Perpetual Optimist ‘Stacy on the Right’ Urges Her Listeners to Have a Purpose in Life

Rob Bluey / January 13, 2023

Stacy Washington wants to tear down the wall separating religion and politics. Her book, “Eternally Cancel Proof: A Guide for Courageous Christians Navigating the Political Battlefront,” chronicles her journey as a Christian and her own conversion from the political Left to conservatism.

Washington is host of the popular show “Stacy on the Right,” which airs weeknights from 9 p.m. to midnight ET on SiriusXM’s Patriot Channel 125.

As she discusses on this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast,” Washington uses her show and other media platforms to put the focus on what’s important in life, using a biblical worldview to help us understand how to navigate today’s challenges.

Washington is a wife, mother, author, radio host, and political commentator. She’s also a good friend of The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal.

Listen to the podcast or read the lightly edited transcript.

Rob Bluey: Before we talk about your book and current events, could you tell us about your own life’s journey?

Stacy Washington: I grew up in a household that was very conservative. It’s kind of typical. I’m Gen X, so we had these military-connected experiences where I was a military brat. My parents were very conservative, but they were Democrats.

Now, one time, I remember my childhood very distinctly, my dad voted for [Ronald] Reagan, and it was such an uproar at our house because he voted for a Republican, but he really liked Reagan and his platform and he loved his ideas. But after that, of course, nothing but Democrats.

I was raised as a Democrat. It wasn’t something that we discussed, like, “Here’s Republicans, here’s Democrats.” It was, “We’re Democrats,” and that’s it. But my parents believe in hard work. They don’t believe in taking money from the government. And they certainly taught me that my destiny, things that I have going on in my life, it would be the result of my actions. The majority of my results would come from my actions and of course my walk with God.

So as a young adult, I went to college for a couple years, dropped out for a year, and then joined the military. And I was in the Air Force. And the main experience I remember being, it was a little bit of a turning point or maybe an eye-opener, was just arguing with a co-worker about abortion and not being able to answer her claims because she was coming at it as a Christian.

And I really didn’t agree with abortion, but I knew that as a Democrat we were “safe, legal, and rare” back then. So I just said, “Well, it just sounds kind of racist to have it only be this kind of black and white. You don’t take into consideration all the reasons why someone might need to have an abortion.”

And she was so insulted by that because, obviously, she wasn’t a racist. But I was using that as a fallback because there really is no justification for abortion and quite frankly, most of the Democrat Party platform.

So it was a few years after that, my husband and I moved from Florida. We were on Eglin Air Force Base and came to the Midwest and he took a job in financial services. We separated from the military and then we’re kind of walking this journey out to conservatism, but separately, because I wasn’t talking to him about listening to Bott Radio Network when I’d be out with our newborn baby walking or in the car driving around. And he would be at his work talking to his co-workers at this financial services company, and he’d be kind of agreeing with their comments, but thinking, “These guys sound like Republicans.”

So by the time we realized that we’d both kind of made the jump, but it was for different reasons—obviously, leaving the military and not having our income shielded the way it was from taxation, we were paying a lot more in taxes. My husband was actually working in a professional capacity and earning a nice living, and the taxes were just, they were shocking because we hadn’t had to pay that much before.

And it started to become real to us that the more successful we became, the more taxes we would owe. And that seemed really antithetical … makes you not want to be successful. You don’t want to pay so much more of your money in tax, the more successful you become. But that is the system that we have, progressive taxes.

So it was a number of things, but mainly, I just started to view the world differently when we had our first baby, and God used that to bring it all together in a neat little package of me flipping and things have never been the same.

Bluey: Thank you so much for sharing that. I want to ask you about the radio show because, I mean, you’re a big proponent of conservatives and Christians using their voice, speaking up, getting the truth out there. What was it that inspired you to start a radio show?

Washington: I was volunteering in our kids’ school district and doing a lot of work there. Just copy mom, kindergarten, social mom, you name it. If it needed to be done, I was there doing it. And I ended up kind of serving on the Strategic Planning Committee where they set up the five-year strategic plan. And from there, it seemed like I was moving away from helping in the classroom and moving into a little bit stronger of a thing.

So I ran for school board. After, I was appointed to a position on the board because I served on the Strategic Planning Committee and work with board members there. So they had this vacancy. I get appointed and then all of a sudden I’m running and I lose by 435 votes. So I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I’ve lost. What am I going to do with myself?” And a friend of mine was like, “Well, you should come hang out with us, we sit around and we talk politics.”

I’m thinking, “Oh, that sounds terrible.” So I go and I met another friend who invited me to speak at this, what they called “Tea Party Under the Arch.” And at the time I didn’t know Dana Loesch or Gina Loudon. These are people who lived in St. Louis at the time, and they were on radio and they were activists. And so I kind of just, I’m rubbing elbows with them at this speaking engagement.

And I chose to talk about the genocide of abortion. And I had seven minutes to speak. I spoke there to 4,800 people, but it was broadcast on the radio. And then I ran for school board unopposed and won my seat.

So I was kind of thinking, “Well, I’m not going to do this politics thing anymore.” Well, after speaking about that, I got invited to go onto “Allman in the Morning” and talk about this huge event that I was kind of volunteering and putting on this event to show “Maafa 21,” the documentary about abortion in America, at a bunch of locations across the country simultaneously to draw attention to its impact on the black community, almost 16% fewer black Americans due to abortion.

And so I go on the radio to promote this event, and Jamie thought we had such good rapport. He invited me to come on a weekly basis just to do one seven- to nine-minute radio hit to talk about political issues of the day. So I go back onto the school board, I start doing this weekly hit, and then I started filling in. And then before you know it, I had “Stacy on the Right” on Saturdays, and then that show moved to Sundays.

And then I went to Christian radio and did that for a while. And then I eventually became a guest host on Sirius XM. Always the same show, “Stacy on the Right.” And now I’m on Monday through Friday, 9 to midnight Eastern.

And so it kind of grew out of nothing. You would never have convinced me that I would be a radio host or any kind of public speaker at all because … I’ve never been shy, but I’ve never been one to kind of jump up and speak in front of people and especially large groups. But that’s what I do for a living now. So I feel like it was something that God had in store for me to do.

And I am a natural talker. I do get every bit of my 50,000 words a day that women supposedly talk 50,000 words a day. I know I do. And I always have. And I’ve always had on my report cards, even back to kindergarten, “Stacy either talks too much or spends too much time talking,” some variation of that on every report card K-12. So, you know.

Bluey: As to you’ve built an audience, what is it that you want to leave them with when you are talking to them on a regular basis? And how do you go about crafting a show and making sure that they’re inspired to take action?

Washington: As you know, because you host this and you also run The Daily Signal, it’s a lot of me reading sites like The Daily Signal and getting great information and then kind of saying, “What are people talking about?” And then, “What is the point?”

A lot of what we do on the show is we highlight narrative shifts that Democrats are enacting to change the way we think, talk, and feel about issues that are facing Americans on a daily basis. And through the use of language, Democrats have moved this country lurching to the left because we all adopt their way of speaking because they control the media.

And so those three hours on radio Monday through Friday are an opportunity for me to speak into that narrative and shift it back and to cause people to, when you’re listening to the news, if you’re trapped in the airport and CNN is on and you hear them saying something, to give people the tools to be able to say, “Wait a minute, they’re characterizing someone’s opinion as an insurrection.”

Or, “They’re characterizing lawful activity that’s guaranteed liberty given to us by God, but guaranteed in the Constitution the right to freely assemble, the right to address our elected officials. They’re characterizing that as an insurrection or as unlawful activity, or they’re using thoughts and feelings language to make it seem as if people don’t care when, really, it’s the ultimate act of caring to shed your anonymity and to go out publicly and speak at a school board meeting about these pornographic books or to face down your mayor or someone over a tax issue. These are the ultimate acts of caring. And they’re our duty as citizens of this country. The citizen is the highest office of the land.”

So what I want people to leave with when they listen to my program is, first of all, we are all created beings. We’re called forward for a purpose. God put us in this time-space continuum—you can tell I watch a lot of sci-fi—to actually have an impact, every single one of us.

So you’re maybe having an impact at home, keeping your house clean, taking care of babies, having a hot meal on the table when your husband gets there, or maybe you’re running a huge website and working for one of the most important think tanks in the entire world and crafting white papers that people like me, I’m continuously devouring them for information to share with my listeners. Whether you are running an organization or just kind of working at Costco or Sam’s Club, there are people in your life who are watching you and they understand your worldview, whether you share it with them or not.

And so I want to make every person feel the importance of their existence and that they have a role to play in running this fantastic country. And that also life has meaning. We’re actually meant to enjoy it. And so Dennis Prager wrote a book called “Happiness Is a Serious [Problem].” … It’s one of my favorite books ever that I’ve read where he says, “We have a responsibility to be happy because everyone around us is impacted by our happiness or lack thereof.”

And so I infuse that same concept into the show. I’m perpetually optimistic, I’m upbeat, I’ve read the end of the Bible all the way through to Revelation. I know how this story ends, and so therefore I am to continually uplift other people and inform them and empower them and also have fun while doing it. Lots of laughing, great bumper music, and an opportunity to call in and share. And even the disagreement, I think that’s enjoyable as well.

And doing that, basically I’m doing it for the glory of God because there’s no way otherwise I would ever get to do what I do or to talk to you on this podcast or to have cool stories with your producer John Popp. I don’t get to do any of that stuff on my own steam because I don’t have the background in media or radio or broadcasting to place me here. So I’m obviously put here for some fun and to bring fun to other people. And so that’s what I’m trying to do.

Bluey: As you mentioned, you’re based in St. Louis. I recently had the opportunity to interview Pastor Wes Martin of Grace Church on this show. You recently spoke to his congregation. And I want to ask you, because you used the term “biblical worldview” in your book, and you’ve just talked about being a Christian, what do you mean by that? And those of us who are Christians or maybe have other beliefs, religious beliefs, how can we do our part in today’s society given all of the challenges that it seems we’re up against?

Washington: Pastor Wes is actually my pastor, too. I’ve been going to Grace, my husband and I, and all of our kids have been going there for, I think, 12 years now. And so when you talk to Pastor Wes and Pastor Ron is our senior pastor, you’re hearing individuals who are—these men believe in the biblical worldview because they’ve lived it and because they know it is the only way for us to connect.

The majority of our lives—which we don’t spend in church, right? Rob, we go to church on Sundays, some people go on Wednesdays, some people go to Sunday nights as well. But for the most part, the majority of our lives are spent outside of church. And so if church is just someplace you go, like some people go to the hair salon once a week, then it’s not going to have a huge impact on your life.

But if you want to live joyfully and fearlessly, courageously, then you have to have a biblical worldview. And it also makes it possible for you to then throw off the shackles of, “Well, this person doesn’t agree with my belief in pro-life. This person doesn’t agree with me that the Bible says X, Y, and Z.” Well, I don’t need the agreement of other people if I know what the Bible says, and then I’m walking that out.

And that’s part of the reason why I wrote the book. We have to be courageous as Christians because politics is, it’s grown outside of its normal strictures. Politics is, like, let’s take something common that we all use, ladders. Ladders are responsible for 330,000 accidents every year. Most people don’t know that the only reason you would have an accident on the ladder is improper use. People don’t understand how to use ladders. They set them up, they’re not stable, they fall.

Well, if we treated ladders like politics, we would have the Department of Ladder Safety. We would spend millions of dollars working against lobbyists who are lobbying for ladder colors and ladder heights and ladder sizes. There’d be ladder unions, there would be people fighting for and against ladders. You would know the kind of character of your next door neighbor by the color of ladder that they had when they pulled it out of their garage to change their light outside their garage. It would become so outsized and so obsessive that we’d have parties for and against ladders.

Sound familiar? That’s how politics has become because politics is a simple tool by which we manage government that has been allowed to grow into basically its own religion. And it divides families, it divides people. And that is not biblical.

God actually has a hierarchy that he set in place and he gave us representative government. He gave it to the Israelites first back in Exodus 18, and now we have it because the Founders tried other forms of government before they landed on representative government and realized that that is the only way that you can have a free and prosperous nation that everyone wants to live in around the world.

And so that’s why they gave us this great experiment with our Constitution and our representative form of government, not a democracy representative government.

So the biblical worldview simply takes what’s in Scripture and it boils it down to a simple set of questions, which I include in the book, and then it helps you to detach emotions and feelings and political parties and everything else away from it.

And as a Christian, you can say, “Well, I believe in that because that’s what the Scripture says.” And then the responsibility for defending it really goes back to the source document, which is the Bible, and to God, who is the author of the Bible.

So I don’t have to be insulted when people disagree with me about the pro-life issue. They’re not disagreeing with me. They’re disagreeing with Old and New Testament Scripture that describes the origin of life as being God calling you forth before he made the foundations of this planet, and him knowing your name and writing it on the palm of his hand and then calling you forth for a specific time and purpose and then knitting you together in your mother’s womb and knowing every fiber of your being, counting the hairs on your head, and then setting you forward for a purpose. These are not things that I’m going to argue for or against. They simply are the truth. These are simply truths that you find in Scripture.

And for people who don’t believe you are the beneficiary, if you’re an atheist or you practice some other faith, if you live in America, you’re the beneficiary of a nation that is founded on these ideas. So you don’t have to believe them yourself. You need only preserve them so that you can continue to enjoy freedom.

So the book is, it’s short and it’s meant to explain those things. And I cover a bunch of issues that American Christians actually were pulled on these issues and they wanted their pastors to preach on them.

And so I wrote about them because my pastors actually do preach on these issues, but most pastors do not. So you take this book, it’s, like, plane ride to and from Miami. You can read the whole book or you can tackle it in a weekend. You then know what the Scriptures say about these issues and then you can kind of say to yourself, “OK, where do I fall on that? And do I care?”

It prompts questions and it gives you an opportunity to really examine things without it being about Democrat or Republican, even though I actually take apart both party platforms in the book as well and compare them to Scripture, you can then make up your own mind for yourself.

Bluey: Again, your book is called “Eternally Cancel Proof: A Guide for Courageous Christians Navigating the Political Battlefront.”

Stacy, I want to pick up on something you mentioned there, because in the conversation I had with Pastor Wes Martin, we talked about the fact that he is unafraid and regularly brings politics into his church and confronts some of the challenging issues that we see in the news. You also talk about how we as a country have moved away from pastors doing that. We’ve moved away from the fact the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Why do you think that is? And how do we get back to making sure that we’re grounded in a biblical worldview and those principles?

Washington: There’s the push and pull, there’s good and there’s evil. And we see that in demonstration every single day. It’s the things we’re fighting against right now. If you noticed, a lot of what we’re talking about in the media is, it’s got a really pernicious ring to it.

If we take the southern border, that it’s wide open. It’s not just the illegal entries, it’s the fact that people are sex trafficked for 1,100 miles from the Northern Triangle countries all the way up to America, that we’ve now had over 1,500 dead bodies found on our southern border of people who’ve died of exhaustion and other things because they’re making this trip because our border is open.

And so if you are arguing for or against illegal immigration, you are also arguing for or against the sex trafficking and the increase in deaths of people who shouldn’t be making the trip because we should only have lawful immigration.

Or if you take the issue of public schools and education right now and the rise of the pornographic material that has been put in public libraries and now on school shelves, that is sexualizing children, taking away their innocence, and making them more susceptible to being preyed upon by sexual predators.

Over 500 of those cases in 2022 in the Chicago public school district. I think we’ll find more of these cases will be reported on over time across the country because children are being sexualized and predators are using that to prey upon them.

These are no longer the kinds of things that you can sit over a cup of coffee and kind of argue for and against. If you’re arguing in support of open borders, you’re arguing in support of sex trafficking and human trafficking. That’s evil. It is evil to sexualize children and to remove their innocence from them. It’s no longer an issue of Left or Right. It is now good and evil.

And so I’m very concerned that, first of all, we use language that carefully articulates what we are for or are against, and that we understand that and that in the long run we’re finding ourselves as a people fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. And so policy is always, it’s always a fight. We can always sit across the table from each other and argue about how we should implement X or Y, but we should never be arguing about whether or not it’s wrong to have immigration policy and a sovereign nation with borders.

And so that brings it all into full perspective. And that is why Pastor Wes and Pastor Ron and the leadership at Grace Church have chosen to expose these issues to the people who sit in the pews there, to make them wise enough to make proper decisions during the week when they’re not in the pews.

And that’s part of the reason why I wrote the book. It’s the reason why you see so many pastors across the country like Pastor Rob McCoy, he’s been traveling, he’s running himself into the ground, traveling across the nation, talking about these issues and exposing their connection to Scripture because Scripture covers every aspect of life. There is nothing that you are facing in your life, there’s no problem that has not been seen before and actually discussed in Scripture.

So it’s so important that people stop putting that fake wall of separation between the tool of politics and the everyday life of being a Christian. So knowing your Bible, being obedient, living it out, which means sacrificial love for others in your country, it’s important. It’s important enough for me to give up my—I’m really talented at interior design. I could totally be doing that, but instead I’m doing this and I love doing it. It’s great. It’s another calling.

But what I’m saying is there are a lot of people out there in this movement who are great at other things and they choose to do this and are choosing to do it because the need is great.

People are unaware, uninformed, disengaged, but also very upset with the way our country is headed. The way to change that is to become engaged, informed, and involved. And part of that, in my opinion, is being in a church where they connect the Scriptures to what’s happening in our everyday lives. And reading books like the one I wrote where you can actually see I’m connecting it in your everyday life.

These are not concepts or kind of lofty things that you discuss and think, “Oh, that was interesting.” No, this is practical. This is your every day. And we have to get to that level if we want to stop a lot of the evil that we see going on every day here in America.

Bluey: We certainly do. And I think you’ve touched on something because as we’ve seen declining participation among younger Americans in church services and even believing in God. Clearly, something needs to change. And so I appreciate your call to action here and hope other pastors and Americans follow that.

I wanted to pick up on something, Stacy. You talked about some of the difficulties and challenges and you confront so many of these on “Stacy on the Right.” But here we have a situation in Washington, D.C., which you’re well aware of, where Republicans have just seized control of the U.S. House. There is finally a check after a couple of years on the Biden administration and so many of the bad policies that it has been implementing.

What are your expectations? Are you hopeful? Are you pessimistic? Where do you see things going for the next couple of years, particularly as conservatives wrestle with the future of their movement?

Washington: We hear this a lot, “Oh, we’re going to lose our country. Oh, we’re at a crossroads.” Well, I don’t think we lose our country, but I do think we’re at a crossroads where the huge percentage of evangelical Christians who are not currently voting or involved in politics, if they continue to abstain from our political future, the Left will continue to dominate and grow.

And so the Republicans controlling the House, if last week was any demonstration of this new paradigm, then I have a lot of hope because we saw 20 people stand up to what a lot of commentators call “the establishment.” And I said on the radio last week many a night how sick I was of hearing leftists complain that the Republican Party is in disarray. But I also said that I hope they stayed the course and that they would see it through to the end, whatever their end goal was in holding up [Kevin] McCarthy’s eventual speakership, that they would get out of it what they set out to do. And they did.

So there were 20 people who were willing to step to the line to get on the wall, to actually fight for what was right. And what we needed was we needed 40, we needed 60, we needed all of them except a very small sliver to do it. And so I think last week’s demonstration by the 20 was pouring courage into some of the others who weren’t yet ready to stand up and report to the line. And so my encouragement for everyone right now is, thank the 20 who stood up.

Anyone that does something that angers the Left, you have to look at what they’re doing and understand that the reason the Left is angry with them is because they’re putting roadblocks on the Left’s agenda. And that’s what those 20 people did. And so because of them, we have powerful committee chairmanships and appointments going to people who are actually there for a purpose, not there to enrich themselves, not there to kind of make their bones or to be famous. They’re there for a purpose. Those people did us a service last week.

And so I think we’re going to see a different House of Representatives over the next 24 months. And if so, it will set the stage for a return to a Republican president, which we need desperately.

President [Donald] Trump was so great when he was in office, but a lot of the changes he made weren’t permanent because he didn’t have the support of the Republican Party and they weren’t done legislatively. And as we can see, as we have seen, any victory that you take with the pen via executive order can be dismantled by a subsequent president or the Supreme Court. Legislation is much more permanent. And we need Republicans to join in with our next Republican president and make permanent changes to our laws that cannot be undone.

And then the other thing is we need to stop begging for people who will fight if we’re not willing to support them when they do.

Last week, 20 Republicans answered the call that we’ve been screaming since the tea party days. We want fighters, we want people who fight. They fought. And a lot of Republicans were wilting in the face of the opposition to them fighting. When warriors step up to the line to fight on our behalf, we have to immediately report to the line behind them and hold them up. We have to stand behind them and we have to support them in their fight because that’s what we ask them to do. We ask for strong, really, really important things to be changed in Washington, D.C., and that’s never going to be easy.

I hope that people will look at what happened last week and understand that we have a new day in the Republican House and if we support these people, they’re going to give us some of the things we’ve been screaming about for the past 10, 15 years.

And that is so important because there’s nothing worse than someone who asks you for something and then when you give it to them, they immediately throw it back in your face and say, “Well, I don’t want it like this.” We’ll take our wins however we can get them. And last week was definitely a win.

So I’m looking forward to seeing what they do and supporting them, interviewing these congressmen on the show and supporting them and encouraging them. And I’m also looking forward to seeing the Republican Party coalesce around our nominee, whoever it is.

Because remember, it’s the right tool for the job. It’s not personalities. It doesn’t matter what kind of tweets they send. What matters is the policy they’ll bring to the executive branch. And we got to support our nominee and get them into the White House so that we can set some of these evils to right.

We need to correct policy that has been allowed to be forced on us. We need to correct it and set it back to its proper constitutional setting to protect the innocent, to punish evil and protect the innocent. That has to be our main focus going forward for the next two years until we can win the presidency back.

Bluey: Thank you so much for leaving us with that charge. We certainly appreciate everything that you’ve done over the course of your entire career, but particularly to seize that moment last week when we saw those courageous Republicans stepping forward. In fact, it was discouraging to see others in conservative media criticizing them and discouraging them to continue their fight.

So those of us who were standing alongside them—and after many, many years of defeats when it came to getting conservatives on the Rules Committee or Appropriations Committee, or changing the way the House operates—to see this breakthrough was definitely encouraging.

And I think you’re right. It sets the stage for positive developments over the next two years, particularly as we have a debate over the future of the Republican Party and conservative movement.

So I want to thank you, Stacy. Again, I want to give a plug to your show, “Stacy on the Right,” which is on SiriusXM’s Patriot Channel 125. You are doing fantastic work. And for those who haven’t read your book, it’s called “Eternally Cancel Proof: A Guide for Courageous Christians Navigating the Political Battlefront.” Stacy Washington, thanks so much for joining us.

Washington: Thanks, Rob. Such a pleasure to be here.

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