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The World and Everything in It: October 10, 2024

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WORLD Radio - The World and Everything in It: October 10, 2024

The Colorado Supreme Court dismisses a case against Jack Phillips, some Democrats no longer support their party, and Allie Beth Stuckey explains “toxic empathy.” Plus, Cal Thomas on Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent interviews and the Thursday morning news


Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado Photo by Alliance Defending Freedom

PREROLL: Many people today misunderstand empathy. In fact, it's even being used as a weapon against Christians. Join me in a few minutes for my interview with author Allie Beth Stuckey to find out what we can do about it. I’m Lindsay Mast. I hope you enjoy today’s program.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The Colorado Supreme Court just dismissed a case against baker Jack Phillips, closing a 12-year legal battle.

PHILLIPS: We want to serve everybody with respect and do the best job we can. But we can't create cakes that express every message that people ask us.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also today, we’ll meet some voters who feel their party has gone too far and they’re leaving it.

And an interview with author Allie Beth Stuckey on “toxic empathy.”

STUCKEY: Politics matter because policy matters because people matter. Politics affects policy. Policy affects people. And people matter.

MYRNA BROWN: And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on the most recent media interviews by Vice President Kamala Harris.

MARY REICHARD: It’s Thursday, October 10th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

MARY REICHARD: Now the news with Kent Covington.


SOUND: [Hurricane]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Milton » Hurricane Milton was still lashing the Florida peninsula early this morning after roaring ashore over the state's Gulf Coast late last night. Milton made landfall near Sarasota with winds well over 100 miles per hour.

Search and rescue crews are already leaping into action. Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters on Wednesday …

DESANTIS:  We have hundreds of state search and rescue personnel on hand. 26 total teams. They are currently embedded in the potential impact sites along the West Coast to begin immediate rescue operations as soon as the storm passes.

Michael Brennan with the National Hurricane Center had this advice for potentially millions of Floridians now without power:

BRENNAN:  You want to use flashlights and not candles. You want to practice portable generator safety. We lose a lot of people to carbon monoxide poisoning from improper generator use. And you want to be careful with any food and water left in your home without refrigeration. Again, make sure that it's safe to eat.

Milton was the second hurricane to hit Florida in as many weeks … on the heels of Hurricane Helene.

The Pentagon says thousands of National Guard troops have been on standby, ready to assist in rescue and recovery efforts.

Helene recovery » Gov. DeSantis also shot back on Wednesday at Vice President Kamala Harris who has criticized the governor for not taking her phone calls as Hurricane Milton closed in.

The governor noted that five other hurricanes have hit the state since Harris took office.

DESANTIS:  She has never been interested in any of the storms we've had in the state of Florida for entire time as vice president. Now she's out there attacking me because I'm not catering to her whims. All she's trying to do is inject herself to be a part of her political campaign. I don't have time for political games. We've got a job to do. We got people's lives on the line.

DeSantis said Harris, as vice president, had no official role to play in preparation for or recovery from the storm. He added that he’s been in regular contact with the White House and FEMA.

North Korea » North Korea continues to ramp up hostility toward South Korea. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: The Kim Jong Un regime says it will destroy roads and railways linking the two countries.

It’s the latest move by Pyongyang … intended to signal that the North and South will never reunify.

Cross-border travel and exchanges had already been halted for years.

The Kim regime cited what it called various war exercises in South Korea, the deployment of U.S. strategic assets.

The South has deepened its military cooperation with the U.S. … as the North ramped up nuclear testing and military threats.

However, the North has not yet announced an expected constitutional revision … designating South Korea its principal enemy.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Israel » President Biden spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday for the first time since August.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:

JEAN-PIERRE: It lasted about 30 minutes. It was 30 minutes long. It was direct. It was productive. They discussed a range of issues.

One topic of discussion: Israel's potential retaliation against Iran for its missile attack against Israel last week. Jean-Pierre was tight-lipped about what Netanyahu shared during that conversation. But Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pulled no punches.

GALLANT: [Speaking Hebrew]

Gallant says Israel's retaliation will be lethal, precise, and above all, surprising. He says Iran will not understand what happened or how it happened...but they will see the results.

Afghan terrorist arrest » The Justice Department has charged an Afghan that it says has ties to ISIS for allegedly planning an Election Day attack in the U.S.

FBI agents in Oklahoma arrested 27-year-old Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi after the agency said he purchased rifles and ammunition from an undercover officer.

Authorities also arrested his juvenile brother in law who is accused of being a co-conspirator.

Death toll from gang attack in Haiti » In Haiti, the death toll from a brutal attack on a small town is now well over 100 people. WORLD’s Paul Butler has that story.

PAUL BUTLER: A local official near the town of Pont-Sondé says at least 115 people are now confirmed dead, including infants and elderly residents.

The attack is one of the deadliest massacres that Haiti has seen in recent history.

More than 6,000 survivors have fled the village and temporarily settled in the coastal city of Saint-Marc and surrounding areas.

A human rights group said the gang known as Gran Grif was angry that a local self-defense group was trying to limit gang activity in Pont-Sondé. The group was also preventing the gang from profiting off a makeshift road toll it had recently set up nearby.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Christian baker Jack Phillips on this week’s Colorado Supreme Court decision. Plus, when Christian empathy becomes a weapon against the church.

This is The World and Everything in It.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 10th of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Up first: case dismissed in Colorado.

JUDGE: Court will call 23SC106: Master, Masterpiece Cakeshop and Jack Phillips versus Sardina...

REICHARD: In June, the Colorado Supreme Court heard arguments in the latest case involving Christian cake baker Jack Phillips. He first went to court in 2012 after a same-sex couple sued him for declining to bake their custom wedding cake.

BROWN: Twelve years and one U.S. Supreme Court win later, Phillips was back in court, this time for declining to bake a custom cake celebrating a so-called gender transition. And this week, the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed that case.

Is this the end of the cake baker’s legal saga?

Here now to talk about it is Jack Phillips and Alliance Defending Freedom Chief Legal Counsel Jim Campbell.

Good morning!

JIM CAMPBELL: Good morning.

JACK PHILLIPS: Good Morning.

BROWN: Jack, this isn’t the first time you’ve gotten the news about a big court decision…where were you when you got the news about this one? And how did you feel?

PHILLIPS: I was at the shop, and one of the attorneys for ADF, who's been representing me, gave me a call and said that they had the decision and that the case was dismissed. It was exciting, because we've been in court for over 12 years, and it's been a long road, and now this one, I asked him, pretty much right away, can this be appealed? And he said, “No, the way this, the decision came down. It cannot be appealed.” And so this one is done.

BROWN: Done, done.

REICHARD: Jim Campbell, ADF has been with Jack since the beginning. You’ve seen all these cases. What are the facts that led to this latest Colorado Supreme Court decision?

CAMPBELL: So this case first arose when Jack received a request from an activist attorney, and that attorney sought a pink and blue cake to symbolize and celebrate a gender transition. That was something that Jack couldn't do. It's not a message he can express for anyone. It's not something that's consistent with his faith. And so he politely declined. But this attorney filed a lawsuit against Jack. Initially filed a complaint with the state of Colorado, and that case eventually went away, and then this attorney tried to file another case in state court, and the ruling that we got earlier this week simply said that the attorney used the wrong process, and so the court threw the case out and said that it can't go any further.

REICHARD: So both Jack and Myrna used the word “done” earlier. Is it done? Is this decision the final word on compelled speech?

CAMPBELL: So the Colorado ruling is based on a question of state law, and this ruling was issued by the Colorado Supreme Court. The Colorado Supreme Court is the highest court in the state of Colorado, therefore there's no one else to appeal to. This decision is the final word on this case, but the court didn't need to reach the idea of compelled speech because it found that it didn't even have a basis to address the legal issues before it. But I will say that last year, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in a case called 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. And in that decision, the Supreme Court made clear that states can’t apply their laws to force people to express messages they disagree with. That simply violates the First Amendment, And so that case provides ongoing protection for Jack.

BROWN: Well, back to you Jack. You've been harassed for more than 12 years. What have these lawsuits cost you?

PHILLIPS: That's something that I really don't have a good answer for. I know we had to give up doing our wedding cakes. And a wedding cake, that was a lot of our income. But it's more than just the income. When you speak to a bride and you plan the wedding cake, you design it. You sit down, you make sketches and everything, and then you get the order, and you do the cake, and you deliver it, and everything goes well. Then next thing you know, you're doing an anniversary cake and a baby shower cake and first birthdays, and you've if you do it right, you develop a customer for life. And that's what we want to do. We serve everybody. We want to serve everybody with respect and do the best job we can. But we can't create cakes that express every message that people ask us.

BROWN: So Jack, how have Christians come alongside you in this and did that support change at all as this battle has just dragged on for years?

PHILLIPS: No, we have fellow believers, even people who are not believers, but the church has really come through to support us, and they call and encourage us. I remember one day a man called me up. This was years ago, in the middle of the day. I don't know who he was, but he said, My wife and I are just about to pray for you. What can we pray? How can we pray for you today? And I thought, This man is actually, literally praying for me, not like, Okay, I'll pray for you later, but right then. And so that kind of comments and those kind of things just have really inspired us and kept us going.

REICHARD: I can hear that in your voice Jack, just how much that meant to you. Jim, back to you for a moment. How have you been challenged watching Jack go through all this?

CAMPBELL: It's challenging watching him go through it, because it's just not fair. It's just not fair for 12 years of Jack's life to be distracted by all of this. But on the flip side, it's been encouraging to watch Jack. Jack's faith is unlike a faith that I have seen before, and that's not hyperbole. I've never met someone like Jack. Jack does not worry. He's not frightened. He's not fearful. He has faith in the Lord to walk him through difficult places, and that has encouraged my faith To walk alongside him.

BROWN: Amen, amen. And so Jack, you're back in the shop, right?

PHILLIPS: I'm in my office right now, and the shop is open. I don't know if you hear we have a buzzer on the door when people come in, so hopefully you hear some commotion up there. But yeah, we're in the shop. We're working away.

BROWN: Well, we’re rejoicing with you. Christian baker Jack Phillips and Alliance Defending Freedom Chief Legal Counsel Jim Campbell have been our guests today…thank you both for your time!

PHILLIPS: It was our pleasure. Thank you.

CAMPBELL: Thank you.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

Voters dumping their party.

For years, the Democratic party has supported laws allowing men to use women’s bathrooms and play on women’s sports teams, pretending there are no differences between the two sexes.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: WORLD’s Juliana Chan Erikson spoke with several Democratic voters who say that’s become enough to change their vote. Here’s the story.

KARA DANSKY: I have been a registered Democrat since 1990.

JULIANA CHAN ERIKSON: Kara Dansky is your typical liberal Democrat. She’s a writer and feminist who supports abortion and same-sex marriage. But over the last few years she’s noticed a concerning trend.

DANSKY: For those of us who are on the political left, who are used to thinking of the political left as championing women and girls, gay rights, free speech, traditional liberal values, what the Democratic Party has done on all of those issues is utterly appalling.

A growing number of Democratic leaders support allowing males in female-only spaces, including restrooms, school locker rooms, and sports teams. Most Democrat-led states have passed laws allowing gender-confused minors to receive cross-sex hormones. Dansky says she’s written letters to newspapers, and even a book, pleading for her party to stop.

DANSKY: And so I published that in November 2023 as kind of a warning to say, Listen, Democrats, it is time to reverse course, drop this agenda, renounce what you've done, renounce the policies that allow men to be held in women's prisons, renounce the policies that are harming children.

But the Democratic Party has stayed its new course. And so Dansky will likely stay home on Election Day.

DANSKY: I have no plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November.

Vice President Kamala Harris has not spoken on the topic of gender identity since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. But as a presidential candidate in the last election cycle, she expressed support for taxpayer-funded body-altering surgeries for inmates in California prisons. Here she is in an October 2019 interview with the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund.

KAMALA HARRIS: I worked behind the scenes to not only make sure that transgender woman got the services she was deserving. So it wasn't only about that case, I made sure that they changed the policy in the State of California so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and need.

At this point, Harris has not said anything to suggest her position has changed.

Former President Donald Trump, on the other hand, says he would pass laws doing the exact opposite, making it more difficult for adults to receive such treatments and impossible for children. Here he is in a campaign video from last year.

DONALD TRUMP: I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United State government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.

Other Democrats I spoke with say they dismissed Trump’s concerns…until the gender issue struck close to home.

AMANDA ERICSSON: I just got fed up with listening to Trump, and I voted for Biden, and then I had my eyes, like, opened by this whole gender thing. It just, like, attacked our house.

Amanda Ericsson—no relation to me—is a California mom whose teenage daughter began identifying as gender fluid in 2019. Ericsson bought pronoun pins and called her daughter by the name she requested. But when the teenager grew more belligerent and depressed, Ericsson realized affirming her daughter’s gender identity wasn’t working. Even so, everyone around her, the school teachers, the staff at child protective services, the therapists, and other parents believed it would.

ERICSSON: As I've watched this take hold of our society, I'm seeing the consequences of not saying, No, this is not okay. Like, this is too far, and I have reverted so far back, and now it's just to the point where, like, I can't even vote Democrat.

Ericsson told me she will vote for Donald Trump this year.

In all, I spoke with 10 longtime Democrats. Each expressed deep concerns that their party would undermine protections for women and children. Here are a few of them.

JOEY BRITE: This is Kamala Harris putting boys in high school in the girls teams in 2019 here in California…

ANNA HINRICHSEN: …And I can't say anything without being called a bigot, you know, like you're not allowed to say anything, you’re not allowed to oppose these people.

SELIN DAVIS: The majority of Americans feel pretty uncomfortable with this gender stuff and children.

Some Democrats keep their concerns secret. One parent said she didn’t want to lose custody of a gender-confused stepchild. Another parent told me he feared cross-sex hormones would shorten his son’s life and harm their father-son relationship. A public teacher in San Francisco says she risks getting fired if she challenges her school’s policy on pronouns.

These voices are likely a minority in the Democratic party…as most Democrats plan to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. But Dansky hopes more come to see that the party needs to rethink its priorities.

DANSKY: This whole issue is the most important issue facing American voters today.

Back in California, Amanda Ericsson said she’s changed her political affiliation after her bad experience with state gender policies. But interestingly, the change didn’t end there.

ERICSSON: With that destroying our household and everything, I ended up like going to church. I'm like, I just feel like I'm under attack by evil because there just feels like there’s such an agenda behind it.

In her search for answers, Ericsson came across YouTube videos of former atheists seeing God’s design in the universe…and she came to the realization that they were right.

ERICSSON: Yeah, I think God's real. And then I was like, but which one? So then I started studying all the different gods and religions and stuff, and I'm like, the only one that makes sense is the Bible.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Juliana Chan Erikson.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Thousands of treasure seekers have been on the hunt in France…for 31 years!

That’s due to a book titled “On the Trail of the Golden Owl.” Contained within are 11 riddles to solve. Here’s one riddle read by sleuths on Red Web Audio:

ANNOUNCER: Clue number 3 or riddle number 3…wherever you want, by the ross and the coachman, but wherever you have to, by the compass and the foot.

(“Ross” is a horse, by the way.) A 12th clue leads to a token which can be exchanged for a golden owl statue.

Well, after all this time... last week, someone solved all the riddles and found the token! The news both thrilled and disappointed sherlocks immersed in the challenge. News went out on gaming platforms to “stop digging.”

The winner’s name is yet unannounced, but that golden owl?...is worth $165,000!

MYRNA BROWN: That’s a hoot!

MARY REICHARD: It’s The World and Everything in It.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 10th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown. 

MARY REICHARD, HOST: I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST:  And I’m Lindsay Mast. Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the role of empathy in politics.

Allie Beth Stuckey makes a living encouraging women on how to think through their faith and worldview. She went from speaking at sororities about political matters a decade ago to now hosting her own podcast called Relatable.

MONTAGE: If an entity is not actively Christian, it will eventually become liberal.
Talking about things like gender identity to young children, that is sexual innately.
If you want to debate which policy, whether it’s restricting abortion or making abortion totally free and accessible, is going to end abortion, I think the answer is obvious.

Stuckey also writes on occasion for WORLD Opinions, and she has a new book coming out next week. It’s called Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. She says she wrote it to help Christian women make sense of pressing issues ahead of the election.

I had the opportunity to talk with her recently. Here’s a portion of that discussion.

Allie Beth, your new book is called Toxic Empathy, so I want to go ahead and jump in on that. Can you tell us what you mean by that term? And also, if you could give us some examples?

STUCKEY: Yes, so toxic empathy is the use of empathy as a kind of a mallet of manipulation, so a tool by which those in power in media exploit and extort people into taking on a particular position by saying, in order to be a good person, in order to be a compassionate and kind person, this is the stance that you must take. And they do that not through good faith persuasion—because that's one thing—but through what I would say is emotional manipulation, or telling only one side of the story, or completely misrepresenting an issue to make you believe that the only righteous position is their position. And they will use Christian language and Christian ideas like loving your neighbor, and welcoming the foreigner, and loving mercy and justice to convince you that, for example, opening up the border, or affirming someone's so called gender identity, or affirming the redefinition of the family, or affirming a woman's so called right to choose that these are all not just kind and compassionate positions, but actually Biblical positions because this is what it means to love. And the point is really that empathy and love are different things. You can feel how someone else feels, but love is inextricable with the truth, because love never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth, as 1 Corinthians 13:6 tells us. And the God who is love—1 John 4:8—gets to define that for us. And so we as Christians are obligated not just to feel how someone else feels, but to actually look at the policies and the so-called culture war from the perspective of what is actually true.

MAST: What’s the better way to view the role of empathy in the life of a Christian, in your opinion?

STUCKEY: I think that empathy can be a powerful tool to love those around you. I use an example in the book of before I had kids, when I would go on a flight and I would hear babies crying. You're like why do parents do this? This is just bothering me, all about me. And then after I had kids, I'm like, what can I do? What can I carry? Can I help you? Because no one wants this baby to stop crying and screaming more than you do. Like, I get it. And that can be powerful. However, it is actually the love of Christ that compels us to be compassionate and other-centered and loving. And so I think really the emphasis that our culture puts on empathy in general is kind of just like misplaced and misguided. But in itself, it is really neither bad nor good. Because empathy can also—if I put myself in the shoes of someone else, and I am so staunchly in their feelings, and I am exclusively blinded to everyone else's perspective because I only feel what that person feels, well, then I can't make very good decisions. Because if I only feel what the media's designated victim feels, well, then I'm not paying attention to the rights and the needs of the well-being of other people. So if I am only focused on, for example, this teenage boy who says he's distressed about his body, and he wants to become a girl, and he wants to identify as a girl, and he wants to go into the women's locker room, if I am only thinking about his feelings, which is what we are told is true empathy. And then, of course I'm going to affirm. But I have to get out of those feelings. I can't only focus on those feelings because there are other people whose rights and well-being and privacy matters. And even more than that, the truth matters. The truth that he cannot become a woman, that he can't become a girl – that matters.

MAST: You deal with all manner of current events on your podcast. I hear a lot of American believers who say that since our kingdom is not of this world, or since God is in control, we need not concern ourselves with matters of culture or politics. What’s your defense of Christian involvement in them?

STUCKEY: Yes. So, I came up with an alliteration that I use almost every day to explain to Christians like why politics do matter and it's “politics matter because policy matters because people matter.” Politics affects policy. Policy affects people. And people matter. People matter to God, therefore they matter to us. They matter because they're made in His image. And God did not place us here arbitrarily or accidentally. I don't think any Christian would contend with the fact that we are commanded to love our neighbor, those who are around us, and yet they tend to forget that politics is not the only way. And it's not even the primary way. But it is a way to love our neighbor, because the policies that we vote for have a real effect on people, especially vulnerable people. We don't have to care about everything and everyone at all times. We do not. But the issues that affect your community, the issues that will affect your children, that will affect your children's children, while we still have the right and the responsibility to exercise our right to vote and to influence elections and to raise a respectful ruckus for the things that matter, I do think that we are obligated to do that. Just as, you know, Israelite exiles in Babylon were tasked by God in Jeremiah 29 to seek the welfare of the city in which you live because in their welfare, you will find your welfare. We are exiles in this world. Our citizenship is in heaven. And yet, here we are. Here we are. And so in the welfare of the community around us is our welfare, too.

MAST: Allie Beth Stuckey, we appreciate you being with us today.

STUCKEY: Thanks, Lindsay. 

BROWN: Allie Beth Stuckey is the author of the new book Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. There is much more to this interview and we will post the entire conversation on our WORLD podcast feed on Saturday.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 10th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming up next, WORLD commentator Cal Thomas.

Many political analysts—including Cal—have said that Kamala Harris needs to start talking with the press. Well, this week she kicked off a handful of interviews with an appearance on CBS.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: It took two and one-half months for Kamala Harris to agree to an interview with a national journalist. She was interviewed on "60 Minutes" by Bill Whitaker, but her answers are not likely to help her with the few voters who say they are still “undecided.”

Asked by Whitaker to explain her economic plan and how it would be paid for, Harris’ response bordered on the meaningless:

HARRIS: My plan is about saying when you invest in small businesses you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America’s economy. Small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy.

Whitaker responded: “The question was how are you going to pay for it?”

HARRIS: I am going to make sure that the richest among us who can afford it pay their fair share in taxes. It is not right that teachers, nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations. And I plan on making that fair.

“Fair” must be a poll-tested word, but it has no meaning unless it is defined. Democrats have been invoking it for years, but they never say what they mean. In some states the successful are paying more than half their income to federal, state and local governments. Is it fair when governments penalize success and subsidize its opposite? And who will define affordable? Whitaker should have asked Harris what she would do to cut spending, the main driver of debt, and how would she reform Social Security and Medicare, which will run out of money in the 2030s.

When Whitaker asked Harris how she would get her plan through Congress, the vice president gave a nonsensical answer:

HARRIS: You know when you talk quietly with a lot of folks in Congress, they know exactly what I’m talking about ‘cause their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about.

I don’t know what she is talking about.

In reporting on some of the same claims that President Joe Biden made in his last State of the Union address, Reuters reported: “The average American worker paid about a 25% tax rate in 2022...White House research found the wealthiest individuals paid about 8% from 2010 to 2018.”

White House “research”? According to The Cato Institute: “The 8 percent is a concoction by Biden political appointees at odds with data from the U.S. Treasury, Congressional Budget Office, Internal Revenue Service and Joint Committee on Taxation. All these official sources find that tax rates on high earners are much higher than tax rates on lower- and middle-income folks.”

On another topic, Harris was asked about Israel and the attacks by Iran and its proxies. Harris defaulted to the familiar position that Israel “has a right to defend itself,” but seemed to separate the Jewish state from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

Whitaker pressed on: “Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?”

HARRIS: With all due respect, I think the more important question is do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.

The Biden-Harris administration, like the Obama-Biden and Clinton-Gore administrations before it, has repeatedly tried to impose its will on Israel to get the Jewish state to act in ways that would put it in greater peril. Harris’s attempt to separate Israel from its duly elected leader would give aid and comfort to Israel’s enemies, who are also our enemies.

The question still waiting to be asked is why Harris and every Democrat who met with Biden engaged in what looks like a cover-up of his mental state that led to his withdrawal from the race.

After the “60 Minutes” interview, Harris decamped to more friendly territory, appearing on “The View” and Howard Stern’s radio program. It is unlikely any of these interviews will change the minds of entrenched voters—but they’re still revealing in their own way.

With less than a month before the election, we’re running out of time to hear all that we need to, to make an informed decision come November 5th.

I’m Cal Thomas. 


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday.

And, we have a review of a documentary that’s animated in Lego bricks that isn’t really meant for kids. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible records the jailer of Paul and Silas as asking them: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” —Acts 16:30-31

Go now in grace and peace.


WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

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