Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us today on the Wallbuilders show. It's Thursday, so we'll be getting to your questions. That's our Foundations of Freedom Thursday. We love hearing from you. So email those questions into radio@wallbuilders.com. And by the way wallbuilders.com place to go to get all kinds of great information and tools. And of course, we do ask you to consider making that one time or monthly contribution. It helps us to expand, get more radio stations, train more pastors, train more young people, train more legislators. All the things we're doing here to rebuild liberty. You can help make that happen by making that contribution wallbuilders.com. And then if you missed some programs this week or in the previous weeks, you can go to Wallbuilders.show for all the latest radio programing, David Barton and Tim Barton and I'm Rick Green and guys we got a lot of great questions. First one, I bet for most Americans, unless they've been through our constitutional live program or they've been listening to Wallbuilders for a long time. Never heard the words marque and reprisal. And I will admit I didn't hear that all the way going through law school. One day I'm sitting there with David right there in the museum, and he starts talking about Marque and reprisal. I'm like, what are you marking up? You draw in on things. What does that mean? And anyway, so we got a question on this today guys. It's going to be fun. So hey fellows. Don junior recently made a post about Mark and reprisal. It got some military buddies thinking, which may not always be the best thing. Article one, section eight. And that by the way, that's what David said when he wrote it and not me. And he's probably military, so we can get away with that anyway. Article one, section eight the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to"grant letters of marque and reprisal". While Congress hasn't issued one in over a century, could Congress issue the letters authorizing private security firms or specially trained civilians to intercept cartel operations? I'm, of course, in my back of my mind here. Aaron, the name Erik Prince, as I'm reading this anyway, particularly those involving drug shipments and you would trafficking this would reduce the financial burden on taxpayers, and the payout could be a cut of whatever recovered. To summarize, if given permission, can we legally become patriotic? Modern day pirates have a merry short life, mateys. All right, David, that was one of the most fun questions to read that we've had in quite some time, so thanks for putting some effort into that. So, David, Tim, first of all, what is market reprisal? And then secondly, why haven't we used it in over a century? And would we do that with our current military good. 

David Barton [00:02:27] Not that. I mean this is going to be really unusual. I'm going to rule out some sarcasm here for a bit and we never do that I understand. 

Rick Green [00:02:34] Yeah, right. And of course, David's questions were just dripping with sarcasm. So not you David. The David that's in in the question. 

David Barton [00:02:42] So I mean, I completely understand that in law school you never covered this because this is part of the Constitution and that's not what you cover in law school.

Rick Green [00:02:51] Unfortunately. 

David Barton [00:02:52] What you do is starry decisis. You do all the previous decisions and this is not been done in 100. And it was what was it three weeks ago that we actually went into this in pretty good depth. We had a question on this a few weeks ago, and that's the first we've heard a long time. So this is the second one. And this is a lot more action oriented to what's going on right now. And and literally with what's going on right now. And I I've got to say that constitutionally. Yeah you could do that. What what David suggested absolutely. Constitutionally. Right. I think it's bad policy at this point. And the reason, as we have a complete military, this was done at a point in time when America didn't have a complete military, and we needed everybody all hands on deck. We need all the militias and all the county cops and everything we had. We needed everybody. And so at this point in time where you got a complete military, if you start authorizing private groups to act like a military, you're going to get the same thing back from other nations. And suddenly the cartels in Mexico will start acting like a military from Mexico, etc.. Now, I think what we've got now, look, we have the best. We have the best military in the world for taking out bad guys. I put it right up there with Israel. I'm not going to say that that were more or less good than Israel, but that those are a couple right in the top. And when you throw on the British Royal Marines, I mean, you got three elite groups right there, and there's other elite groups, you know, Denmark and and the Danish forces, they're great forces and there special forces or elite operators. But what we have now with Trump having cut out the war that that the cartels in Mexico are terrorist groups and all these, all these drug cartels are terrorist groups. What you've now got is you've unleashed the power of the Navy Seals against those terrorist groups, and it's authorized now is a legal thing to do. And you wouldn't want to get into letting citizens go in situations and start taking out bad guys, because this is what happened with the Somali pirates. You know, Somali pirates basically represent Somalia and they're Muslims and and they're trying to carry through the policies of Somalia and going after all these non-Muslim groups. And you just don't want to get in that situation where you're encouraging other nations to start retaliating in kind with their citizens. That's my opinion. 

Tim Barton [00:05:07] One day, and I do. I do wonder if maybe some of the government officials in Somalia might disagree and say, no, they don't represent us at all. You know, wink, wink. There definitely could have been some of that going on. And so not to say that everybody does this stuff, even though they might represent some of the belief in ideology of the nation, that they don't always do it with the full permission or the the condoning of the nation. But, you know, it is interesting, looking back, how how prevalent this has been historically. And that is you're saying, you know, maybe it's a different direction now, we wouldn't want to do that because it would authorize potentially civilians in this. But it's interesting that even even if you go back to the whether it be the American Revolution, War of 1812, and you kind of go in that 17 and 1800 period, there were a lot of ships that were flying for a lot of other countries and had their flags, but they had to get permission and approval to do that. Now, there wasn't some level of competency check. There wasn't a military screening check, a capability of what they could do. But it does seem like that right now. The federal government does use a lot of outside groups to contract in a lot of things with sometimes like these three letter agencies, etc., so it might not be as far off. It's just a different version of that now than what it's been, but certainly we would not want it to be something that we gave a green light to every redneck with their AR 15. That would be a major problem for lots of reasons. But certainly there are some very highly qualified individuals. There's some organizations, again, some that work with. 

Rick Green [00:06:48] By the way, I take great offense to the redneck with an AR 15 line because I are a redneck with a few AR. I'm just kidding, man. 

Tim Barton [00:06:56] I mean, up until the early after that. And you lost them, all right. 

David Barton [00:06:59] If you're a true redneck, you only have an AR 13.5. I mean, it's not it's not quite all there. If you're true, read that. 

Rick Green [00:07:07] I think you guys are spot on, man, because, you know, as fun as it sounds, right, it just it just doesn't make sense when you have the, you know, this incredible military that we have. And cause we talked about this on Wallbuilders before too, that that we should be essentially having our special special forces practicing, you know, doing training on the cartel, like go in and wipe those guys out and, and take those, those new seals and others and give them a chance to get some, get some action. And, you know, it just takes like you said. I mean, it's the the policy of a president that is willing to use that power in a Congress that will will back them up on that. So it's a great question. But in this day and age, with this current situation. 

David Barton [00:07:43] You know, I'll add to that by saying when this was written at the time, the American Revolution, what do we have for ships in the Navy? And I think that at no time in the revolution did we have more than several dozen. If you add them all together, including the ones we lost, it's, I think, Tim, you saw on a number of like 61 over that, that entire course of the war. But compare that to Great Britain, who's got hundreds of warships and they've got hundreds of privateer ships and they're fighting Spain, and they're fighting France, and they're fighting in America. They're fighting battles all over the world. I mean, we really didn't have much at all to fight the greatest Navy in the world with. And so we needed all the all the civilian help, all the private help we could get. We needed all those ships, anybody that had guns and could fire and British ship. We need your help. So we're just not at that point anymore. We have the most formidable military in the world at this point, no question about it. And there may be a come a time when we need civilian help again and that that may come. But at this point, I think you'd encourage escalation from every third world nation and dictator to turn his people loose, to go after Americans in the name of their their corrupt government, whatever that was. And I just don't think you want to get into that situation today. 

Rick Green [00:08:56] All right, guys, well, let's go to our our next question. Actually move it over to the DOGE category here because a lot of people have been sending in questions on this one, Lori said. Is DOGE constitutional and is the way Congress has been spending tax dollars with no accountability constitutional? So same question from Heather. We've got a lot of other people been asking about this. And of course, you guys are probably get the same question out on the road with regard to this as well. So this can be a fun one. Is DOGE constitutional. And of course, the image that the media has painted is that essentially Donald Trump handed over the keys to Elon Musk and say, go do whatever you want, and there's no accountability, and he's just firing people willy nilly and all that. That's not exactly how it's working. But what do you think, guys, constitutional or not? And let's talk about exactly how they really did set it up with that, whatever that digital agency was that that was existing before. 

David Barton [00:09:46] So if you look at what's constitutional, not how many precedents can we go through. And the answer is every one that created some type of agency in his administration during his presidency. And that was not a question of whether it's constitutional or not, because the president can form agencies to help execute what needs to be done as president. Now, if you're going to keep funding them, you're going to have to go back to Congress for budget money. And at that point in time, you're going to have to have Congress approve it. Or sometimes they're they they do these these blanket approvals of $3 million for, you know, whatever the thing is. And if you want to spread that between ten of your agencies, that's fine. So not every budget and not every agency has a specific budget amount, nor does it have to be authorized by by the government. Sometimes they give blanket grants. We're going to give 1200 billion, whatever it is, to the executive branch for him to spend. That's a lot of what they did with Biden. They gave him a lot of open, blank checks for him to decide how he wants to use it. So if you're going to say it's unconstitutional and Democrats are certainly doing that, they're suing like crazy against DOGE. If you're going to do that, you have to go back to Biden and you have to go through every Democrat president. And by the way, every Whig president, every Republican president, every federal president, every Anti-Federalist president, every independent president, because they've all done that. So the question is, does it become an agency that continues on like the Department of Education does? Then it gets its own budget. But as long as the president's just using that to help execute his job and his task, it doesn't need congressional approval more so than what what he needs just to operate as president, which is money. But if he gets block block kind of amount from from Congress, then he can spend it how he wants as long as it's not violating, clearly violating some federal law or some constitutional provision. And DOGE is not there's all sorts of it is out there to help the president. 

Rick Green [00:11:44] Yeah. I never could figure out what they were complaining about because it's really just even if it was just a name representing what some of Donald Trump's staff was doing, or even if they weren't paid staff, it just people. He's coming. Hey, I need some help doing this particular job. It's kind of like having an assistant chief of staff, right? I mean, if he if he decides he needs an assistant chief of staff to help execute whatever's going on in the white House, there's nothing unconstitutional about him doing that. And of course, they're operating at the what's the expression at the pleasure of the president? Right. So they're serving the president as they go do these things. It's not like they're doing the doing it without his permission. 

Tim Barton [00:12:20] And this is also not far fetched. Any business it's ever had an independent audit where somebody comes in like, hey great point. Yeah. Like that. That's that's totally normal. And by the way, for like every single nonprofit for, you know, these groups that are are receiving dollars that, you know, tax credit or whatever else. Like it's totally reasonable that we want to know, hey, if I'm if I'm donating money to a charity, I would love to know what you're doing with the dollars that I give you, which is also why they have, you know, whether it be a 9-90, whatever it is they're releasing, that you can go and investigate. But in the case of the federal government, they've been taking our money and they've not been releasing a single thing they've done with it. And so this idea now we're like, hey, we like to see your 9-90. Like we, we've been giving you money a long time. We'd like to see what you did with that. Or like a business that's saying, hey, we have some questions about the books. Let's get an outside perspective so nobody can accuse us of cooking the books. So let's have somebody come in and review this. None of this is crazy. This is a quite a normal thought and a normal activity, both for profit businesses and even for nonprofits. And the level of irony that the people that are screaming so loud right now are the very same ones that were saying, we want to see Donald Trump's tax returns, but right, don't come and investigate us. And then you have guys like Adam Schiff saying, well, Elon Musk, he just wants your Social Security so he can get into your bank account. Like Elon Musk doesn't care anything about my bank account. I can promise you he would be so disappointed by what he found in my bank account. But no, maybe maybe Adam Schiff's like. But if he's able to investigate, I don't want him to investigate me. It sounds much more like people that are nervous for being exposed for wrongdoing or corruption, then any kind of genuine, authentic idea where you even have now, I think. Jen Psaki Yeah, I think earlier in the week came out and said that it's it's a mistake for Democrats to keep saying that this is a constitutional crisis because it's not a winning proposition. It's not a winning statement or argument because it's not. This is not a constitutional crisis. This is accountability that the American people want. And so the idea they're screaming over this is crazy for lots and lots of reasons, but dad, as you mentioned, certainly, that the idea that a president could be able to bring in people that work for him, that can go and review these organizations that also work for him, that's not a crazy thought at all. And the people that are getting upset, you have to wonder, what is it you are afraid they are going to find? And of course, based on what they're already finding, we have a pretty good idea of what they're afraid they're going to find. 

David Barton [00:15:00] Yeah. And I think I think that's part of what's going on. And by the way, this goes back to Romans 221 where Romans says when usually those who accuse others for choosing them owns themselves. I mean, they accuse others of what they themselves do, and they deflect by by going after others. And isn't it interesting that when you have a Biden administration who love to audit everybody about everything, including, you know, the potential J6 people we're going to audit? 

Tim Barton [00:15:28] No, no no, no, no. They didn't audit everybody but everything. They audited Christians. 

David Barton [00:15:32] There you go. Exactly. 

Tim Barton [00:15:34] And their political opponents almost, almost like what communist and Marxist do targeting their political opponents. That's what they were doing. 

David Barton [00:15:43] And now that they're getting audited, they suddenly think it's unconstitutional. And it's it's the kind of thing where that I mean, I was reading that even today. They've already DOGE has already uncovered fraudulent payments, not cuts. We're talking fraudulent payments and what we see. How many thousand was it? That are getting Social Security checks in their 150 years old or older, and they're still getting checks, you know. 

Rick Green [00:16:09] Are you a centurion? Is that what we would call it? No. And almost like. Are you are you. What's the what's the word for racist against old, really, really old people like hundred 50 years old. So you already. 

David Barton [00:16:19] Know what you call a 350 year old person. But there was somebody. Well, one of the people was. 

Rick Green [00:16:24] Looking pretty bad. 

David Barton [00:16:24] Nine years old is still getting still getting Social Security checks. Yeah. And they're still be. Yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:16:29] Here's the deal. If you're still alive at that point, you deserve it. Right. There's there's no doubt you deserve it. I just I'm skeptical they're still alive. But if they are, I would love to hear their stories about George Washington. Please come and tell us. Yeah, right. What were the pilgrims like? I want to know, like, come share with us this wisdom. 

Rick Green [00:16:48] Well, are you guys surprised at how bad it is? Because I, you know, we always knew there was only time governments that big and that unaccountable, there's going to be problems. But I got it's it's actually worse than I thought it was going to be. I mean, that that number of people and yeah. 

David Barton [00:17:02] Polling that's out right now shows that half of the Democrats are supporting what's been done with exposing the fraud. And so this is really a losing argument for the Democrats to keep saying that, you know, this is a bad deal because the people are seeing the a level of fraud they were not aware of. You know, everybody clamors about fraud. Oh, it's not that bad. It's not that. Well, yeah. When you got thousands of people that are over 150, you still get the Social Security checks and still cashing them in every month, that that's fraud. 

Rick Green [00:17:33] So and what was the other number. There was like 4 trillion or something that was untrue. Was it traceable like. 

David Barton [00:17:38] Nearly 5 billion. 

Tim Barton [00:17:40] From the IRS. That was money going out that they had no code Tuesday. They can't trace where it went. And so no idea. And one of the things to that I've seen a lot of people speculating on social media is with some of the Social Security being cash, there's a lot of thought that this could be part of what's going to some of these illegal immigrants who have come across the southern border that they are being paid, and we know they're receiving all kinds of government benefits in lots of ways, but this is one of the ways they're getting payment. And it's, again, you can call conspiracy speculation whatever you want, but there's a lot of thought of, right. This is some some more devious thoughts of Democrats shoring up and securing a base by bringing these people and giving them money, and then hopefully giving them some kind of amnesty granting. Or if you have mail in ballots, it doesn't matter anyway. If you're not check an ID when you vote, it doesn't matter anyway. But certainly that's part of the speculation right now. I'm seeing all over social media. 

David Barton [00:18:38] And the fact that you've got and I think the the amount was 4.7 trillion just in that that one agency, Treasury or IRS, wherever IRS 4.7 trillion this gone out with no indication on the check where it goes. If the IRS audits you, they want to see where every check you wrote went. And you better have tags on there showing how you spent it and where it was. And so the very agency, the demands that and their audits is not doing it themselves going out. And this is this is more of the hypocrisy that that I think average common people are just getting a taste of. And this is why I saw polling numbers today that Democrats are starting to line up behind Trump, not behind Trump, but on what he's trying to do here with this, you know, revelation of bringing stuff out. 

Tim Barton [00:19:25] And and his treasury. I'm sorry, I said IRS. I just looked it up and it's Treasury. 

David Barton [00:19:28] It's Treasury. 

Tim Barton [00:19:29] But they find either way there's waste everywhere. There's no doubt about it. 

David Barton [00:19:34] Well and that's just I mean, we're, we're we're less than a month in, I guess. And we've already uncovered fraudulent spending and already brought back non fraudulent spending. The just stupid like $900 million and DEI grants from the Department of Education. And you start throwing that stuff in and that's that's in a month. And so they had to add a number that yet. 

Rick Green [00:19:55] It's so fast that we need a break to be able to take it all in. So we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back. Stay with us, folks. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Rick Green [00:21:09] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Let's see guys, we can keep going on. DOGE I gotta get another question. You I want to go to a different quick. Yeah. Go ahead. 

David Barton [00:21:18] Let's keep going on DOGE for a minute? Because I got curious and I looked it up. And so if those goes in and does these these audits, these spot audits and man have they got some really smart guys in there. It doesn't take them long. And a couple days they've got it identified. You know what the crazy stuff is and where it went. And I don't know I don't know how they do it so fast. But they have done it. And you know, I mean Elon has talked about how smart these guys are. And Trump talks about these smart young guys and and they're committed to this. And it doesn't take them a couple days to come up with stuff. But I was looking. And so what do you got in the way of agencies that you can audit that are under Trump's control, where it doesn't take a congressional act to do something. And I was looking and there's there's currently 400 completely separate agencies. I mean, independent separate 400 agencies. And you're talking 3 million federal employees. So real quick. Now that averages 7500 employees per federal agency. Now some are bigger, some are smaller. But that's average in some. And just to put that in context, okay, where we live, the county where we live has only 8000 people in the entire county. So it's like the average size of a federal agency is the same size as our county, and it's bigger than our county seat. Our county seats only got 4500 people. 

Rick Green [00:22:42] I wonder how many states are smaller than 3 million. If you got 3 million. How many states are not even that big? 

David Barton [00:22:47] Or three? 3 million. You'd be looking at about 4 to 5 congressmen. And so I think Alaska is smaller than that, Delaware smaller than that. You get into Dakotas and why? I mean, you get into Montana. There's a lot of states that are smaller than than five congressional representatives. That's crazy. The federal government would be. It wouldn't be one of the smallest states in the United States. It might be in the lower 10 or 15 or so. But nonetheless, 400 separate agencies under his control. There's no way a president can know what's going on to those agencies with 3 million people. And so, you know, the fact that he's been firing right and left, just going in and firing. Probably your your effectiveness is going to go up, your efficiency is going to go up. And a lot of the the bureaucratic nonsense has got to go down. Just getting rid of those folks. 

Tim Barton [00:23:38] And add to this is also where so significant the people he's appointed because you're saying he's going in firing them. He hasn't fired hardly anybody. He's appointing people like Marco Rubio, who's like, we have 10,000 people. We need 300, right? We don't need all this peripheral weight of what we're doing. And so he's putting people in place that have the vision that are going and fulfilling and doing. And then of course, he's he is helping lead and and structure things and frame things in a certain way that help make that happen. And so there's no doubt it's his directive that's doing this. But what's different so much now from his first term is that his first term, he had a lot of the same similar ideas. He didn't have the same will his first term. He does now. He didn't appoint the same people as first term. He's appointing now. And so now, man, he's rolling up his sleeves. He is not holding anything back and he's getting after it. And and this is part. 

Rick Green [00:24:30] Of the he's radicalized to the Constitution. He's been radicalized by the Constitution. 

Tim Barton [00:24:36] Yes. I mean, the the best and worst moment in Donald Trump's life is when they took a shot and missed. That's right, that's right. Mean that they that was the worst mistake they have made. The worst with they've made it was worse than picking Hillary Clinton worse and picking Kamala Harris. Right. The worst whiff they've had is when they nicked Donald Trump's ear. And obviously, I mean, not to make light of it. This was a providential moment We firmly believe. I believe that I actually will include included sometimes in presentations. Now I talk about like the of George Washington and and God's providence. And by the way, we've seen things like that in real life. Like Donald Trump turns his head. There's no doubt. I think it's a miracle. But it certainly did awaken Donald Trump in a lot of ways, obviously, even in the faith component. But then the way he's been targeted, they they have awakened a sleeping giant in the midst of awakening him. It's awakened a lot of Americans as well. 

David Barton [00:25:27] You know, I would add to that not only the physical assassination, but I think the political assassination attempt is what really changed it. I think the physical stuff, he knew that God put him there and saved him for that. But had he not gone through four years of weaponization, how many dozens of attempts to take him out? He could have said, you know, as president, he'd been reelected. Well, I know the government does that, but that's not typical. Well, they tried to kill you politically. They tried to assassinate you simply for being president for four years. And they didn't like what you did. And he saw prosecutors coming after him and things that they would never prosecute anybody else for. They took trivial things and made it like a capital offense for him. And it was it was an attempted political assassination. And I think those two assassination attempts, a physical one and the political one, have made him into a president that he does not tolerate stupidity and nonsense going against the American people from the federal government. I think that's great. 

Rick Green [00:26:22] What a wonderful example of why God tells us in the book of James, count it all joy when you experience various trials. So these trials that Donald Trump is going through, that our nation has gone through, it's going to end up making us better in the long run. What a great program today, guys. Thanks for the questions. To everybody out through the city questions. We'll get to more of them next week. Don't miss tomorrow. We got a lot of good news to share with you. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.