Rick Green [00:00:07] It's the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders Show. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. One of the few guys in American politics that does that on a regular basis and stays pretty consistent on the biblical foundation for sure, knows the history and certainly does his best to follow the constitution, the lieutenant governor of Texas. We can just call him governor. David and Tim will, we'll have Dan Patrick with us a little later in the and when we call him governor, everybody just needs to know we don't mean he's like taking Abbott's place. That's just what we do in Texas. We kind of ignore that lieutenant part. 

David Barton [00:00:43] I think we do that actually in most states. I think it's, it's kind of, I think that it's pretty standard that you say, Mr. Governor, even when it's the vice, you know, even with his lieutenant governor, now you don't do that with the vice president, you don't call him president, but I think at least in states I've been in that they pretty much call him governor, even when he’s a lieutenant governor, when they address him, so I don't know, maybe it is just a Texas thing, but That's kind of the protocol I'm used to in other places. I may be the one that gets it wrong in all those states, but that's the way I've heard it done anyway.

Tim Barton [00:01:17]  It also might be a little, ambitiously, promotive, prophetic, you know. Yeah, obviously we are, we are now in a position, where governor Abbott for us in Texas has not been, the, the tyrant Abbott that we were frustrated with early on in COVID and not calling legislature. So, we, we've kind of moved past that a little bit. But had we had Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, we probably wouldn't have had some of those problems not to digress down that one. But maybe guys, this is a good transition, which is not what we're going with the program today. But to say this is why we have to make sure we pay attention in elections because elections have consequences. The people we vote for, it does matter. And speaking of voting for, primaries are going on in several states right now. And one of the things that we're seeing in Texas is it seems like Democrats have been far more motivated to this point in the Texas primary season, then have Republicans as far as what it looks like for voter turnout. And so this is again, just a update reminder challenge for everyone out there. Not only that we have been stewards or that we are stewards, we've been given a stewardship with our vote. And that doesn't just mean in the main election in November, we need to paying attention at these. These primary races at local races so that we're not showing up at a general election, the main election in November, and then frustrated that we don't have better candidates, number one. And then number two, that we didn't get frustrated with whoever our leader might be and go, why do we have a leader this bad? Well, it's probably because you didn't get involved more in the earlier seasons of elections and largely that's in primary. So, we have to make sure that we are getting engaged in primaries. We pay attention. There's websites out there like Christian Voter Guide. Which actually is a place that has links to voter’s guides all over the nation. So whatever state you're in, you can go on there. You can click on your state. It'll have voter guides for your states. Cause one of the, one of things we know for a lot of people is if they don't know who's running, then they don't want to get involved. Cause they don't want to vote for the wrong person. There, there's too much information out there now readily available for us to not get involved because we didn't know, who was there. We have to get involved; we have to participate in this election and this especially primary process. So, whether you are in a state where primaries are going right now. Or if you're in a state where primaries are coming up in the near future, because by the way, that's every state in the union, we need to make sure that we pay attention, that we get involved, that we show up and vote so that we can have some better options and better choices when we get down the road to November for the bigger elections. 

David Barton [00:04:01] Yeah, and there's actually several states right now. Tim, you mentioned Texas, in addition to that, other primaries that are going right now include North Carolina, Arkansas is going, Illinois is going. There's several going right now and a bunch more start in March. And it really has been kind of surprising that even in those red states, the turnout seems to have favored the Democrat voters at this point. You know, that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll win those elections. But at this point, they've been more active in turning out. So, we'll see what that means. But that really is a big deal. And I know we're going to cover some stuff with, with governor Patrick today. But Tim, you're right. I mean, this, this really needs to be paid attention to. We can't say, man, how, how nice things have been going the last year. This is great. Let's enjoy it. Now you got to double down at that point and, and really get focused on making sure you don't lose control of what we work so hard to get at this point. 

Rick Green [00:05:00] Yes, so much at stake and so many important elections. We really do want to encourage people to get informed, get some of those voter guides, make sure that you are paying attention when your primary is. Always more influence in the primary than in the general because fewer people show up. So that means your vote counts even more in terms of a weighted scale. You can have a lot more influence. And before we go to Governor Patrick, David, this kind of came out of your testifying before the, I guess, do they call it commission or committee? I can't remember if it's religious liberty. 

David Barton [00:05:26] It's the commission. 

Rick Green [00:05:27] Okay. And you had, that was just a few weeks ago and doing great work. Another one of our friends on the commission, Kelly Shackelford, and actually a lot of friends on the commission. But at any rate, you had a chance to testify about some of the chaplain history and some of the other rich religious history of our country. And of course, you've been working with governor Patrick on a lot of different things, but it'll be exciting to get an update from him on the commission and things going on in Texas.

David Barton [00:05:53] Yeah, the commission has actually had a kind of a mandate, which Governor Patrick will talk about, I'm sure. But it's really to look at the attacks on religious liberty across America. So, this commission made up of leading folks from across the country is looking at how religious liberty has been dealt with, the attacks in the military, the attacks in education, the attacks in social services, the attack just in general and looking to see if there's areas where the laws are being ignored. We have great laws. Or looking to see, great laws that aren't always enforced, I'll add, we have great laws, but there's a lot of violations of them going on. So, looking to if it's a matter of enforcing those laws or if there's other things that the administration needs to do to take steps to stop some of this nonsense that's gone on. We've seen it a whole lot in education from kindergarten through graduate students being discriminated against, not allowed to share their faith in public places. So, there's lot of craziness, but the part they asked me to testify on was on the history of religion. Well, actually it was on religious violations in the military. But I thought the easiest way to do that is to go back and show what the military used to be and used to do. So, I went all the way back to George Washington's first orders and went through the religious liberty standards that he set up and the practices we had going all the way through World War II and how that really starting with particularly with Biden in 2009, they started singling out the military, started excluding anything. Kind of religious that wasn't forced on them. They tried to outsource chaplains, get chaplains out of the military, just have hired contractors that we could have on the side, which meant you wouldn't be able to deploy a chaplain with the military. So it really started in 2009. Biden did a lot of it as well. And that's really what they had me testify about was the overview of where the military had been for over 200 years and what's happened in the last 20 or so years. And so that was my part of the testimony. 

Rick Green [00:07:50] Well, Governor Patrick will be with us when we come back from the break. We'll get an update on what's going on with the commission. Stay with us, folks. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:09:02] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Lieutenant governor Dan Patrick from Texas with us, he's heading up President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission. Gotta going to catch up on that governor. Great to have ya on, man. 

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick [00:09:12] Always good to be with you, Rick. It's been too long. 

Rick Green [00:09:15] I know, I know. We love you, man. We appreciate what you're doing for Texas. And of course, the president has tapped you to help spread that across the country. You've always been a defender of religious liberty here in Texas. And the President recognizes the challenges and wants to celebrate some of the victories. And that's what I've seen from the commission so far. You guys are highlighting some of the good stuff, but also pointing out the bad stuff. 

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick [00:09:36] Yeah. You know, Rick, this is really unbelievable to think that what we've heard testimony on actually happens in America. We are already now at five committees in and 500 pages of testimony nearly. And the stories have just not only make you angry but break your heart because the people in the Biden administration specifically who went after people for religious liberty. They didn't just stop them from whatever they didn't want them to do. They punished them. I'll give you a couple of examples. One is we had a Navy SEAL 19 years near retirement, and he wouldn't take the vaccination for COVID. So, they said, well, for what reason? If he had said for medical reasons, he would have been waived and allowed to go back on duty. But because he said for religious reasons, his religious beliefs, they washed him out, took away his pension, took away his health benefit. And to this day, five years later, he's still had never been made whole. If he had said the other thing, which he knew he could say what, what the other men were saying, he would have been allowed to continue. But he said, I'm going to stand up for my faith. There's a little young, young man named Shay. Shay, when he was in the fifth grade was told to read a book on transgender to a first grader. And he just knew he shouldn't do it. He knew it went against what he felt he had been taught by going to Sunday school and to church and at home with his parents who were Christians. And so, he went home and said, Mom, I don't know what to do. I don't wanna make the teacher mad with me this was my assignment. So, she said, well, don't do, we'll go to the school board. She went to the School Board and most of the staff and other teachers showed up and searched supporting transgender affirming. And so, she was like, I can't believe this is happening to me. This is our faith. This is what we believe, and my son should be able to say, no, I don't want to do this without getting a failing grade. They not only ran them out of the school; they pretty much ran them outta the community by just all the hate that poured in to this young man who was such a soulful person when he came to school. And then the family was victimized by people saying, what are you trying to do here? You know, we have to be inclusive. We have to allow this, et cetera, et cetera. And when he and she gave their testimony, she started to tear up and this little boy put his arm around his own mother as she read that story or the parent from a school in California that got a report card, which she thought was a mistake because of a boy's name on it. Was her last name, but a boy's first name. And she thought, well, I don't know how this happened because it's not my daughter's name and it might be her report card, it must be a mix-up. No, they had allowed that young lady to use a man's name or a boy's name while they were in school. And they told her not to tell her mother. Not to tell, or his mother, you would say. And so, the parent said, this school allowed my son to change his identity and never told me. And so, my daughter, they've been treating him as a boy, calling him by his name of choice. Even his report card has that name. Those are just three samples of stories of many stories that we've heard Rick. You just can't believe it's happening in America. One more, I'll give you one more, a Hispanic teacher, seventh grade. I think she was seventh grade teacher. Uh, someone complained, she had a cross on her desk. She'd been teaching a long time, highly rated. I think, she was teacher of the year one year. Someone complained, so the school board said she had, or the principal, had to take the cross off her desk, fearing she would be fired, she said, yes. But as she went to remove the cross, she said, Rick, I could see Jesus on the cross and I just couldn't do it. So, she said, I'm sorry, I can't do it. And so, to this day, her case is going through the courts. The other cases I mentioned to you have either gone through the court or Little Shay won his case, by the way, in the Supreme Court. But this teacher for the last several years has been told to show up every morning to the administration building. She sits in a small little office and does whatever she wants all day. She's not allowed to teach even though they're paying her because she wouldn't put the cross away. So, the whole point of this commission, Rick, is a lot of Americans don't know where they can pray or when they can pray. They don't know if they're a football coach, can they coach or rather pray in the locker room or is it on the field? Is it at halftime? You know, Coach Kennedy won his case. Well, is that just for the 50-yard line after the game? We had a valedictorian who testified, a young man, brilliant young man. They made him remove any reference to Jesus or God in his speech. So, people in America of faith don't know what they can do and when they can pray. Can they have a nativity scene in the town square? Can they a religious symbol in their front yard? Whatever it may be. And our committee has been mostly Christian witnesses because we're mostly a Christian nation, but we've had Sikhs who were told to shave their beard, which is a part of their faith, or get out of the military. We've had Jewish students on anti-Semitism, which has really made the news recently. This is not American, and this is not what our founders intended with the first freedom of the First Amendment, the freedom of religion.

Rick Green [00:15:22] And so you guys are not only working towards proposals for how to keep the stuff from happening in the future, you're educating people on what their, what their rights are now and educating frankly, school districts on what the law is so that they don't violate just by having these hearings. It brings attention to it where, like you're saying, a lot of people don't know where the lines are. 

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick [00:15:42] And this all started, and I tell the story only because the president told it otherwise, I wouldn't tell this story. But in 2024 when he was elected November, he, my phone rang and it was the President and we have a great relationship. I mean, he hasn't called me all the time. I'll call him all the. Time. I'm not trying to suggest that, but we have great relationship I ran his campaign, three times here in Texas, which is an easy job, by the way. If he had lost Texas, I'd had to move out of the country. But he said, Dan, are you looking for me? And I said, no, sir. And so, we started talking. And of course, then it was right before the inauguration coming up in two months, and the cabinet, all the things he had to do, I would have never thought to call him and bother him with anything. But after we talked for a few minutes, I said Mr. President, since you called me, this is a God moment here, Rick, since you've called me can I share an idea with you? And it was to have a Religious Liberty Commission, a Presidential Religious Liberty Commission. He immediately said, yes, I love it. Let's do it. He said, I want Franklin Graham. I want Paula White. I want Cardinal Timothy Dolan, because they've all worked with him, and Paula heads up the Faith Office, and the others have prayed at his inaugurations. And so, we started talking. And before I knew it, it was done. And of course, we went until March after he got all through those other major issues. And our first sharing was in June of last year. And I had this outstanding committee, and he invited me to speak at the Rose Garden in May on Prayer Day, National Prayer Day. And he told the story and so it's this is the commission of all faiths not just Christian but of all face no one should be denied their religious liberty and so I do have Cardinal Dolan, I do have Franklin Graham, I do I have Paula White, I do had Dr Phil who's a leading Christian. You know people don't know that about him he moved to show back to Texas because paramount told him to quit saying God on his tv shows. I've got Dr Ben Carson, my Vice Chair. I got Kelly Shackelford, known by many in your audience. And it's just been an incredible experience. And our mission is at the end of, we have two more hearings, one in March, and we do them all at the Museum of the Bible. We did one in Dallas where David Barton came in and did a tremendous job talking about our history, dealing with the military. But we do the other hearings in the Museum of the Bible and later this spring, we will give a report directly to the President with recommendations for either executive orders or legislation or cases that DOJ can take. Because we want to make these things permanent beyond executive order. So, another president doesn't change them. But, and then last week when we had a member of our committee challenge our Jewish witnesses on anti-Semitism and try to make it a national issue, a national story about Israel and Gaza, the Palestinians, which is not what this is designed for. It's not designed our, our committee listens to witnesses. We hear their story. We don't say, well, to the Navy Seal, well maybe you were wrong. Maybe your commander was right, or the superintendent was right to the teacher. We don't do that. We just hear their stories and ask them a lot of questions of why it happened and what happened. But once she went off on this anti-Israel repeatedly saying, the Jews killed Jesus the Jew's killed Jesus.  I removed her the next day from the committee. And she put a Palestinian pin on during the meeting. Can you imagine that, putting on a Palestinian flag in the middle of a Religious Liberty Commission to Jewish witnesses who had their religious liberty taken away and tried to put the blame on them. Franklin Graham, at one point, he doesn't say a lot in the committee, but when he speaks, it speaks volumes and a few words. He hit the mic and said, Reverend Graham, your mic's on. He said, "No one killed Jesus. He's alive and the tomb is empty." Is that great? And then we had a Catholic priest who was actually testifying against anti-Semitism. And then he chimed in and said, look, we all killed Jesus, he died for all of us. And so, it was quite a week. And what it has done really, the Bible says in Genesis and in Romans, I'm paraphrasing here what some people made for evil, God can turn to good. Sure enough, she tried to hijack this commission. There's been stories all over the country about this, how she tried the hijack the commission, and that I was right in removing her. But she's brought attention to it, Rick. And I normally on a good post on my Twitter account, or X, as it's known today, maybe I'll get 15, 20,000 views on a really good post, 100,000. I'm at 4.6 million. And it's been, so it's brought attention to this issue of anti-Semitism, which we have to wipe out in this country, and we have to wipe it out for the Republican party. That the Candice Owens crowd and those followers, Rick, they will destroy our party on that issue. 

Rick Green [00:20:50] Alright folks, sorry for the interruption, but we're going to get the second half of our interview with Governor Patrick tomorrow. Right now, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be back in a moment with David and Tim Barton. 

Rick Green [00:22:06] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us guys, man. I didn't realize there had been so much controversy with the commission and this, this gal apparently you know, really trying to hijack the commission. So good thing that they took immediate steps and, and it looks like that will no longer be an issue.

David Barton [00:22:24] You know, I, I'm so pleased that they acted so quickly. It didn't get a chance to blow up or become a news issue, which the other side would have loved. And Dan just put his foot down and said, nope, that's not happening. And I'm so glad Cardinal Dolan and Franklin Graham both stepped up, you know, one saying, hey, the Jews didn't kill Jesus. Our sins killed Jesus, et cetera. And that is such a big deal because even the scripture, Jesus says, nobody takes my life from me. I lay down my life on my own. Don't you think I could call a legion of angels right now and end this. He said, I'm doing this in my own will. This is me doing. So, nobody killed Jesus except all of us, all of our sins. And this thing that's going with the anti-Semitism, blame it all on Israel. I mean, that's really poor knowledge of the Bible. That's very, how do I want to say that? It's biblical illiteracy, but there's just something going. It's really strange right now. You know, we talked about when things don't make sense, a lot of times it's spiritual. And the attacks on Israel really don't makes sense. The greatest ally we have, and we're going after or groups in America are going after Israel, it just doesn't make sense. 

Tim Barton [00:23:27] Well, yeah, guys, when you have someone who is Jewish coming to testify and you put on a pin that is pro Palestine, I mean, already you are taking a pretty hard bias. And as Governor Patrick said, most of what they're supposed to do is sit there and ask questions to let people tell their stories, not to challenge them and say, excuse me, Navy SEAL, don't you think you should have submitted to your commander again? Like he, he explained it so well. And Dad, I also loved what he said from Franklin Graham, where he says, Jesus isn't dead, right? Which is really kind of the whole point of everything. But one of the things guys that also struck me, Rick, as you were talking to him is as he's explaining that God is using this for good, he said, let me paraphrase, he says this is in Genesis and it's in Romans. And I know that as someone that studies and loves the Bible, I don't expect many politicians to know, for example, what Joseph told his brothers when they were super concerned that, because the father was dying and what's going to happen and, and, you know, they're trying to navigate the situation and Joseph tells them guys, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. And then you have Romans 8:28 that we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those that love Him that are called according to purpose, et cetera. So, there's very similar things in Genesis and, in Romans, but when you have the lieutenant governor of a state who is competent enough in knowledge of the Bible. That he's saying, hey, this is in Genesis and Romans. Let me summarize. And he gets it right in the midst of everything that he said that was so positive and I love the fact that he was talking to President Trump and said, I want to do this. Trump like, man, it's great. Let's go for it. He supports it. And then he has this great team on this committee. I was just, guys, so impressed that there's a lieutenant governor, not just upholding, defending religious liberty, but someone who clearly understands biblical foundations. And even as he said the majority of the people that are coming in to testify are Christians because that's the majority of our nation. And Dad, one of the things that really, to me, emphasizes even more of the shift we're seeing in a positive direction is when we were just as last week at NRB, the National Religious Broadcasters, we were speaking that night from the main stage and Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, spoke before us and he goes on incredibly about the Christian heritage and foundation of the nation. And you leaned over and said, you know, 35 years ago, when I was saying these things and, and it was an anomaly, nobody else was saying them I never imagined that we would be at a place where you literally have people from the White House saying the things I was trying to teach people 35 years ago. And this is guys, what's so cool to me is we finally have some leaders in our nation who understand our nation's history, but in this case also know the Bible and are promoting and defending those truths. 

Rick Green [00:26:19] Yet and usually when we when we hear most public servants especially at that high of a level quoting a Bible verse it's almost like cringe-worthy because you can tell they don't understand or they don't know the context or they misapplied or whatever so yeah that was very nice to have somebody that clearly is in the word and understands the word. Great stuff today guys we'll get the rest of Governor Patrick's interview tomorrow, so be sure and tune in everybody. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.