Steve Deace goes NUCLEAR on Chick-fil-A CEO for 'pathetic' NBC interview over company’s stance on LGBTQ+ rights



On October 14, Chick-fil-A CEO Andrew Cathy sat down for an interview on NBC’s "Today" show with Craig Melvin.

Melvin pressed Cathy on the company’s past stance regarding LGBTQ issues. In 2012, Dan Cathy, Andrew’s father and former CEO, publicly supported the biblical definition of marriage, which triggered protests, boycotts, and controversy.

The company also faced criticism over past donations from its foundation to Christian groups, such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Salvation Army, that some criticized as opposing LGBTQ rights. In 2019, Chick-fil-A redirected its charitable giving toward education, homelessness, and hunger.

When Melvin asked what Cathy would say to people who protested or boycotted because they felt Chick-fil-A didn’t “stand with the LGBTQ+ community,” Cathy said, “Well, for anybody that hadn't tried us, we'd love for you to come try and have our great-tasting food and the hospitality that we're known for. I think that everybody that will be willing to walk in the door, they'll see that they're welcome to come eat with us.”

When Melvin followed up by insinuating that Cathy “[didn’t] want to talk about that chapter in Chick-fil-A's history,” Cathy replied that the company was “focused on serving everybody that come in and eat with us.”

Melvin then asked for “the company's official position on equal rights.”

“We're focused on hospitality, serving great-tasting food and great service,” Cathy replied.

LGBTQ advocates, progressive outlets, and even some celebrities criticized Cathy for what they interpreted as dodging the questions to avoid explicitly supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

BlazeTV host Steve Deace has the same complaint but for the opposite reason. On this episode of the “Steve Deace show,” he rips into Cathy for selling out to the secular culture, despite the company’s increasing profitability.

“Last year, Chick-fil-A made almost $24 billion in revenue … up 5% from their revenue in 2024,” he says.

He shares these numbers to prove that Cathy’s evasive answer was not financially motivated.

“Whatever PR firm that convinced him that this was the right way, can that be publicized so I can make sure that everybody I know in the Christian conservative space or any media space at all never hires them ever again?” says Deace.

The entire interview, he argues, “accomplished nothing [and] was unnecessary.”

“Nobody asked for this. There was no moment that required it. There was no tension whatsoever,” he says.

Deace believes that Cathy agreed to this seemingly random interview with NBC because “a PR firm told him to do [it].”

“What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul in the entire process?” he asks. “Well, apparently $24 billion was worth baring your soul and having it stomped on and humiliated and put through a Soviet struggle session on the "Today" show.”

“That might be the most pathetic video I've seen in the year of our Lord 2026 right there. And I'm offended at it. I’m angry at it.”

Cathy’s cowardice, he argues, indicates that he’s “going to the spirit of the age for repentance and absolution.”

“You're making $24 billion a year and you're actually a business who's increased in value while many other people can't afford much else, so you called up Devil HQ and said, ‘Hey, do you mind if we come in and take a lashing?’” Deace rails.

“If you're going to do that, then open up on Sundays. Your Sunday thing's not legit then. It's a crock. It's performance. It's virtue-signaling.”

To hear more of Deace’s scathing commentary, watch the episode above.

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Steve Deace questions Talarico’s mysterious ‘flu’ absence: ‘Something smells rotten’



Where was James Talarico — and why isn’t his campaign offering a clearer explanation?

The Texas Democrat’s two-week absence has been explained away as “the flu,” which has set off alarm bells for BlazeTV host Steve Deace, co-host Todd Erzen, and executive producer Aaron McIntire.

“This is so obviously disqualifying, no matter what the truth is,” Erzen says.

“If Talarico somehow wins in Texas, I have to reevaluate a lot,” he adds.

“I haven’t even considered the broader statement angle about what it means for the state of Texas,” Deace agrees. “But that is an excellent point, and I think you’re exactly right. It’s an absolute watershed moment for the state of Texas, for sure.”


“There’s no way that a simple flu knocks somebody out. And the campaign has nothing to say,” he continues.

“Something smells rotten in the state of Denmark here, gentleman,” he adds.

Erzen points out that if it really was “a flu,” the Democrats wouldn’t be letting it go to waste. Instead, they “would be using it to max effect.”

“Yeah, get a flu vaccine and everything else,” Deace agrees.

But even the flu excuse, McIntire says, was “calculated.”

“Everything is calculated. And when they allow this to go on, to enter the bloodstream, to enter the public consciousness, and they’re just fine with people just throwing this out there and all their explanation is, ‘Oh, it was a flu,’” he says.

“That’s calculated. Which means whatever it actually was ... assuming it’s not the flu, which that would be incredible because Todd is absolutely right there. If it was a severe flu where he was really on death’s door, they would be beating the drum for vaccination. They would be pounding some sort of issue, some sort of wedge they could make,” he continues.

“But they’re not doing that. So, this is calculated one way or another. And the silence is calculated as well,” he says, “which makes you wonder what indeed actually happened here.”

Deace agrees, adding, “Any time a campaign or a politician is fine with the narrative that they’re completely incompetent ... it means that what’s true is worse.”

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Is the AI boom really about intelligence — or building a surveillance state?



Artificial intelligence has already transformed the way Americans work and research.

But BlazeTV host Daniel Horowitz believes the public is being sold an inflated vision of artificial general intelligence — and pouring staggering resources into the wrong model to achieve it.

“I actually like AI,” Horowitz tells BlazeTV host Steve Deace. “And I believe for narrow tasks, edge computing, localized sovereign data ... there’s a lot of good stuff being done.”

“My concern is, we’re misallocating resources away from the most useful, least painful, least consuming analogues of AI and using an all-of-government approach towards this AGI, which in my view is the least useful ... most expensive, really unfeasible the way they’re trying to do it, and also problematic,” he explains.

“For the average person out there, like me, that only knows about AI doing that or asking ChatGPT questions, help them understand the distinction that you just drew in ways that would relate to their understanding of the technology,” Deace says.


“If you want an ‘ask me anything,’ what they did was get people addicted to it, and then they’re like, ‘OK, it doesn’t cost anything,’” Horowitz explains.

“But then it does. Actually, we’re going to have to build five hyperscales in every county, and this much power, and yada yada, and make everything else more expensive,” he says.

“So, now that’s an ROI thing,” he continues. “It’s not that there is no use to artificial general intelligence, right — this open-ended generative AI. It’s not that there’s no use to it. It’s that there is a question of an ROI in the way they’re going about doing it.”

“Is it accurate to say that you believe, therefore, we’re overselling this technology to the American people based on what you just told us?” Deace asks.

“We’re overselling the need and utility of centralized cloud hyperscale model for AI. In terms of deploying it in low latency, narrow at the edge, there's things like the Iron Dome in Israel. You know, Israel has no hyperscale,” Horowitz replies.

“My core thesis is what they’re selling you on — again, and people could disagree with me, but my contention is that, just the opposite. Not only am I not opposed to it, I believe they are doing what government does in health care and many other sectors,” he continues.

“They’re misallocating resources towards a bubble and to Oracle’s grift of their 1970s technology of a centralized cloud in an impossible way that would perpetually have to scale in a way that either becomes obsolete or unfeasible,” he adds.

Horowitz goes on to explain that one of the only reasons this is being done is “a surveillance state.”

“Remember, China doesn’t have nearly as many of these because they built their surveillance state — in large part from these same companies, by the way — before AI. So, they already have it. They don’t need it,” he says.

And what Horowitz finds extremely concerning is that auto companies have just “won the rights to your texts when they get cycled through the car player.”

“They got all of it, and they won in court that they’re able to keep it,” he says.

“Your car, your home, your appliances. They would ideally want every step you make, every breath you take,” he adds.

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A GOP Survival Plan the Markets May Be Missing
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A GOP Survival Plan the Markets May Be Missing

Steve Deace: Those who control the storytelling control the culture



What can America's most successful movies tell us about America itself?

Steve Deace, Todd Erzen, and Aaron McIntire set out to answer that question by examining the 25 highest-grossing films in U.S. history — when adjusted for inflation of course.

From "Gone with the Wind," "The Ten Commandments," and "The Sound of Music" to "Star Wars," "Titanic," and today's blockbuster franchises, the list offers a window into the stories that once united the culture.

"The Graduate" made the end of the list, which Deace calls “the only intentionally subversive film on this list.”

Erzen notes that it’s a “really well-crafted” film about “people living hollow, empty lives.”


“They’re just, you know, going in any direction they can think of to find some level of meaning and purpose. That’s a conversation worth having,” he says.

“That is the conversation that’s being buried by most people. Like there’s a lot of young white men who are struggling for meaning and purpose, and they’re choosing video games over a lot of other things,” he continues.

“Today,” he adds, “it’s just about victim culture and whiny grievances and DEI, and you know, who wants to be a part of that?”

McIntire points out that there’s “a gap there from 1999 to ... 2014, 2015.”

“That was the era of 'Harry Potter,' 'Lord of the Rings,' 'Avatar.' ... Those were, I thought, cultural icons. They are cultural icons,” he says.

“And then on top of that, once you get past that 14-, 15-year gap, the movies that are on this list, the entries that are on this list, what do they have in common?” he asks, answering himself, “They’re franchises.”

“So nothing original,” Deace comments. “Everything’s a derivative.”

“That’s not a good trend line in my estimation, but it kind of fits hand in glove with not only the big picture culturally that we’re seeing, but particularly in Hollywood,” McIntire adds.

However, while the left has run Hollywood for quite some time, Deace points out that the right is gaining ground in this part of the culture war.

“To our credit, if you look at films like 'Young Washington,' you’re seeing us, you know, beginning to seize the opportunity,” he explains. “It does show right now, the opportunity that exists to gain a serious beachhead within the most powerful pop culture medium in the history of this entire planet.”

And this is important, he explains, because “who controls a culture's stories and myths controls a culture every single time.”

“If we gain a serious beachhead in the storytelling realm, folks, then that’s worth five to ten Senate seats,” he adds.

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Make Democrats toxic again — or lose: ‘The biggest strength we have is who we’re running against’



As voting day approaches quickly, BlazeTV host Steve Deace believes Republicans are making a critical mistake: focusing too much on what they're for and not enough on who they're running against.

Laying out what he calls a political survival strategy, Deace urges GOP candidates at every level to embrace far more aggressive campaign messaging.

“The biggest strength we have is who we’re running against,” Deace explains, noting that this “is what the strategic plan should be.”

“I’m looking at what’s been used against me in the past and done so successfully and can I emulate it in a way that doesn’t violate my own worldview?” he says, “And in this case, the answer is yes. We’re not going to bear false witness.”


“We don’t have to, like they do calling us Nazis, but we’re just going to say they’re anti-American communists. We’re going to try to drive turnout down,” he adds.

While he admits that may sound “cynical,” he doesn’t care.

“I like my way of winning better than your way of losing,” he says.

“Drive down turnout. This is what they did in 2022. Drive down normie turnout because ... basically every normie voter is going to just assume they’re voting against us. Our margins with normies are like minus 30 or something,” he continues.

Deace says that the Republican Party needs to assume that these “normies” will be “voting against us.”

“Drive down as much of that normie vote as you can,” he explains. “Make the environment as negative and toxic as you can.”

This strategy is one of survival, and Deace concludes it with three parts: “Drive down normie turnout, heighten the negative messaging on who our opponents really are, and try to heal the fractures within our coalition as best we can by what people are actually united against, rather than trying to message to them things they’re never going to be united for.”

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A warning for Republicans: Stop telling struggling Americans the economy is fine



Americans may be hearing positive economic talking points from politicians, but Jesse Kelly tells BlazeTV host Steve Deace many families are living a very different reality.

“There are little things that matter and then there are big things that really matter,” Kelly says. “And here’s the truth. Because of the COVID lockdown stuff and printing $7 trillion ... people have lost 30% to 50% of their income, basically their earning power, because the dollar’s gone down in just the last five years.”

“And so now ... there is this tidal wave of unhappiness across the country as we’ve had this tiny window of a massive drop in people’s standard of living,” he explains.

“And I really don’t think either Republicans or Democrats truly understand that that is the sentiment across the board of the United States of America. People are unhappy. I can’t afford anything anymore,” he adds.


And since Donald Trump is the man in charge, he’s the one who is “going to get white hot hate.”

“People remember what it was like to afford things before he got there,” Kelly says, noting that previously, the hate “fell on Joe Biden and the Democrat Party after they stole an election and installed that cadaver for four years.”

And despite the economic pain so many Americans are in, Trump continues to claim that the economy is doing great.

“What happens is you’ve taken somebody at their lowest possible moment, and you’ve kicked dirt in their face when you do that,” Kelly says. “And you never want to do that as a politician. You’ve taken somebody whose dog just died, and you walk up to him and say, ‘I bet you didn’t walk enough. That’s probably why your dog just died.’”

Now, Trump is giving speeches at rallies and telling Americans the price of gas is “worth it because of Iran.”

“Gas prices are through the roof. Diesel $6.50 a gallon. Prices have not come down. Interest rates are going up. The anger’s there, if not even worse. And you have people in the Trump administration saying, ‘If you can’t afford beef, eat chicken.’

“That messaging is freaking awful,” Kelly says.

“And that better change now,” he warns, “considering we’re like five weeks before the election. We have five weeks to get that reversed. If they want to know what to do, look at JD Vance. He's the one who’s out there doing it right.”

“‘I know you’re hurting. I’m sorry you’re hurting. We’re fighting for you,’” he mimics.

“That’s how you message when the public is angry,” he adds.

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Steve Deace: The TRUTH about why men have become so passive



Men have always found reasons to avoid difficult fights — but today this has gotten worse, and it’s not exactly their fault.

The biggest problem with men these days, Todd Erzen of the “Steve Deace Show” explains, is that “they keep finding reasons not to fight in a culture where there are fights everywhere.”

“You’re not supposed to just randomly do it because it’s your style, your thing. You’re supposed to do it because the Lord identifies good and evil, and you are a servant of the good,” he continues.

“You must, as a man, vanquish evil,” he adds.


However, BlazeTV host Steve Deace points out that even in Genesis 3, “There’s not a whole bunch of guys preemptively looking to take on evil.”

“The opposite is often true. We wait until we’re cornered. We wait until we’ve suffered enough,” he explains.

“So that’s not new. That’s not unique,” he adds.

And even the founding fathers were not prepared to attack the “first time their God-given rights were violated.”

“They spent 10 years thinking about it, talking about it, negotiating it. Then when the redcoats start putting armed soldiers in their homes and calling it the ‘Quartering Act,’ they’re like, ‘You know, guys, we might be at a point of no return here,’” Deace says.

“I promise you, we’re not the first generation of men late to the party. That’s been every generation of men. Every single one,” he continues.

“We’re sinners,” he adds.

What is new, however, Deace explains, are the phones that never leave our hands.

“It’s these phones. We have never had at our instant disposal more opportunities to dissuade us from our priorities than the current technology of this world provides,” he says, adding, “Now that is what is new.”

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JD Vance to Steve Deace: AI must serve people — not the other way around



As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms the economy, Americans are asking whether the technology is moving faster than the public can keep up — and BlazeTV host Steve Deace wants their questions answered.

So Vice President JD Vance is doing just that.

“A lot of our audiences around the country, Mr. Vice President, kind of feel like this is kind of being thrust on them, and they haven’t had time to breathe,” Deace tells Vance, noting that in contrast, even the internet “slowly rolled out phase by phase.”

“It didn’t in just 10 minutes just take everything over,” he continues. “And I think a lot of people feel like AI is. Like nobody wants China to dictate this technology to us. At the same time, you know, people do care about land use and making sure they’re heard, and are we building these things for jobs that will actually go to Americans?”


“Can you give us some clarity on this at all?” Deace asks.

“So first on the data center thing, my view is that the political backlash to the data center thing is fundamentally about local control, which obviously we love. As the president of the United States has said, these are important engines of the economy, but they have to be done in the right way,” Vance says.

“And I think the most important way to ensure that they’re done in the right way is for people to follow the Trump administration’s taxpayer protection pledge,” he explains, pointing out that in communities where data centers are building their own power sources, there’s less political backlash.

“When you, on the other hand, have a data center that’s tapping into the pre-existing grid where people see their power bills go through the roof, that’s a real problem,” Vance says. “I don’t want a data center built if it means that local residents are going to have to pay higher electricity costs.”

As for AI in general, Vance explains that the principle he applies is that “technology exists to serve the human person and the human person of course exists ultimately to have a relationship with their creator.”

“I don’t think that we can see technology as the end, and I think that we have to make these technology tools subservient to human operators,” he says.

“And so where I get a little worried is when I see the technology companies come out and say, ‘We’ve lost control. We can no longer control these tools.’ And that brings me to my final point, which is the solution to these problems is to hold the tech companies accountable,” he continues.

“Not to give them regulatory protection and allow regulatory capture,” he adds.

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Exclusive: Hidden-camera footage captures Talarico’s pastor saying evangelical Christians are 'not smart' and comparing Trump to Hitler



Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D) has made no secret of the impact that Jim Rigby, the pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, has had on his thinking.

Talarico, the Texas Democrat now battling state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) for a seat in the U.S. Senate, told the New York Times, for instance, that Rigby was one of “the biggest influences on [him] as a Christian, as a human being.”

'This false shepherd managed to deny virtually every key doctrine of Christianity in less than two minutes.'

“He is my pastor in every sense of the word,” added Talarico, a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has fought to keep the Bible out of school; attempted to use Scripture to justify abortion; taken money from an associate of dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein; concern-mongered about traditional Christian views; and voted against sparing kids from sex-rejection mutilations.

Hidden-camera footage exclusively obtained by Blaze News appears to show that the pastor who shaped Talarico’s worldview doesn’t think too highly of evangelical Christians.

In a video dated Aug. 30, Rigby was asked by a person off-camera, “What’s wrong with evangelical Christians? Like, how do they read what they read, they claim what they claim?”

RELATED: Talarico's pivot from 'God is nonbinary' is all just an act, admits minister at his church

The woke pastor says in response, according to the video, “My guess is that they’re people who are just not that smart in, like, abstract thinking, which is where a lot of the liberal stuff and the principles of human rights and all that stuff comes up — it’s like they just, it doesn’t show up on their radar.”

“They panic when that stuff is laid out in front of them,” Rigby stated further, according to the video. “They know there’s something they’re not seeing. It’s like they have black and white vision and somebody’s showing them [a] color photograph or something like that.”

Rigby appears to believe that President Donald Trump and even Adolf Hitler have exploited evangelicals and their allegedly simple way of thinking for political gain, claiming in the video that "what Hitler did and what Trump is doing is play off of that."

The purported Christian pastor apparently complained further about evangelicals’ beliefs in the supernatural, specifically in hell, angels, and demons, suggesting that such beliefs are irrational.

“The church is a huge part of the problem — teaching people from the cradle that things are true because you believe them,” Rigby says, according to the video.

“A belief in hell shuts everything down, because when you think that you could be tortured for all eternity, and you believe in demons and angels and stuff like this, you can’t stay rational for long.”

Rigby adds, according to the video, “If you think that supernatural beings are affecting things, good logic wouldn’t make any sense.”

According to the most recent Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study, 27% of adults in Texas identify as evangelical Protestants.

Evangelicals are, however, hardly the only Christians who believe in the existence of hell, angels, and demons.

A 2021 Pew survey found that 62% of all American adults and 69% of all American Christians believe in hell. A 2023 Gallup survey found that 69% of Americans believe in angels and 58% believe in the devil.

“It's not surprising an open and avowed heretic like James Talarico goes to a church led by fellow heretics,” BlazeTV host Steve Deace said in a statement to Blaze News, after reviewing the footage. “What is surprising, though, is how this false shepherd managed to deny virtually every key doctrine of Christianity in less than two minutes.”

“You have to be really committed to doctrines of demons and detesting Christ and His Word to display that level of deception masquerading as conviction,” added Deace.

RELATED: UNDERCOVER VIDEO: 'Shady as f**k' scheme paid people to vote for Talarico in 'roundabout way,' Soros PAC leader caught admitting

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Rigby has issued plenty of other remarks that Talarico might want to distance himself from in the final months of his campaign. The pastor, who expressed hope that Talarico would follow in his footsteps at St. Andrew’s, has, for instance, made headlines for calling for a “true jihad” at a pro-Palestine rally; rejected belief in a literal resurrection; repeatedly cast doubt on whether Christ rose from the dead; emphasized that he doesn’t “believe Christianity is the only way, or even the best way for many people”; and expressed discomfort with the use of the word “God.”

Rigby and the Talarico campaign did not respond to requests for comment from Blaze News.

While supportive of Talarico, his message, and his candidacy, Rigby noted earlier this year, “I do not speak for him and he owes no one an explanation for things I have said.”

Despite noting that they do not speak with one voice, Rigby’s influence on Talarico is unmistakable — particularly in his eagerness to criticize Christians and mainstream Christianity.

Talarico noted, for example, in a March 2021 episode of the “Activist Theology” podcast that despite always getting "drawn back" in, “I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity.”

Paxton has stressed that Talarico "is a threat to our values, our way of life, and the future of Texas."

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