Autism isn’t a superpower — or a dead-end: A story of tough love



In the modern world, a diagnosis is often worn as if it’s a badge of honor.

But not everyone sees it that way. And Leland Vittert, an American journalist and anchor for NewsNation, certainly doesn’t.

Vittert, who is diagnosed with autism, tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey that the adversity his diagnosis caused him did not hold him back, but rather helped him become the successful journalist and reporter he is today.

Vittert didn’t speak until he was “well past 3,” and he had “lots and lots of problems in typical school.”

“If a kid touched me or looked at me the wrong way or whatever, I’d turn around and slug them,” he tells Stuckey, explaining he was “pretty aggressive” and had “big sensory issues.”


“Dad’s idea was to hold my hand through the adversity. And I think what he realized was that I was going to face that adversity later in life, which I did. ... I had to learn how to adapt and how to interact with the world as the way the world interacted, not as the way I wanted to interact with it,” he explains.

And it was a struggle, he tells Stuckey, noting that he “couldn’t figure out how to relate to people emotionally the way they were emotionally.”

“I couldn’t figure out how to, you know, read a room, when to stop talking. All of these things I was going to have to learn,” he says. “And if you’re put in bubble wrap and told how wonderful you are all the time, you’re never going to learn that, right?”

That’s when Vittert’s father decided to prioritize self-esteem.

“So, when I was 5 or 6 years old, I was doing 200 push-ups a night. And after a couple months of doing that, you get some kind of reward. But my dad wanted to teach me that self-esteem is earned, not given, which is a very different philosophy, I think, than what we see now,” he tells Stuckey.

After self-esteem, Vittert’s father prioritized teaching him “how the world works socially.”

“So, my dad started spending hundreds of hours with me. Thousands of hours. Still is my best friend. ... We’re recording this a little before noon, and I’ve already talked to him, I think, three times today,” he tells Stuckey.

“So, he would then take me out to lunch, and we’d go out to lunch with any of his friends. And because I spent so much time with him, I could sort of talk about business and politics and news and those kinds of topics,” he recalls.

“But as soon as we’d sit down at some diner for cheeseburgers and milkshakes, as soon as his friend sat down, I would either start blasting him with questions or blasting him with stories about my push-ups. And my dad would tap his watch. And that was my dad’s way of saying, ‘OK, be quiet,’” he explains.

“And the idea was, later on, as we were driving home, it was like, ‘OK, when Mr. so-and-so was talking about his weekend and you interrupted it to talk about your push-ups, why did you think he would be interested in that?’” he continues, telling Stuckey that he and his father would then role-play how Vittert could have asked the friend more questions about himself.

“It was this very minute-by-minute teaching of the emotional and human dynamic,” he adds.

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‘Nations were God’s idea’: Why Christians must support strong borders



Former President Barack Obama may have deported more immigrants than President Trump, but that isn’t stopping the left from accusing supporters of Trump’s immigration policy of being heartless and cruel.

“Biden also deported over a million people,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says on “Relatable.” “Did you hear about ICE raids under Biden? Did you hear about ICE raids under Obama? Did you hear about kids in cages under any of these administrations, even though that was happening, if you want to call these detention centers cages?”

“Did you hear about all of the lost children who were abandoned and not accounted for under these administrations? Did you hear about the sex trafficking, the human trafficking, the drug and weaponry trafficking that was happening under these administrations?” she asks.


“No, it’s not because it wasn’t happening. It’s because the media is in bed with the Democrats, and they don’t want you to see the Democrats doing things that they are criticizing Donald Trump for,” she adds.

Stuckey calls this a “weaponization of empathy.”

And Democrats weaponize your empathy to make you feel like the well-being of a stranger who lives a world away should be a priority in your own life — but Stuckey couldn’t disagree more.

“Countries are like families, just on a bigger scale. You put the safety and security of your people first. Not because you hate people from other countries, but because you love people in your country. It is not possible for us to equally prioritize all of the interests of everyone in the world and all of their safety and security,” she says.

“I believe we see that principle in Romans 13, that governments were instituted by God to punish the wrongdoer and reward the good,” she continues, adding, “You take care of your people. Nations were God’s idea. Borders were God’s idea. Government, laws, all God’s idea, and they are good.”

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2025: Triumphs, tragedies, and lasting legacies — Allie Beth Stuckey’s year in review



Without question, 2025 was anything but dull. Trump made a historic return to the White House. Biden regime policies were thankfully booted out the door. Left-wing violence reached astonishing heights. Natural disasters ravaged parts of the country. Infighting in conservatism burned bridges and fractured the MAGA base.

It’s been a wild year full of ups and downs. On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey revisits four defining moments of 2025.

1. Trump’s inauguration

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump was sworn into the presidency for his second term.

It was quite an eventful occasion. The sound system failed just as Carrie Underwood began “America the Beautiful.” But the blonde country icon didn’t skip a beat, launching into an a cappella performance and hitting every note with her usual precision and cadence.

“That was beautiful,” Allie says.

However, controversy erupted when Trump took his oath. Unlike the majority of presidents before him, he did not put his hand on the Bible, leading many to brand it a scandal. But Allie says there was nothing significant or covert about it. The fact that the Trump family provided their own family Bible for the ceremony is proof that he wasn’t making any sort of anti-Bible statement.

2. Vatican elects the first American pope

On May 8, 2025, following the death of Pope Francis, white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel, announcing that the successor had been named. It was Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who selected the name Pope Leo XIV. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, he is the first-ever American pope.

“It’s a really important historical moment — not just in the Catholic Church, but really in the West in general,” Allie says.

“Unfortunately, Pope Leo has some progressive views on some things that I would call unbiblical views on some things that I don’t love,” she adds.

3. Loss of four prominent Protestant leaders

The year 2025 sadly saw four courageous evangelicals pass away.

On May 26, Duck Dynasty patriarch, BlazeTV host, and devout Christ-follower Phil Robertson passed away at the age of 79 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

John MacArthur, an 86-year-old evangelical pastor and theologian, then died on July 14. He died from pneumonia after being hospitalized.

The following month on August 21, James Dobson — psychologist, author, and founder of the conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family — passed away at age 89 from undisclosed causes.

And finally, reformed Baptist preacher and speaker Voddie Baucham Jr. passed away from an undisclosed emergency medical incident on September 25, 2025. He was only 56 years old.

“I mean, this is, like, just a generation of faithful evangelical Protestant pastors and leaders that we lost,” Allie says.

“Their legacy lives on, and God ordained all of their days, knew exactly when they were going to pass, but it’s still sad for all of us, but especially their families.”

4. Murder of Charlie Kirk

Lastly, 2025 will go down in history as the year when our beloved Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking at a Turning Point USA event. On September 10, the TPUSA founder was struck in the neck by an assassin’s bullet on the Utah Valley University campus where he was launching his TPUSA 2025 tour. He left behind his wife, Erika, and their two children, as well as the TPUSA empire that has only exploded in growth since his death.

“I will never forget that day,” says Allie, who was friends with Charlie.

“This renewed interest in [God] that we all saw at Charlie’s memorial, that we all saw on college campuses, it is happening,” she encourages.

“It seems like the love of many has grown cold really fast — like we so quickly went from this unified moment at the memorial to conspiracies, to accusations, to slander, to gossip, to division.”

But revival is still happening. Maybe it’s not as loud and bold as it appeared in the beginning, but it’s happening nonetheless. “When we get to the other side of eternity, we are going to see this incredible, complex, interwoven tapestry of all of these little unseen and unsung moments in the lives of believers that culminated in someone’s salvation, and angels rejoicing because of that,” Allie says.

To hear more of Allie’s 2025 recap, watch the episode above.

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Chosen at 13 to be the pastor’s ‘maiden’: Sex-cult survivor shares her horrifying story



When Lindsay Tornambe was just 11 years old, her parents and four siblings moved out to remote Minnesota to join a religious compound called River Road Fellowship. The group was led by a man named Victor Barnard, who claimed that God had ordained him to gather and shepherd the fragmented people of the Way International — a deeply heretical “Christian” sect — after its founder Victor Paul Wierwille died in 1985.

At first, things were almost idyllic. Lindsay spent her days playing with the other kids, tending to animals, and skating on the frozen lake. But it wasn’t long before Barnard’s sinister intentions shattered the pastoral facade he had created, condemning Lindsay and other victims to years-long servitude in a sex cult.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey interviews Lindsay about her decade as a “maiden” in a cult whose leader is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence.

After secretly grooming Lindsay, Victor, who had taken off his wedding ring, claiming he was “married to the church” like Christ, reportedly preached a sermon from the passage in Exodus where God commands the Israelites to “give” Him their firstborns, meaning redemption through small payments or temple service.

As many cult leaders do, however, Victor reportedly twisted the passage to mean that parents must literally give their firstborn daughters over to him.

“He read off a list of names. Mine was on there,” says Lindsay.

This all happened during the early 2000s, amid lingering influences from the 1999 “Summer of Love” — a notorious period in the Way International when leadership allegedly encouraged widespread sexual promiscuity among members, including married people, as a supposed expression of “God's love.”

Victor, however, didn’t frame the girls’ role as sexual. They were merely being asked to serve Christ and the church. Lindsay, after seeing her friends eagerly volunteer, consented to being a “maiden,” having no idea what awaited her.

She, along with nine other young girls, was then removed from her family home and taken to live in Victor’s private living compound. The maidens were assigned different duties, like gardening, cooking, cleaning, and assisting Victor with various tasks, many of which were intimate.

“Things in the beginning were kind of okay,” says Lindsay, noting that she initially believed her time as a maiden was temporary.

“I was under the impression that I would serve there and live at the camp ... and then I would go home and be homeschooled,” she says.

But a shepherdess who helped oversee the young girls told 13-year-old Lindsay, who had expressed excitement about returning home to her family, that her role as a maiden was a lifetime commitment. “You're not going home. This is your home now," she said.

“It was shortly after that that I was raped by Victor for the first time,” says Lindsay, adding that he justified his actions by claiming that “Jesus Christ had Mary Magdalene and the apostle Paul had Phoebe” as sexual partners.

He also claimed that “even though he would be having sex with me, I could remain a virgin spiritually,” she adds.

This abuse, which was often accompanied by physical and emotional abuse, lasted for years, she says.

Eventually, fear and manipulation brainwashed Lindsay into believing she genuinely loved her captor. “One thing that Victor would tell us is that the more we dedicated ourselves to him in this life and to God, the better place in heaven we would have, and so I think the thought of not being in heaven with the maidens and with Victor really scared me,” she says.

But Lindsay’s sympathetic view of Victor was a ticking time bomb.

In 2008, after most of the girls had been moved to another remote location in Washington state, one of the maidens was deported to Brazil after her student visa expired. Victor sent other maidens to live for temporary periods in Brazil alongside her.

When it was Lindsay’s turn to go, she was exposed to the outside world for the first time since her family had joined the commune. The taste of freedom was intoxicating.

When she returned to Washington, the maidens had started their own cleaning business. As a housemaid, Lindsay got another taste of life outside the cult, as she studied family pictures on walls and heard secular music drifting from radios.

This view of the outside world had already begun to sour Lindsay’s feelings for Victor, but then news came that he, still legally married to his wife, who lived next door to him, had been sleeping with married women in the community.

In Minnesota, it is against the law for pastors to have sexual relations with their congregants, so one of the women in the commune reported Victor to the police and even shared some information about his “maidens,” forcing him to flee. The infidelity broke up the original commune in Minnesota, sending Lindsay’s family back to their home state.

Lindsay, deeply disturbed by Victor’s philandering but still unaware of her own abuse, decided she was done being a maiden. Even though fellow maidens and Victor pleaded with her to stay — calling her Judas and accusing her of not loving God — Lindsay’s mind was made up.

She called her parents, who were still committed to the Way International and Victor, and they agreed to allow her to come home.

“They gave me $500 and bought me a train ticket, and I took Amtrak all the way from Washington state to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia,” says Lindsay.

Re-entering secular society at 23 proved difficult and confusing for Lindsay. “At that point, I thought the only way to make a man happy was to sleep with him, and so I slept around a lot. I lived in a lot of sin,” she says.

“I just was really interested in exploring and living life and making friends and getting away from my parents, because they were still supporting Victor.”

While her outside life looked fun and exciting, Lindsay’s internal world grew darker over the years, as she reckoned with her past life in the cult.

“I just kept thinking over and over again: If God is a God of love that I read and believed for so long, why would he let this happen to me? If heaven is so great, why don't I kill myself now and not live in this internal pain that I feel?” she admits.

To quell the pain, Lindsay experimented with a gamut of “remedies” — self-love programs, crystals, witchcraft, even self-harm.

“I always came up feeling so empty, so unsatisfied,” she says.

But despite Lindsay’s doubt and sin, God was working in ways she couldn’t see. Single motherhood, unexpected friendships, and perfect timing wove together and allowed Lindsay to distinguish the real God from the phony one who had been used to warp and manipulate her as a child.

To hear the beautiful story of Lindsay’s redemption, including where her family is today and the trial that landed Victor behind bars, watch the full interview above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Autism Isn’t a Super Power — Or a Death Sentence. A Story of Tough Love | Leland Vittert | Ep 1282
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Autism Isn’t a Super Power — Or a Death Sentence. A Story of Tough Love | Leland Vittert | Ep 1282

Liberals in nuclear meltdown mode after 2026 ‘Color of the Year’ is announced



Liberals across the nation are in full tantrum mode after a shade of white was declared 2026’s top hue.

On December 4, Pantone LLC — which is considered the global authority on color standardization — announced “Cloud Dancer,” described as a “billowy white imbued with serenity,” as its 2026 Color of the Year.

“Similar to a blank canvas, Cloud Dancer signifies our desire for a fresh start. … An airy white hue, PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer opens up space for creativity, allowing our imagination to drift so that new insights and bold ideas can emerge and take shape,” wrote Pantone Vice President Laurie Pressman.

Pantone Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman echoed the VP’s words: “The cacophony that surrounds us has become overwhelming, making it harder to hear the voices of our inner selves. A conscious statement of simplification, Cloud Dancer enhances our focus, providing release from the distraction of external influences.”

Despite these rationales and Pressman’s statement that skin color “did not factor into” Pantone’s selection, furious liberals are accusing the company of being tone-deaf and racist.

Allie Beth Stuckey dives into the hilariously absurd reactions of several unhinged lefties.

X user @svviftlet tweeted:

— (@)

In another social media video, two girls denounced Pantone’s Color of the Year, claiming it gives “Sydney Sweeney has good genes vibes.”

Back in July, Sweeney was lambasted for starring in an American Eagle denim commercial using the double entendre that Sydney Sweeney has good jeans/genes.

“You're not allowed to say if you have blonde hair and blue eyes that you have good genes. … She clearly does have good genes. She's beautiful,” scoffs Allie, “but if you're a white person, you can't say that.”

In another video, Feng Shui expert Katie Rogers literally set her Pantone color swatches on fire:

Another Instagram reel features influencer Charlotte Palermino, who ironically filmed her video in an off-white sweater in front of white-colored walls, whining, “It’s giving conservative.”

“It's literally just a color, okay? It's an inanimate color,” says Allie, “and the subliminal message is far more offensive than any supposed message that Pantone is communicating.”

The message these social media users are hammering is that “it's not okay to be white. … You need to be ashamed of that, that white — having white skin — symbolizes something bad, that we need to reject the color of our skin.”

“In this age of self-confidence and self-love, it's only white people who have to hate themselves or associate their skin color with the collective sins of people who lived elsewhere at a different time? No,” Allie says.

She encourages everyone, but especially Christians, to reject this social justice nonsense. “It's completely unbiblical. That is not just. Justice is impartial. Justice is individual. Justice is direct. You don't carry the sins of someone who kind of looked like you,” she says.

To see the videos and hear more of Allie’s commentary, watch the video above.

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Riley Gaines: Why Americans are FINALLY pushing back on gender ideology



Women’s sports, children’s innocence, and biological reality are at the center of America’s cultural struggle — but Riley Gaines tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey at AmFest that the tide is finally turning.

However, it took some serious struggle on Gaines’ part before she began to see a change.

“It was really hard to read some of the things that are being said about you. I mean, bear in mind, I’m a 21-year-old college student who merely just wanted to compete fairly, right? Seems like the bare minimum,” Gaines recalls.

“For saying the things that I said, such as ‘there are two sexes’ and ‘you can’t change your sex’ and ‘each sex is deserving of equal opportunity of privacy and of safety’ — for saying that, you’re vilified,” she explains.


While at the time, Gaines was hurt by the negative response, which included being called names like “racist” and “misogynist,” it’s now “water off the duck’s back.”

“I put all of the confidence and the security that I have in the fact that I’m fighting for the hope and the promise of eternal life. And once you do that, it shifts your perspective to understand that nothing of this world matters,” Gaines says.

Because of the courage of women like Gaines, Stuckey feels that the “tide is turning in a really good way when it comes to female sports.”

“You’re really in the thick of it,” Stuckey says. “Like, you see the activist attacks. You’re seeing what’s really going on on college campuses. Do you feel like the tide is turning?”

“110%,” Gaines answers. “You compare now to even a year ago, it’s very different. I think we’re seeing more people with the willingness and the boldness to say that men can’t become women. Men can’t get pregnant. Women don’t need prostate exams. Tampons don’t belong in boys' bathrooms.”

“Obviously, it sounds pretty cliche, but I do believe courage begets courage. And so when you have people like yourself, or you have President Trump in the Oval Office, that gives the people a lot of cover, right?” she continues.

“They see him doing it or you doing it, and they think, I can do that,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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Allie Beth Stuckey delivers bold speech at TPUSA AmericaFest: 'Truth divides'



BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey took the stage at the Turning Point USA conference and delivered a bold speech to thousands of attendees on Saturday.

Stuckey, who helms the hit Christian podcast "Relatable," challenged societal notions about the conservative movement and the Christian's role in politics.

'Truth divides. It's not always a bad thing.'

"While I do think it's important to find unity, I actually think that truth is more important than that. I think truth is more important than that," Stuckey said.

"And it's important to remember this analogy: If you're discouraged by the disagreements and the division and the debates, I understand. It can feel demoralizing, but let me tell you why this happens so much on the right, seemingly more than it happens on the left," she added.

"There is a difference in the nature of progressivism versus conservatism. Progressivism sets out to destroy, and if you are destroying something — destroying Western civilization, destroying the church, destroying the family — it does not matter how you do it. It doesn't matter what tool you hold or what material you use. As long as you are destroying whatever institution or edifice it is, that's fine. You don't really have to agree on much," Stuckey explained.

"But on the right, on the conservative side, we are trying to build something. And when you're building something, you have to agree on a lot. You have to agree on the materials used, the tools being used to build, and most importantly, you have to agree on a foundation. And if we cannot agree on a foundation, then it's going to be very hard to build something together," she said.

"But the debates and working out what that edifice looks like, of what the future of America should be, there's going to be some discomfort and division within that," Stuckey added. "Truth divides. It's not always a bad thing."

She went on to say that the job of Christians is to pull people to their side and not compromise on their principles.

RELATED: 'Incapable of being divided': Glenn Beck breaks down the importance of the Pledge of Allegiance at AmericaFest

Elsewhere in her speech, Stuckey said that politics should be one of the methods through which Christians show their love of their neighbors.

"Let me tell you, as a Christian, something that a lot of people don't want to talk about, but I know everyone in this room wants to hear and agrees with," Stuckey said.

"One way that Christians can glorify God, one way that Christians can love our neighbor as we await the perfect and sure victory of Jesus Christ is through politics. It's through politics. Politics matter because policy matters, because people matter," she added.

RELATED: Nicki Minaj stuns crowd in surprise appearance at AmericaFest, praises Trump and Vance

"Progressivism sets out to destroy. And if you are destroying something, it does not matter how you do it. But on the Right, on the conservative side, we are trying to BUILD something." - @conservmillen #AmFest2025 pic.twitter.com/OSZT4uxcGM
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) December 21, 2025

"Politics affects policy. Policy affects people. People are made in the image of God. People matter to God, and therefore they matter to us," Stuckey continued.

"And so Christians don't have an option, nor should we want the option not to be political," she added. "That doesn't mean that politics is the primary way or the only way that we love our neighbor, but it is a way to love our neighbor. Because our most vulnerable neighbors are affected by politics."

Vice President JD Vance and rap artist Nicki Minaj were among the more prominent speakers at the Turning Point USA conference that lasted until Sunday.

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Charlie Kirk was right: How Islam is destroying the West



Western nations are collapsing under the weight of mass migration, failed assimilation, demographic upheaval, and the growing alliance between Marxist and Islamist ideologies — a threat Charlie Kirk warned about with clarity long before his death.

“We don’t talk enough about Islam. ... We don’t talk nearly enough about the hundreds of thousands of Muslims that we have voluntarily imported into our country that build mosques, implement Sharia law,” Kirk once said.

“You go to Minneapolis, you even go to Dallas, you go to New York, and it will metastasize. It will spread. You know why? Because the women of the West, they get cats. The women of Muslims, they have eight kids. Eventually, it doesn’t work very well,” he continued.

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey couldn’t agree with Kirk more.


“I thought he was going to go in the direction of toxic empathy, because it’s toxic empathy that has made us say, ‘No, Christians are the bad ones. Muslims are the great ones. And we just need to accept, unfettered, anyone into our country,’” she tells her father and BlazeTV contributor Ron Simmons on “Relatable.”

And Simmons has noticed it in his own neighborhood.

“Even in the neighborhood that I live in, I walk a lot. ... I will pass people that I know have immigrated here, you know, meet them, and they won’t even make eye contact. It’s just really strange,” Simmons tells his daughter.

“That’s not the America that I grew up in or believe in,” he adds.

“And that’s one thing, you know, we heard so much, especially the past few years: ‘Diversity is our strength. Diversity is our strength.’ Well, statistically, that’s not true,” Stuckey agrees.

“It can bring different perspectives and things like that, but at the end of the day, you have to say, ‘Okay, but this is what we have in common.’ But if you don’t have that, then diversity is a weakness,” she says.

“We are trying to force multiculturalism upon people without any shared underneath values,” she continues. “And that has worked zero places throughout history.”

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Fact check: No — Jesus was not a refugee



There’s a narrative that circulates in progressive “Christian” circles every time Christmas rolls around: Jesus was born a refugee.

Not only does this take the focus from Jesus’ ultimate identity — the Son of God and savior of mankind — and channels it toward a destructive political agenda, but it’s also just false. Jesus was not a refugee by today’s standards.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey debunks this ridiculous argument that uses toxic empathy to push open borders.

“We can have a separate biblical defense of defending refugees and how many refugees we should accept and which refugees we should accept from what countries. That's fine,” says Allie, “but the argument should not be based in the idea that Jesus Himself was a refugee. He was not a refugee in the same sense that we are defining refugees today.”

A refugee in the modern sense, she explains, is “someone who is leaving one country and going to another country to take refuge.”

But that doesn’t describe Mary and Joseph at all. They were simply obeying a Roman census decree that required them to travel inside the empire they already belonged to. This was an internal journey within the same province, not an international border-crossing or asylum-seeking flight comparable to modern refugees entering the United States.

Then after Jesus was born and Herod ordered the massacre of all boys under 2 in Bethlehem, the family — acting on an explicit divine command from God — fled to Egypt, which was also a Roman province at the time.

Mary and Joseph’s travels were never “a breaking of the law,” says Allie.

She reads from Matthew 2:13-15: “Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child and destroy him.’ And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.”’

It’s a “completely different scenario” than progressive “Christians” would like us to believe. Jesus’ family’s flight to Egypt was prophecy fulfillment, obedience to the Lord, and deliverance from a murderous tyrant. And it all happened “within the same empire,” meaning no laws were broken, Allie counters.

The progressive “Christian” argument that anyone who doesn’t support refugees — which today means anyone “who wants to come here from a poorer country” — is somehow against Jesus because He was a refugee is just pure manipulation, she says. It employs “toxic empathy” to get well-intentioned Christians to denounce “enforcement of sovereignty and borders,” both of which are biblical.

“You understand that God created laws and governments and borders and sovereignty for our good, for our protection?” Allie asks.

But there’s another part of the Christmas story progressives conveniently forget: Jesus and His family went home. After Herod died, God told Joseph to “take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel” (Matthew 2:20), but because Herod’s son, another brutal tyrant, was on the throne, they returned to Nazareth, where it all began.

That’s the opposite story of the modern refugee experience, where people often never return home because they can’t or just won’t.

What progressive “Christians” are doing, Allie explains, is reading the Christmas story through a modern, politicized lens. Their version is not only historically inaccurate, it exchanges the “good news of great joy” for a manipulative political strategy that cons people into supporting open borders.

They’re “not getting more into the heart of Jesus and more into the reason for Christmas,” she says. “[They] are instead trying to extract meaning out of the Christmas story in order to accomplish [their] political ends, and in so doing, are very distracted from what it really means.”

To hear more of Allie’s argument, watch the episode above.

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