Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. This is the WallBuilders Show. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, here with David Barton and Tim Barton. You can learn more about all three of us at our website, wallbuilders.com. That's wallbuilders.com. David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders.com that's wallbuilders.com. David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder at Wall Builders. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of Wall Builders. And I'm a former Texas legislator and America's constitution coach.

You can also take an extended course with us by going to wallbuilders.com today and getting that biblical citizenship in modern America course. It's a great way to bring people together in your living room or at your church or at a community center and get them to study the things that we talk about here on Wall Builders all the time, but study them together in person. I'm telling you there's no substitute for that face-to-face fellowship, watching those videos with Kirk Cameron and Rabbi Daniel Lappin and all these other folks that are talking about how to look at citizenship and how you treat your neighbor, based on a biblical worldview, and then how to do that properly in our constitutional republic. All of that information right there in Biblical Citizenship in Modern America available to you today, right now at wallbuilders.com Great way to get educated and to build community. Been talking for a while about getting saturated in God's word, then building community and then tending the garden, and that biblical citizenship course is a great way to do that. So it's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. We're going to jump into the questions from our audience. All right, guys, let's dive into those questions for this. Foundations of Freedom Thursday. We actually have a combination of questions here.

A lot of people have been emailing in about the whole Supreme Court thing, with President Biden proposing a lot of changes, saying he wants a code of ethics, term limits on Supreme Court justices. We haven't heard in this new proposal additional members, but he had certainly threatened to pack the court at the beginning of his term. All of this in response to you know, quote unquote presidential immunity and even a constitutional amendment Now he's calling for to prevent presidential immunity. And of course we've talked about this on the program. There was nothing new in that Supreme Court decision. All of those levels of immunity were already in place. Supreme Court didn't do anything new there.

But there are renewed calls from the Democrat side to basically get rid of Clarence Thomas. Right? That's the real goal here. How do we get Clarence Thomas off the Supreme Court? But anyway, lots of questions on this, guys. So thank you to everybody that sent these in Michelle and Katie and so many others. We're going to try to tackle those all at once. Might take the whole program, might not even get to any other questions, but great topic for us because we love talking about the court and justice and restoring justice. But I'm not sure President Biden wants to restore justice as much as he wants to get rid of any checks and balances, right, guys.

David Barton

Well, I think it's time to get a new constitution. I mean, this thing hadn't worked well at all and we need to go through and rewrite what the Constitution says about judiciary. I think we ought to rewrite what it says about presidents as well, and even Congress. Let's just get the whole thing thrown out. And essentially, that's what you're doing here. You're stepping in and saying, hey, it's been this way for nearly 235, 237, 238 years, let's just do something. This is what progressives do. They come in and fix problems that don't exist, and they always create problems when they do so. Here they step in and say, hey, let's fix it, and the problem they've got is they don't like the results they're getting. It's not the process they're concerned about, they don't like the results, and that's a wrong reason to try to change things.

Tim Barton

Well, not only they're trying to change things, because they're trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist, and then they're trying to change things to solve a problem they have. That's been limited by the Constitution.

David Barton

Yeah, that's right 

Tim Barton

Yeah, that's right. We do make the joke often about people trying to fix things and making it worse, or trying to fix a problem you didn't have whatever. There's a lot of adages, maybe some axioms that go along with that, but I think they know exactly what they're trying to accomplish. They also, I think, know that this is not going to be of help, that this is not something that no constitutional expert looks at this and says oh, you can totally do it. It's very similar to when President Biden was saying let's just forgive all student debt, the grown adults who took out a loan in their name. Let's just say they don't have to pay it back anymore. Let's make the American taxpayers the American people. They'll pay it back. Well, of course, courts have struck that down every time he's tried this and you can't do that.

But the Democrats are so good at controlling the narrative in election cycles and seasons to say that, guys, right now we've got these major problems and we've got to solve these problems, and so they're posing it in such a way. I think that they think it's going to be favorably viewed by constituents, by American people. Even though they're not always correct, they do tend to be right more than they're wrong on the way they phrase some of these things. And I think what they're doing is not necessarily trying to change the Constitution. I think they're trying to have a political talking point because right now they have nothing favorable they can talk about. They can't look at Joe Biden's record. They can't look at Kamala Harris's record. There's a reason Kamala Harris has not been in front of the media in weeks we're coming up on nearly a month. She has not done any kind of media stuff because she has nothing to offer, and they know this.

And so they want to control the narrative but also change some of the focus and direction. So they're going to continue to say Donald Trump is really bad, remember how bad he is. He's so bad. We don't like him and, by the way, JD Vance is weird, but Trump is so bad. And here's some ideas that we should promote. It takes the conversation away from the failures of the Biden administration, the failures of Kamala Harris leading the effort to secure the border, and it just gives a different talking point. So I don't think they're as much trying to move the Constitution in this moment as they are just trying to change the conversation.

David Barton

I'm a huge believer that this is nothing more than a political talking point. They want something to talk about in the campaign and this gives them a way to do it. They're claiming to reform something and again they're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. But even think about the logic of it. They have no seriousness to this because of those three proposals, rick, that you mentioned at the beginning, the three things they're tossing around. Two of them would take a constitutional amendment to get done. One of them you could do statutorily, but to do it statutorily you're going to have to come up with 60% of the Senate to agree with it and there's no way they're going to get a majority in the Senate to agree with any of these three proposals. And two of them wouldn't be a majority. It would take two thirds of Congress has to vote for. Actually, three fourths of the states have to ratify it. So constitutional amendments there's no chance you can't get that done. Even getting a bill passed through the legislature and signed by the president, you're not going to get it done. There's just not the votes there. So clearly this is not a serious proposal and it's interesting they didn't roll it out two years ago or three years ago, they rolled it out before the election. So this is all election talking points. This is something to keep attention deflected from other issues and it makes it sound like they're really being serious about reforming government. What they want is reforms that will help them win and will let their issues go through without the court standing in the way of what they want to do.

So this is a political talking point. It is purely campaign rhetoric. There's nothing serious about this, because there is no plausible or possible way of getting any of those three things done Two constitutional amendments and one vote through Congress. We can't even get a budget through Congress at this point. That's why they're doing continuing resolutions, because it takes 60 votes to get a budget and we can't even get that. You're sure not going to get this. So great questions, but this is all political rhetoric and political posturing.

Rick Green

So let me jump into my dream world. I've been for term limits of federal judges forever. We even talk about it in Constitutional Live finding a limit. I don't even care what the time frame is, whether it's 10 years, 18 years, 20 years, but some sort of day of accountability out over time. And it doesn't get rid of Clarence Thomas immediately. But what you're saying, I think, is absolutely right. I think to get everybody to agree on this in a way that would actually work is well, it's a pipe dream. I like dreaming, but I got to say philosophically, I definitely would like to see term limits on federal judges.

David Barton

But, Rick, you already have term limits on federal judges. It's five times in the Constitution. They get to be there for the duration of good behavior. If you're tired of them, get them off the courts because there are no term limits. There's no lifetime appointment for judges in the Constitution.

Impeachment is the way you remove it. 

Rick Green

You're saying you've got to have impeachment, which is a positive step towards, and you've got to prove they did something really wrong.

David Barton

That's right, 

Rick Green

where I want them, good and bad, to have a day of accountability, 

right and, dad, too, I would say the other thing about this is there is a lifetime appointment if you have good behavior . 

David Barton

That's right, if you do what’s right 

Tim Barton

But there could be lifetime appointments and that is still contrary to the founders phuilosophy and view. But also guys, the level of irony when you have Joe Biden, who's been in government for 50 years, when you have Nancy Pelosi, who's been in government for like 40 years, right.

Rick Green

Mitch McConnell

Tim Barton

Right, these astronomical numbers and specifically, I'm just referencing right now some of the Democrat leaders who have been there forever and they're suggesting that, oh, we have to. You know the Supreme Court justice. They've been there too long, they have too much control and too much power and that's not good for the American people. Coming from the Democrat leaders who have been there longer than I've been alive, right, I mean the levels of irony here should not be lost on the American public. As they are saying this, they're continuing to expose their hypocrisy. But, dad, back to the earlier point we were making. It's just about for them accomplishing their political will, their political agenda, and so whatever they can do to advance their position, whether it's to try to impact change, but even here, I don't think they're trying to impact change as much as they are to change the conversation and discourse so that they can focus the narrative on how bad Trump is, how bad Republicans are. It's why we have to get them off. It's why Democrats have to be in power, because they can't actually run on their record right now. Joe Biden, kamala Harris have done nothing that would encourage Americans to want to vote for them a second time, and so this, again, it's just part of shaping and controlling the narrative to try to help them maintain their position of power.

David Barton

Well, they've done nothing for people to want to vote for them a second time, but they're going to get a whole lot of votes anyway, and that's because people no longer look at issues. They look at titles and parties, and that's that's a problem. And so not looking at who they are and what they've done and what their record is that's the real issue too.

Tim Barton

Well, and I absolutely agree with that, I will go add one more thought to that is that if Democrats were not able to paint Donald Trump in a really bad light, if people didn't think Trump is so bad and then this guy is the worst and we can't let him there if they did not have a negative view of Trump, democrats would not get nearly as many votes as they will get this coming election. And this is fraud aside, because we think that fraud exists, we think it will probably happen again. Will it be enough to sway the election? That's undetermined, but there are dishonest people that do dishonest things. But that aside, there are so many people that will vote Democrat this coming year because of the negative view of Trump, not just because they vote for their party, although that does happen but the people that vote for their party.

There are some of them that would not just blindly vote for the party if there was not such a vile reaction to the candidate on the other side, which Democrats have been very strategic, really evil Hitler kind of figure, this fascist figure, when, of course, the irony is it's exactly what the leftist media and Democrat politicians have been doing for decades. Nonetheless, I do think it's not just people that will vote based on what party they affiliate with. It's also because they villainize their political opponent, and that slanted a lot of people, that there's a lot of people that have said look, we don't think Joe Biden is doing a good job, we don't think Kamala Harris is good, but we cannot have Trump again, and so it's their kind of vitriol reaction to Trump that will lead them to Democrat, not just because they're going to continue to blindly vote Democrat.

David Barton

And I would add to that, I think, part of the way they get their margin of victory, if they get a victory. But what they try for is not only to vilify Trump, they've got to cover their own records, which is why I point to GovTrackus. You should be able to go on and find anyone's voting record. Try finding Kamala Harris's voting record as a US senator. It has now been taken down. So not only will they try to vilify Trump by creating things that don't exist, they will take away actually what does exist to make themselves look better and make themselves look less extreme.

And so if it were strictly an election of truth, this wouldn't be in contest at all. But when you have so many voters who know so little about the process and so little about the candidates themselves except what they hear in those 15 second sound bites or you know whatever comes across, really quickly, that's where this battle is going to be determined more than anything else. And even, Rick, back to your thought about term limits for judges, I mean, if we were to pursue that, we still have that threshold of needing three-fourths of the states to ratify that, and that is going to be such a high threshold. That's another constitutional amendment and so really all the stuff that's being talked about is just it's not doable within our foreseeable lifetime, unless something catastrophic happens either. And I guess catastrophic could say on the other side you could have a constitutional revival. Let's say there's such a constitutional revival, but there has to be some big change of what people know, either for the good or for the bad, to get this thing off dead center.

Rick Green

Well, part of the way we need to get people thinking you know, back to what you were saying, Tim is, instead of the structures of our government and our process being based on an e-jerk reaction to a particular politician or policy or a party, where it's just this emotional. Well, I just want to make sure they don't get to do X, y or Z. It's kind of like the 12th Amendment and figuring out how to deal with electoral votes. Right, if there's an accusation of cheating or a broken down system or violations of the constitution of how an election happened, we should all be able to agree on some sort of process, just like due process in the Bill of Rights. And when we deal with criminal stuff, what's the process that actually just makes sense, no matter which side or which personality or which party.

We got to get back to thinking like that, and the same goes for okay, what's the best system of judges and should they serve for a particular amount of time instead of for life? And Congress and everything else too. Do we want to get rid of this system that rewards people for sticking around for 40 years when they really should have gone home, like George Washington did and live under the laws that they were, that they were part of creating. And it's so hard to do that right now in this hyper just you know, exaggerated world that we're in, where everything seems to be all about extremes. But I will say I think it can be done in our lifetime, because I think leftists are now, or liberals are, realizing we don't want the Supreme Court telling us what to do, and we said that for 50 years.

So maybe there's going to be I don't know a perfect storm where both sides are upset enough that they would agree on the structural change so that whoever's in charge doesn't get to make law for America from this unelected, unaccountable position, and if they're doing that, that they're only there for a certain amount of time. That's my dream world. Now we'll see if it can happen. Why don't we take a break? All right, we'll be right back. We've got more questions coming from the audience when we return it's Foundations of Freedom Thursday here on the WallBuilders Show

Break.

Rick Green

Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show. It's foundations of freedom. Thursday, taking your questions, and first half of the program, we had combined questions on the supreme court. Well, we're gonna do the same thing in the second half of the program. Several questions Scott appreciate sending this in.

Debbie also asking about project 2025 and how it's hard to find any. Well, they're saying it's hard to find information on it. I think if you go to Heritage website, you probably find out more. But the questions are the drafters of the 2025 project affiliated with the Republican Party? And then are have you all talked about this on your program? And you can't seem to find any information on the topic.

This is a weird one, guys, because when I first heard about Project 2025 and looked at it, I thought, wow, this is great man. They're really getting into details. These are the kind of things that we can implement in a new administration. And then we had the speech from Trump really lambasting it and kind of running from it. But yet my understanding is it is former Trump officials and some of the folks that will probably be in the new administration that helped Heritage to put Project 2025 in place. So this would be a great question for us to ponder. What do you guys think? What do you know about project 2025  and why is it now in controversy, when it seemed to be all the conservatives coming together to say this is what we want to do?

David Barton

 A lot of this goes back to Trump's first term, when he was in. Every president has what are called Schedule C appointees. Schedule C appointees are those people who are appointed by the president. They're not civil service, they're not career bureaucrats. They're people that are headed to their appointed head agencies, like, like your cabinet level officials. You know, Ben Carson. That's a Schedule C appointment Somebody that he nominates and places over an agency, somebody he puts over the EPA, somebody who puts over the Federal Reserve, whatever he puts it over. So those are Schedule C appointees. It turns out that a president has about 9,000 appointees he can make and those serve at his pleasure. So when he leaves office, the next president can replace all those. Unfortunately, presidents cannot go in and replace the Department of Justice itself or something else. They can't get rid of all federal employees. They can't fire federal employees. They can only do Schedule C. So, as it turns out, when Trump went in he was not prepared for 9,000 appointments. They had not identified 9,000 good people to fill every bureaucracy that's out there with a good leader. So as he left office after his first term, there were still so many places that needed good leadership that they'd never had any. So a lot of those Trump folks said, okay, if he's going to have a second shot, if he's going to get a second time, we're going to make sure that day one going in, we've already identified the right policies and the right people. So there's really two organizations kind of working together on this. AFPI American First Policy Institute that's a lot of the former Trump people that worked in him, close to him, near him, in his administration, high level people. And then you have Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation. Heritage Foundation is considered one of the largest conservative think tanks on Capitol Hill, and so they both get into this and they start saying, ok, coming back in, let's have an agenda ready to go from day one. Trump gets back in and let's have the personnel ready to go into place that can help move this thing along. So it's turned out that what has happened is the two have collaborated.

But I think right now, kind of the way it's divided is AFPI is working on the policy initiatives. That's where you're saying, hey, let's abolish the Department of Education. So that's the kind of thing coming out of AFPI. And then what's coming out of Heritage is Project 2025. And they call it Project 2025 because the new president will be in in 2025. And this is the project for the new president and they're trying to identify 9,000 Schedule C appointees. If we're looking for someone to take over the office of management and budget, who should that one person be? And he's got seven secretary or seven deputies under him, whatever. Let's find out who those seven people would be really good in the budget things. And so they're going in and taking resumes and looking at people and trying to find out who would be the best people to go in and start making these conservative reforms, start moving things forward.

Trump found out it was actually in his fourth year when he found out that the Pentagon is not all about the military, that if you're a three and four-star general, that's a political appointment. One and two-star generals are there by merit. Three and four star general that's a political appointment. One and two star generals are there by merit. Three and four star generals are there because of their beliefs and philosophy. They're chosen by the president, which is why Obama, before he left, he asked for the resignation of 800 generals. So he gets 800 generals turned in just in time for Trump to come in. And you got Obama generals in there and Trump didn't pull anybody because he doesn't want to disrespect the military, not understanding that those guys are not necessarily pro-military. They happen to be pro-liberal. At that time, they happen to be in the military. So Project 2025 is saying all right, coming in from day one, let's not have a learning curve, let's try to get this thing going Now.

Part of the reason that Trump distanced himself from this is he doesn't necessarily know what the names of these groups are, but in the case of Kevin Roberts' heritage, he made a gaffe politically.

He said we need to have a revolution in America. Well, coming on the heels of all the J6 stuff and coming on the heels of Trump created an insurrection. He called for people to rise up in violence. When you have the leader of a large national organization say we need a revolution in America, kevin wasn't talking about a gun revolution, but that's not the way the media is going to report that comment and that's not what they're going to show. So Trump has to distance himself from that kind of comment and say no, no, no, no. That's not part of that. I'm not because they're already beating him up for trying to have a gun insurrection anyway, anyway. So that doesn't change the fact that so many people that are becoming the administration of Trump should win will come in aware of the resources that are now at their availability. So that's Project 2025, helping find the people, and AFPI helping find the policies for 2025 if Trump gets reelected.

Tim Barton

And Dad too, there's more than just those two groups that are working on things. Those are two of the larger groups that are. But this is where, also, I mean you pointed out where Trump was really kind of handicapped, going in not knowing who people were and what could be there, and so some of the people that were on the team at the end of his last presidency said we want to have this in place. But Trump again, just kind of recapping on some of what you said Trump wasn't fully aware of all of this. And one of the things we know about President Trump is he likes to be the guy that comes up with the idea. And if there are some of these scenarios where something is broached to Trump and it wasn't his idea, and somebody says it's a bad idea, then sometimes he says, oh, I was never for that, I would never do that. I'm not in favor of any of that and it's, I think, sometimes simply because Trump doesn't know all of those details. And if Trump was behind it and informed of it. And again, some of this I think Trump is in favor of but, like you pointed out, because he doesn't always know the names or know the details and he didn't control the messaging, the marketing, his team wasn't in the lead on the rollout of this.

I think this is another one of those strategies where, politically, oftentimes, if you can tarnish the rollout, if you can tarnish the title, the name and make it look bad, it's the reason that you had the leader of 2025 resign. It's not because necessarily there were bad ideas coming from Project 2025. It's because of the way it was being messaged in the marketing and the way the media was covering it. He resigned simply, I think, in an effort to save part of the work they had done up to that point getting details in place. So I don't know that and now there's more conservatives that have talked about this when you read some of what is actually in Project 2025, you're like that seems like a really good thing. There's a lot of really good stuff there. I think there's just a lot of politicization that happened that Trump wasn't fully familiar with, and the media did very well what often they do. They were able to spin it in a way to make it look really bad, when it's not necessarily what was trying to be done wasn't necessarily bad

Rick Green

 All right folks. That's all the questions we have time for today, but if you'd like to send some into us to consider in future weeks, please send those to radio@wallbuilders.com. That's radio@wallbuilders.com. It can be about the founding fathers, it might be about a story we've covered in the last few weeks or months. Maybe it's just something you're seeing in the news and you've got a question on how to apply the Bible to that. What's the biblical perspective on that hot issue of the day? But then also, what's the constitutional perspective? Is there a historical precedent for that particular issue? When we talk about the Supreme Court nominees or, I'm sorry, the number of Supreme Court members, or lifetime appointments versus good behavior, all of these things, what's the historical precedent on that? What's the constitutional precedent on that you may have a question regarding? It could be something like welfare. It could be something that's a particular congressional bill that's being considered right now. Whatever it might be, send it in to us. That'll drive our conversation on Thursdays. We look forward to reading those emails from you. Send those into radio@wallbuilders.com. That's radio@ wallbuilders.com. And then also our other programs. Throughout the week, Monday through Wednesday, we have interviews with people that are on the front lines of the culture Fridays we do Good News Fridays and then, of course, today, foundations for Freedom Thursday.

But any of those programs one of the ways that you can help us grow as a program is simply taking the link to the program and sending it out to your friends and family. I mean literally taking that link and just send it a few texts once in a while. Text a friend or family member with that particular program and say, hey, I just listened to this show on wall builders. You need to listen to it, or maybe post it on your social media pages with some sort of comment about why people need to get educated. You are a force multiplier. When you do that, you're helping to save the country, restore the country by helping us get truth out there to as many people as possible. So please consider doing that today and then also consider going to wallbuilders.com and making that one time our monthly contribution. Thanks so much for joining us today. You've been listening to the WallBuilder Show.