Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the wall builder show on a Friday, which means it's good news today. Folks get ready for some rapid fire. Good news from David and Tim Barton. I'm Rick Green, America's constitution coach. And we sure appreciate you listening to the wall. But our show, by the way, you can listen to our radio programs that you might have missed over the last few weeks at wallbuilders.show super easy website to navigate and also to share the program with your friends and And then if you want to dive a little deeper, go to wallbuilder.com and you can see some of the events we have coming up this summer and throughout the fall. As well as get some good tools and some swag for your family. Get some of those cool, everything from shirts and hats and coffee mugs and all kinds of cool stuff. Cause we got to get the patriotic mood folks. It's the 250th coming up for the whole year. We're going to be talking about this and learning a lot about the founding fathers. But let's jump into some good news for things that have happened in the last few weeks or months. We've covered a lot of good news guys. I don't even know where y'all are going to start, but I think we've missed a lot a good news as well, because it was more than we could possibly cover. 

David Barton [00:01:03] Yeah, we have missed a lot of good news. Actually, just this week I went through and took out almost 150 pages of good new stories out of the stack because we've just gotten by them. They're good news, but that was three weeks ago. And so there's so much that now that stack is reduced by about 150 pages. So I'm gonna start with it's a good news but it's kind of a different approach to the thing and it deals with what I would call fine arts. And I really like arts and entertainment. I've got a private collection, probably at 1500 movies that I have in that collection. So I really like arts and entertainment a lot of ways, but I've come to not like what I would call the fine arts very much. I like orchestras, I like stuff like that. But what's the fine art now? And what has become the fine arts? That's just not my style much anymore 

Tim Barton [00:01:54] Now by fine arts, do you mean like a Fred Astaire tap dancing, a Bing Crosby singing? Is that like, cause I feel like those were pretty fine arts. Is that what you're referencing? Gene Kelly. Oh, that's the one that was Gene Kelly, he's the fine art. 

David Barton [00:02:07] Those are definitely fine arts and that's why I said I don't like what it's become and so yeah my fine arts I've got, man, so many of those those guys back there it was awesome 

Tim Barton [00:02:16] I'm just chuckling because as you talk about your collection, and you do, you have an incredible collection. I mean, genuinely you have closets full of DVDs that at this point we're now just trying to digitize and make available for you on a different platform. But it really is interesting how far it is devolved from what used to be. When you go back and see whether it's a Cecil B. DeMille, one of those Bible epics or a Gene Kelly. And some of the abilities and performances to where it's now modern art is like duct taping a banana to a wall. It's utterly ridiculous how far we've fallen, but I just had to chuckle dad, not to interrupt you, as you were talking about all of your collection and how you really love entertainment, most of the entertainment you love, unless it's like... You know, the new Top Gun Maverick, which was great, or, you know, a couple new ones. Really, it's the older entertainment, where they were such great storytellers and really great entertainers on so many levels. That's so much of your collection. 

David Barton [00:03:17] Well, one of the epitomizations of fine art, especially in Washington DC is the Kennedy Center, the Kennedy Performing Arts Center. And I actually got to do a gig in the Kennedy center, I guess it was 15 years ago, Glenn Beck did restoring honor in Washington, DC and I was part of that. And so he had 500,000 at least there. Some say it was 1.2 million is what some of the park rangers said, but we've called it 500,00. And so the night before we did that event, we did an event at the Kennedy Center. And it was a faith event. We had choirs and we had inspirational speakers and it was it was great event at Kennedy Center and then I looked at when Trump came on, way back, this is in February, so what's he been in a month now? He just fired the board of the Kennedy center, just threw him out and he said, I'm now chairman of the board at Kennedy center. And he took it over because he was so tired the wokeness. And so what he canceled, this is some of the stuff they had. They had a drag show and drag show lunch. They had the Gay Men's Choir of Washington DC. They had drag show performances. They had The Tapestry of Pride, a whole, it was pretty much LGBTQ events all the way just for event after event after event. And it was not what you would have called fine arts in the old days. And he looked at that. And said that this is not a good deal. This is not what the arts are supposed to be. This kind of woke nonsense is not it. So he fired the board at the Kennedy Center and he made himself board. Well, it took a little bit more than that because what happened was he started putting different people on the board of the Kennedy Fine Arts Center. And then they did choose him director of the board. So just a few days ago, he had the dinner at the White House for the board on the Kennedy center. And so he was there and the people on the board now, here's the people that he has on the Board, his Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles. He's got Attorney General Pam Bondi. He's Got Vice President Vance's wife. So the second lady is on there. Lee Greenwood, God bless the USA. And these are the kind of folks he's now got on on the Kennedy Center. And so I'm looking at the events he has scheduled now. Here's one of the events he has scheduled. He's going to bring back the Wizard of Oz and it's going to be that the 1939 wizard of OZ, which I'm the entertainment, except he's going have the national symphony do live music with it. So you watch the movie, but instead of listening to the movie, to the music on the movie. They're going to be doing the movie soundtrack live, which would, that'd be awesome. That'd be a really fun one to see is watch the And you got live music while you're watching the movie. So he's, he's got that going. Uh, Tim, you probably won't remember this, Rick. You may remember this. Do you remember Chicago? 

Tim Barton [00:06:15] I wasn't allowed to watch that as a kid. My parents were very strict when I was growing up. 

David Barton [00:06:22] That's right. The movie, the musical Chicago, Back to the Future, the Musical. 

Rick Green [00:06:25] They did a movie version of that musical at one point, even Richard Gear or somebody was, I remember they had some big names in it, but anyway, go ahead. 

David Barton [00:06:35] And that's the kind of stuff he's bringing back back to the future of the musical, um, they're doing children's stuff with Bluey there, you know, so it's, it's not the gay LGBTQ stuff. Now he's just bringing genuine fine arts back and that's kind of fine arts I used to like a lot instead of what it's become all this woke nonsense. That's good for maybe one half of 1% of the nation, maybe, you know, maybe 2%, but it's the 70 or 80% mainstream kind of and so it's just really fun to see that with all the stuff he's got going on, he is now the director for the Kennedy Center and has actually got some good people choosing the stuff that's coming back in. So that's just a refreshing piece of good news. I would love to see the arts come back to being something fun and enjoyable 

Rick Green [00:07:25] No doubt. And I got to add to this one because our mutual friend, Floyd Brown is now the VP at the Kennedy center now for people that in our audience that may not know Floyd- Floyd trained me when I was 19 years old, so he was the head of the, of the young America's foundation. So the conservative student conference I went to that really, you know, instigated a lot of what I ended up doing that and going to the leadership Institute with Morton Blackwell. And, and so Floyd has been a mentor for years and kind of helped with Patriot Academy and, and, uh, does a lot of conservative work and actually started the Western journal. I mean, it's a guy very involved in conservative politics, but the fact that you have a guy like Floyd Brown now is a VP of the Kennedy Center. And when he told me we were at an event a couple of weeks ago, and he told me he said, Rick, this is going to come out and I'm going to be the VP of Kennedy Center and Trump's offered that to me and I got to do it because we got to turn the arts around and he made the same argument, David, that you're saying it's like the left just. You know, and they, and like Dennis Prager says, they destroy everything they touch. And so the arts actually became just trashy, right? Not even, not even entertaining. And, so anyway, I love, I love what Donald Trump's doing here. I mean, this is just good, good stuff. 

David Barton [00:08:32] I would say having Floyd Brown as the VP is kind of like having John Wayne as the VP and so boy, John Wayne is an entertainer. There's no question, you know, Academy award winner, but he would never be chosen by this generation of folks. And by the way, just, just in case you say, well, Trump, it's all about economics, there was an economic side to what he did, but you didn't know it at the time. And so he started looking at the budget for the Kennedy Center and how many tens and hundreds of millions had been put into the Kennedy center in recent years. And he was kidding at the dinner. He said, man, he said, Congress right now has 250 million set aside for the kennedy center because it is in such disrepair. It is in need of maintenance. He said I don't know what they've been doing with all those tens of millions they've being getting for the last years, but they clearly have not been spending on the Kennedy's center. And, and now his, the, the guy's got his director at Kennedy center,  was just reviewing the previous budget and found $26 million in Phantom revenue. So maybe that's why they put Pam Bondi on the board of the Kennedy center so the attorney general can, can see where all the money's going, so economic aspect to taking back the case there, but man, if we could get back to where entertainment, you know, bluey and stuff like that, that kids do enjoy and that's really such a widespread like by kids instead of the one or two percenter. That's just a wholesome story. 

Rick Green [00:10:06] The good stuff, good stuff. Well, man, Tim, sorry, we took so long on that, but then I jumped in there, but that was just, that's good stuff. I love it. And it sounds like though, how many 1500 DVDs sound like we need to, we need make sure that we grab every working DVD player possible for your dad. Like we need it. We need to just have a stack of them. 

Tim Barton [00:10:24] I'm pretty sure there's three in boxes from Walmart, Amazon, wherever we got them. So we have that covered. Not to mention, I think there's a DVD player in every room in his house. So we should be able 

Rick Green [00:10:37] It's a good thing you said that because the audience might have started sending- that would be kind of funny, right if 500 DVD players showed up at the WallBuilders 

Tim Barton [00:10:46] Well somebody yeah, we're gonna get emails from somebody going hey I can digitize all those for you. Let me let me solve that problem, and I'm just gonna tell you like I will drop those in a box I will start sending you boxes. That's no problem. We can make that happen, but no not really we're good and we don't need more DVD players either, but thank you for thinking of us 

Rick Green [00:11:04] Yeah, yeah, no kidding. All right, your turn, man. What's the next piece of good news? 

Tim Barton [00:11:08] All right, well, this headline says U.S. Inflation slows to lowest levels since February, 2021. And we're, we're definitely not pre COVID levels. However, the fact that it is falling and it's the slowest and lowest inflation since February 2021 is significant. We know under Trump's administration, it's been falling. The whole time, actually, even before he was sworn in, once he was elected, the market began to realize, hey, maybe it won't be crazy going forward.

Rick Green [00:11:38] We have a chance to save this thing, yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:11:41] Right. It was already beginning to change. We're already seeing that in the markets. But just to read a couple of notes from this article, it says, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual inflation rate declined to 2.3% in April from 2.4% in March. So it was already going down. So it went down another 0.1%. This represents a third consecutive monthly drop and the lowest reading since February 2021. It goes through core inflation, which... Covers energy and food components it was unchanged at 2.8% but as as they break it down gasoline dipped by 0.1% and is down nearly 12% over the last 12 months crude oil prices have plummeted this year uh 13% since January the food index dropped by 0 1% including 0.4% decrease in supermarket prices uh the food away from home category edged up by 0 4% so eating out But as it breaks all this down, in fact, just one more note, the super core inflation, the Federal Reserve's preferred measure that concentrates on non-housing services eased to 2.7 from 2.9%. So all of these metrics that people are using to look at, they're seeing it go down and... This is before the big, beautiful bill, which I was just up in Washington, D.C. This last weekend and actually had a chance to talk to Congressman Clyde from Georgia. And he was one of the five that were one of the holdouts initially in committee, with Chip Roy being kind of the lead vocal individual of them, but our friend Josh Bercheen we have a lot of friends that were there. And they recognize part of what's happening with this beautiful bill. It's, it's not doing enough. We, it should do more. President Trump has promised these things and this bill, there's a lot of things slipped in here that, that are going to prevent some of what he wants to happen that there are some good things, but, but it's, it's doing all that it should be doing. And so they were trying to get it to do more, which is a really good thing, just so people know, some of the tax cuts that were in the, the quote unquote big, beautiful bill, they didn't take effect till 2029. Well, you're going to have a new Congress before 2029 and they actually could go back and change some of these things anyway. So it was, it was smart what they're doing. But the reason I point this out is inflation is already dropping before Trump's been able to do a lot of things to change even some of the tax policies. He's done a lot by executive order. He hasn't had a lot help from Congress at this point. And these numbers should only get better as Congress is able to start doing stuff. So guys, this is not where we want it to be, but it does show that inflation and the market is moving in the right direction, which is overall good news. 

Rick Green [00:14:20] Yeah and guys, that's, that with the tariffs, right? I mean, think about it. This is, this is good economic news in the middle of, of all of the, the tariff wars and everything going on. So we go back to our thing of saying, Hey, trust the guy in the room and it looks like,  already some very good results. Quick break. We'll be right back. It's good news Friday on the WallBuilders Show. Stay with us. 

Rick Green [00:15:47] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. It's Good News Friday. Tossing it back over to David for the next piece of good news. 

David Barton [00:15:52] Well, first piece of good news, I went back to February to start the story and I'm going to do the same thing again. And so it's, it's back to February, but it's now got some closure on the story, just like the Kennedy center did. And it goes back to Trump making the startling announcement. They said America has taken the Panama Canal back. We're going to take the Panama canal back. Panama is not keeping its agreements and that's shocked Panama and it shocked most of the nation. It shocked most the world. Cause nobody saw it coming really. As it turns out, Trump had really good intelligence information that either no one was talking about or they didn't know. But if you go to the Panama Canal, before the Panama canal was built, to get from, for example, Boston to San Francisco, you had to sail all the way around the tip of South America to get there. You had to go way down. And so with the Panama canal, you can just cut through the kind of there below the golf, go, go across the straight there of Mexico and come out on the other side and save you just countless hours. And so it's real important militarily for them to be able to move ships around. It was real important to trade as well. It used to be back in the early 1800s to take a ship from Boston to San Francisco was a six month voyage because you had to go all the way down almost the South Pole and get around the continent and come back up. So it was a tough one. And, and then that got Matthew Mari helped shorten that down to only a three month voyage because he found out about sea currents, but still you're talking weeks on a normal voyage. And so the Panama Canal was real strategic. Teddy Roosevelt helped construct that, helped build across there. And the America operated that that was, that was operated by America. And then Jimmy Carter in 1977 gave the Panama canal to Panama. But he did so with a treaty provision that says, but you have to keep it friendly to the United States, you have keep it neutral. You can't have powers that come in that are unfriendly to the United States. And that's what Trump said. We're taking it back because China now operates the East end and the West end of the Panama Canal. China has got controlled the Panama canal and that's who Panama had agreed with and, and they'd done, done the contract with China to run the and that's where Trump said, ain't doing it. We're taking it back. Well, that got Panama's attention. And so Marco Rubio went down to Panama and met with president Panama and said, here's our deal. Well, we want it to be neutral again. And I mean, within a couple of weeks, he had it back to neutral. And so what they've done over time, they have now taken it back from, from China. China no longer has any control over the Panama Canal. It's back into neutral hands. It's back into friendly hands. And we now have an agreement through Pete Hegseth, secretary of defense where that we're working now side by side with Panamanian troops doing jungle exercises together, doing trainings together to be able to defend the Panama Canal if necessary, if we, if have to get into fighting for it, uh we have an ally with Panama and so now we're training together military troops, which is good for both sides. So this is something that again, Trump started back in February with the shock and announcement. And here we are now a few months later, and it's played out really, really good for the benefit of America for the longterm, getting that thing out of Chinese hands, our enemy and getting it back into friendly hands where that we're not going to have to have a military snafu and a military bottleneck down there if we have to move from East to West or West to East. 

Rick Green [00:19:36] You know, I'm genuinely curious. I mean, I want to, there's so many things to blame the Biden administration for. You don't have to, you know, come up with new stuff. Uh, but how does this kind of thing happen? I mean is it just, you, you don't neglect on our part. We don't pay attention to, to the moves China's making there, or we didn't keep good relationships with them. I mean that was a, we, you a lot of Americans died putting that in. Uh, it was a big economic boom to them. You would think that would have maintained a good relationship. I guess we just dropped the ball maybe. 

David Barton [00:20:05] Well, you maintain a good relationship if you insist on maintaining a good relationship, but if Panama does all these changes and nobody says anything, how do they know whether it's a good relationship or not? You know, so we didn't say anything, you know, China got it. We didn't say anything. So how do they know? 

Tim Barton [00:20:23] Well, and not to be silly on this, but guys, I would also point out,  you have states that are part of the United States, like California, that is super friendly to China, that has making all kinds of deals that are anti-American. And so this is, this is not just what's happening in foreign territory. I, you know, it's one of the things where we applauded some of these states. I think it was that was it Missouri are they the ones that actually sued China for COVID and part of the settlement they were able to reclaim some of the land that China had then possessed around some of the military bases was part of their move to get it back because China wasn't going to pay them the 20 billion dollars whatever it was I think it was Missouri that did that they're not the only state that's brought these COVID lawsuits against China but but the point is somebody was selling that land to these Chinese companies. And it was being sold around military bases. What were we thinking? Why would we do that? And of course, we're saying it now from even a good news perspective, that there are states and attorney generals in those states and governors and states saying, we got to change this. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, what they've done in Arkansas saying, we're not going to sell any land to China, to these foreign, into these foreign nations. It's American land for American use, et cetera. But guys going back to like even Panama Canal, we have had such a... A anti-American ideology, such a one-world government ideology, really, you can go through kind of the breakdown of what this worldview looks like, but the easiest thing to say is it's not been people that loved America or that one of the best for America going forward as a nation, and so this isn't, hasn't just happened outside the nation, it's happened in the nation as well, and Rick, I know you were kind of asking just a, a prodding question to let us talk and not that you weren't confused on this at all, but it's worth noting, just- What we have seen, general worldview from so many progressives on the left has been far more favorable to nations like China than it has been to America. When you have, as another example, when you have professional athletes that are going to speak about how bad America's been with race relations, how bad we are today, and yet they're doing deals with China for different sporting gear or a tire or technology And China's literally enslaving people and China uses slave labor and child slave labor, and you can go down the list. It does show the hypocrisy of people that are far more anti-America than they are logical or common sense. And I think that's part of it. Certainly, I think there's neglect that happened with the Panama Canal. For sure there's neglect, but I don't think it was just neglect. I think they were people that were anti-American that were in positions making decisions, and they were making decisions where they thought were better for other nations in the world, not what was best for America. 

Rick Green [00:23:03] Yeah, that's I had totally forgotten about even just the inside globalist within our own government that, like you said, I mean, they they hate their own country that they're serving, so they would cheer to see us weekend in this way and see that they are leveling the playing field because America has been too powerful for too long. Well, Tim, take us home with the final piece of good news today. 

Tim Barton [00:23:22] Well, since this is the final piece, dad, I think it was on your stack but I saw it and I'm taking it, because I have the last piece of good news. So just the end of April, president Trump put out on truth social. He said, I'm bringing Columbus day back from the ashes. The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation and all of the Italians that love him so much, they tore down his statues and put up nothing but woke or even worse, nothing at all. Well, you'll be happy to know Christopher is going to make a major comeback. I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations as it has had for all of the many decades before. And, you know, guys, we've talked about Columbus for, for now, years when... 

Rick Green [00:24:10] Wait, but Tim, did he also say, like, because the Italians are great people, these are good people, they're good people. Christopher Columbus was a good guy. 

Tim Barton [00:24:17] I got to tell you, I was reading in my head, I was hearing his voice and I knew I couldn't do a proper mimic of the voice, but that's all I was. 

Rick Green [00:24:27] I can't either, but I did it anyway. 

Tim Barton [00:24:29] Oh man. I, yes, I was hearing it in his voice, which is super fun and silly. But, but you know, guys, for, for now, more, probably five or six years, we've been talking about Columbus, our book, The American Story, The Beginnings, it was the first release of The American Story the series, there's more on the way, but we actually start with Columbus and trying to say, let's go back and ask honest questions and let's learn the honest story and kind of let the chips fall where they may. But we have bought into so many narratives that are philosophically motivated, that are politically driven in many situations, and they're not historically based. And so much of what's happened with Columbus... Where people are saying that it shouldn't be Columbus Day, it should be Indigenous Peoples Day. And by the way, I'm not anti-Indigenous Peoples day. We talk about this, for example, with the pilgrims. Had it not been for the indigenous people, the pilgrim's never would have survived. Had it been for Somerset, had it not be for Squanto, had it not have been for Massasoit and the natives, the Pilgrims would have gone extinct and America would never have become the nation we've become because the Pilgrams are the ones that laid so much of that foundation. So I'm NOT against. Indigenous people's day, but it's kind of worth asking like well, what indigenous people are we saying because Columbus dealt with multiple tribes One was a Taino tribe who was very friendly. They were great, but he also dealt with the Karibas Also known as the Cannibs who were cannibals So even this notion we're gonna cancel Columbus But we're going to celebrate all native people as if there weren't ever any bad natives who did bad things like cannibales like killing And eating people it's a dishonest approach to history But the fact that we now have a president who says we're not gonna cancel someone based on some woke ideology. We're bringing Columbus back. It is really encouraging. And if people aren't sure about Columbus, go to wallbuilders.com, get the American story of the beginnings and read the whole first section on Columbus. It has some of the good, the bad, the ugly. He was not a perfect guy, but he's not guilty of most of what he's been accused of today. 

Rick Green [00:26:32] WallBuilders.com, The American Story, and there's two volumes so far. Just go ahead and get both of them while you're there. But start with Columbus for sure at WallBuilders.com The American story. Thanks for listening today, folks. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.