, thank you for the insight.

Appreciate it.

Wait, before you go, one more thing.

Expecting anything to come out of this?

I have pretty low expectations, Glenn.

I think there's a chance we may get some sort of ceasefire, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

Thank you very much, Matthew.

We'll talk again.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Allison I.

Welcome, Allison.

How are you?

Good.

How are you doing?

I'm great.

I'm great.

Thank you for coming on the show.

I want to play, if I may, I want to play just a little bit of IDK for the audience, For anybody who hasn't heard this, listen to not only the voice and the production value, but listen to the words and what she's saying.

Listen, I don't know.

I don't know.

Or what if you die alone?

Well, I do note the one who knows it all.

What if you're too much?

I don't know.

Or what if you're not enough?

I don't know.

What if you can't please anyone?

And I will trust the one who knows it all.

What if your worst fears come true?

I don't know.

What if you're just not talented?

I don't know.

What if you're actually bad at Z?

I can't play anymore of that because I'm only legally allowed to play 30 seconds of it, but then it gets into the hook.

It is a great song.

It is a great song

called IDK by Allison Ide.

Allison, how old are you?

I am 25.

You're 25.

You're wildly talented.

How long have you been doing this and writing in particular?

Great question.

I grew up in a music family.

So my dad was actually a worship artist, senior songwriter.

So I grew up touring with him in middle school, high school, with like writing songs since I was a kid just because I loved to.

It was just fun.

And it was my dream to do this someday.

But I didn't release my first single until 2023, which did happen to go viral.

And everything has snowballed after that.

So

the first one was Who I Am?

Love Who I Am.

Yeah.

Love Who I Am.

Okay.

And this one you just released, and it went mega viral in hours, didn't it?

You know, literally within like a couple days, that thing had like a bunch of millions of views on social media.

Yeah.

And then it definitely, when I released it on like streaming platforms, it was my highest dream song.

So I've had a couple moments like this, but IDK is definitely the biggest I've experienced, which is like really cool.

Very grateful.

Yeah, it's great.

By the way, I would love to invite you.

I'm doing a series of interviews with musical artists and things.

And

I would love to invite you up to the ranch if you would be willing to perform up at the ranch.

And it's just kind of a performance and then conversation kind of thing, but we could talk about that off air if you're interested at all.

But

so

the lyrics really on all of your songs are speaking, I think they speak to me, and it shouldn't.

I mean, I know who I am.

Anyway,

but I thought of my daughter immediately

because, I mean,

girls are wicked.

They really are mean to one another.

And, you know, when she was going through high school, my gosh,

it was constant, you know, crisis of identity and who do I listen to and everything else.

And you seem to have that theme.

Did you go through that?

I struggled a lot with my mental health, I'd say, since I was like 10 years old.

So a lot of

my,

where these songs come from is just really me being mentally a disaster and having no idea how to heal and get better.

So wait a minute.

Can I ask you?

What do you mean?

What do you mean you struggled with mental health?

If you don't mind me, you can tell me to stop stop anytime.

I won't push you.

I have, no, you're so good.

I have struggled with an anxiety disorder called obsessive-compulsive disorder

and then struggled a lot with different trauma and

episodes of depression.

And that was in and out throughout like middle school and high school and college.

College was at its worst, which was ironic because I was like playing college basketball.

I loved like

performing on stage, but behind the scenes, I was just really debilitated.

I grew up in a Christian family, though, so I was like, oh, I

like I should be able to trust God.

I should have faith in him.

I should be confident.

Like, if God loves me, how come I don't know how to love me?

And it was just this like tension at all times.

If I'm a Christian, I love God.

Why is it so hard?

And I feel like he's not here.

And in college was when it was...

I was struggling the most, but there was one night like in my car at 2 a.m.

And I always wrote songs to to like get through all of this, but I remember really experiencing Jesus in my mess.

And I learned like his heart does not repel our mess.

He actually is a magnet to those who are broken.

And so the bigger the mess, the closer Jesus is.

That inspired me to be like, I'm not going to write songs and tie them up in a bow.

Like I'm just going to say it as it is, unfiltered.

The Lord has, for some reason, taken these songs to a lot of places to help people.

So I just think he uses what's really bad and changes it for good.

And that's a blessing.

I tell you, I can understand,

I can understand how I need to be as a father by

looking at him as my literal dad.

And

I can look at my daughter and

watch her struggle.

She struggled through a lot of the same stuff that you

struggled with and depression, you know, in and out of hospitals.

And it was really difficult.

And

she found,

you know, God

to be the answer as well.

And I loved I love the lyrics in Love Who I Am.

God, I need to see me through your eyes.

I've been so dependent on how I think.

They think of me, truth pushed aside by the

opinions I've been harboring.

I want to love who I am, not through somebody's lens, but through the author holding the pen.

Just great.

Those lyrics.

Yeah.

That's

the Lord is kind for that.

Thank you, though.

You're very kind.

So where do you go from here?

Do you do tours?

I'm sorry, I just, I'm, I heard the music and I loved it.

And I asked my staff, can you get a hold of her?

So I, I'm, I'm, I don't know that much about you, but I want to, I want to learn where, where are you going now?

Great question.

We just finished summer tour, so

we were all over the U.S., my band and I, for that.

And

the last leg of tour, we had a couple headline shows in New York and Florida, and it was the first time playing IDK live.

And it was crazy how the fans like screamed that song.

So that's kind of what we just finished up, and it was really cool.

We are currently working on tour plans for end of fall and then next spring.

But in the meantime, I'm just releasing, I have three more singles coming out this year and very, very excited about them.

What are they?

Yeah.

So the next one's called Digital Jesus.

And what is that about?

I mean, besides Jesus.

Digital Jesus is basically a song about

going through grief or any mental struggle and like numbing it out with the phone and with the noise and just being like, God, I am done and like wanting to throw the phone away and run and be with the Lord and feel again.

And the bridge of the song really touches on how like the discomfort, where there is discomfort, where you feel a mess, that's where God's presence is dwelling.

And so it's not fun,

but to feel and to experience Jesus is worth it.

And so I went through a difficult year.

I lost my dad to cancer a year ago, and it was a really traumatic experience.

And going through that type of grief was uh very foreign to me i was i've never experienced something like that and so who is god amidst grief and the mess has just been the theme of these songs so

it is fabulous um

uh i don't know if you've ever heard of eminission she is

really good um she's i love eminism yeah she's she's cracked she's crazy i know i just i just talked to her on the phone for, we're getting ready for her to come up at the ranch, and I just talked to her on the phone a couple of days ago.

She is hysterical.

She is really

very, very kind,

really powerful.

She knows who she is, but she struggled through a lot of, I don't know if you follow her, but

she talks about body image and everything else that I know girls are dealing with.

And it's

in just a really powerful way.

But anyway,

I've heard her say that,

you know, I don't necessarily want my music to be called Christian music or, you know, pop music or jazz or whatever.

She's like, it's just good music.

And

do you kind of feel that way?

Are you

are you are you kind of pushed into the Christian music?

Even though, I mean, your lyrics are obviously Christian, but it doesn't sound, I, I could listen to your music and it's like like listening to Billie Eilish or anybody else.

Totally.

I totally understand Eminism with that, too.

I think what Christian music is known as, like CCM, feels like such a strict bubble.

And I think a lot of us younger artists are ready to break free from that box.

I know for me, there was a time when I was traveling to Nashville.

I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota, but when I traveled to Nashville and was building a team, a lot of people were like trying to

help me write a song that's geared towards radio or fit the theme of like the Christian sound.

And I was like, that's not me.

So I just kind of took it independent and built this from scratch a little bit.

And I have noticed that the industry has never been shifting and changing more than ever before.

And I think people are ready for just, like Emma said, good music.

For me,

I think

I am fine being known as a Christian artist, but I think more so when my mission is

to

rebel against the,

how do I explain this?

The expectation to have everything together.

Yeah,

I would love to show what it looks like to be an absolute disaster and still love Jesus, to be doing the things that

seem un-Christian, but are actually just revealing what mess looks like.

And my songs showing, just modeling what it looks like to be authentic with the Lord.

So whether or not I'm pegged as a Christian artist, as long as that's what people are experiencing from my songs, then I've done my job and I trust the Lord for the rest.

I will tell you, just stay true to him and the whole world is going to change.

I mean, it already is changing.

I think people

have dealt with labels for so long.

And, you know, when I first heard Emma,

I thought,

I could peg her with three.

I'd listen to those songs and I'm like, oh, that's who she is.

And then I listen to the next song.

Oh, that's who she is.

And then, and then I heard, I don't remember what it is, but one of her songs, and she sounds exactly like Ella Fitzgerald.

And I, and, and that's when I knew there's something you entirely unique.

She's her own little box.

I feel the same way about you.

You're your own little box.

And, and labels don't mean anything.

And I think just quality, and I don't know why you can't have good quality

music like yours that, yeah, it happens to mention God or Jesus, but

the other music that is pop is mentioning all kinds of darkness and really bad stuff.

I'd rather have me and my family fill my head with good music that I want to listen to, but also have decent lyrics.

Why can't we, why does that have to be in a box that's not pop?

I think that's going to change.

I really do.

I think it's going to change.

I so agree.

think also

the powers that be in the industry have never had less power because we have viralities and social media and this digital age gives everyone a much more of an equal chance to have a voice, which means the internet is chaos with music, but it's beautiful because there are not as many gatekeepers.

And I think now we get to see music I think mu it's it's a little unpredictable now, which means the Lord has the more control on where the songs get to go and who it gets to impact, which anything in the Lord's hands is, that's the best hands something can be in.

So, I mean, that's what I think.

And I think it's chaotic, but it is a very important time for people to just write the music and make the songs that feels authentic to them.

And you bring Jesus into that, whether explicitly or implicitly, I think the Lord blesses it.

Allison, I hope to meet you.

I just love your music and love your attitude.

Thank you.

Keep going.

Thank Thank you.

Alice and Ide.

Alice and I.

And the name of the song is IDK.

Listen to the whole thing.

I mean, it's really, really, really good.

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