coming up on this episode of The Roundtable.

Part of the problem is that American Christianity is sometimes so used to prosperity

and to relative freedom from persecution.

I know that there are like counter examples to this, but in general, right, this is a country

that does not like round up Christians and execute them on mass.

And so Christians are not always acquainted

with just the like how seriously Jesus means that. Like he really is saying, you know,

this is just a broken system from the word go. And so if you discover that the people in charge

of the most powerful nation in the world are weaponizing the decline

of an old man with cancer to like cover up their own petty venality, you know, that shouldn't

be news to you.

That should just be sort of what you expect and then you move from there, you know? Hello and welcome once again to the Roundtable, your weekly publishers and editors podcast here at The American Mind.

I'm your host this week, Spencer Claven, associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books and big, beautiful editor of the American Mind.

I am joined this week by managing editor Mike Sabo and our

regular guest, Seth Barron. Ryan Williams is out today's traveling, so we're holding down

the fort. And I think we have to start with talking about Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis. On Sunday morning,

it was announced that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer that has metastasized to his

bones. So this is the sort of diagnosis that, I mean, it's a really bleak one. It has the phrase that we are all now learning,

many of us for the first time, a Gleason score of nine, which is this rating from one to 10 of

how likely you are to survive it. Ten is kind of the worst. So this is clearly very serious and

severe. It's stage four cancer. And I guess we should say at the outset

that this is the sort of thing that nobody in his right mind wants to celebrate or feel good

...