(LifeSiteNews) — “Just give me one. Just give me one kid.”

In the most devastating moment in a heart-wrenching interview on September 20 with Ross Douthat of 60 Minutes, Patrick Clancy shared his desperate prayer after discovering that two of his children — Cora and Dawson — were dead, but eight-month-old Callan’s heartbeat had been restored. Callan lived for four more days. Patrick held him as he died.

Patrick Clancy reflects on the final days with his 8-month-old son: “I really thought there was a chance that Callan would live. And remember just thinking, ‘Just gimme one. Just gimme one kid.’ I was holding out hope for that.” pic.twitter.com/TGO1euPuIc

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 21, 2026

In one of the most insidious manifestations of how the online age has deformed our collective conscience, Patrick Clancy has been cast as a villain by legions of digital denizens who have taken to defending his ex-wife Lindsay, who strangled their three children to death in January 2023. Women poured a torrent of vile content onto the internet lionizing Lindsay and demonizing Patrick; showed up outside the courthouse for her murder trial; and were livid when it ended in a mistrial.

As a father, I could not make it through Patrick Clancy’s 911 phone call, which records the moment he found his three children in the basement. Nobody with a heart could listen to the entire conversation without breaking down. Cora, age 5, was already dead. So was 3-year-old Dawson. As Patrick sat watch beside Callan’s bed as his baby lingered, he wrote down his memories of the children, terrified that he would forget them. “I got to hold him. I got to lay down next to him. And he died in my arms.”

Patrick is a bereaved father and has endured — will never stop enduring — an unthinkable tragedy. Yet, the responses to his interview have been nothing short of demonic. Scores of derisive, vicious comments have bloomed like mushrooms after rain beneath each online clip of his interview. I have seen countless digital lynch mobs over the past decade. I think this one is the worst, and the hardest to understand. I use the term “demonic” advisedly.

During the trial, the online hordes excoriated Patrick for allegedly being calm on the witness stand, in accusations reminiscent of those attacking Erika Kirk for every manifestation of her public grief. The truth, Patrick told Douthat, is that he had a “massive, traumatic” panic attack on the second day of his testimony, and he was put in an ambulance. “They offered me some medication, but I said, ‘I don’t want it, because I want to go back and I want to finish this so I can be done with this.’ And I went back and I finished the testimony.”

The grief almost killed Patrick, who toyed with thoughts of suicide. “There was a time where I didn’t think I would live to see my 35^th birthday,” 36-year-old Clancy told Douthat. “And I was completely fine with it.” Lindsay never asked for forgiveness; he gave it, nonetheless. He didn’t want to be eaten alive by bitterness, and he did not present her as a monster in the interview. This April, he was remarried to Dr. Rachel Danis of New York City. They are starting a family, and Patrick looks forward to telling their child about their sister and two brothers.

He moved to New York City to get away from it all — and for anonymity. “Five weeks after I moved to New York, on May 26th, I had to figure out how I’m gonna celebrate Callan’s first birthday,” he said. “And how do you celebrate your son’s first birthday months after he’s passed away? And so I go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I light a candle, and I say, ‘I love you, buddy.’ And I walk out on Fifth Avenue and I start crying my eyes out. And nobody cared. I thought, ‘This is where I need to be. I can grieve.’”

Douthat asked Patrick if he ever dreams about his children, and as he answered, Douthat — a father himself — audibly gasped as he answered:

Patrick Clancy says he dreams about his late children “all the time”

In one dream, he says, “I’m in the kitchen at the house, and Cora walks in. And I just look at her and… I basically just said, ‘Where have you been?’ And she comes up to me and gives me a big hug.”… pic.twitter.com/Ya8SlHCz5O

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 20, 2026

Ross Douthat’s interview with Patrick Clancy is a must-watch for anyone who wants to genuinely understand what has been unfolding online for the past several months. The conversation between the two fathers is a litmus test. How you react to it does not determine anything about Patrick Clancy — but it says much about you.

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