Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to Intersection of Faith and Culture. This is The WallBuilders Show, taking on those hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective and the perspective today. It's the day after. The morning after. I feel like that would make a good movie the morning after or the day after. 

David Barton [00:00:22]  had a song on that. I recall a song or movie. There's Got to be a morning after. Yeah, that Poseidon adventure. I think that. 

Rick Green [00:00:29] Was a you're way over my head on that one are beyond my years. I don't know. Yeah that's what it is. It's not hard. Okay. We're in a good mood here at the WallBuilders Show because last night was a good night not only for the presidential race, but Senate races and all kinds of other things. 

Tim Barton [00:00:43] Or because it's like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning as we're recording this program and we haven't slept in like 24 hours and we're a little delirious, that's I can be part of it as well. However, what we know right now more than we knew 24 hours ago, really positive things that we can rejoice about, by and large, and definitely some things that reveal to us some of the challenges that lay ahead. One of the things that we knew coming in is no matter what happens, there's a lot of work to be done by the church in helping disciple Christians, first and foremost, and and things that have been confirmed now from some election. When we talk about some of the ballot measures that happened, some that passed on that didn't pass, some of the opposition. And then, of course, where we even see some of the successes, the victories, the challenges when it comes to some of the states, a lot of positive things for sure, but a lot of work to be done, which is also very clear. Yeah. 

Rick Green [00:01:36] And guys, of course, we've got, you know, multiple networks have said Donald Trump's the winner. They haven't all said that yet because, you know, apparently there are some states that think they need a lot of time to finish counting their votes. And we had some ballot dumps last night. And there's all kinds of things. But apparently it is definitely a Donald Trump victory. But not only that, guys, let's talk the Senate first. I know folks want to hear us talk about Trump and Harris, but you know, the Senate, of course, you know, a very slim Democrat majority right now, but enough to make Chuck Schumer the majority leader. And so this election was very important from that regard. And honestly, some surprising results on the Senate. You know, maybe some that we had hoped would win like Harry Lake out in Arizona, that that didn't. But then some that we weren't sure about that are you know, it could be, what, 5354 possibly for the Republicans in the. 

David Barton [00:02:21] Yeah it is going to be a safe margin in that sense. But in some sense, it's also unsafe, if I can use that word and that term. It goes back to Woodrow Wilson. Everything bad seems to go back to him in some way. So Woodrow Wilson, that's what they came. 

Tim Barton [00:02:36] At least a Democrat in some regard. 

David Barton [00:02:38] He Well, that's true, too. At that point, they came up with the filibuster rule they now have and the Senate that says even though the Constitution establishes a majority of votes to win, even though George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both said the fundamental principle of our Constitution requires the will of the majority to prevail. The Senate under Woodrow Wilson came of the saying they said no, we think actually 60% is what it takes to prevail and 60% puts the 41% in charge. So the 41% can block the 59% every single day in the Senate. And because no party has said 59 senators in like decades, that means nothing goes through the Senate, which why you have a president to exercise too much power is why you have so many executive orders. That's why agencies do so many things, because literally you're not getting done in the Senate where you need to. But now having that Senate with the president being Trump and having preserve the House, having both legislative bodies and the executive branch all on the same page, talking to Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, and he said that they have come up with ways to reconciliation process where they can run things through the Senate Now with a 51% majority like it should have that like the founding fathers set it up like the Constitution required. And so if that's the case, you'll be able to see a lot of legislative progress made very quickly. So the Senate, Rick, you asked about the Senate and comment on that. That's why it's so big this time having the Senate, because if you'd gone in with a 5050 or a 4951 like it is now, with Democrats on top, having the House and having the presidency would not give you the opportunity to really get the nation moving in the right direction. But having all three of those bodies, that's significant. 

Tim Barton [00:04:21] Well, the other thing, too, that's significant about some of these Senate pickups is that even though you have several Republicans, it's a little bit like on the Democrat side, there were four independents previously that were U.S. senators. And now a couple of those have been replaced or I guess at least Manchin has been replaced. Some Democrats were defeated that were incumbents and their Senate races. But Manchin was someone that at times from West Virginia, he would at times vote with Republicans on certain issues. And similarly, there were some Republicans that would vote with Democrats on certain issues. But now when you have a 53, 54, whatever, this number is going to end up being majority in the Senate. Then if you have a couple of squishy Republicans, if you have some very moderate liberal Republicans that side with. Regrets on certain issues. It doesn't negate enough of the vote to prevent you from getting done what you want to get done. So, again, overall can be very positive. What's happening with the US Senate and again, some of this is still undetermined what these seats are going to be. And as we mentioned earlier, we are recording this in the wee hours of the morning. When we wake up in a couple of hours, we'll be doing all kinds of news interviews and having lots of conversations. We will see and know more that point. And so probably we'll have an update tomorrow as well, where we will again know far more at that point with that update. This is what we know at this point. And it does look like that not only will Republicans win the Senate, but have enough of a majority that if you ask squishy Republican senators, it won't prevent potentially Donald Trump from getting some of the things accomplished that he wants to get done from maybe some of the less conservative moderate senators. 

Rick Green [00:06:00] You know, flipping back and forth, guys. So back to the presidential race. It looks like Donald Trump set to have a significant popular vote victory, which I don't I don't know that I remember anybody projecting that right. So that's a that could help. But I think last night on the on the program, David, you and Michele Bachmann both said that could have a real calming effect and kind of help to, you know, bring the temperature down in terms of the divide in the country, because normally it's a split. You know, popular vote typically goes to the Democrats in the Electoral College, to the Republicans, when they you know, when it is split. So what do you guys think about that? I mean, we're talking multimillions. And in terms of the margin on the popular vote. 

David Barton [00:06:39] Yeah, that is a real calming effect. And I think it also kind of negates some of the things the Democrats would have liked to have done, I think had it been a really close thing or had had the Electoral College gone one way and the popular vote gone the other way, which is very possible, by the way. Just be real clear. Go on record this. It is not the popular vote that matters in a presidential election. It is not an election of the United States. To choose a president is an election of the 50 states to choose their president. And every state has its own. It has to be the majority vote of that state. It's not the total net popular vote. Otherwise, you can get 20 blue cities together. 20 top cities in America have more population than every other county in the United States put together. So if you just had the popular vote only is 20. There are 35,000 cities in America and 20 cities have more population than the other 34,980 cities. And that's just not a good scenario. So back to the back to your question, Rick, having a popular vote victory with citizens that really don't understand civics is going to help calm things down by saying, well, he was elected, It's, you know, whatever. 

Tim Barton [00:07:49] Well, yeah, I also think, guys, is worth noting that not only can have a calming effect, but I think it certainly will. I think it will do a lot to push back against some of the narrative from so much of the mainstream media. For example, on X, when are you on? Must talk it over. And they said, my goodness, there's so much misinformation and disinformation. And they claim to be the bastion, the source, the sole source of truth and information. And when you disagree with them, it's because you're promoting this disinformation. Therefore, you should be censored if the majority of the population and that's your point, that it's not the majority, the population that wins the presidency, it's the you have to win the majority of the the electoral right, the electoral vote in the majority of states. And so it's obviously it's different. And we think that's a brilliant way to do it. The founding fathers that with this incredible genius set up the system. So it's a function that way. But with that being said, if he wins the popular vote, then it also says something I think in a large part to the media about how out of touch they are, and I'll be there to receive that message. I think they're still going to play the blame game. And you have all these excuses for why and you should trust them more. But it it, I think, can even help usher in for so many people a different understanding of who the media is, of what they've done and even even looking at the facts that as as Trump and Vance were heading into this election, they did an awful lot of interviews, but a lot of the interviews they did were not in any kind of mainstream media. They were in a podcast platform. And as they were doing it, it shows to some extent in my mind the deterioration of popular mainstream media and the growth of so much of what's happening with outside sources, where people are more listening, so much more to independent voices that they will trust the individual more than they trust a media corporation. And so I do think it also indicates that we are just like when when Trump won in 2016 and he showed a new era where social media was a way to get your message out. I think now podcasts and many podcast hosts are showing that there is a different source of information. And even x ray, formerly known as Twitter, is showing there is a different place to get your news from. Other way. It's not necessarily the mainstream media. 

David Barton [00:10:09] Is that the official name of that? That site. 

Tim Barton [00:10:11] Now is. 

David Barton [00:10:12] Formally known as Twitter. Every time I see it, it's also formerly known as Twitter. So it is as the official Title X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Tim Barton [00:10:20] It might as well be because that's what all of us have to say to make sure people know they were talking about some inappropriate material that, you know, we're putting out there. Wait a second. What are you doing? Know is formally known as Twitter. So just to clarify, we're not being inappropriate here. 

Rick Green [00:10:33] Yeah. Musk We're really glad you saved free speech in America, but why don't you have to name it X? Because it is confusing us. But but it's interesting how much the media has changed and this election proves it. And, you know, Rogan talked with Trump about this whenever he interviewed Trump. Joe Rogan on, you know, the biggest podcast in the world, talked about how because the major media became so biased that people stopped trusting them, it helped to usher in this new, you know, wave of where people get their news. And I know there's tons of people that I talked to that they only listen to WallBuilders and watch Victory News and Flash Point, you know, and they don't even do the major media at all anymore. And so it's you know, we need to recognize that going forward into future elections and how important it's going to be to use our voices, our positive way to influence. 

David Barton [00:11:16] That's a great lesson to is the media did not trust the people. Just let the people make their own decision. And when you start trying to cook the books and tell people what they need to believe and censure the other side and take it up, they committed suicide, is what they did. The media wipe itself out? There was no one that had the power to take them out. They took themselves out by making themselves distrustful, even to people that would normally be their progressive kind of supporters. They just went so far. And that is the problem with having no more no moral system. You will eventually kill and eat your own. And that's that's what they've done. So I think it's a really good outcome to that. And we didn't like it for the last ten years when we haven't been able to get the other side of the message out. But I think it's helping people become thinkers again, helping wean them off, helping realize there's more to the story than sometimes what I hear on the media in the news. I think it's been really good, but it's been a decade of really hard stuff getting here. 

Rick Green [00:12:11] I'm curious on a couple of the states real quick and when we take our breaking them on, we'll come back and talk about the ballot measure. Some of the, you know, the governor's races or some of the other things are on the ballot. But was was North Carolina a big surprise to you guys? Of course, with the hurricane and all the craziness? We were concerned, actually, that that the voting would be interrupted in a way. And I can't remember was Chad Connelly or someone on the program last night that was talking about how, you know, they finally recovered. It took them a couple of weeks, but they were able to put the measures in place to make it possible for people to vote. But that was the first one that y'all called tonight. That was a big one, right? Like that one. That was one of the ones that was on the fence. So, North Carolina, what do you think. 

David Barton [00:12:48] That that was not a surprise? Well, I guess depends on how far ago, probably 3 to 4 weeks ago, I thought North Carolina would go to Trump. And so at that point in time, nobody was really calling it per se. But even as we were traveling, we're doing meetings in North Carolina and we have friends and the Trump camp. And we were hearing that the Trump internals already had him up about eight points in North Carolina, and that was 3 or 4 weeks ago. And then with that period of time where, you know, he was up, then as we got two weeks out or two and a half weeks, I guess, out from the election, Kimmel started taking money out of North Carolina. She had been running ads and doing media and doing rallies, and she started moving out. And that said to us that, you know, her internal polling is saying that she's not doing good in North Carolina and she actually diverted her money down into Virginia, which was very striking because at that time, everybody thought that Virginia was a hard core blue. And, you know, it was down to the 90 percentile the night before it turned blue. So well, I guess last night now that we're talking to in the morning. But last night it was it was red and looked like it might go Republican for the first time since the earth started cooling. And it was it just I don't think North Carolina was a surprise to me, per se. If you go within the last month or so. 

Tim Barton [00:14:05] Well, one of the things I think also was a big turning point is when the hurricane after that, the flooding when it hit North Carolina and Trump was the one who went there, I think that made a major difference. Not just that the failure of the federal government to do something as we're spending more money funding Ukraine, and yet we can barely give any money to the hurricane victims and the flooding victims, etc., I think Trump going there in person was very impactful. One of the things that I heard somebody say and I totally resonate I agree with it, is that when you are hurting and somebody shows up, even if you don't like that person, you are endeared to that person because they were there in your time of need and when they were there to help you when you needed it, then you are going to be there for them. And I think we saw that which, as we even talked about in some of the election coverage we did last night, yesterday is one of the interesting things and we might talk about this more after the break, but. Even though President Trump did very well in some of these areas where there were lot of question marks about how well he would do it, the polling didn't seem to show that he was going to do that well. It didn't necessarily carry down to the kind of the coattail thought of it carrying some of these other candidates in North Carolina as maybe one of those examples, although we already talked about how the for the governor, there were some problems for that Republican candidate. But with that being said, it's it's interesting that there were a lot of people that voted for Trump that did not vote down ballot, which seems to indicate that they cared about President Trump and maybe not everybody else. And I think part of it goes back to the fact that he showed up after the flooding and he has been a guy who has just been there and then being on some of these different podcasts, he's not he doesn't come across as a crazy person he's been accused of. He's far more of a normal person. And when people actually watched the Joe Rogan interview where they watched some of the rallies and some of these different podcasts, they realize that even though they might not like him for whatever the X, Y, and Z reason was that he's not quite as crazy as he's been accused of by some on the left. And I think that showed up as well in some of that change and transition when he showed up after the flooding, after the hurricanes, people saw, okay, this guy maybe isn't as evil as I was led to believe by CNN or whatever other outlet there is out there. And I think that was part of what had an impact in North Carolina as well. 

Rick Green [00:16:27] Our guys to take a quick break. We'll be right back. We've got some other races we'll talk about when we return. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Tim Barton [00:16:36] Hi, friends. This is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don't know much about American history or even Hebrews of the faith. And I know oftentimes for parents, we're trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has a faith Hall of Fame, where they outlined the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our Web site. One is called The Courageous Leader's Collection, and this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there's a second collection called Heroes of History. And this collection you'll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends. The list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read into providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at wallbuilders.com. That's www.wallbuilders.com. 

Rick Green [00:17:40] Well, go back to the wall to show. Thanks for staying with us, talking about the election results from last night, which for for us, that was just a few hours ago and still still a lot to be reported that we haven't seen yet. Tim, your time at North Carolina, As we were going to the break, Georgia was another one that, you know, let's not forget, last time it was, what, 10,000 votes in Georgia was the difference. And at least as of the time of this recording, it's about 130,000 vote victory for Trump there. There's still a few percentages, percentage points out, and I think they might be from some of the big cities. So I'm assuming that will shrink. But all the networks called Georgia because they assume that that is too big to overcome with any reporting from those areas. But let's talk Senate races, gubernatorial races. There was an Indiana race where the lieutenant governor we talked about last night is going to be a black road regiment pastor by the name of Michael Beckwith. That will be the lieutenant governor of Indiana. That's a a big one. That's a that's a really big deal. And and good for the future of the country. What were some of the ballot initiatives? We know Florida, they defeated the abortion effort there. So that means in Florida it'll be a six week ban in in Florida. 

Tim Barton [00:18:49] Yeah, One of the things that's interesting about these ballot measures is even though the the abortion measure did not pass in Florida, if a majority of voters voted in favor of abortion, it's just because the threshold there had to be a 60% threshold that had to be passed for that measure to pass. And then why this is significant is because if you look at most of these abortion ballot measures that were in the states, there were multiple states that had them. Is most of them not only passed, they passed pretty strongly in favor of abortion. There was only a couple of places where abortion and anything anti-abortion or anything that was for abortion didn't pass where any anti-abortion measure actually passed. And why I bring this up is because we talked about this a lot in election coverage yesterday. But whatever happens going forward, this is only this is only like the next lap of the race. And there are still a lot of race in front of us when it comes to the work that needs to be done and the role of the church. It's becoming so much more clear to me. But guys, especially as we spent the last several months on the road challenging and encouraging Christians to be involved, how the Bible applies to every area of life. And that includes not just family, not just church. It includes in government. As much as we go to the Bible for guidance on how we navigate, relate relationships, how we navigate attitudes, how we navigate our businesses, we should be doing the same thing for navigating government and politics and and civics in general. And we just haven't done that. But not just the thought that churches need to help disciple people when it comes to government. The fact that we have so many self-identifying, churchgoing, born again Christians supporting abortion really raises the question to me of what are we teaching or not teaching in churches? As so many Christians are confused about an issue that is not confusing in Scripture. And I actually have some some calls in to meet with several of my pastor friends and I'm going to kind of going to be very kind. And but walk through this and I'm a challenge it a little bit of, hey, what what are you trying to develop in your people? Right. Like if if the goal of us as believers and ultimately as a church is if we're supposed to make disciples and equip the saints for the work of the ministry, well, then what does a disciple look like? If you've done your job, a saint is equipped for the work of the ministry. What does that person all like? What does a disciple look like? And if we can identify what a disciple looks like, the my question is then what are we doing to help accomplish that? Because I feel like there's a lot of pastors that disconnect what a disciple should look like with how they're actually teaching, mentoring and pastoring. Because the fact, again, that we have the majority of voters in all of these states that are voting for these ballot measures on the abortion issue, the majority of them are voting in favor of abortion, and a huge percentage of them are born again evangelical, churchgoing, active Christians. That says a lot about what we're not doing in the church. So in the midst of us navigating all of the political landscape of what that looks like going forward, I think there's a major challenge for the church as well to say we got to do a better job of discipling our people. And it's not just to be active and involved in government. It's what are some basic biblical positions that we should hold that we should know. What does the Bible say? Why do we believe in the value, the sanctity of human life? And I'm just using that as one example. There's many we could point to, but I think that's one of the my takeaways from some of these ballot measures, ballot limits. So even though I'm rejoicing that abortion is restricted in Florida and we should rejoice over that, the only reason it's restricted is because it didn't reach the 60% threshold, but it did get the majority of the vote, just it didn't surpass the threshold they needed to actually win. And I think that's very telling. And the challenge for Christians in the church to begin discipling even more intently. 

David Barton [00:22:34] And I would also add to that that there were ten states that had ballot initiatives last night and. Florida. One took a pro-life position, but not by a majority of the state, by a minority of the state, because it takes that, as Tim, as you said, 60 point threshold. So how about the other nine states? Well, they went down on this thing and they went down even in very red states like Missouri, very conservative state, considered really kind of a Bible belt state. And so certainly Pastis is there. But I'm going to make another point on this as well, is look at your kids and your kids are becoming pro-abortion at a very rapid rate. Well, I know you're pro-life and you teach them, right. Your kids get 40 hours prime time a week of education in a secular progressive school somewhere, even if you call it a rural school. And so rural public schools are really good. And we found out in Texas last cycle that what we consider our rural schools and we say rural public schools are really good, they're not woke. We found out that here in Texas, of all the teachers and rural districts, they give political contributions. 92% of those contributions of teachers in rural districts went to Democrats. So even in a rural district, you got some progressive teachers teach in a rural districts. And so if you separate like that, you can match 40 hours a week of quality time. Now you probably get your kids with a more than 40 hours a week, but not quality prime time like like the school gets. And if a pastor thinks he can take a 30 minute sermon in a week and compete with them getting 40 hours of primetime week plus their social media plus or so, we're just going to relook at the whole culture. And it can't be that I just I tell my kids what's right or wrong. You have to train them and what's right and wrong. Pastors have to train in what's right and wrong. You can't just have a head not acknowledged, but doing a pro-life sermon every once in a while out of the pulpit that just not does that does not even match what's there. And then if they go off to college, they're really going to be loaded up with progressive professors. So it really is time for the church to kind of reexamine itself. And on most of the value issues that came up on ballot initiatives on election night, we lost most of those those initiatives. Now, there were two bright spots that I saw for the last five cycles. Probably we had the first two states vote down marijuana usage, and that just hasn't happened. We've had a state do it before on medical marijuana usage. But we had two of the four states actually say, no, no, no, we're not going to legalize illegal drugs, which marijuana has always been a gateway drug to bigger stuff. 

Tim Barton [00:25:04] So overall. 

David Barton [00:25:05] While the direction of the country, I think was preserved by the way we chose the House and the Senate of the presidency, what we did at the state level on ballot initiatives revealed that our moral system is not as strong as it needs to be, and we need to spend a lot more time not just teaching, but training. And training is very different. To just think about training. You put a lot more time, effort, intentionality into it, and I think that's where we are in the nation. We got big time and intentional effort and it's time really for us to start mentoring. Those around us. Maybe need to mentor some of the neighbor kids, maybe need to mentor people who you work with, spend some time at attention and just talk to them about things. It doesn't have to be serious. You have to be cautious, but just start conversations and have just just nice, relaxed conversations and throw some thoughts. And it's time to start building those relationships. And I think that we have a good kind of roadblock to bad stuff that that would have come had we not won last night. But there's still a lot more left to do. 

Rick Green [00:26:04] Well, it looks like our election recap is a Donald Trump victory for the presidency. Republicans gain seats in the House, so they didn't lose the majority. They're gaining seats and the Senate is now going to be Republican. So we talked about this on the program last night. They need to press the gas and that means get some things done immediately. And of course, for all of us as citizens, our responsibility continues. This is just opens the door, opens the the window of opportunity for us to regain liberty in our community. So, folks, the real work begins now. Get a little bit of rest today, maybe tomorrow, and then let's hit it again. Let's get back out there and be good biblical citizens. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.