The pastor who wants to repeal voting rights for women is becoming more mainstream - Newsmakers

What is your view of the Iran war? Is it a religious war? In a very broad sense it is a civilizational collision and there are religious elements mixed up in it. You don't support forever wars. Has this gone on too long? Yep. Yeah. Now you've called for repealing women's right to vote which is protected by the 19th amendment. Why? Because it's a good idea. I wouldn't just impose a Christian, a hard theocracy on the country as it now is. You can't do that. Politics is the art of the possible. You do what you can with what you have. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invited Pastor Doug Wilson to give a sermon at the Pentagon. Wilson was invited as part of Hegseth's monthly Christian worship service. The pastor's appearance was controversial. Wilson is a self-described Christian nationalist and not long ago his beliefs were seen as extreme, fringe. Today, even though Wilson's church network and followers are still few in number, his teachings according to religious studies scholars are entering the mainstream. And that's why we sat down with Doug Wilson here at Christ Church Hall in his church community in Moscow, Idaho. Doug Wilson, thank you so much for having us here in Moscow, Idaho. Great to have you. Thanks for coming. You know, part of the reason we came is because you've shown up a lot in the national spotlight lately because of your association with the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Right. You were invited to the Pentagon to lead a monthly worship service earlier this year. And I just wondered what that was like to do that service in this hall of power. So there's a certain element of it that is kind of trippy. So I'm a pastor in North Idaho. Yeah. Right. And that is not the normal thing you would expect. So there have been some twists and turns along the way. So yes, trippy is a good way of putting it. When you say that, but did you, when you said, I didn't expect, what was it like? Well, it was a very well-run service. About 300 people there came. I noticed that the morale in the Pentagon, the people that I interacted with was very high, a very exuberant group. The message was very well received. It was just a good event. It was very hard. The find your way, but I did it. Secretary Hegseth attends a chapter of your network of churches that you co-founded. What about the church and your teachings appeal to Secretary Hegseth, do you think? So there's a little bit of history there. When Pete Hegseth was still with Fox News as a correspondent anchor type, he did a documentary on the state of American education and was so impressed at what he saw about this classical Christian school movement that he moved to Tennessee to put his kids in a school like that. He was still a correspondent with Fox. So he was flying in and out of Nashville because of his job. And he would fly in to Nashville on Sunday and not in time for church. There was one church in the area that was meeting in the afternoon because they didn't have a facility. And that was Pilgrim Hill Church, which is pastored by my friend, Brooks Puttiger. And he's part of our denomination, the CREC. And there are connections between the classical school movement and the CREC, the denomination. And it was there that he made all the connections before he was the Secretary of War. He knew about me because I was one of the founders of the resurgence of classical Christian education. So he was familiar with my work because of that as well, I think. So after he moved to Washington and was the Secretary of War, we started the church service in DC. We opened a church service, yeah. And it was under the authority of the church here. And we didn't have a pastor. We just had an opportunity. And so we raised enough money to fly pulpit supply in for like a year. And we had different men from here and other places around the country who would come into DC and preach and lead the service. And so Secretary Hegseth began attending that service, which was a CREC church like the one he had joined in Tennessee. So it was a natural place for him to attend. When you say we had an opportunity, what do you mean? So if Kamala had won the presidency, there would have been basically zero evangelicals in the White House administration. It wouldn't. And although Donald Trump is not an evangelical by any stretch. He's a professing Christian, but he's not an evangelical. That's probably the best way to put it. Even though that's the case, his administration is full of them. Christians everywhere. And in DC, there are other even fine Christian churches, Reformed evangelical churches, but our movement has a couple of distinctives that made it necessary for us to think about putting a church service there. And that's because with all the Christians, all the evangelical Christians in the administration, that included a number of our people from around the country, CREC people. And one of the distinctives that we have is we are Presbyterian, Paedo-Baptist, baptized infants, but a distinctive feature that we have that a lot of Reformed churches don't have is that we commune children. We practice weekly communion at the culmination of every service and we commune our children, as you can see from the spots on the floor. So it's a war zone. So you're giving a little cup of wine to the kids included. Now, if you're a CREC family man and you've been offered a job in the administration, you don't want to move to DC and have to join a church where basically your kids are going to be excommunicated, right? So we're the only Reformed church in the area that serves the children in that way. So that was one doctrinal distinctive. The other distinctive is what the writer Kevin DeYoung called the Moscow Mood, which is basically a particular approach to cultural engagement where it's more exuberant than what you often get from Christians. Now, I want to come back to the church in DC, but I also have a couple more questions about your relationship with the Secretary of Defense before we get into your broader views. How often do you talk to him now? Not a lot. I've communicated with him some. He obviously invited me to do the Pentagon service and I met with him when I was there. I've communicated, I've met with him. I met him a few times at church, once in Tennessee and once or twice in DC, and we've texted some, but that's not a lot. Does he ever seek your advice or the advice of other pastors within your church network on policy matters? Not to my knowledge. Certainly not from me. And there's an important distinction to be made here. I think it is crucial for pastors when it comes to situations like this to stay in their lane. You know, let's say I've got thoughts on the Strait of Hormuz. I don't have security clearances. I wasn't elected to anything. I don't have the information that I'm sure he has. So no, I want to stay in my lane and not do anything. At the same time, I'm a pastor and a writer and I will write columns and I'm happy to talk about the Straits of Hormuz and different things for the public. And if I were to say something there and Pete Hexeth read it and said, I think that's a good point. That's his business. But in terms of, it's not my business to take a position of a spiritual pastor and muddle the categories. Now, having said that, there are certain areas where spiritual issues and political issues overlap. So, let's say, this is not real, but let's say President Trump said, let's nuke them all and let God sort it out. You know? Beth Dombkowski I mean, he did at some point say, we're going to end the civilization. He has said things around that. Pete Hexeth Yeah, he said that, but he didn't do that. Beth Dombkowski He didn't do it, but he did say it. Pete Hexeth But let's say, and one of the things that's interesting is you're looking at the things the President says and you're thinking, okay, is this just New York bluster? Is this the art of the deal? Is this a serious threat? When Donald Trump talks, he often doesn't do what he says, but he usually does something and something's going on. But let's say I had reason to believe that, I'm not accusing or anything like that, but let's say I had reason to believe that I thought the President was going to commit a war crime and require people under him to be complicit in the war crime. I think that pastors there have an obligation to say, you may not. Beth Dombkowski Do you think the U.S. has committed war crimes in Iran? Pete Hexeth No, I don't, no. Beth Dombkowski Not the school. Pete Hexeth Well, there's a difference. If we had said, see that school? We're going to kill the kids. That would be a war crime, yes. But one of the things that's awful about war is that, and several things are awful about war. One is the antiseptic terminology that's used, like collateral damage. But there is a very real difference between civilian casualties as a byproduct or because they were in the blast radius, as opposed to targeting civilians on purpose. That would be a war crime. So just to keep the lines distinct, if Christians are told to do something that would dishonor God, it doesn't matter that your superior told you to do it. You must not. Beth Dombkowski What is your view of the Iran war? Is it a religious war? Pete Hexeth In a very broad sense, small r, religious. It's not a religious war in the way the Crusades were. It's not that. But there is a civilizational difference between the Islamic civilization in Iran and the historically Christian civilization. It is a civilizational collision and there are religious elements mixed up in it. Beth Dombkowski So you see this as a Christian-Muslim war? Pete Hexeth No. I think it's a geopolitical war with Christian-Muslim elements mixed up in it. Beth Dombkowski Do you think it's divinely sanctioned? Pete Hexeth Well, I'm a Calvinist, so I think everything is. I think that everything is ordained by God. Beth Dombkowski As in, is there biblical justification for this war? Pete Hexeth There's a difference between a holy war in the Old Testament where God says, go in and exterminate the Canaanites. That's God's command. That's a religious sanction for the war and it's a holy war. As opposed to, that was under Joshua in the invasion of the land. Centuries later under King David, for example, the wars that Israel had were, you might say, ordinary wars, geopolitical wars that happened to have believers and unbelievers on opposite sides. And the rules of war in an ordinary war were different than the wars of extermination that God commanded under Joshua. So I don't believe that the wars of extermination are ever justified in the Christian era. I don't think that is our place. I don't think that's what God is up to. But I do believe that we come into ordinary conflicts and we must fight like Christians and there are rules of engagement and they ought to be observed. Beth Dombkowski You said you don't support forever wars. Pete Hexeth No, I don't. Beth Dombkowski Has this gone on too long? Pete Hexeth Yep. I think that this, and this is a stop and start kind of thing. The bombing campaign was a short, brief war. I would have much preferred to have us just do that and get out. But it seemed like more of an entanglement than I think anybody in the MAGA right likes. Beth Dombkowski Do you think it should have started at all? Pete Hexeth What's that? I've written about this too. I much prefer the older constitutional system of Congress declaring war and the President executing it. However, with the War Powers Act and the way Washington has functioned since World War II, that was the last declared war that we had. You would have to unravel a good deal of Washington in order to get to a constitutionally declared war, which I would prefer. I would prefer that. But given the fact of hostilities, I like the fact that Congress has the authority to pull the plug. Beth Dombkowski And is that what you want to see happen? Pete Hexeth Well, I'd like to have them pull the plug at a sensible time. I appeal to Colin Powell's statement about Iraq. He appealed to the Pottery Barn rule. If you break it, it's yours. So I think you can't go thundering in and then tiptoe out like nothing happened. I think we did that, for example, in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was a terrible overreach. I don't think we should have been there. I don't think we should have been there for 20 years, and we certainly shouldn't have extricated ourselves the way that we did. So the way we came out was as much of a disaster as the way we went in. So if we extricate ourselves from the Iranian war, I don't want that extrication to make things worse. Beth Dombkowski Have you communicated these concerns directly to the Secretary of Defense? Pete Hexeth No, I've written about them, and he may have read them, but I've been very careful not to take my position as pastor and say, I've got a pipeline to the Secretary. Let me tell you what I think about these things now. Beth Dombkowski Now you've made it clear that you want a Christian theocracy in this country. You've declared yourself a Christian nationalist. What would that look like in the United States? Pete Hexeth It would look like fluffy clouds and unicorns and everybody would be happy. That's my vision. Beth Dombkowski That's your vision. Pete Hexeth What would it look like in practical terms? What would change, for example? I would want basically the same constitutional framework that we have now. I love the U.S. Constitution. I think it's a work of theological genius. I like the federal system of subordinate states that have their own powers. I like the separation of powers at the federal level. I love the constitutional structure. So I'd want that to remain. The things that would change would be things that would be at the statutory, some would be Supreme Court, excuse me, constitutional amendments, or they might be dealt with other ways. I'd want to see abortion outlawed everywhere. I'd want to see Obergefell overturned. I'd want to see no-fault divorce rejected, overturned. Things like that. Beth Dombkowski So no same-sex marriage. Pete Hexeth No same-sex marriage. I'd like the LGBTQ plus thing to go away at the legal level. Beth Dombkowski There would be no legal protections for LGBTQ plus folks. Pete Hexeth Correct. There would be no special carve-outs for them. Beth Dombkowski You said you love the Constitution. Pete Hexeth Right. Beth Dombkowski I mean, the First Amendment of the Constitution protects your right to believe all the things you believe. It protects other Americans' rights to believe what they believe or not believe. It says very clearly that there shall never be a religious test to hold public office. It says very clearly that there shall never be a religion of the land. So how can you love the Constitution, but also envision a Christian theocracy in this country? Pete Hexeth So let me divide it in that question. It's actually two questions. One is the established church issue, and the other is the First Amendment free expression issue. There's two things going on there. First, on… Beth Dombkowski The First Amendment says there shall be no establishment of religion. Pete Hexeth Right. And the First Amendment says, Congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of religion. The only entity on earth that can violate the First Amendment is Congress. What the Founders were prohibiting was a church of the United States. They didn't want a federal denomination. And this makes sense, because if the Oriole is the state bird of Maryland, and the Bald Eagle is the national bird, that's not likely to cause any civil war. The state flower, national flower, state anthem, national anthem, everybody's fine. But if you had state denominations, which at the founding we did, so Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont all had the Congregational Church as the official church of their state. Not Vermont, excuse me, New Hampshire. Then Vermont came in as the 14th state after the Constitution was ratified, and they came into the Union with an official Christian denomination as the state church. In the other colonies, South Carolina, for example, had a law that said basically the Protestant religion is the official faith of this state. Okay? Now, if you then made the Anglican Church or the Episcopal Church the national church, you're just begging for conflict between the federal and the state. So the prohibition of a religious test is a prohibition of a religious test for federal public office, okay? For state office. When the men who ratified the Constitution, they had all kinds of religious tests for office at the state level, right? And so, now, there's an important thing here. I'm not a big fan of established religion at the state level either. I don't like it. Natalie But how do you get to a Christian theocracy? I would prefer the South Carolinian system where we publicly recognize that Jesus rose from the dead without giving tax money to any particular Christian denomination. So I don't want, there's a difference between a formal recognition of Christianity and tax support for ministers or tax support for particular churches, which I'm against. So if I were a citizen of Connecticut at the time, I would have been opposed to the Congregational Church being the state church of Connecticut, and I think it's a bad idea. But it's not an unconstitutional idea because all the people who ratified the Constitution were doing it. They had established Christian religion in the states that ratified the Constitution. So the thing that's excluded is an official denomination of the United States, and I support that. So I support the First Amendment as originally written, and I am an opponent of established state churches at the state level, which I think is a bad idea, but a state should be allowed to do it if they want. It's not unconstitutional. Now, the other part of your question on the First Amendment is I believe that LGB2Q-plus people have the right to think what they think and say what they want to say, and I don't want to prohibit their right to express their views. So that's not, I don't believe in a priori censorship. I don't believe in restricting, persecuting people who think differently. I think religious minorities, for example, in a Christian republic should have civil protections. But you would want to make it illegal for them to be in partnerships. You would want to restrict what they could do in their bedrooms. So, oh, you meant like sexual partnerships, like marriage. Yeah, so I don't want legal recognition of those relationships, right? What happens, you said you want civil protection. What happens to non-Christians in a future Christian theocracy that you imagine? So Muslims, Jews, Hindus, many other non-Christian faiths, people without a faith. So if you took the United States as it currently is, so my joke about this is, if I were president of the United States, what a glorious three days that would be. I wouldn't just impose a Christian hard theocracy on the country as it now is. You can't do that. Politics is the art of the possible. You do what you can with what you have. And so there's a distinction to be made between if I were in a position of political influence, what would I do next? What fish would I fry? And that's one question. And the other is, what do you envision as the ideal civic arrangement 250 years from now if everything evolved to that point, right? So a lot of the questions that I get asked on this have to do with the 250-year scenario and not what I would do right now. What I would do right now is outlaw abortion, overturn Obergefell. Those are the fish that I would want to fry now. Beth Dombkowski But the long-term view of what happens to non-Christians in a country that has long given equal rights and equal protections to all faiths and all, what happens? Can they hold public office? Can they vote? Can they pray in public? So probably the best illustration of this would be church bells, yes. Minarets, no. Why? Because the public space would belong to Christ. So church bells can occupy the public space, but a minaret is a loudspeaker, big call to prayer. Could Muslims pray to Allah? Yes. Could gather together to pray to Allah? Yes. Should they be free from being hassled and persecuted? Yes, they should be free from that. But they should do it quietly and in their homes. But they should recognize that they're in a Christian country. And consequently, they should defer to that. But the only way, go back to what I said about the politics being the art of the possible, the only way that that is ever going to happen is by means of persuasion, evangelism, mass conversion to Christianity. There's no way, you can't just flip a switch and make this country as cosmopolitan and secular and diverse as it is and just say, okay, everybody, we're going to do it the Christian way. That's not going to happen. Do you believe Catholics should have a role in shaping a future Christian America? Yeah. Do they count as Christian in your view? Yeah, I would want a basic Apostles' Creed definition of Christian for these purposes, yes. Mormons, Pentecostals? Well, the Mormons couldn't sign off on the Apostles' Creed. Pentecostals could. Could they serve in public office? Could they vote? So, if you had a Christian republic, the constitution would be Christian. And an officeholder would have to vow to uphold the constitution. So, everybody who holds public office would have to vow to uphold the Christian constitution, yeah. So, they could be technically Muslim or Jewish or Hindu and then vow to this, which they wouldn't. So, technically they wouldn't be in public office. Right, technically they would not be. But could they vote? Yes, probably, yes. Now, you've called for repealing women's right to vote, which is protected by the 19th Amendment. Why? Because it's a good idea. A lot of women wouldn't think so. A lot of women wouldn't agree, right. But this is one of my favorite questions now too. This is not an XXXY chromosome issue. Because I don't want women voting as individuals because I don't want men voting as individuals. So, what I envision is a system that we have practiced in our church here for four decades, and that is household voting. So, in our polity, in our church system, the congregation votes on the installation of deacons and elders and calling a pastor. Those are the areas where the church exercises its voice. And when we hold a church election for an elder, about 7% of the votes are cast by women because we have a number of women who are heads of their households. And when a young man, let's say a college student, moves to Moscow and he's 19 years old and he's going to college and he wants to become a member, we interview him. And one of the things we ask is, who's paying for your school? And if his folks back home are putting him through school, we bring him into membership, but he's a non-voting member because he's not a household. But with the concept of headship within your church, which is households led by men... When there's a man. When there's a man, that would mean the vote would ultimately be decided by the head of the household. Well, the vote would be decided, the vote would be cast by the head of the household. By the head of the household. Which would typically be... The man. Right. And when it isn't, and in our church, we have a number of households headed by women, and when they head the household, they vote. So, it's the household that votes. So... So, in a future Christian theocracy where the 19th Amendment is repealed, what is my role in public life? Do I get to vote? Do I get to run for office? Do I get to do these things? Okay. Hold it in this hypothetical. In this hypothetical. Hypothetical. No, you wouldn't hold office because you couldn't vow to uphold the Christian constitution. And whether you voted or not would have nothing to do with whether you were a woman or not. Whether you voted would be... If I'm the head of my household. If you're the head of the household. If you were head of the household and Christian, you would vote. And if I'm head of the household and not Christian? Then that would depend probably on the state, right? Now, you've talked about wanting patriarchy, and that's because you believe that men are supposed to protect women. Provide and protect. But you also use words that don't feel Christian. Cunt, small-breasted biddies. You've spoken of the propriety of rape for women who reject patriarchy. So, women who reject patriarchy, do they deserve protection? Of course. So, that phrase, propriety of rape, a number of those things are gathered from people taking arguments out of context. Let me give you the propriety of rape thing. One consequence of rejecting the protection of good men is that you're opening yourself up to the predations of bad men. When they've walked away from the protections of fathers and brothers, what it amounts to is a tacit, implicit, and principled, not overt acceptance of the propriety of rape. This is from a 2016 book. Correct. I'm not saying anything about the propriety of rape. What I'm saying is the women who do these things, they're the ones saying that. So, if you refuse the protection of good men, then I'm saying you're the one asking for it. I'm pleading with you to stop asking for it. I don't think there's ever a time when- Asking for? Let's say, here's an illustration. Let's say someone parks his car in a bad part of town, leaves his wallet on the dashboard with $20 bills sticking out of it. I think that if someone breaks his windshield and takes his wallet, that person should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He has no right to take the wallet. He has no right to do that. And he should be prosecuted for doing that. So, I don't argue for the propriety of theft. What I'm saying is that the idiot who left his wallet on the dashboard, he was arguing for the propriety of theft. He's the one- So, the women who reject this protection are arguing for? And my argument was they ought to stop doing that. I'm opposing the propriety of rape. I'm not urging the propriety of rape. I'm opposing it. And I'm saying that there are certain downstream consequences to rejecting the protection and provision of good men. You expose yourself to the predations of bad men. I'm curious about what punishment would look like in this future Christian theocracy, if it were to come to be. And you've taught that homosexuality is an abomination to God, and that either execution or exile are permissible punishments. In the Christian America you want to usher in, would homosexuality be a crime? And what would be the punishment for that crime? Right. The punishment would vary depending on jurisdictions and whatnot. But when I say execution or exile, that first arose in a debate back in the 80s. There was a movement called Christian Reconstruction, and there were people arguing that the penalty, Old Testament penalties, ought to be executed, period. Homosexuals need to be executed, period. Right. And my argument was, no, wait, King Asa and King Jehoshaphat, both are recorded as basically shutting down the bathhouses. They exiled the homosexuals, and they didn't execute them. And so, my argument was, execution is not the minimum penalty in the Old Testament. It's the maximum penalty. It's not a minimum, you must do this in all circumstances. So I was arguing for the civil magistrate having the leeway to deal with the social problem of public sodomy and the pride parades and whatnot. He can do that without shooting people. He can do that without executing people. And Asa and Jehoshaphat did that. So what would punishment look like in a future Christian theocracy? Would it be stoning? Would it be exile? And for other things too, adultery, blasphemy? Yeah. Adultery was a capital crime, just as homosexuality was. But one of the things you have to bank on, budget for, is the coming of Christ. When Christ came, the Apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Corinthians, after the coming of Christ, gives a whole list of gnarly sins, including homosexual sins and adultery and whatnot. And then he says to the Corinthians, and such were some of you, Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost, not to kill everybody. So the Old Testament, the holiness code, the requirements there were instituted in order to teach right from wrong, up from down, left from right. And when Christ came, he came in order to save sinners. I'm not interested in taking a grappling hook, grabbing Old Testament law as it is, and then dropping it on modern society. I'm not interested in that. I am interested in, as the Westminster Confession says, that the judicial laws of Israel are ceased along with that nation ceasing, and do not pertain today, except as the general equity thereof may require. So I'm interested in arguing from the general equity of Old Testament law. I'm not interested in applying Old Testament law straight across with no variations. Beth Dombkowski How do you actually get, though, to a Christian theocracy? I know you talk about 250 years, but there has to be a mechanism. Is it courts? Is it schools? Is it violence? David Morgan No, it's not violence. It is preaching the gospel, planting churches, starting classical Christian schools. It means working your tail off, basically. Beth Dombkowski Until the majority of Americans are convinced? David Morgan Yeah. So basically what I'm talking about is a radical experiment in democracy. Beth Dombkowski But you would have to change portions of the Constitution to become a theocracy. David Morgan Actually, no. Beth Dombkowski I mean, a lot of constitutional scholars would disagree with you. David Morgan Yeah, and I disagree with them. Beth Dombkowski Well, let me, okay, go ahead. David Morgan Here's an important issue. All societies are theocratic. In every society, there's a point past which there's no appeal. There's always got to be the buck stops here. And when you've identified the point past which there is no appeal, you've identified the God of the system. In secular democracies, the God is Demos, the people. In Saudi Arabia, the God is Allah. In a Christian republic, the God would be the Father of Jesus Christ. So every society has a point at which debate stops, and that is the final authority in that system. So my argument for Christian nationalism is very simple. If this is the state or society, and God is over that society, if there is no God over the state, then the state becomes God. Beth Dombkowski You have about, you're just under 170 churches? David Morgan The CRAC is about 170 churches, yes. Beth Dombkowski Would it be your interpretation that is the blueprint for a future Christian theocracy here in the United States when really you're a minority among Christians in this culture? David Morgan Oh yeah, I'm a big-time minority. Beth Dombkowski So why would it be your vision, your blueprint? David Morgan Well, right now it isn't, right? So this goes back to persuasion, write books, preach sermons, look to persuade, do everything peacefully, and see what happens. Beth Dombkowski With so many evangelicals, in the administration, that are connected to your church, do you feel in this moment that your religious worldview is closer to power than it's ever been? That your vision of what the U.S. should be is closer? David Morgan I think it'd be fair to say that my vision, our vision of what the intersection of theology and politics should be, our theopolitical vision, is closer to getting a hearing. We're not… Beth Dombkowski Closer to getting a hearing. David Morgan Closer to getting a hearing, which is very different than being, here are the levers of power. That's not where we are. But where we are is, I would say, 15 years ago, we've been teaching and preaching and talking about these things for 40 years. And 20 years ago, the faithful would listen to it, and that was a great conference, or I really enjoyed your book. In the last five years, we have gotten a much more significant hearing than we ever have before, where people are actually listening to what we say, are actually able to reproduce what we're saying. And this is a backhanded compliment to you. But the reporters I've been talking to over the last few years have come prepared. They know what we're saying. They've read it. They've watched a bunch of the video. They've come prepared. 10, 15 years ago, they would just throw mud at the wall, you know, you're a fascist, you're a Nazi, you're a, you know, this is… Beth Dombkowski And some people still think that about you. David Morgan Oh, yeah, there's still people, that's still going on. But we are, we have risen to the dignity of needing to be intelligently opposed, okay? The slander doesn't cut it anymore. Screaming doesn't cut it anymore, although there are still screamers, there are still people doing that. But the last five reporters I've talked to have commented to my friends, man, they knew what they're talking about. They came into the interview knowing what our positions were, rather than coming in half-cocked, half-baked, and then misrepresenting them. And what that means is we're getting a respectful hearing. Maybe not a friendly hearing, but we're getting a respectful one. And that is progress, compared to the way it was before. Beth Dombkowski Doug Wilson, thank you so much for sitting down with us. We really appreciate it. David Morgan Happy to do it. New episodes of Newsmakers can publish anytime. So to stay caught up, subscribe on YouTube, or follow on Spotify, or catch us on the NPR app. I'm Laila Faldan. Thanks for watching NPR's Newsmakers.