SPEAKER_02 0:07

Welcome to the Introduction of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Boulder Show taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. It's uh let's see, what is this? This is Tuesday. We got all kinds of things going on in the world from Iran to uh, of course, the the Joe Kent thing out of the uh counterterrorism uh resignation. And I mentioned that one briefly last week, guys, as we were signing off. But I bet a lot of our listeners may not even know who he is and may not have even seen this. It's been a big deal if you're in kind of the you know certain circles and your Twitter feed or your ex-feed happens to be caught up with it, but thought we'd get Heidi St. John on to talk about it. She ran against him several years ago, uh, but thought we should cover it a little bit more today.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

This is something that is a media heyday. They look for any opportunity to make Trump look negative. He is doing well in polling and other things right now, um gaining support. And so they look for anything to kind of drag him down. And if you can find someone out of the 2.3 million federal employees that don't like Trump, that that when he leaves makes a big deal out of it, that's exactly what they're looking for. And essentially that's what's happening now.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Well, and uh, you know, some of this guys, too, there's some validity to some of the concerns if the accusations are all correct. And looking at some of what's going on, so for those that don't know, Joe Kent uh came out, was did several different interviews, but Tucker Carlson was one of the biggest ones where he said that Israel is controlling America and America is going in to do Iran and war and blah, blah, blah. And so a lot of people that are maybe more in the isolationist camp, uh, frankly, um, but think, man, we're tired of America. And and and maybe that's not totally fair for some of them. They're just tired of America funding other nations more than maybe doing some basic things in America, and some of that's just uh Democrats in general, perhaps. So a little nuance in the midst of that, but they're tired of seeing our dollars go uh international. And Joe Kent, just a couple months ago, was talking about how bad Iran was and we had to oppose Iran and they're the worst threat, and et cetera, et cetera. And now he suddenly changed his tune in a couple months, but he's not really saying why he changed his tune. He's not saying why he believed something different. And of course, Tucker Carlson and uh good Tucker Carlson fashion didn't ask those kinds of questions. Uh, he really just kind of let uh Joe go with where he lands now and why President Trump's a problem and why Israel's a problem, et cetera, et cetera. And so, really, guys, it would be worth maybe finding out a little more details about Joe, his background. And someone that definitely uh had some firsthand experience with Joe and can maybe shed more light on the situation is our friend Heidi St. John.

Patriot Academy Leadership Pitch

Heidi Returns And Homeschool Growth

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Heidi St. John with us when we return. You're listening to the Wall Builder Show. Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America? We're looking around for leaders of principle to step up, and too often, no one is there. God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them. They're crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need. Patriot Academy was created to meet that need. Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America, in the halls of Congress, in business, in the film industry, in the pulpit, in every area of the culture. They're leading effectively and impacting the world around them. Patriot Academy is now expanding across the nation, and now's your chance to experience this life-changing week that trains champions to change the world. Visit Patriotacademy.com for dates and locations. Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old, but we also now have a Citizen Track for Adults. So visit the website today to learn more. Help us fill the void of leadership in America. Join us in training champions to change the world at Patriotacademy.com. Welcome back to the Wall Booter Show. Thanks for staying with us. Heidi St. John back with us, Heidi St. John podcast, firmly planted, all the different things she's doing in the great state of Washington, which we have not given up on because Rob McCoy lambasted me right in front of Heidi in front of a whole crowd when we were campaigning for her. When I just even answered a question about if someone might want to move out of a blue state, and he's like, You coward! Anyway, Heidi, I'm sure you remember that. That was fun. Thanks for coming back on.

SPEAKER_04 4:18

It's great to see. Of course, I remember that. It's burnt seared into my memory. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

We were just having a nice little campaign rally for you, and I had to say something stupid, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 4:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. Well, you know, Rob, Rob didn't hold back when I called him and told him, Hey, people are threatening my life. He was like, Are you done whining?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

I'm like, And I'm sure you think of it every time you think about whining, just like I think of it. Every time I think about telling someone to leave a blue state, I think, oh, Rob might be watching. Because he was right. He was absolutely right. And I think you took his side that night, I'm pretty sure. Um, which you should have. Because I'm still here in Blue State and still doing great work. How many families y'all have now at Firmly Planted?

SPEAKER_04 4:57

Uh, about 800.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 5:00

So two thousand, roughly 2,000 students.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

And for our listeners that have been under rock and arrowware, this is a homeschool resource center, which we want to duplicate in Texas at some point. Let's go, let's go. Constitution City. If we ever get Heidi and Jay to come down and hang out with us and show us how to do it. No, it's so cool. I was it's been five years since the first time I walked through that with you. And I was so impressed with all the things that y'all do. I mean, this is not, this is not your grandmother's homeschool co-op. This is you guys have dance, you have theater, you have bees, you have coffee shops, you have you have it all. And so the kids actually get to learn entrepreneurship and the arts and uh while also learning reading and writing at arithmetic and civics and all those good things. So anyway, praise God for you. I I just think y'all, y'all have created a model we need to be replicating all over the country.

SPEAKER_04 5:46

Well, we'd love to see that happen. I really believe and I continue to believe that it won't matter if we have a good election in 2028 and maybe we've got a good election two years in the midterms after that, because this isn't it's a math game in the United States right now, and we're gonna be overrun by the kids that are coming out of our public school system, our public high schools and our public universities who've been trained in uh socialism and leftism. These are kids who don't know what a woman is and think we live on stolen land. And they're the voters of the next generation, and it simply is a math problem at this point. If we don't get a handle on education in this country, it's game over. I really believe that.

Why Joe Kent Felt Wrong

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Well, you help equip families all over the country, encourage them to listen to you. Best way to find you heidisaintjohn.net. I'm guessing. Is that where you want me to send them? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Um, and and the the cool thing is you make it fun. You're kind of like us here at Wall Builders. You don't like boring history or boring civics or boring culture stuff. Uh, you make it entertaining. So anyway, we love you. Kara says howdy, and we can't wait for you to come down and and and visit. Um, I got to get to the to the ugly. You know, I usually do the good, the bad, and the ugly. Uh we did a little bit of good there. Um, this Joe Kent guy, you know him as well um having run against him and and been on the campaign trail with him. And and and the only reason I knew he was bad news, um, you could feel it when he walked in the room, uh, even back then, but you had to deal with that on the campaign trail for what, six months or so that y'all were can't maybe longer than that.

SPEAKER_04 7:07

But it was a year and a half, dude. Oh it was a yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Well, it could be shortchanging your tour of duty. And I don't I say that on purpose, tour of duty, because all these simple-minded folks out there that think just because you serve in the military, you deserve a pass on everything. I say you can be an absolute patriot, even if you haven't served in the military, and you can be uh someone who served in the military and be a Benedict Arnold with a microphone. And um, I think that's what we've got on our hands now, don't you?

SPEAKER_04 7:34

Oh, yeah, there's no question about it. And we knew this early on because I was out on the campaign trail with Joe listening to him to give his uh stump speeches, and they're not Republican. And I started wondering, where did he get that idea? Why is he talking about taxing the rich? Why are the rich in his crosshairs? You know, why is he talking about$10,000 per child tax credits? These are not Republican conservative ideas. And it started off with sort of some sort of fiscal things he was saying. And then uh it was shown to me that he was not, he didn't have a conservative history. And I asked Joe when I first met him in 2021. I said, Joe, uh, like I think it was January of 2021 when we were all kind of kind of considering a race that was going to be happening in August of 2022. So I announced in February of 2021, around the same time that he did. And uh when I met with him, he was trying to get me to drop out of the race before I even got into it. And I asked him, so I was like, tell me about you. And his story is compelling, right? And that's what got him to where he is. Yeah, you know, his story is compelling. His wife was killed by a suicide bomber in ISIS, uh, an ISIS suicide bomber when she was serving with the US Navy in Syria. And he it made me sad. He's kind of, he was sort of, you know, he's got the riz, you know, he walked in, he bought me copy. Who didn't want that? You know? And so I was like, okay, well, you know, tell me about your history with the Republicans. And he's like, I'm a lifelong Republican. I'm a, you know, died in the world, diehard Republican. I asked him, what's your view on the public schools? Tell me about your view on abortion, what's your view on taxes? And most of it checked out.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

And so now, didn't we find I I remember discovering that he was a Democrat because we went back and did some homework on him and he had he'd voted in like what the previous two demons, I mean, like not 40 years ago. I'm talking about like the previous elections right before he ran for Congress.

Lies And The Bernie Sanders Past

SPEAKER_04 9:13

Yeah. Well, my my point is that's exactly my point. When I met him in 2021, early in 2021, he lied to me. Oh, he missed right, he he misrepresented himself. Yeah. And so I was thinking out on the trail, okay, you told me you're a diehard conservative, and yet your positions are not diehard conservative. And I certainly don't uh I I'm trying to figure out where well, you know, fast forward six or eight or nine months, and we learned that he is a bur he's a Bernie Sanders Democrat from Portland. Wow. We learned that he was a Bernie Sanders supporter. And so I outed him as a Bernie Sanders supporter and said, guys, we got to do a better job. This guy voted, you know, if somebody becomes a Christian, Rick, we don't elevate them to the head of the elder board the next Sunday. Right. Right? You know, we they don't we don't say, you know what, you should be the youth pastor. We don't do that. Yeah we go, you know what, there's uh Christianity 101, you know, right here. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna teach you how what it means to be a Christian. If somebody says, uh, if someone's a brand new baby conservative and we find out about it, you don't get to run for Congress. Sorry. Like if your history is a is that's why I'm concerned about people like Tulsa Gabbard and other these guys who come, they come from the Democrat Party, they say, hey, now, now I'm a Republican. Okay, so you're a baby Republican. Let's start from the very beginning, like the sound of music, and we'll just build our way up, right? But we're not just it's the same thing.

Trump Meeting And The Dossier

SPEAKER_02 10:26

And and I know I don't want I do this with you. When we get on a show, we go off on so many tangents together. But we got to talk about these young, quote unquote influencers, podcasters, because it's the same problem. They're talented, they're articulate, they're good looking, they got the riz, like you said, they they just they're good on camera or on podcasting. So we want them to be out front talking about conservatism, but they're not ready. And then they get the grift, they get you know, they get the what did Dan Bongino say today, the grift virus, um, which is he he was saying that's what happened to Joe. He said Joe was a friend of mine, he got the grift virus, like he named a lot of other people that I won't repeat right here, but I think he's right. Um anyway, so so yeah, we got to talk about that at some point, maybe not on uh maybe not today, but you watched it happen in real time, yeah, and you saw people just you know ignore all of that just because of the military record, or just because, like you said, he was charismatic as he as he walked in the room. Yeah, um, and and then Trump endorsed him.

SPEAKER_04 11:16

And and that too was just, you know, well, even in that, it's really important that people understand the history because President Trump called me and said, Hey, or actually Cezy Wiles called me and said, Hey, would you come out and meet with the president at his golf club in New Jersey? He wants to talk to you about the race. So this would have been in the June of 2021. And so I flew out there, had an hour-long sit down with the president. Extraordinary opportunity. And he spent the first 30 minutes grilling me. Do you remember this, Rick? Yeah, you know. I sit down, I sit down and he's just like, so Heidi, you know, offers me a Diet Coke. He's a very, like, he's just beguiling President Trump is. And he offers me a Diet Coke, and I'm too nervous to take it because I'm afraid I'm gonna drop it. I'm standing there in my, you know, my like, you know, cocktail dress is six inch heels in front of the, you know, the the most powerful man in the world. And he's like, like a diet coke. And I was like, no, thank you. No. And sits down and he opens up, I'll never forget it. He opens up a manila envelope or manila file folder, just opens it on his desk and takes out a piece of paper and reads it and says, Why don't you pay your taxes? Why don't you pay your federal taxes? And I was like, What? He said, Well, why don't you pay your federal taxes? I see here that you haven't paid your federal taxes, that you're in arrears. And I was like, No, that's not me. And he goes, Okay, goes to the next thing. He goes, uh, he goes, I see you got a lot of marriage trouble. I see that you and your you and your husband, you're in marriage counsel, what, you've been divorced several times. I'm like, No, on and on and on it went. Finally, he takes out a piece of paper, which really was me, from a post I wrote about him in 2016 when I was friends with Ben Carson and I was no way I was gonna be a Trump supporter. In 2015, I was no ways gonna be a Trump supporter. He reads it back to me. I eviscerated Trump in this Facebook post. I mean, I eviscerated him and he read it back to me. Do you think, Richon, in a million years, when I was typing that in my bedroom in my pajamas with my fluffy bunny slippers on, that I ever thought he would see it, let alone read it back to me. In person.

SPEAKER_03 13:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:00

In person, I was so embarrassed. I mean, I could just feel my face is getting hot, my ears are getting hot. I'm like, oh my gosh, the ground could open up and swallow me. I just want to die. Someone shoot me right now. And finally, I just I stood to my feet and I said, Sir, Mr. President, with all due respect, everything you're reading about me in that dossier is a lie. Except for that. I did write that. And I really by this time, Susie Wiles was coming in the room and she was just like, you know, sir, you know, I just not the only one. And you can tell I kind of cracked him at that point because President Trump was like, I don't suppose my access Hollywood piece helped your opinion of me very much. And I was like, No, did he really? Yeah, he really did. He he actually can he can take it. I mean, he also can dish it out, but he can take it. So anyway, I just told him, I said, I didn't like you. You came down the the the escalator, that golden escalator, and all I saw was a reality TV star. Billionary wanted 15 more minutes in the sun. And so I I went in for Ben Carson and I was wrong about you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

And it's like, yeah, me too, me too. I was all in for crews and thought Trump would be the worst thing that he's turned out to be. He may be my favorite president before this is over.

SPEAKER_04 13:56

Me too, me too. So President Trump said, President Trump at that point, he was just like, Heidi, why do you want to run for Congress? And so I told him why. He said, Listen, I met Joe Kent on the tarmac in Dover Air Force Base when his wife's body was brought home. And it really impacted President Trump. He has so much respect and love for our military. Yeah. And to him, to his way of thinking, here's Joe Kent's wife just made the ultimate sacrifice. By this time, I already told him, I said, I don't think I didn't know about Joe Kent's voting record at this point. Yeah. So I just said, listen, what I'm hearing, sir, on the on the trail tells me at the very least, he's a baby conservative. He I don't trust his conservatism. I just don't trust it. Trump said, Well, what other job could I give him? Now you gotta keep in mind, you gotta keep in mind that President Trump, that Joe Kent was former CIA. Joe Kent gave President Trump all this stuff off the internet. He found another Heidi St. John in Washington State who has almost my exact birthday.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 14:50

And shares my middle name, found a Heidi St. John, and he lifted that information off the internet and gave it to Trump.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

And had to know it wasn't really it. He knew. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 14:58

He's a liar. And so when Dan Bongino says, well, he got the grift, no, he has always had the grift. He was born with the grift. It's just that now we're paying a terrible price for our lack of discernment and our unwillingness to vet him because of his service to the U.S. military. That's how we got here.

How Endorsements Warp Races

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and Heidi, I think that's what I want to ask you about the where to go from here, not just obviously with with Kent, but how do we do a better job of that? Like how do we, even in terms of our diet of information, as our mutual friend Nicole Tice out in in Delaware would say, how do we, especially, you know, you we both work with young people. So how do we train them to have an ear for that and to recognize when the depth and and the the the the truth is not solid with someone? You does that question make sense?

SPEAKER_04 15:41

Well, I yeah, I think we have to be willing. If if new information surfaces, we have to be willing to say, oh, hey, maybe we were wrong. We have to do a better job. Uh it's it's really interesting. You know, you you lived this with me because you came up here and campaigned with me, and and uh which I am so grateful for forever. But you lived this with me in real time. And I got trapped very early on in the campaign uh by a question that I actually think Joe already knew the answer to. And Joe said, Hey, listen, if President Trump, whoever President Trump endorses in this thing, the rest of you, will you all agree to bow out?

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_04 16:14

At that point, yeah, and I'm like a brand new, uh, brand new uh uh candidate. I've never run for anything in my life, and all of a sudden I'm running for Congress, and I was like, Well, I said, I remember saying, and it's on tape, I said, Well, I guess whoever Trump endorses the oxygen is gonna get sucked out of the room for everybody else. And so yeah, I probably would would uh bow out. And man, they hung me with that. They hung me with it because shortly after that I found out that that uh he was a Bernie Sanders supporter, and then he lied about his support for Bernie Sanders, and then he came up with an idea or this this you know, talking point about how he was doing a rush limbaugh trick to try to help President Trump is such a lie, so much garbage, just like him saying that he was in the West Wing and Charlie Kirk, like, Joe Kent, I love you, man. Don't let us go to war with Ariana. A million dollars says that Trump that Charlie never said that. Right. This guy just lies. Well, so I changed my mind. When Trump endorsed Kent, I refused to bow out. I just like, no, he's not in the world.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

And I remember I remember how much you struggled with that. I remember it was like, it was Rick, I've got yeah, I remember you saying, you know, I know this guy is bad news. I I cannot get out and and with a good conscience and endorse him when there's a chance we could beat him and keep him from getting to this position when we know he's bad news. Trump obviously doesn't and has been convinced to endorse him. And I can't go along. I remember you prayed about it. Y'all, you know, it was a serious, serious decision to make. But but it's like, man, five years later, now all of a sudden everybody else is finally seeing what what you knew and and we knew at on the campaign trail five years ago.

SPEAKER_04 17:39

Yep. It was an absolute unwillingness to vet the guy.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:43

We were we were blinded by his military service and blinded by the death of his wife and wanted to have compassion for him. And actually, Trump said that on the tarmac today when they were interviewing him. You know, they're like, What happened? He goes, Listen, I he goes, I was trying to help the guy, which is absolutely true. So when Trump asked me, Heidi, what other job could I give Joe? I literally said, Mr. President, you couldn't Joe couldn't run for dog catcher with his record and get elected in Clare County, Washington as a Republican. He's not a Republican. Trump, this is a hard lesson. The Republican Party needs to learn it. Just because somebody says, I served in the military, does not make them a candidate for Congress or school board or any. We need to know what is your voting history?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

That's right. That's right.

Vetting Candidates And Staying In Fight

SPEAKER_04 18:21

You have a history of conservatism. What are your values? If we don't vet these people, there are wolves in the hen house, man. Yeah. Amen. There are wolves in the hen house, and they dropped an atomic bomb onto the Republican Party the other day. And I frankly think this has been the plan all along. I heard Joe Kent say, standing right next to him, I heard him say that he'd been trained to be a chaos agent. He was trained to go overseas, infiltrate communities, and and find out how they ticked and turn them on each other. And he was talking about that in terms of war and how they have to operate in war. I'll never forget Jay leaning over to me and saying, dude, that's what he's doing to the Republican Party here in Washington State. And he was right. That's exactly what he was doing. And that's what he's doing now, going on Tucker and Candace and Megan and all these wack-a-doos. Yeah. That's what he's doing now. He's a chaos agent.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Hey, you for our listeners at home, Jay is Heidi's amazing husband. Um, I I I Jay saw it. He he could tell uh no one is talking about the fact that he was CIA. All you hear is Green Beret, Green Beret, Green Beret. So it's like they they don't want to, I guess, you know, it's part of the part of the try to protect, I guess maybe protect the machine itself. I don't know, but it it bugs me. It's like, I mean, like you said, this is part of this guy's MO from day one. Okay, let's talk about going forward. You know, what is um, you know, huge midterms coming up. I know you've been talking about this as well. What are your thoughts on how to convince those people in the middle that might be just tired of the chaos? Um, you know, and and and actually let me ask it this way. First, let's talk about our people because you talk to them every day. We've got people that are just burnt out, they're just tired of the the chaos and the Yeah, two of them are sitting right here.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

Two of them are sitting right here.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

But we stay in the fight and we keep going and we keep doing our duty. What are you saying to people when they call in and they and they tell you they're just done? Like, how do you keep them in the fight?

SPEAKER_04 20:04

Well, I I remind them of what our country would have been like had we bowed out a few years ago and Count Alarris was the president. I remind them if you think this is bad, you give this to the Democrats, it'll be 10 times worse. We have to learn from this. We don't win battles by running away. That was what Mike Ferriss said to me when I was running for Congress and I wanted to quit. And he was like, Heidi, the surest way to win a fight or to lose a battle is just not to show up. And so we basically hand it to the enemy. We hand it to the Democrats, we hand it to the leftists. They burn this country to the ground if they had the opportunity, right? I mean, we'd have more open borders, more chaos, more men and women's sports, more taxes, more of all the things that we all hate as conservatives, we would have if we bow out. We simply can't afford to bow out. It's the same reason, Rick, that I don't leave Washington State. I happen to love the beauty of this place. My family is here, my history is here, my job is here. I love, like you do, the United States of America. And we're either gonna fight for it or we're gonna give it up. And I choose to fight for it. And I think we don't have, we we're missing a sense of duty. Our forefathers had a sense of duty and they instilled that into the next generation, into rising generations, as Thomas Jefferson often referred to them. And we failed to do that. And so now we have generations with no sense of real duty, and they're following, you know what I think is an even bigger problem than that is all the conspiracy theories that are out there now. You know, it's like it's like it's the spirit of the age, dude. And the Bible says that God is not the author of confusion. Yeah. And so when we see all this confusion and all this chaos, we need to go, okay, that's not God. So what's the opposite of what of what that is, and then go that direction? All this chaos, all this confusion. The only way I think we we pull out of it is if the voices of reason and I and I'm I'm just gonna say it's godly people, we need to start we need to start elevating godly voices in this country. This is a spiritual battle of epic proportions, and spiritual battles require spiritual weapons, and yet what are we doing? We continue to send people to the highest positions of authority in this country and all over. Into positions of authority who don't know God's word and can't wield a spiritual weapon. And so we send them to high the highest positions of spiritual battles who can't wield spiritual weapons and look where we are. This is exactly how we got to where we are now. And so I think it's very basic when it comes to the God's people, at least. How about we start getting back in there and stop being lazy disciples and start opening God's word for ourselves? How about we stop getting our theology from Tucker Carlson? How about that? How about we start just opening our Bibles again? I can't believe, Rick, that we're living in a time in our country where we're being divided as Christians right now over Israel. We're being divided over whether or not the earth is flat. My goodness. I mean, the the the world's on fire. And I think truth is the only remedy to it. And how do you get truth into the culture? You elevate voices that you know to be credible who will speak the truth. And that's how we got in trouble with Joe Kent. He wasn't credible in the first place. We were unwilling to vet him, unwilling to do our homework. We're just lazy. We're just lazy. I mean, we we are. We're lazy. And that's why you're just saying people are just want to give up. What are you gonna do? Give up and go back and just watch Netflix for the rest of your life. You know, don't we have other things to do? Do we care about the future for our grandkids or not? You know, we got grandkids, and I'm doing this now, and I know you are too for our grandkids. Yeah, it matters.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Yeah, I like to tell the Patriots, there's a damsel in distress, there's a city to be saved. Let's go. Let's get let's get in the fight. Well, talking about finding good voices, HeidiSaintjohn.net, go check out our books as well, all of our mom strong books, and then Born on a Battlefield, spiritual strategies from moms in the trenches. I loved it when I came up there to campaign for you the first time, and we were in battleground, Washington. I was like, okay, this was meant to be. Absolutely meant to be.

SPEAKER_03 23:36

So meant to be stitched on. I'm still right over here, just battlegrounding it up. I'll tell you what.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Heidi, y'all keep it up. Give Jay our best. Thank you for giving us a little bit of the inside scoop. And thank y'all for standing strong, even back then when everybody from you know President Trump on down was trying to get y'all to get out of the fight and not be involved. So thanks for taking a stand and continuing advancing truth, as we like to say. That's uh that's victory. And you did a lot of that and continue to do that. So we appreciate you. Thanks for coming on.

SPEAKER_04 24:00

Rick, you're a national treasure. Thanks for having me on.

Reject Confusion And Rebuild Discernment

SPEAKER_02 24:03

That was Heidi St. John back with David and Tim now. And uh, of course, a lot of good news in there too, just talking about the homeschooling movement and how many more you know, families are part of their uh homeschool resource center there, that that's growing across the country. So some good stuff, uh, but definitely some concerns about where we get our diet of information and who we vet and who we who we platform.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, and it's really important. And I think there's a real big political lesson here, quite frankly. Uh, when you look at what this represents, you have a guy here who is flawed in so many ways. This is not a guy you would have wanted for a Republican congressman, not any congressman, but Republicans who tend to have different standards. I mean, he didn't even come up to their standards.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Well, and one of the things too, guys, multiple things can be true at once. And we are grateful for someone who faithfully serves the military or does heroic things in combat, even though we might have some significant political, philosophical disagreements. And certainly that's where I would want to point out this is not an anti-military, it's not an anti-uh veteran, et cetera, et cetera, where some people might be triggered and want to accuse us of something we're not saying. But Dad, to your point, we need to be more careful, strategic, wise, selective in some of that process instead of just going, hey, if somebody was in the military or whatever the accolades might be, well, that's all that really matters when clearly that there's way more to the story. And one of the things that we often have to navigate when we hear accusations, and this is the way we do research with the founding fathers, we hear something, we go, okay, is it true? How do we know? What's the source? Is there more to the story? Is there a different context? Is that all they said about the issue? You have to start asking more questions and some pretty basic questions and do better investigation to find better answers.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah, this is a really important thing. And there's some real key verses on this. Uh, and back in Exodus 18, 21, we're told, go select the right people, go find the right people. And a lot of times we just wait to see who shows up on the ballot. Uh, this is a real good lesson for why you recruit people and go get good people on the ballot, because when they get in office, they may not be everything you thought they would be or hoped they would be or they said they would be. And the other thing is a great parable in Judges chapter 7, uh, where that they were electing leaders at that point in time, and the best leaders are the ones who are least likely to run. You have to really work hard to get them. And that's something for all of us to remember as you look at school board or state rep or Congress or something else. It's not just the ones who show up. Go find the right people and get them to run and encourage them to run. That's what we really need, is better candidates.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Everyone can be a part of that, certainly locally. You can be a part of vetting those local candidates, but we need like you said, David, we just need to do a better job for sure. But uh great lesson learned, and uh, we'll do better in the future. Uh folks, we're out of time for today. You've been listening to the Wild Boar Show.