WBLive2025-06-16.mp3

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. So thankful that you joined us today. This is the place where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And by the way, you can visit our websites, wallbuilders.com and wallbuilders.show for more information and more programming. Wallbuilders show is a great place to catch up on the programs from the last few weeks and send them out to your friends and family. Great way to be a force multiplier is to simply share the radio program. And then a wallbuilders.com lots of great tools and materials. And of course the place where you can make that one time or monthly contribution lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, as we're celebrating the 250th throughout this year. Let's do all three of those things. David, Tim man, so many things over the last few days. And of, of course yesterday Father's Day, hey, happy father's day to both you guys, wonderful fathers and grandfather Barton. So it's just, uh just a blessed weekend and I know we all got some good time with our families. So that I'm really thankful for that as well. 

David Barton [00:01:02] Yeah, and happy Father's Day to you too, Rick. You got a great crew and great kids, grandkids. 

Rick Green [00:01:07] Thank you, sir. 

David Barton [00:01:09] There was a, this is kind of an interesting thing for me to say, because I've heard a lot of Father's day sermons over the years, and having read through the Bible a number of times, essentially the Bible hasn't changed since, it was canonized maybe 1,700 years ago. So it's a set scripture, and yet I heard a sermon yesterday. Father's day that I had never heard before on a verse I've never paid attention to before, even though I've read it literally dozens of times. And it was when David went out to face Goliath and he eventually killed Golieth and turned the course of the battle there. And so as after David has killed Golaith, he had the conversation with Saul and he said, hey, you know, I can do this. I'm capable of doing this. And he goes out and fights him. Then he comes back. It's interesting the question that Saul asked David. In the last verse, 1 Samuel 17, he said, whose son are you? Who's your father? And the thought in that was, you know, you look at what somebody did and the question is, who's your Father? The impact that a father can have on a son or grandkids or whatever. And that was a good challenge for yesterday is like, think about the impact you can have on a son, who knows what they're gonna do as they grow up and become something or whatever? But it was just a great question, is who's your father? And I'd never heard that verse ever used before. 

Tim Barton [00:02:27] That's a really interesting thought because it does seem almost as if Saul is asking, like, who trained you, right? Where did you learn to do this? That's almost the way I imagine it could be saying, who's your father? That's really great thought and definitely speaks to the idea and the impact that fathers can have in training their kids, the rising generation to do something very impactful. That's are really great thought. 

David Barton [00:02:51] Well, you know, at least by looking at that story, there's no indication that anybody else stepped up to say, I can do this. Nobody else stepped forward to say let me at this guy. And you have the one guy that this one young man who steps up and says, let me add him. And yeah, you're right, Tim, it's like, he didn't, it was outstanding. Whatever he did really got that attention that that speaks a lot to the potential. So it was an interesting summary yesterday, for sure. 

Rick Green [00:03:16] Well, it makes me think too, you know, yesterday we had a, a Victor Marx in town and, and, he did a filming with us on Saturday night for the new rebuild Liberty course, and then Sunday morning did, did both the services. It was so incredibly powerful. And of course, a lot of our listeners know his story. Some may not, but you know here's a guy that didn't really have a, certainly didn't have a dad. He had a lot stepfathers, a lotta people that really abused him as a kid. And he, and somehow, some way, you know, God wrapped him up and and he was able to build a relationship with his Heavenly Father and he, and he spoke about that and spoke to those people that for them father's day is a painful day because they didn't have a good earthly father, for, you know, for whatever reason, whatever the circumstances might be. And, and I think about King David and, and when he did what he did, you know, that bravery and that courage, I wonder how much of that was a Heavenly Father inspiration because of that time out there with the, with the sheep, In that time of defeating the lion and the bear and all of them, the relationship he had worshiping the Lord. And so I would just say to anybody out there listening right now, first of all, go read Victor Mark's book, the dangerous gentleman. And, and if you've had a tough, you know, if you had a tough childhood and you weren't blessed with a good earthly father, that is not your identity. And you have the opportunity to have your identity in your heavenly father. And man, I was just so moved by Victor's story yesterday. It was so incredibly powerful.

David Barton [00:04:32] Lots of other stuff went down this weekend, too. That was, I guess, leading up to Father's Day. What kind of dominated my Saturday, if you will, was all the stuff that went into the 250th celebration for the Army, the parade and the stuff that went with it, plus the protests that were against it. It was quite a fascinating day. It was Saturday, just to see all the stuff that happened then. 

Tim Barton [00:04:55] And by the way, this follows up flag day,  cause Friday was flag day. That the,. 

Rick Green [00:04:59] Wow! That's a lot in one weekend guys. 

Tim Barton [00:05:01] It really was. We had flag day the 250th anniversary of the army, president Trumbep's birthday and father's day. So a lot happening this weekend. And you know, for flag day looking back, it's something that we have talked about, we chuckle sometimes that the stories that we know compared to the history that is real. And so when we hear Flag Day, there are people that talk about Betsy Ross doing the first flag and we can go back historically and show, well, she wasn't really the first one to do a flag, but it's where they determined that there was going to be red and white stripes, there was going be stars 13 for the colonies and so that's Friday. Then you have the 250th anniversary of the army and the parade. It's so, so funny seeing some of the political leaders of our nation. Whether they be mayors or governors or congressmen or senators, uh, generally from a specific party, but where they would say, you know, what he's doing, what president Trump is doing, having a big parade in Washington, DC. This is like North Korea propaganda, what's happening right now. And this is also part of, uh. Feeding the fuel for what was the No Kings rallies that happened. 

Rick Green [00:06:14] Let me get this right the guy's celebrating the people that keep us free and that's a North Korea type celebration?

Tim Barton [00:06:22] Yeah, so I, I really appreciated, as a side note, Senator Fetterman from Pennsylvania, he's certainly has left his, I think he's crazy on a lot of the issues for his position, but every now and then he does have these rational positions as well, and he came out totally against the Democrat position, largely speaking, and said, these are our sons and daughters, and for 250 years, our sons and daughters have been fighting for our nation, for our freedom. And we should celebrate our sons and daughters, the ones out marching in this parade right now, we should celebrate them and what they're doing. And I definitely appreciated the balance he brought to it. But the contrast was there was this No Kings Rally. It was supposed to be a big deal all over the nation. It wasn't that big unless you were in a few very liberal areas. There were some bigger rallies in certain locations and others. And of course, there were some governors and mayors and sheriffs. Who were very clear in some of the more red states that we're not going to let this get out of hand. We're not gonna let this turn into like an LA riot kind of situation that that's not going to happen here. But the level of irony that the argument going is that President Trump is trying to be a King. So we're going to rally against Kings. It's ironic for lots and lots and lot of reasons. First of all, that's, not a new position in America. We've been against Kings since before 1776. Which again seems ironic, but if we actually had a king, do you know what people wouldn't have been allowed to do on Saturday? Have any kind of peaceful protest rally, because an actual King would have said, nope, I'm not letting you do that. An actual dictator would have shut that down. The fact that you can actually go have a peaceful protest. The fact you can go have rally. The constitution is there and it ensures it, but that's the point. A King would not be submitted to what the constitution says. A King, would not, be respecting people's first amendment rights. And the levels of irony go even deeper, but just so many silly things where Democrats and some very leftist progressives George Soros funded a lot of this stuff. They were trying to take away from not just president Trump's birthday, because that was kind of a side note to the 250th anniversary, the parade, the celebration, but that parade and celebration, it was very refreshing in a lot of ways, but to see how many of the military men and women were so excited to be there, how many people were cheering for the military. It was refreshing that there was something incredibly patriotic supported by our government, but applauded by the people. And that certainly was one of the big takeaways from the parade on Saturday. 

David Barton [00:09:03] That parade was something else. And I was so, I've just got to say, I was really, really impressed with several things in that parade. Not the least of which is that president Trump stood and saluted every unit to him by him. And so here is at 79 and here's, I'm just going to throw out personal opinion, I am so tired of hearing that it was his 79th birthday. The left started that to say this is him doing a celebration for himself. And then the right media started picking up and it's a 70. He doesn't care what birthday it is, and he didn't do it because it was his birthday. He did it because it was the day you celebrate the Army, and it just happened to coincide. And so I think it feeds into the media narrative that this is all about Trump, all about him. It's his 79th birthday. Not at all. I mean, we've already, and I appreciate that from day one when Zelensky went to see him, he set the tone. You will respect the office or you're out of here. And he's done that with senators and congressmen and others. That you're going to have respect for the United States in the office is not me it's the office and I think that's what it was saturday was it's all about the army not him 

Tim Barton [00:10:08] And I do want to continue that thought dad president Trump put out a post on social media. It is a brilliant post He, said "A HUGE THANK YOU to all caps letters a huge Thank you to all the no Kings protesters yesterday I was very concerned a king was trying to take my place, but thanks to your tireless efforts I am still your president great job all! That is one of the best Troll posts on social media, I have ever seen. Great job, President Trump on that one. Just so great. But yeah, dad, to your point, there's certainly were media outlets trying to pretend like President Trump was doing this to celebrate himself and in his honor. And that certainly is not who he is. It's not what he's done. And it's not where the day was about. And anybody watching or anybody who was there talking to people there, that certainly was not the impression or opinion they would have come away with. 

David Barton [00:11:02] Well, that was such a cool parade and seeing the units go by. And I mean that you had the units that and the army keeps these units as part of his history, but units that were dressed in continental, continental American revolution gear all the way through the wars, war of 1812. And then you got into Buffalo soldiers and the civil war and you went through all and they were dressed and those uniforms and the world war two stuff looked like I was watching footage, a newsreel, something from back in world war II, even the world War one footage was so great. And then, of course, they brought all the vehicles along that went with that period of American history, you know, even the mule-drawn wagons back with the Buffalo soldiers. And it was interesting just watching those vehicles. And Tim, you and I have a friend, Paul Veins, who has this Museum of the American Soldier down College Station area that is just a phenomenal museum. I think it's one of only two in the United States where, and he's got tanks, Sherman tanks, everything else. 

Tim Barton [00:11:59] And dad is, I think it's the, the museum of the American GI, or is it the soldier, American soldier. 

David Barton [00:12:05] Yeah, I thought it was soldier, but it could be GI, but he's got Sherman tanks there. He's got just about every vehicle you can think of all the uniforms from various wars. And, and so I texted him in the middle of the parade and said, Hey, did you provide all this equipment? He said, no, my friend up in Southeast Pennsylvania, who has another museum like Paul has, he said he provided about a hundred vehicles for the parade. And so a lot of those, those vehicles, they really were historic vehicles coming out of museums and other places. So it was a great way to see and learn history. But again, for President Trump to pop up and a 79 year old man to stand up and salute every unit. And by the way, for people who don't know, the president doesn't initiate salutes. The only salute he initiates is to someone who's received the Medal of Honor. And at that point, he will initiate the salute. Every other salute is initiated by the soldiers to him. And he returns the salute and they hold their salute until he returns that salute. And so yesterday he initiated the salute out of respect for the soldiers. He is the one who started that. And then as they would go by, he kept that salute there until that unit had passed and that's when they dropped salute. That's when he dropped his salute. But it was just a great show of respect and tradition for his respect for military. And that made it even more offensive that somebody was trying to say, oh, he's trying to establish, trying to make himself a king. How nonsense, how much nonsense was that? I mean, this is all about America, our history, our tradition, all about the soldiers, all about those guys, 1.4 million who have given their lives in service. 57 million Americans have served in the military over our 250 years, 1.4 million have given their lives, that's what that was about yesterday, was commemorating them and celebrating what an influence they've been for freedom. So, and I say yesterday was actually Saturday, but. Looking at it, it feels like it was yesterday because I watched some of it on Sunday. I went back and rewatched some of it. So it was a great event for sure. 

Rick Green [00:14:06] So it's fair to say that President Trump is the best troll in presidential history and the worst tyrant in presidential history. He's really bad at this stopping free speech thing and not allowing people to have their own voice. He got to get better at that. 

David Barton [00:14:18] I got one more to add this this may have been the the funniest thing I saw from the No King stuff all the protests now they they predicted they were gonna have tens of millions turn out. What I've seen everything put together on and what we used to call the eventualistically speaking kind of Building the numbers beyond what they were say about five million and about two thousand different protests a lot of those are pretty small protests, but there were no there were definitely no violent protests in Florida DeSantis, before No Kings did their thing, this is what he said, he was on a broadcast and he said on a podcast that drivers in Florida who encounter protestors and who feel threatened by protestors have a right to hit them with their cars. Here's what he says, he said quote, he says if you're driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a rights to flee for your safety and if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that's their fault from pinching on you. And so there's literally videos of the No King protesters that would block intersections, but they would only do it when the red light was on. As soon as it turned green, they ran out of the intersection for fear of being hit by someone who would run them over. So the way DeSantis set it up is we're not gonna put up with this nonsense and you drivers have a right to defend yourself if you feel threatened. So it was, that kind of deflates a whole lot of the No Kings movement for sure. 

Rick Green [00:15:40] I genuinely think he's the best governor of our lifetime. And maybe in all of history, he just keeps doing things like that. That are so good. All right guys, quick break. I know we got a lot more to get to that happened over the weekend. Stay with us folks. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Rick Green [00:17:00] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Back with David and Tim Barton. I'm Rick Green. It's Monday and we're just trying to catch up on all the great stuff that happened over the weekend. What else did you guys have on your list? 

David Barton [00:17:11] Well, certainly what happened with the attack on Iran and how that's escalated and de-escalated and re-esclated. And it was very interesting. We had Omer on last week talking about what might happen and then lo and behold, it did happen. And he happened to be staying with us when it happened. So for the last couple of days, Omer had been sitting in the living room and getting all the feeds coming in from Israel, just within seconds of everything happening. What the IDF's putting out, what the Iranians are putting out that we were quickly able to confirm was false in many areas, a lot of their propaganda, the extent of the damage, it was interesting to me, even with the Houthis, when they thought they'd jump in out of Yemen and help their buddies in Iran, and then Israel went and pounded them one time, and they only shot one missile after that, it's like, okay, we got the message, we don't wanna mess with you. But what we saw with Iran the first day with precision strikes by Israel against Iran. Those five nuclear sites within two months of being able to start producing weapons and using weapons and so two months out, they hit they hit those areas. They took out immediately 11 of the 14 top commanders were taken out. They had managed to get them all in the same meeting It was amazing the way that they've been able to play the Iranians that the Iran is knowing it and so it was precision precision precision targeting on on human life with the Iranian's taking out the facilities, but then taking out just the leaders. And they used very precision bombs that weren't blowing up buildings. They were blowing up rooms and buildings. It was just amazing to see. And then the Iranians come back and start launching hundreds of rockets and drones against Israel. And they're going after civilian population. And once they started going after a civilian population, then Israel escalated and said, okay, we'll go after all your military sites. We'll go out to your launch sites. And it got to a point where that the Iranians were only able to launch about 100 missiles at a time and they were all off mobile missile launchers. They were having to run around the country and Israel has ended up taking out a number of those since then as well. So it was quite interesting to see. 

Tim Barton [00:19:19] Well, dad, too, I wonder and this is a genuine wonderment. I do wonder if Israel was already preparing to strike some of those military targets, because at this point, once you have a green light to stop the nuclear program and when Iran has been so clear, once we get this built, we are targeting you. When Iran came out and said that no American is going to be safe in the Middle East, no military bases there, they're going to target Americans. And Trump was like, hey, we. We tried to have a conversation, you know, they didn't want to do this. 60 days in, we said we'd negotiate. Day 61, Israel does a strike. Iran fires back. And I'm not sure that Israel wasn't already. And again, genuine wonderment. I don't know, but I don't know that Israel wouldn't have already targeted some of those military bases again, because of the clarity of what Iran had done, because their failure to negotiate and the reality of what they said they would do once they had the the nuclear weapon capacity, and they were getting closer to that. It seems almost like in my mind, a little bit like what happened on October 7th, after that happens in Israel and Israel at this point has a justification in green light to go and clean out Hamas from Gaza and, and actually they could have done it much faster if there weren't all these hostages, cause they had to be more, it's more strategic and how they're navigating now to try to preserve life of those that are still alive of the hostages, but... That created an opportunity that allowed Israel to do what the world had opposed them doing before this. And again, I do wonder if that was part of their strategy with Iran, if this created the opportunity for them to do something because also there have been a lot of videos from people in Iran that have actually celebrated some of what's going on because the Iranian leadership, they have taken so much of the money they've received that they should be a very wealthy nation, based on some of the oil refineries, some of natural resources they have, but they've taken the money and they've used it to fund proxy groups that have committed acts of terror really around the Middle East and arguably around the world. And the people of Iran have not enjoyed the benefit of the great wealth of the nation. And so it does seem like maybe there could be a regime change that benefits the people, which is maybe why we've seen some of these crowds that seem to be celebrating to some extent what Israel has done. Anyway, I just, it seems like there's a lot to this story and, and maybe again, that Israel was, was just grateful for the opportunity to do what they know needed to be done. 

David Barton [00:21:51] Well, there's no question they had the military bases targeted, that just wasn't on their first round. Their first round was nuclear facilities, nuclear scientists, and leadership. And then Iran came back at Israel, and Israel hit their bases, but they were all targeted, they were known exactly what, and it's interesting, the Iranians, for all practical purposes, never got a plane off the ground. And essentially, it was probably better they didn't, because it was like them fighting our F-35s with biplanes. And Tim, the point you just made about, they waste so much of their money, is if you look at Gaza, the leaders in Gaza, Gaza has received 1.7 million tons of relief in the Gaza. Do you know how many people there are in Gaza? 1. 7 million. That means on average, every person in Gaza has receive one ton of relief. How much of that you think actually reach the Gazans? Not much. They sell it off and they use it to buy weapons and et cetera. So it's the same thing. But with Iran, we saw each of the wave about every hour and a half, they had another wave of planes going in, taking out another set of targets and you could watch and it was a nuclear stuff. And it was the military stuff, actually the launching places. And then they went after the bases themselves, and then they went after they, the movable launchers. And so each one was very specifically targeted for a range of things they were doing. And it really good because it was hierarchy of battle in the sense. They took out the most dangerous stuff first, and they came out and took back the most danger stuff that was left remaining, then came back on the third time, took out most dangerous left, and each time it was like a tier lower, but it was just awesome seeing it. And there was so much propaganda going out. The Iranians said, oh, we've captured Israeli pilots, we have a female pilot, and quickly we learned from Israel, no, that is not true. They did not have any planes shot down. There are no female pilots that were flying in this mission. They have female pilots but they weren't flying in the Iranian mission And so it was just a lot of propaganda going back and forth but Israel clearly has delivered that and what Israel was showing was how many Iranians were celebrating on the streets for the overthrow of that regime so we do think I think it's a great opportunity for regime change and particularly they have so weakened it and it was striking to me they took out everybody except the political leader. They left him there as a mouthpiece. They could have taken him out with all the precision stuff they did. They took out all the military guys and they left the civilian mouthpiece. And he's still making a lot of noise and threatening stuff. But I think it's a very deliberate effort by Israel to say, we could have had you and we will have to take you out if you're gonna do certain stuff. But it was just fascinating to see the position with which the Israeli military operated over those two days. We were also told out of Israel that they expect this will go on for several more weeks. They're going to absolutely destroy the military capability of Iran, which will give the people in Iran a much greater chance to rise up and overthrow what's left of that regime. But they're saying it likely is gonna be weeks that this goes on with Iran. 

Tim Barton [00:25:03] Along those lines at this weekend. I was up at a world that we church in Murfreesboro pastor Alan Jackson incredible incredible Godly man a pastor and one of the points he made is what could happen for the Iranian people and a lot of those in the Middle East if this really? Terroristic kind of regime is removed It could be as significant in the middle east as it was in Europe with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall where because Iran has been the primary funder of some of this, if they're removed, it actually could bring so much freedom and peace and stability to the region. And so we prayed for the people of Iran that they would be able to have freedom and be released from this kind of grip hold the terrorists have had over so many of the people that largely might not support some of what's going on, but it is an interesting thought for sure. 

Rick Green [00:25:54] I am blown away that the propaganda made its way to my feed as much as it did. I was literally scrolling through X and I was seeing over and over and over again, these supposed shooting, you know, shooting down of the, of the F-35s, the Israeli F- 35s, and the capturing of the female pilot and all of these things. And it was, I don't even know how these people ended up on my feed, but it was over and, and over again. And so I, I guess that's what happens to us. We see it enough. We start believing it. I believed it. So I I'm thrilled to find out that's not true. Uh, but amazed that they had a propaganda machine that sophisticated. So to your point, Tim and praise God that we have the potential here to have freedom, not just for so many in the middle East, but also to reduce the amount of terrorism around the world. Lots of great things, guys. I know we didn't even get to everything for the weekend. So we'll do more of that throughout the week. Thank you everybody that was listening. You've been listening to the wall builder show.