'Total destruction': Republican CRUSHES Democrat at Iowa gubernatorial debate



The gubernatorial debate in Davenport, Iowa, turned a corner when Republican Zach Lahn unleashed a torrent against State Auditor Rob Sand, his Democratic competitor.

The Republican went on the attack Tuesday night against criticism from Sand about whether Lahn meets the residency requirements to qualify for the race.

'I will spend whatever effort necessary to defend my children from people who'd like to exploit them like you. And my promise to the voters of Iowa is this: I will also defend your children from people who'd like to exploit them.'

Lahn excoriated Sand for making the residency issue the "central lie" of his gubernatorial campaign.

"He's been spreading this lie using money that his family has given him to do that all over the airwaves. People see it all the time," said Lahn.

"But here's the deal. Rob, you're now encountering somebody who's not going to intimidated by how much money your family has. It just won't happen. I can't be intimidated like that. The truth is I'm a sixth-generation Iowan. I live in Iowa today. I have lived in Iowa. Rob has been lying about this, and the issue is I have a blended family, and my kids split time. That's the issue," he added.

"But Rob has chose to make this issue the primary focus of his campaign," said Lahn.

"And I'll tell you, yes, I travel. I travel for business, I travel for family. You know who else travels? Rob. Rob traveled to Aspen, Colorado, to their $77 million mansion there. Rob travels to their multimillion-dollar home in northwest Iowa," he added.

"Rob travels around the state in a Ford F-150 — when he gets home, he gets in the $200,000 Mercedes G-Wagon. Rob is not telling the truth about who he is," said Lahn.

"And he's definitely not telling the truth about who I am. But I'm going to tell you this right now. This issue is about one thing. It's about my children. That's it. I have a blended family, and they split time. And I'm going to tell you right now, I am not going to be intimidated on this," he added.

"I will spend whatever effort necessary to defend my children from people who'd like to exploit them like you," Lahn concluded. "And my promise to the voters of Iowa is this: I will also defend your children from people who'd like to exploit them, like Rob Sand."

RELATED: Iowa Democratic Party corrects 'minor' mistake on partial vote tally — Bernie Sanders blames racism

Lahn's campaign posted the video of the beatdown during the debate, and he received great praise online.

"My phone was blowing up with excitement last night from conservatives all over Iowa ecstatic to see [Zach Lahn] humiliate Rob Sand in the Iowa Governor's debate. This might be the most decisive feedback I’ve ever received in an Iowa debate," BlazeTV host Steve Deace wrote on Facebook.

"I will run through a wall for @ZachLahn right freaking now," he added on the X platform.

"A total destruction of the lies coming from leftist Rob Sand. We can not allow Iowa to be turned over to these leftwing frauds!!!" responded Donald Trump Jr. on social media.

Sand also shared clips of the debate online Tuesday night. In one post, he wrote: "This race is between a change candidate, and a change of address candidate. 10 years of one-party control has given us a cancer crisis, a water quality crisis, and has left Iowa families strapped to afford gas & groceries. It's time to rotate the crops here in Iowa."

The election will decide whether Democrats can pick up the governor's office in Iowa after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds retires.

Iowa Governor polls 2026: Sand vs. Lahn

Iowa Governor polls 2026: Sand vs. Lahn pollwatch.theblaze.com

Every public poll of the 2026 Iowa governor race, Rob Sand (D) vs. Zach Lahn (R), and the Blaze polling average. From Blaze News.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Charlie Kirk kept asking America to argue back



I knew Charlie Kirk. He was my friend, and that friendship changed my life. When he was assassinated on September 10, 2025, I did what you do when your own words fail. I went back to his.

“Charlie Kirk, in His Own Words” is the result. It gathers his social media posts, curated one by one from 2011 to the day he died, and weaves in never-before-seen photographs and testimonials from the people who loved him.

Charlie Kirk understood that when speech is controlled, power concentrates and people learn to keep their real thoughts to themselves.

I am not making a dollar from this book. All proceeds go to Carry the Torch, the nonprofit I founded in his honor. This book is a gift, my thank-you to a man who spent his life telling young people the truth.

The selections are Charlie unfiltered, saying exactly what he believed and inviting anyone who disagreed to come and say so to his face.

Freedom of speech and an invitation to debate

Free speech was one of Charlie’s clearest instincts in public life. He treated the First Amendment as a safeguard for ordinary people — especially those without power, status, or institutional cover.

He understood that when speech is protected, a country can argue, correct itself, and stay honest; when it is controlled, power concentrates and people learn to keep their real thoughts to themselves.

He also understood how censorship spreads: It rarely begins with the average person. It begins with a claimed emergency, a claimed harm, a claimed moral cause — and then the boundaries tighten.

Kirk liked the part of politics where you cannot hide — a microphone, a chair, a crowd, and a clock. Debate forced clarity: it made people define terms, defend claims, and sit with the consequences of their own logic.

Campus debates mattered to him for another reason too — universities were supposed to be places of open dialogue, and he watched that promise shrink under administrators who treated disagreement as harm. But when students still showed up, argued back, and kept listening, he saw proof that the story wasn’t finished.

His respect for debate was not limited to his own side. He wanted arguments in daylight. No censorship. No cowardice. No hiding.

The quotes that follow show what that commitment sounded like in Charlie’s own words — on free speech, censorship, disagreement, and the obligation to make your case rather than silence the other side.

RELATED: WaPo ordered to rehire anti-white radical fired over Charlie Kirk assassination comments

ISABEL INFANTES/AFP/Getty Images

Free speech as birthright

5 million followers! Thank you all.

And thank you @elonmusk for liberating this critical platform.

After spending three days in England, I truly mean this with renewed importance: May we always protect free speech as one of our most sacred American birthrights.

Government limited by rights

The First Amendment was written precisely to hamstring the government!!

They work for us. They serve us. We the People, the citizens, are the sovereign. Never forget that.

Chapter by chapter

Thank you, President Trump, for acknowledging the amazing work our @TPUSA team is doing on thousands and thousands of college and high school chapters. There is a whole new generation of free speech warriors rising up, with more every passing year.

Platform censorship

Twitter censored and banned the leader of the free world from its platform.

We should never forget just how wildly absurd that really is.

Questioning is essential

When you're not allowed to question something at the risk of being banned, censored, or “cancelled” — it’s not science, it’s propaganda.

A double standard

The Packers and Eagles are scheduled to play this Friday in Brazil, where X has just been banned in a sweeping crackdown on free speech.

So let me get this straight...

The MLB took away the All-Star game from Atlanta because Georgia passed voting integrity laws.

The NCAA boycotted North Carolina because it had a law to keep mentally ill men out of girls’ bathrooms.

Thirty years ago, the NFL took the Super Bowl away from Arizona because voters didn’t vote to make MLK Day a paid holiday.

Why is the NFL bringing its road show to Brazil while the country is at war against free speech?

Young voters moved

Our Prove Me Wrong campus debate clips were seen 2.1 billion times this semester on TikTok, IG, X and YouTube.

The vast majority of those were viewed by 18-29-year-olds, and the Kamala campaign never knew how to counter.

YOUNG PEOPLE SHOWED UP FOR TRUMP

Refused to debate

This election brought the realignment we didn't see coming. It was the Biden Basement Realignment.

Does it make sense now why Democrats hid in basements? Why they refused to debate?

Run on nothing, say nothing, debate nothing, just hide and harvest.

RELATED: Randi Weingarten fought Texas to let teachers celebrate Charlie Kirk's murder. It didn't go her way.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Nigeria’s future

Daniel Ogoloma (@Dcogoloma) was my debate partner at the Oxford Union, taking a stand against a large majority of the house as we took the negative position on the resolution "Trump Has Gone Too Far."

Offstage, we spoke about the future of Nigeria. He is a very talented young man and Nigeria will be lucky to have him.

Debate over censorship

Today I moderated a debate between Dave Smith and Josh Hammer on Israel. It was very fiery, fun, and mostly peaceful.

Debate is the way forward, not name-calling or censorship. At the end agreement was found between both Dave and Josh on many important things.

A chair caused ‘trauma’

The University of Arizona is offering "mental health services" because I sat in a chair and took questions for 2 hours yesterday on the campus quad.

College administrators are more worried about conservatives expressing their views on campus than they are [about] Hamas supporters who want to kill Jews.

America, circa 2023

Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from “Charlie Kirk, in His Own Words,” compiled by Christy Edwards (Post Hill Press). Reprinted by permission.

The 'Jubilee Face Off' that shocked everyone: Allie Beth Stuckey vs. ex-Christian



While BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey walked into "Jubilee’s Face Off" against Monte Mader, she was expecting a debate.

But what she got was a “monologue-off.”

She and Mader were each allowed to bring two claims. Her two claims were that Christians must oppose abortion and that Christians cannot affirm same-sex marriage.

Mader’s claims were that America is not and will never be a Christian nation and that the patriarchy, not feminism, is at odds with Christ’s ministry and teaching.

“So four total claims, and there are 16 minutes per claim that we get to go back and forth, and that is split into her eight minutes and my eight minutes,” Stuckey explains, noting that there were also no interruptions allowed in the debate.


“It was really more of a monologue-off. Like it was her monologue, then my monologue. It wasn’t really a back-and-forth,” she explains, noting that the way it was set up made it difficult to respond to any claims.

“They make too many claims in a matter of, say, five minutes that they’re talking. You’ve got to pick and choose what claims you are going to respond to. And never do you have the ability to stop and say, ‘Hang on a second ... you just said that, but earlier you said that,’” she says.

In this format, there is no way to “define your terms,” which Stuckey says is the “most important part of any debate.”

In one clip from the debate, her opponent claims that a baby in utero is “not a baby.”

“That’s not me being contrarian. That’s accuracy. Embryo up to the end of eight weeks and then we have a fetus. And I think it’s very important so that we’re actually getting to the facts of the matter,” Mader said.

“Do I have to put myself in harm’s way or risk death in order for this life to be viable? I think you have an absolutely solid argument after viability. But we know that that is not when the bulk of abortions happen,” she continued, adding that “late second and third trimester is almost exclusively for fatal fetal abnormalities, still births, partial miscarriages, and medical emergencies.”

“First of all, fetus is Latin for small child, and so we can get into the semantics of it. It’s all a human being. I mean, just because we call a child a toddler or we call a child a baby doesn’t mean that it’s not a child, doesn’t mean that it’s not a human,” Stuckey responded.

“Viability, extremely arbitrary standard for whether or not a person should be murdered. I mean, we’re not just talking about, OK, is it okay for the dentist to pull a tooth?” she added.

“So as you can see, there are a million things that I could have responded to even in that. I could have responded to the fact that she’s now saying, ‘I have a good argument after viability’ when earlier she said that ‘life doesn’t begin until first breath,’” Stuckey comments.

“I could have addressed this idea that late-term abortion, second and third trimester are only for all of these reasons like the health of the mother, cancer diagnosis. That’s not a reason to abort a child in the second or third trimester,” she continues.

“It’s really easy when someone is spouting a lot of information that might seem factual because they’re very confident to kind of follow them down that trail, but that’s called a red herring. That is making an argument that is actually totally unrelated and irrelevant to the logic and the substance of the main claim,” she adds.

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.

Hasan Piker is the anti-Charlie Kirk



I have watched more of Charlie Kirk since his death than I ever did while he was alive. I do not say that proudly.

While Kirk traveled from campus to campus inviting hostile students to challenge him, I was only vaguely aware of what he was building. In the months since his assassination, I have watched hours of those encounters and wished I had paid closer attention.

Charlie Kirk offered a vision of adulthood built upon duty, sacrifice, personal responsibility, and devotion to something worth defending. Hasan Piker offers a different vision.

As Hasan Piker’s influence has expanded across the American left, I have begun to see him as a kind of anti-Charlie Kirk.

That requires some explanation.

Piker publicly condemned Kirk’s assassination and called it horrific. Nor am I suggesting that Piker avoids debate. He and Kirk debated in 2018 and were scheduled to meet again at Dartmouth College on September 25, 2025.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated 15 days before that debate.

The difference between the two men lies less in whether they were willing to argue than in how they exercised influence, the lives they presented, and what their methods taught young people to do with disagreement.

Charlie Kirk’s signature gesture was to share the microphone.

Hasan Piker’s is to control it.

Kirk went where he was disliked. On campuses where much of the student body opposed nearly everything he believed, he invited students to tell him why he was wrong.

He could be abrasive, overly confident, and eager for the devastating clip. But he entered the arena and allowed his opponents to enter with him. They stood a few feet away and spoke in their own voices. Kirk had to listen, think, and respond in real time.

The person disagreeing with him remained visibly a person.

Piker has mastered the internet’s preferred form of political communication: the reaction. From his studio, he watches clips, interrupts them, mocks them, and turns opponents into material for an audience already disposed to applaud. He selects the clip, stops it when he wishes, interprets the opponent’s motives, and delivers the verdict.

RELATED: The internet makes monsters and saints before the body is cold

PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP/Getty Images

The opponent is present, but only as content.

Media does more than transmit ideas. It trains habits.

Kirk’s format taught his audience that an opponent should receive a microphone, finish a question, and expect an answer. Piker’s format more often teaches an audience to classify, ridicule, and dismiss.

Kirk tried to win converts. Piker identifies enemies.

There is another difference, and it has less to do with politics than with adulthood.

Piker is not publicly known to be married, and his private relationships are his business. It would be unfair to speculate about what we do not know. The relevant distinction is not his marital status but the vision of life he presents publicly.

Charlie Kirk made no mystery of his.

He spoke openly about his wife, Erika, his children, his Christian faith, and the joys and responsibilities of building a family. He did not merely tell young people how to vote. He urged them to marry, have children, accept responsibility, and build something durable.

Kirk offered a vision of adulthood built upon duty, sacrifice, personal responsibility, and devotion to something worth defending.

Piker offers a different vision. His public rhetoric is saturated with rage, profanity, grievance, and the promise that political power can remedy injustice, real or perceived. Speaking to the College Democrats this summer, he described himself as “an outsider currently pushing for an insurgency.” After condemning Democrats he considers collaborators, he declared, “We don’t need those Democrats anymore.”

Kirk called young people to govern themselves. Piker calls them to join a political insurgency against those he blames.

Rage, once summoned, does not always respect political boundaries.

Nearly a year after Kirk’s murder, Piker is alive, broadcasting, and shaping the politics of a generation. That is how a free country is supposed to work. Conservatives should criticize him, answer his arguments, and oppose the candidates he supports.

They must also defend his right to keep talking.

RELATED: The Democrat civil war is real — and it is happening in Wisconsin

Joshua Lott/Getty Images

The harder question is whether the political culture gathering around Piker would extend that protection to people such as Charlie Kirk.

A culture can make violence more plausible long before anyone commits it. It begins by stripping opponents of their individuality and treating their presence as a threat.

A person becomes a category. A category becomes an enemy. An enemy becomes an obstacle.

Eventually, someone decides the obstacle should be removed.

Charlie Kirk’s importance was not that he was always right. It was that he kept showing up where people believed he was wrong. He asked for the next question. He believed opponents could be confronted without being erased.

Then, he went home to the wife and children he loved.

Kirk and Piker were supposed to meet on a stage at Dartmouth. We will never know what Charlie would have said that night.

But as the anniversary of his murder approaches, we should remember what he had already said through the manner of his life: Bring your argument. Take the microphone. Prove me wrong. Then, go home and build something worth defending.

Just leave the rifle behind.

INSANE videos from unhinged Democratic debate to replace Graham Platner are going hilariously VIRAL



Democrats who are still hoping to win one of Maine's seats in the U.S. Senate after Graham Platner's unceremonious exit were likely disappointed by the Democratic debate Thursday.

The social media team for the Republican National Committee had a field day posting various clips from the debate that displayed the candidates' absurdity and/or extremism.

'They say we want to hurt people. I don't want to hurt anybody, I just want to use the bathroom.'

Transgender-identifying candidate Ashley Webb got the most attention with the bizarre statements he made from the stage. In one video, Webb tries to list his qualifications to serve in the Senate.

"I ran for office several times. Didn't win," Webb explained with a brief laugh, "but I did run. And then, I'm a songwriter, and then I write my own books."

Then Webb, who was wearing a dress, added: "I wouldn't lie to the people, and I wouldn't deceive the people, like we're being deceived right now ... like what's going on with ICE."

Webb went on to explain why he supported the rights of trans-identifying individuals to use any bathroom.

"And then with the trans community, we're being dehumanized," Webb said. "They say that we want to hurt people. I don't want to hurt anybody, I just want to use the bathroom. ... If they want me to use the men's room, I will, but I don't want to be assaulted."

Webb also supported expansion of gun restrictions nationally.

"I think a national red flag law would probably be more appropriate. If you're a danger to society, you shouldn't have a gun," he said in another video posted by the RNC.

Other candidates used the platform to bash the Democratic Party and to advocate abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

And many had warm thoughts about Platner, despite his embarrassing shortcomings.

"The single idea from Graham Platner that spoke most deeply to me is that he's right. The democracy that we thought we had has been deeply corrupted by those in power in Washington," said Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who failed miserably to unseat incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R) in 2014.

"We need someone who's gonna stand up for Mainers, and Graham Platner was right! The system's rigged!" said Dan Kleban, co-founder of Maine Beer Company.

The New York Post compiled a video of some of the cringiest moments from the debate.

RELATED: WATCH: Graham Platner's video denial of sexual assault sounds EERILY similar to that of Eric Swalwell

After the debate ended, a television commentator tried to gently acknowledge the lack of pizzazz from the candidates.

"When it comes to charisma, Platner had a lot of advantages. ... I don't think that any of those people that we saw just now have that card to play," Ron Schmidt said.

The winner of the Democratic scramble to replace Platner will go up against Collins in November.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Allie Beth Stuckey debates Latter-day Saints podcaster — and asks: Was Christ’s sacrifice not enough?



Today, Allie Beth Stuckey, BlazeTV host of “Relatable,” debated Jacob Hansen, a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints podcaster whose channel is dedicated to exploring various worldview apologetics and comparing them to the LDS perspective.

In this fascinating 90-minute conversation, Allie and Hansen dive into important topics that differentiate creedal Christianity from the LDS faith, including the founding of the LDS Church, the Trinity, salvation, and much more.

Allie and Hansen kicked off the debate by discussing the founding of the Mormon faith.

It began in 1830 in upstate New York when a young farm boy named Joseph Smith claimed that God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him and directed him through the angel Moroni to translate the book of Mormon from ancient golden tablets.

“They essentially told [Smith] that the original church of Jesus Christ was not in its fullness on the Earth,” Hansen summarizes.

“What was missing was the priesthood authority and keys that were given to Peter … to effectuate the ordinances of salvation as a means by which we make covenants with our Father in heaven, and so you don’t have the fullness of the church without the fullness of the priesthood that is necessary to govern that institution, and we believe that was what needed to be restored,” he elaborates.

Allie asks Hansen a tough follow-up question: Does the Mormon church consider her — a Baptist — an apostate who lacks the fullness of truth?

“We would believe that you are a full, sincere believer in Jesus Christ, and we believe that you can reach a potential of relationship with Jesus Christ through that sincere belief that you have,” Hansen answers.

But in LDS theology, the afterlife isn’t binary as it is in the creedal Christian perspective. Heaven and hell are on a spectrum.

“The way that our faith views things is that there are different levels of light that people are willing to accept, right?” Hansen explains. “And the fullness of the light is to come into a full covenant relationship with Jesus Christ through His church, through the ordinances that put you into a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ.”

In other words, someone like Allie, who has a deep and personal relationship with Christ but rejects the tenets of Mormonism that contradict creedal Christianity, can experience “great joy and happiness” in the afterlife but not to the same level as those in the LDS Church who have both a sincere faith in Jesus Christ and fully accept the Church’s restored priesthood authority.

But Allie sees a contradiction.

“At least semantically, you would say Jesus died for our sins and that his sacrifice on the cross paid for our sins so that we could be reconciled to God,” she says.

“But it sounds like you’re saying there’s something else too — that Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t quite enough, that you also need to enter into ordinances.”

Hansen addresses Allie’s point with the analogy of a group of teenagers who ignored their parents’ warnings and decided to drive their car around a cliff.

“The brakes all of a sudden go out, and our car is heading downhill towards the cliff. … There’s nothing we can do to save ourselves; we’re going to go off that cliff, and then Jesus shows up with a helicopter, and He reaches His hand out and He says, ‘Take my hand, and I’ll get you out of this mess,' right?" says Hansen.

He explains that the teenagers in the car are not automatically rescued just because Jesus showed up. They have to “choose Jesus Christ” in order to be saved.

But choosing Christ isn’t just saying yes to being rescued, Hansen argues.

“Our view is that we have to do something to reach up to take His hand,” he says, pointing to how the crowd Peter was preaching to at Pentecost had to repent and be baptized before they received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

“So our view is that our repenting, being baptized, which is where we make this covenant with Christ, opens us up to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands by those who have authority,” he tells Allie.

To hear her response and watch the rest of the debate, check out the episode 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.

Virginia Senator Says He Can Relate To Rural Americans Because He Watched ‘The Dukes Of Hazzard’

'I think I know a little bit about rural America.'

3 must-watch highlights from Allie Beth Stuckey’s David French debate



Yesterday, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey debated New York Times columnist David French, who has long identified as an evangelical Christian and a conservative.

Despite their shared theological and political identities, Stuckey and French clash on a number of issues, including transgender pronouns and gender ideology, abortion, and Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, among others.

In their 95-minute debate, the duo respectfully went head-to-head on topics that have drawn strong criticism of French from many on the conservative right.

Here are three highlights from the debate:

Talarico dispute

Allie brought up French’s recent article in which he praised Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico as a Christian who sets a positive example of the faith in politics compared to “MAGA Christianity.”

In contrast, Allie has sharply criticized Talarico’s progressive theological views, accusing him of twisting Scripture to support abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, and left-wing policies

But French doubled down: “I’m just really not willing to say James Talarico is not a Christian.”

He continued, “When I look at our political discourse around Christianity in this country and political Christianity, it’s so broken. ... We’re writing people out of Christianity based on policy positions.”

Allie pushed back, arguing that Talarico is pushing far more than policy positions.

“They’re not policy positions to say God is non-binary ... or to say our trans neighbors need abortion care too, or to say that, ‘I think all religions share the same central truth,’” she countered, insisting that these are primarily “theological” issues.

Given that Talarico refuses to “affirm Genesis 1,” Allie made it clear that it’s “going to be tough” to agree that he’s the Christian he identifies as.

The Harris vote

In another part of the debate, Allie brought up French’s 2024 endorsement of Kamala Harris.

“I don’t understand voting for someone like Kamala Harris,” she said, referencing the Biden DOJ’s removal of SNAP benefits for public schools that refused to allow biological males to use girls’ facilities or compete on girls’ teams.

She also pointed to Harris’ pledge to restore the Roe v. Wade framework and her opposition to bills banning late-term abortions.

“I agree with you on so many of these issues. ... I just don’t think I could ever vote for Kamala Harris,” she reiterated.

French countered by arguing that for him, the Russia-Ukraine War took precedence over gender and abortion issues.

“I would place a war in which a million people are being killed and injured, which could potentially lead to a World War III that we may not survive as a species ... way above things like pronouns,” he said.

But Allie pushed back on what she saw as “diminishment” of her original argument.

“You know I’m not just talking about pronouns,” she resisted.

“I’m talking about medical guidance for hospitals to chemically castrate kids. I’m talking about in Democrat states ... taking kids out of the custody of their parents because the parents won’t affirm this newfound gender of the child,” she continued.

Pronoun clash

Allie also called out what she perceived to be conflicting statements regarding French’s position on “pronoun politeness.”

Last year during a podcast, French referred to his male colleague (Brian Riedl) who identifies as a woman using female pronouns — an act many, including Allie, perceived as a contradiction to his 2018 article, in which he wrote, “The use of a pronoun isn’t a matter of mere manners. It’s a declaration of a fact. I won’t call Chelsea Manning ‘she’ for a very simple reason. He’s a man.”

“Is your stance one of pronoun politeness that you believe that a man who identifies as a woman should be referred to as ‘she/her’?” Allie inquired.

French claimed he “didn’t remember” using female pronouns to refer to Riedl and partially reaffirmed his 2018 statement.

After praising Riedl as a “brilliant analyst,” French stated, “I’m going to be kind to [trans people], but I also don’t want to say things that I don’t believe are true, and so the way I deal with that is, I use people’s names.”

He caveated, however, by declaring that he’s “definitely not going to go out of [his] way” to call trans-identifying people by the pronouns matching their biological sex.

Allie replied, “I don’t see it as unkind calling someone, whether it’s to their face or not to their face, the gender that God made them.”

But French dissented. “Oh, I think if somebody is dealing with gender dysphoria, ... I don’t see the value in me saying something to them that I know and they know is going to be hurtful to them.”

“It’s just normal, complete politeness and manners,” he continued.

“I’m just not going to go out of my way to say something that I know is going to be hurtful just because I can justify it as being true. All true words are not kind by virtue of just simply being true.”

Allie conceded, “I agree that you don’t have to be rude to someone and say, ‘That shirt looks bad on you.’”

“But when it comes to [gender], when we know it’s a lie that damages someone, that hurts them spiritually and physically and emotionally, hurts their family, I just can’t get on board with assenting to the idea that 2+2=5.”

Overall, the debate offered a revealing look at the growing divide within evangelical Christianity over truth, compassion, and cultural engagement. Watch the full hour-and-a-half exchange below.

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.

Allie Stuckey vs. David French on Pronouns, Kamala Harris, and Empathy | Ep 1334
play icon

Allie Stuckey vs. David French on Pronouns, Kamala Harris, and Empathy | Ep 1334

Republicans Debate The Way Democrats Want Them To

Should we use a scalpel to turn boys into girls? That's not a value judgment or a debate, because it's just a clinical decision to be made by trained experts.