Shadowing Practice: Is Trump Using Christianity For His Own Benefit? - Rhett McLaughlin - Learn English Speaking with Video
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some of these ideas are really beautiful, you know, like from a moral standpoint, like the things that Jesus asked you to do,
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being selfless, being service oriented, you know, caring about the poor and the needy, not just being about the,
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your own accumulation of your possessions, recognizing the emptiness in the accumulation of possessions.
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Like these are beautiful ideas that I subscribe to today.
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So I think that, I think part of my interest is this, like, I want to, I want to
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I want to rescue Jesus from the hands of the people are using him for evil.
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Yeah, because they're pretty out of line.
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I mean, Jesus says this, doesn't he?
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You know, there'll be people who come to me saying, Lord, Lord, and I'll say, depart from me, I never knew you.
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And there is an idea that the path is narrow, and it does just seem at times flatly contradictory,
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the attitudes that people have.
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and yet i don't know if it's like a biblical literacy thing
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or or what but when you see like prosperity preachers for example flying around in private jets
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and things and you think i just i don't know how you can read the gospels
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and not have this yeah just jump off the page at
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you have you seen the clip of donald trump asked what his favorite bible verse is i think this is
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i'd rather not get into this it's sort of very personal and they're like really anything jump bad?
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She's like, no, I think it's, I think it's too personal.
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And they say, are you more of a Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy?
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And he goes, I would say probably equal.
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Yeah.
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And by the way, I think by the next time he's asked, you know, what your favorite Bible verse is, he's like, oh, it's, you know, second Corinthians one.
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Right.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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Well, this is the interesting thing about that.
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Uh, I, I, cause I, I want to give like,
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Like, first of all, there are many Christians who are just like buying this idea that like he's actually a Christian, that Trump's actually a Christian, right?
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That is happening.
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But I will give, there's a lot of Christians, I'll give them credit.
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They don't for a second.
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They don't for a second buy that he's a Christian.
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They know that he's using the Christians for his ends.
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but and i know i know many people like this
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but they believe that the things
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that he you know he's a crude tool yes to basically accomplish things
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that are more consistent with the christian worldview yes and
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so it's a little more nuanced and so i understand
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that that's what they think but but then i'm like yeah
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but okay let's talk about let's talk about the things that
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that platform wants to establish that are still very inconsistent with the things, the bulk of the things that Jesus talked about.
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Then one wonders how much that is Christian nationalism as a whole, how much of it is really Christian outside of just being nominally Christian in the way that Trump might be nominally Christian.
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I mean, the one thing that gives me pause for thought is like when he was nearly assassinated,
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he did sort of quite convincingly portray a feeling of spiritual awakening after that.
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I mean, he put it in quite uncomfortable terms about like, well, if you look at that, if you look at how close it was, I saw the graphic of how it went just past my head.
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If you look at that and you're an atheist, you got to start rethinking it.
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And there is this forgetting of Corey Comporatore, who's the firefighter that the bullet eventually went into and killed.
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But I did think if you were nearly assassinated, especially if you've already got this sort of egomania around you, President of the United States type thing,
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to have your head turned at the right moment and avoid assassination,
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I do wonder if maybe that did make him at the very least seriously consider the possibility of divine watch.
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But I don't know even then although i want to grant him
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that that possible space for spiritual growth i don't know if
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that develops into like you know it's easier for a rich man to yeah yeah all of
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that kind of stuff but and
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so yeah it's like a it's a crude a crude tool is as you put it
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and if you just look at the way
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that i one does wonder i always thought of doing like
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skits where you sort of put jesus in the modern day
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and see how he would actually react like the sort of
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this strange juxtaposition of the Christian attitude you're supposed to have and what Jesus was actually all about.
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Because some of his teachings I do think are difficult and maybe inapplicable.
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I had this idea of him walking through central London or something and somebody comes up to him and says, sorry, have you got any change?
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And the disciples would go, sorry, mate, we haven't got any change.
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And he goes, brethren, when one is in need, if you do this to the least of these, you do it to me.
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So it's like, Matthew, grab the person.
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anyway as i was saying and then another person comes up have you got any change mate
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and they're like oh we just go and he's like because one person is in need?
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Because you've helped one?
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Does that lessen the need to help another?
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No, no. Peter, grab your tunic.
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We're going to give it to him.
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And then people just keep sort of coming up.
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And at the end, someone comes up.
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You got any change?
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And Jesus is like, sorry, mate, I haven't got any change.
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Because I do wonder how directly applicable some of these teachings are to the modern world.
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And so it's kind of easy to say, you know, Christian nationalism isn't Christian.
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Jesus would never abide by Trump.
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But it's difficult to imagine what Jesus would say about the presidency of a transcontinental republic in general anyway.
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I always find it very difficult to make those kinds of claims.
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Well, and I think that's one of the reasons that I think this is back to the idea of like, why is it so fascinating?
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Because when you start, when you really appreciate the context for what this person was operating in,
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You know, and you think about that for every scripture, the idea that like, oh, this makes so much more sense,
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not as some prophecy for current times,
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but for, it was a rhetorical exercise for what they were dealing with.
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And it's just, it's, to me, it becomes, the Bible actually becomes more meaningful in one sense.
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Maybe not in like a ultimate, ultimate meaning way, but in a,
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the way that we actually find and build meaning as humans based on how we interact with our circumstances and our, how our values interact with our circumstances.
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Like that's what these biblical writers were doing all along.
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And suddenly it just, it kind of comes alive to me.
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Like I always, I always thought, I don't understand these biblical scholars who aren't Christians.
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Like it was fascinating.
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Like you study this for a living and you don't believe it, But now I get it.
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Yeah.
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I get it.
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You know, not only because it was so personal to me and foundational to who I am, but because it really is this story of the human struggle to figure out what the hell is going on.
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Yeah.
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Context is always key with any kind of art and in a way the gospels can be considered like a, they're not art per se, but the sort of artistic elements,
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the beauty, the truth, the poetry, the, the meaning that jumps out.
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A lot of that has got to do with contextualizing.
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a piece of art like
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so much of it is right has has got to do with
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that um that's something i clocked
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when i you know you know the book ways of seeing by john berger
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or is it burger i don't know i haven't read it
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but he um he's got this tv show as well
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that he did
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and um one of the things he does is he shows this picture he says just look at this picture
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and you know see what you think about it
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and then turn the page and you turn over the page
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and it's the same picture
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but it's got a caption now it says this is the
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last painting van goff made before he killed himself it's like how has
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that changed the way that you interact with this painting
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and some people want to say it kind of shouldn't know the art should stand for itself
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but it clearly does context plays a massive massive part and
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when you consider the first century jewish context in
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which jesus is is working so many of his claims are transformed
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and this is something christians always want to do
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when it comes to things like uh his claims to divinity
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and stuff it's like no you have to understand to a
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jew at the time this would have been a really significant thing right say.
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Claiming to be the Lord of the Sabbath would have been huge.
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Invoking the I am statement would have been absolutely massive.
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But I think we do need to do that writ large.
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And maybe some of the good stuff needs to be contextualized as well as the bad stuff.
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Yeah.
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Because they're willing to jump on it.
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If you say, what about what the Bible said?
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What about when Paul's talking about women or slavery in the Old Testament?
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It's like, oh, it's context, context, context.
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That doesn't apply today.
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It's totally different.
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You've got to understand there's the cult of artemis
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and women were getting power that they shouldn't have
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and they were bond servants okay
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but with a lot of the rest of the stuff it's
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just quite flatly like yeah the bible gives us a guide
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as how to live today it's eternal truth like what do
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you mean you need to reinterpret it what are you talking about
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and i just kind of think we should look for a bit more consistency on
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that front maybe if you enjoyed
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that clip you can watch the full conversation with rhett mclauchlin
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by clicking the link that's on your screen to support the show and get early ad -free access to episodes, subscribe to my sub stack at alexoconnor .com.
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Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 145 sentences and 1816 words to shadow. The speech runs for 9:13. The speaker talks fast, about 197 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| interact verb | /ɪn.təˈɹækt/ | To engage in communication and other shared activities (with someone). |
| crude adjective | /kɹuːd/ | In a natural, untreated state. |
| biblical adjective | /ˈbɪblɪkəl/ | Of or relating to the Bible. |
| spiritual adjective | /ˈspɪɹɪt͡ʃuəl/ | Of or pertaining to the spirit or the soul. |
| possession noun | /pəˈzɛʃn̩/ | A control or occupancy of something for which one does not necessarily have private property rights. |
| clip noun | /klɪp/ | Something which clips or grasps; a device for attaching one object to another. |
| gospel noun | /ˈɡɑspəl/ | The first section of the Christian New Testament scripture, comprising the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, concerned with the birth, ministry, passion… |
| verse noun | /ˈvɝs/ | A poetic form with regular meter and a fixed rhyme scheme. |
| subscribe verb | /səbˈskɹaɪb/ | To write (one’s name) at the bottom of a document; to sign (one's name). |
| nationalism noun | /ˈnæʃ(ə)nəˌlɪzəm/ | A more extreme form of patriotism; the idea of a more extreme support for one's country, people or culture. |
| circumstance noun | /ˈsɝ.kəmˌstæns/ | Something which is related to, or in some way affects, a fact or event. |
| accumulation noun | /əˌkjuːm.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/ | The act of amassing or gathering, as into a pile. |
| consistent adjective | /kənˈsɪs.tənt/ | Of a regularly occurring, dependable nature. |
| rescue verb | /ˈɹɛs.kjuː/ | To save from any violence, danger or evil. |
| element noun | /ˈɛləmənt/ | One of the simplest or essential parts or principles of which anything consists, or upon which the constitution or fundamental powers of anything are based. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. |
| come up to verb | To approach. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| jump off verb | To move from an elevated place by one jump. |
| jump out verb | To emerge suddenly. |
| turn over verb | To flip over; to rotate uppermost to bottom. |
| walk through verb | To explain (something) to (someone), step by step. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | can be considered · are transformed · be contextualized |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've helped · haven't read |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 35 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, haven't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: atheist /ˈeɪ.θi.ɪst/, brethren /ˈbɹɛðɹən/, rethink /ɹiːˈθɪŋk/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: possession /pəˈzɛʃn̩/, nationalism /ˈnæʃ(ə)nəˌlɪzəm/, accumulation /əˌkjuːm.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: nationalism /ˈnæʃ(ə)nəˌlɪzəm/, accumulation /əˌkjuːm.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/, presidency /ˈpɹɛzɪdənsi/, applicable /əˈplɪk.ə.bəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like interact, crude, biblical.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.