- Eric Metaxas joins us now.

He is the host of TheEric Metaxas Radio Show,

which is now going to air on TBN.

Eric, congratulations.

- Thank you, but how can aradio show air on a TV station?

I don't get it.

- How did you get to make that happen?

- It's kinda complicated.

Matt Crouch had the crazy idea.

I thought it was crazy,and then I realized no,

I'm crazy because he'sa genius, media genius.

They created a studio for me in New York.

When you see it, everybody gasps.

They created the most gorgeous TV studio.

- So a hard turn onto thepresident's immigration plan.

- Uh oh.

- Senator RichardBlumenthal made the point

that, if the plan was in place

when his grandfather was alive,

he grandfather wouldn't have been allowed

to come to the United States.

What do you make of the president's plan?

- First of all, I gottasay I think Blumenthal

is crazy to say such a thing,and you know what it is?

It's sad to me that we gotten to a point

where the Democrats areplaying hardball politics.

They're gonna say almost anything.

For Blumenthal to say that,it's utterly meaningless.

The fact is that we have a president

who finally has the guts and the courage

to see this situation as it is.

If we do not take a hardline on illegal immigration,

on building a wall, andhaving an actual border,

this didn't matter 40 years ago.

It matters today, and so Iam 1000% behind his plan.

And probably the Democratsare gonna continue

to say things like this.

We have a president who's a real leader,

and he can ignore thosekinds of "nattering nabobs

"of negativism," to quoteSpiro Agnew and William Safire,

and he's gonna do the job theAmerican people elected him

to do.

- Eric, on the issue of abortion,

even among evangelicals,there's not consistent consensus

on when there should be exceptionsor even when life begins.

What do you think?

What's your take?

- Well, I think, first of all,

the great thing about the Alabama law

is it has forced a conversation

in the country that weshould've had in 1973.

The Supreme Court, andthey did the same thing

with same-sex marriage,they very ham-handedly

and prematurely

made a law that oughtto have been discussed

so that the states could decide it.

That's what the founderssaid ought to happen.

Government ought to beas local as possible

and that you only resortto the federal level,

you only resort to thejudiciary and the Constitution

in the most extreme circumstances.

This is something thatwe ought to discuss.

Every state ought to beable to make its own laws.

Now that doesn't mean thatI don't believe life begins

at conception.

I do, but the point isthat we have a government

that says we are supposedto talk about things

on the state level.

And so when you have people, I guess,

not really allowing thatconversation to happen,

you have to do radical things.

What they did in Alabama is radical.

I agree with Pat Robertsonthat perhaps saying 99 years

to life for doctors performing abortions

might be somewhat draconian,

but the point is nobody'sright, nobody's wrong.

We need to have the conversation,

and that doesn't happen overnight.

What happened in 1973 happened overnight.

Roe V Wade is bad law,it's an abomination.

We need to have the conversation,

and the people of America need to think

about what happens during an abortion.

We need to discuss it.

It is gruesome.

We need to face the gruesomeness of it.

Once we face the reality of abortion,

which we have not donebecause of Roe V Wade,

once we face that, then we can have

the ability to make laws thataffect the people's will.

We haven't done that.

- Eric, we're tight on time,

but I wanna sneak this question in.

The other day, I was on aflight talking to a woman

about faith, and she couldn'tseem to bifurcate faith

over being identified by her politics.

More and more, it seemsChristians are identified

by how they vote and who they vote for.

Where do evangelicals draw theline before the credibility

of our witnesses undermined by politics?

- I don't think we canworry about that too much.

In other words, I'm sorry, what I'm saying

is I think we sometimesworry about that too much.

I wrote a biography ofWilliam Wilberforce,

the great man whoabolished the slave trade,

and the British Empire ledthat battle politically.

People told him to keephis faith out of politics.

How do you keep your faith out of politics

when people tell youthe slave trade is okay?

It's the law of the land, shut up.

At that point, you have to say my faith

in the God of the Bibledemands that I get political

because God demands that I care

about those Africanswho are being enslaved.

Similarly today, if I careabout my fellow Americans

or, for that case, in that case,everybody around the world,

I have to

sometimes express my faith politically.

And I really think evangelicalsoften worry too much

about their quote unquote "witness,"

and the fact of the matteris if we don't stand up

for the least of these,I wonder what gospel

is it that you're preaching?

So I really think we're at a time

when it's a much longer conversation.

But many evangelicals are all fussy

about oh, I don't want to be identified

with this or that, andI think, you know what,

you should worry about that less

and worry about theunborn and justice more.

And I'll leave it there.

- I gather it's lively conversations

like this is why youhave a TV show coming on.

(Jenna laughs)Thank you.

- Eric, thank you.