6.3.26 Assessing Trump’s two presidencies, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s political leverage, and digitizing Greek manuscripts

The guest argues that Donald Trump's most consequential achievement wasn't any specific policy, but winning twice—interrupting what he calls a 'secular progressive juggernaut' that had been reshaping American courts, culture, and institutions under Obama and potentially Hillary Clinton. This victory, he says, protected conservative values and institutions, especially after Obergefell, by halting a decades-long cultural shift. Yet Trump's legacy is deeply conflicted: while his border enforcement was a rare policy win due to presidential authority, his foreign policy approach—especially toward Iran—reveals a blind spot for non-rational actors like fundamentalist regimes. Meanwhile, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney has gained a governing majority through unexpected party defections, raising questions about political sincerity and national direction. Carney now faces pressure to halt Canada's planned expansion of assisted suicide, a move critics say would protect the vulnerable. In a separate segment, a team of scholars is digitizing Greek New Testament manuscripts to preserve the Bible's textual integrity, emphasizing that no original copies survive, but the New Testament has more manuscript evidence than any other ancient text. Their work reveals that scribes made errors—like mistaking a sigma for an epsilon—but these don't alter core Christian doctrines.