2:16:13 and he hadn't built his own infrastructure. So he's still been big and done a lot of things, but kind of smartly receded behind the scenes. And I know some of the inside baseball still been doing a lot of important work, but now behind the scenes, he's actually a smart guy. He used to be a big, you know, one of the top guys that made your newspaper over in the UK. So that's where he cut his teeth. But here he is with us now. And, you know, for me, I didn't know if it was a gimmick or not a year ago when they said he wasn't, you know, homosexual anymore. I'm a heterosexual. They say don't say homosexual. It's all, you know, it's like, don't say Caucasian. Don't say scientific terms. But the point is, I don't judge anybody. But then now, going to dinner the other night with MTG and you and everything, you were always super articulate, but there is something different about you now. And you're like gone from
2:17:01 very articulate to ultra articulate, so you do seem kind of like you've been upgraded or something. And I'm not saying because you no longer like men. I'm saying something's definitely happened to you. So what went on? I'm happy to say that I've got an upgrade because I've scrubbed it out of my life. Look, nobody changes overnight from gay to straight, but I, look, I like to say I'm retired mostly to excuse my expanding waistline. But you know, with retirement comes a lot of calories. No, I mean, the real reason is that I have, I never wanted to be one of those people, and we both have those friends in common, who get cancelled and then do this kind of like endlessly pathetic, desperate sort of clinging on, you know, for years and years. Oh, cancellation's the best thing that ever happened to me. We all know it's not. We all know that you've moved into a little rented flat.
2:17:54 I didn't want to do that, I just thought I'm going to gracefully excuse myself from the house party where I was told I wasn't welcome and do something else for a bit. So I've been working a lot behind the scenes with various people. I just didn't want to spend four years whining about cancel culture and playing the victim. And so I thought I'd go and do other things. And I've been drawing a lot closer to God. And I have spent a lot of time as my new colleagues at Church Militant, which is a tremendous Catholic news operation in Detroit now, investing in my spiritual life. I have been spending since the sort of big cancellation and I mean look, you and I are two of the seven people who helped to put Trump in office, right? And we have both paid the price in various different ways. And I just decided that I would try to do the dignified thing and if, you know, it was going to be difficult to live in public because I hadn't built something like this yet. I hadn't been going for as long as you, you know, I hadn't built any of this yet.
2:18:50 that I was just going to do some other things. I found that during that time, with having a lot more time on my hands while I was styling myself as retired, I felt a call back to the religion of my youth. My first job in journalism ever was at the Catholic Herald in London. Maybe that was my second job. I felt a calling from the faith of my youth and one day I woke, hey look, You'll remember from 2015 me giving talks on college campuses saying the Catholic Church is right about everything. So my opinions haven't changed, but what the difference between between me now and five years ago, the thing that has changed is I'm trying now to no longer be a hypocrite. I'm trying now to actually live according to the values that I have always professed for others. And I just woke up one day and said, I can't have this in my life anymore. Well, you do seem, I would say, better looking, happier, even more articulate. I mean, no, seriously. That's going on the back of the next book. Thanks, Alex. No, but I mean, I'm serious. The times I was around you, you're a charming, nice person, smart. But
2:19:50 there's still like an unsettling feeling like you weren't happy so you weren't secure. I pick up a manly security now. I will tell you this people who are still in the conservative movement still doing the you know desperate scrambling for attention and money and all the rest of it lots of homosexuals unfortunately are in the populist nationalist conservative movement. Yeah I would say there's more homosexuals than the Republicans and Democrats at the top. I think so too. But more pedophiles than Democrats. I think that's right. I think that's right. And you know, right wing politics, no matter what the country has always had a gay problem. Always. I mean, you know, you look at the Tory party in Britain, there's a lot going on in there. There are still those people who are scrambling, some of whom I think I enabled by kind of, you know, reinventing the whole, you can be a gay right winger genre, which I regret and I will be atoning for for the rest of my life. You know, I know you have some troubles, Alex, but you don't wake up
2:20:43 in the middle of the night realizing you're responsible for Lady Marga and Rob Smith. I have to bear that cross. You know, so there are those homosexuals still scrambling for attention, scrambling for money, and I look at them and I see where I was and I am a greatly enhanced, I think, human being. All I know is what you just nailed of the whole gay genre wavelength, because I'm very empathic, I pick up on people's emotions. is an insecurity in trying to be part of a group. Kind of like gang members, whether they be white, black or Hispanic, go under a guy because they didn't have a dad. He might not be having sex with him, but he's having him commit crimes. They're looking for a father figure. And these seem like men that aren't able to find a father figure, they're out constantly looking for it. I know that's a cliche, but that's really what I think. You're so right about that. Do you remember the nickname I came up with for Trump?
2:21:36 Daddy, do you recall that? What else was I doing except looking for a father figure? And it's you know, you can't see it when you're there in it, but you see it in retrospect. I'm like yikes I see it now Men are supposed to become the father and so that's what I'm telling exactly want to arrest development I'm not hating anybody for what they do I'm just saying leave kids alone, but men you need to step into your offices men I mean and I think I feel like you're starting to do that. I I My way back into the Catholic Church, which is the brand of Christianity I've arrived at as the one true faith, was through St. Joseph, through a father figure, because it's something that I didn't have.
2:22:17 And, you know, who knows if I'm ever going to have a burning desire for a woman in my, you know, in my nether regions. We live in hope. I'm doing the conversion therapy. They say, well, I sure haven't. You're almost lucky you don't, man. I'm doing the conversion therapy. They say doesn't work. It does. You know, they told us they told the same lies about that in the 80s and 90s. They told about Trump and him and me. you know, half a decade ago. Of course it works. Of course it works. It's not your natural state. Man, hot women, it's like a helicopter you want to ride on. I mean, I'm a Christian. I'm not trying to put women down either, but I appreciate what the Lord made. I just like, you know, I need to behave myself. Who knows if I'll ever get there, but I will tell you this. When you, when I would now describe myself, I guess, as a celibate, a celibate, when you cut that chasing,
2:23:05 as you correctly intuited, because you're very good with human insight, which is one of your great gifts. When you cut out that chasing, that desperate scrambling, you know, that sort of, like you're clattering, trying to get out of a hole and you don't know what direction you're going in and you just want an arm to grab onto and you'll grab onto almost anything. When you cut that out of your life and just say, well, I'm just not gonna do that, the first six months are hell. After that, it's extraordinarily liberating. Like anybody who's come... Like anybody... Well, I think that for a heterosexual that's addicted to sex, and when I was younger, I certainly was, it was very liberating to stop doing that as well. Right. Because it becomes a scrambling. Like, you're at the bar, you're picking up this woman, you're doing this, and it's not fulfilling. It functions exactly as an addiction.