Tim Barton [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. This is The WallBuilders Show. My name is Tim Barton. I am joined by my dad, David Barton, and normally, our third amigo, Rick Green, is with us. He is on the road right now doing a Patriots Academy Leadership Congress event, and he was actually gonna be with us and his flight got delayed. And we're not gonna single out the airline, but even though we are proud to be American, sometimes... The proud to be American Airlines doesn't always get you there on time. Just anecdotal experience, not to digress. Today is Thursday, which means it is Foundation of Freedom Thursday, which means we are diving in to your questions today. If you have questions, you can send them to radio@wallbuilders.show. And we would love to be able to try to help answer questions that you have regarding things in the nation. Usually we try to look at things from the constitutional, biblical, and historic perspective, trying to help you analyze things and maybe gain a good perspective with things that we can show again from a Bible thought, from a historic thought, and especially from a constitutional perspective. So, Dad, normally Rick would be here to read the questions. Today. I am going to be the one reading some questions for you. 

David Barton [00:01:32] Want to start with one first I got one that you didn't get maybe this is from, says it's from, Ricardo Verde. And so Ricardo Verde, I don't know if you speak Spanish I think that means Rick Green, but it's for Ricardo Verde So this this question from Ricardo Verde was; yesterday I got to tell you some of the stories some of my fun stories out of the new book Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honor, but you didn't get an opportunity to do that. So Ricardo Verde wants to know, what are your favorite stories? What are some stories that stand out to you from the new book, Lives, Fortunes, Sacred Honor? 

Tim Barton [00:02:09] Well, I would like to thank Ricardo Verde for his very, generous question, allowing me to tell part of some of the stories that we highlight in our new book, Lives, Fortunes, Sacred Honor, and a quick plug that this is a book that Dad, you and I have worked on for quite a while. We, our, incredible team at WallBuilders, had, has helped us do so much of the research, the fact finding, the details, helping us go through and get all these stories put together and really all of the publishing for this book. We have an incredible team of WallBuilders, but this is our take going back to try to reintroduce people to the Founding Fathers. Most people know names and they don't know the stories. And when you know the story. We took the last line from the Declaration where they said we mutually put it to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. And we go through showing part of what their story was, where so many of them actually did sacrifice. Whether it was their lives or their fortunes and all of them committed their sacred honor for the cause. And and we highlight the sacrifices so many have been made, where there's guys like John Hart to when he signs the Declaration, he has neighbors that are loyalists and they get a mob more or less together to come try to get him he has friends that come and say bro, they're just down the road. You got to get out of here. His wife was on her, in essence, deathbed she was in bed sick. He wanted to be there with her, he has to flee. He flees and he actually is on the run for the next year. Not sleeping anywhere in the same bed or the same place twice. In bed is actually a mischaracterization because he really didn't sleep in beds. He was sleeping out in the open woods and fields and in trees and literally in trees, and under hollowed out logs and all kinds of craziness. When he finally makes it back home, it's like a year later, his wife's already passed away. There's Founding Fathers that didn't just have to miss the passing of their wife. There are guys like Francis Lewis and his wife Elizabeth Lewis is the one who, when the British came to his house, he was gone, he was in Continental Congress, but the British come up the sailing up the river, their house is by the river. And troops get off the ship, they're coming up the house. But in the ship, they go ahead and open fire on the house, they shoot a cannon up at the house and she's standing on the front porch, looking down at the river sees this boat and cannonball comes and blows out boards between her legs. One of the servants comes, says, ma’am, we got to go. She says, No, we're fine. That there's no way they're going to hit us. They can't even hit the same spot twice. It's no problem. When the troops finally arrive, they come. She's wearing some brass buttons. She has brass buckles on her shoes. They, specifically, there was a British soldier ripped the buckles off her shoes. Historians kind of agree, they think that probably he mistook it for gold because of the color, and it was shiny, it was pretty. And Elizabeth Lewis tells them that, her quip became very famous, that not everything that shines is made of gold. Not everything that glimmers is of gold! And she ends up getting arrested, taken to a prisoner ship. One of the things that is kind of worth noting is there were more Americans that died in prisoner of war ships than actually died on the battlefield. It was brutal conditions in these prisoner of war ships. Often they neglected to give food and water and when you were fed or when you got something it was food and water. She was literally starving. She got really sick. People were trying to smuggle her food. Word got back to the Founding Fathers what was happening. They sent word to Washington. Hey you go capture somebody do a prisoner of war exchange and so he went and captured two of the loyalists' wives and said we're gonna treat them the way you're treating Elizabeth Lewis until you release her. Well within 24 hours virtually she's released. But her health was so broken. She was so sick. She never recovered and died and so Francis has to watch his wife die of this sickness from being a prisoner of war. And I'm saying this because Josh Hart, Francis Lewis, both of them went through incredible hardship and they never recanted, they, they never backed down, they were committed to the cause. But one of, one of the stories that I think is really great for kind of the cultural context, there's a Signer of the Declaration named William Whipple and his family were, were tradesman. They had multiple ships did a lot of trading all over Europe. And one of the things which, I'm saying this because you actually can go back, historians have documented that there was actually some trade records from some of the ships where it identifies some of what the cargo was, and there was more than 100 voyages that these ships took and trade, but there's like I don't remember the numbers 10 or 12 something like that, maybe up to 15, but it was a small percentage of the number that included some slaves. And so his family was involved in the slave trade. I think if people said, well, they were slave traders, I think the instant assumption is that, well that was all they did, and that was their primary focus, and the reality for this family is that they partook in the slaves trade, it was part of what they did but it wasn't the majority of what the did, this is not to like defend them, recognizing this was a great evil, but I say this because William did recognize this was great evil. He grew up with his family having participated in this, but he has anti-slavery sentiments. That's growing in him. His father gives him a slave, and the slave was known as Prince Whipple, and back then it was not uncommon. There are multiple slaves that had the first name Prince. That was a fairly common first name that a lot of these male slaves had, and then it was not uncommon to ascribe the last name of the slave owners, and so he was known Prince Whipple. Well, as the Revolution unfolds, William Whipple goes to fight in the Revolution and he brings Prince with him. And as he was encouraging Prince at one point, he said, hey, make sure you're courageous and strong. And Prince tells him, well, I think I would fight a lot more fervently, a lot more dedicated, have a lot of more passion if I was fighting as a free-man. And at this point, William looks at him and says, oh, well then, you're free. And acknowledges that he is free on the spot now. Historians would identify, and it's true, that there was a legal process they had to go through at the end of the Revolution to actually confirm and authorize what the state required for him to be free. But the reason I bring this up is because William Whipple was a guy who his family was involved in the slave trade. He begins to embrace abolition sentiments he actually ends up freeing Prince. He ends up stopping the family slave trade business. He then becomes an advocate and open advocate against slavery and against the slave trade. And the reason I point this out is he's one of many great examples that people looked at and they might see one part of the story and go well clearly this is one of the really racist people, Founding Fathers. But if you read a little further to store you realize wait a second, that's not the defining characteristic of his story or his life. What's far more significant is that he actually changed his position, leads an effort against it, stops the family participating in it, freed his slave, et cetera, et cetera. Et cetera. So, there's a lot of fun stories to me like that. And all 56 of these guys, we tried to find some really fun parts of their story, whatever that might be. And we try to be honest about them, too. Some of them that absolutely ended up being abolitionists that are very strong advocates against slavery and the slave trade. And then some of them, that that never embraced that position, and we show that as well. We highlight for so many of them how they were so outspoken and bold in their faith. We talk about some of their military endeavors. We talk about the sacrifice from the courage of them are the internal fortitude they showed, so. So many great things from this book. And as I'm saying all of this, this, the book Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor: The Signers of the Declaration it's available this week, it's pre sell at Amazon. If you wanna go to Amazon and pre-order. But next week; June 23rd. It actually will be available for sale. We already have the books in house, but June 23rd is when it goes live. The sale is live and you can go to wallbuilders.com and you could order one there. So, we would highly encourage you, if you wanna know more than just their names, if you want to begin to learn their stories and part of again why that matters is if you know their stories, then you would realize a lot of the nonsense being said about them and about America is patently false. But when you don't know the truth, sometimes it's hard to identify the error or identify the lie. And so, we wanted to help reintroduce Americans to the 56 Signers. So, I would like to say to Ricardo Verde, thank you for your question. I really appreciate that submission. So, Dad, I feel like I have talked a long time. Let me let me shift to some of the questions that we have. And let me see if we can get a question in before we go to break. 

David Barton [00:11:16] Actually, Tim, I've got a couple ideas, some things I want to bounce off you based on some of the conversation we had yesterday So let's go to break. We'll come back and I've asked something to ask you 

Tim Barton [00:11:25] All right, you heard it from the boss man himself, David Barton. We are taking a quick break. We'll be right back in just a moment here on the WallBuilders Show. 

Tim Barton [00:12:39] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. This is Foundation of Freedom Thursday, where we are answering your questions. At least that's the goal. The first part of the program, we answered a question from Ricardo Verde, which I think in English is Rick Green. And so it's not really your questions, but we do want to get to some of those questions. I do have a stack of questions in front of me, but Dad, you said before the break that you had something that you wanted to talk about. We discussed a little bit yesterday, and so you wanted come back and talk about it some today, so I defer to you. What is the question or what is the topic you want to talk about? 

David Barton [00:13:15] So I'm gonna play like I'm a legislator and I'm going to make this a point of personal privilege. So I've got to kind of deviate from the legislative schedule or what we normally do and go in for an individual point here. 

Tim Barton [00:13:26] Now to clarify, are you a Republican or Democrat legislator? Is this like the Senate filibuster? What kind of personal privilege are you taking here? 

David Barton [00:13:37] Well, you'll have to judge a tree by its fruits. After I get done, Sid, you can figure out whether it was Democrat, Republican, or otherwise. 

Tim Barton [00:13:44] Okay, so we're gonna pass the bill and then find out what's in it. I'm ready, let's go for it. 

David Barton [00:13:49] See, I learned from these guys. I learned a lot of stuff from these guys. So you guys were talking yesterday about the MMA event at the White House, what was happening there with it, and it was, man, what they have, 100,000 people on the grounds watching on the big screens there around the arena. It was massive, and then the way it was streamed across the nation, just not telling how many millions, tens of millions watched it. But it got me thinking about athletic events at the White House. As much as we do with history, I was trying to think back to, alright, have there been other athletic events of the White House? And that got me thinkin' about, have there been athletes in the White house? Have any of the Presidents been athletes? And I started doing a little lookin’, and it turns out that Gerald Ford, When he was president, he had been on two national championships 

Tim Barton [00:14:34] Oh football. 

David Barton [00:14:35] Yep. 

Tim Barton [00:14:36] I mean I feel like at this point Why don't you tell me the president and let me see if I know the athletic activity they were part of. 

David Barton [00:14:43] All right Let's start with Gerald Ford. What did he what was that? What was his sport? 

Tim Barton [00:14:47] I identified he was a football player. 

David Barton [00:14:50] Right. 

Tim Barton [00:14:50] Now. I did not know he was on national championship teams, but I did know he was a football player 

David Barton [00:14:55] Yeah, he was two times national championship team, and he was offered all sorts of contracts by the NFL. So, he had NFL opportunities. Turned it down because he wanted to go to law school. So, there was one. What sport was Barack Obama involved in? 

Tim Barton [00:15:13] Well, I feel like this is a little bit of a trick question because he did invite some college basketball teams like UNC to the White House. He played basketball with them. I feel he probably was a tennis player, but I don't know. I just I.... That's not usually the vision I have of Barack Obama being like this incredible athlete. And I'm not saying that disrespectfully. I just, as a community organizer, it's not the way I view him. So I have no idea. What did he do? 

David Barton [00:15:45] So he was on the state championship basketball team in high school. So he a high school basketball athlete on the State Championship team. So he has a little cred there on sports. So those were two I was unaware of. And so I started looking, and I'm just gonna hit some 20th century kinda guys. And what was, some of this is not necessarily the sport they did earlier, but while they were in the White House, they adopted sports and made it part of the White House. And created sporting entities at the White House, created sporting areas at the White House. Added things to the White House to allow them to practice their sport. So if I start with Teddy Roosevelt, what did he do? What was his favorite sport at the White House? What did he do as an athlete at the White House?

Tim Barton [00:16:30]  Well, it seems, I mean, I feel like that's a trick question. I feel like he might have said like hunting, but I do know that he had some boxing matches at the White House. So that would be my guess. 

David Barton [00:16:44] Yeah, it was. It was boxing matches, and he was a serious boxer, and in boxing a much younger army captain while he was president, he took a real hit to the head that gave him a detached retina. So the detached retina, he had blurry vision for the rest of his life because of the medicine back then. They did not, they were not able to reattach that. And so, he took up Jiu Jitsu instead. So, here's the president who gave up boxing to go for Jiu-Jitsu. And he's the president who built the tennis courts at the White House. He liked playing tennis. So he was an outdoorsman, but he was a good athlete, and so I just have never thought about the athletic sport abilities of various presidents. If you go to William Howard Taft, who was the very large president, about 400 pounds, what would be his sport? 

Tim Barton [00:17:34] I don't know, I was only thinking of joke sports that he could have played. It seems like he should have been a lineman for somebody, but I have no idea what sport he played. 

David Barton [00:17:46] Of all things it was golf. He's the one who got golf really into the White House and started doing that as a big deal there and made part of the White House where he could play some golf around it. 

Tim Barton [00:17:59] Doesn't seem to support the narrative when people talk about golf's a real sport you to be a real athlete. Well if he's the one playing golf there might be some questions, not to digress, like you have the Tiger Woods, historic, amazing, there's some incredible athletes. But okay so a golfer because I do know and this might be on your list Woodrow Wilson was the guy who loved to play golf, but he would use, and this is gonna sound a little odd, but during the winter when there was snow on the ground, he would black golf balls so that he could identify them. Now I say that might sound a bit odd because those that know Woodrow Wilson know he was an incredible racist. And that under his presidential leadership, there was the rebirth of the KKK in DC. They had open marches in DC, so I don't want to make further connections with his golfing with black golf balls in the White House. However, there have been many presidents that participated in golf at the White House, and that is one more that I do remember. 

David Barton [00:18:58] Yep, and he was the successor to William Howard Taft. He's the president came after Taft, and so he was doing golf, too. Now, interestingly, Teddy Roosevelt finally got William Howard Taft to stop playing golf. He convinced him that the people see that as an elitist sport, and you're not an elitist, and you don't want people to think of you that way, so he gave up golf at the White House. Let's go to Calvin Coolidge. What did Calvin Coolidge do for physical exercise at the White House? 

Tim Barton [00:19:31] I have no idea, but for some reason I want to say swimming, but I have no idea. 

David Barton [00:19:37] I'm going to pull in a name Kellogg Cereals, John Kellogg, the guy who did Kellogg's and he had, the president had John Kellog build him a mechanical horse and he installed a mechanical horse, it's like a bucking horse kind of a thing and put that at the White House and he would work out on that mechanical horse that would throw him around, he did that three times a day and that was his activity in sports because riding a mechanical horse it would throw him all around.

Tim Barton [00:20:07] Get a real horse to come in, so that totally makes sense. Not at all in my mind but maybe it's safer, somehow. I have never heard that. That’s fascinating.

David Barton [00:20:23] So, here's one that this is one I'd never heard, but Herbert Hoover actually created a sport in the White House that is still played today. It's called Hoover Ball. So Hoover Ball was created by Herbert Hoover. Do you know what the sport is? Do you anything about it? 

Tim Barton [00:20:39] You have a vacuum and you try to suck the ball to you 

David Barton [00:20:43] The Hoover vacuum cleaner, no it's not the Hoover vacuum cleaner Herbert Hoover was overweight and so his doctor said you need to lose some weight. You got too much stress going on lose some weight. So the doctor helped him create a game and the best I can tell you is take a volleyball court and put up a volleyball net and then have five players on each side and then play volleyball with a six-pound medicine ball. 

Tim Barton [00:21:11] Oh, yeah, that's something that athletes still do conditioning on sand volleyball courts. That that that's still a real thing i had no idea that he's the guy that helped originate this. Dad, all of this to say cause I want to win this plane because there is a question I really want us to get to before we end the program. But all of us to say it sounds like then that the idea of doing a athletic sporting event at the White House is not as crazy maybe is people think. Now certainly, this idea of people fighting there might seem extreme you mentioned Teddy Roosevelt, they would have boxing matches. And back then, probably, there were people saying the exact same thing they were today is, well, that's not civilized two men standing there and beating each other up. I'm sure there's always been people that have been frustrated and bothered but the one thing I would reiterate that just happened at this last event is that it was something that maybe you don't like the UFC and I can appreciate that, but it was certainly something that was very pro-America and we identified yesterday, so many of the fighters were very pro faith in what they did as well. And so ultimately when you have an event that is encouraging patriotism and faith I'm gonna generally be supportive of that event. So overall, I see a lot of good connections. Anything else you wanna add? 

David Barton [00:22:35] No, but it's just I was fascinated how much sporting activities have gone on at the White House, including some really unusual sports. So yeah, yesterday was maybe the first in that genre of sport, but have sporting activities the White House, nothing new. 

Tim Barton [00:22:48] Okay, well, we are limited in time, so we're gonna have to answer this one as quickly as we can. So I'm gonna summarize it a little bit. This is from Dethia Mercer, and in the essence of her question, she identifies, and I'm reading part of her email, she says that there have been, as of June 2026, 38 Muslim candidates have won elections. 76 Muslim candidates have run for office nationwide. She goes through a lot of kind of this detail and breakdown. And then her question she finishes with is with the increase of Muslim political participation compared to previous years, there's a growing trend of engagement where they're trying to win more and more elections. How do we stop the takeover? Because that's what they are trying to do. So, the question is, maybe, how do we stop what some have described as the Islamification of America? And we've seen this in school boards and city councils, we've seen this now in mayors, we see this Muslims running for state legislation, and this is not at all any kind of what some people might describe as Islamophobic. No, it's recognizing that a lot of the ideals that are being promoted in Islam are things that are contrary to the Constitution and that are obviously contrary to Christianity. And so, a lot Christians, a lot conservatives, a lot those that believe in the Constitution, that there's a valid reason for concern. So, Dad, in like a minute and a half, what is something that can be done for those that are concerned? 

David Barton [00:24:21] I talked to a political consultant today. This political consultant today told me he has 200 candidates, that he's running the races for 200 candidates. Of those 200 candidates only 40 of them are contested races, so if you're looking at like 160 they're running for city council, running for whatever position, and there's no contest in that, and that's what many of these Muslims are, they're in places where they don't have competition. But you can't fault them for running. You can fault people for not stepping up to run against them. And I was thinking of these cities where you have that, he's got 199 candidates and only about 40 of them are really contested elections. You know, what does that say about citizen participation? Citizens stepping up and doing their own responsibility. So I don't blame Muslims at all for having that number elected. It should be concerning but you know what's more concerning is them not having competition in some of those races and us not spending time to go recruit people. If you have a really good neighbor and you think, man, he ought to be in office, start getting your other neighbors to go to him and say, or go to her and say you really need to run for whatever it is, for mayor, for school board, for city council, for tax adjuster, for whatever. That's how you stop that kind of stuff is you recruit better candidates. If you recruit, better candidates, that's the way to get around it. And that's what I'm really disappointed with. I'm actually meeting with some state leaders of political parties in various states to saying you guys are not doing a recruiting job, you're just waiting to see who walks up to the door, and if they don't walk up to the door you're not finding people. And Muslims to their credit, they're just using the system that everybody's got access to, they are just using it better than we are. 

Tim Barton [00:25:58] And one thing too, Dad, we've talked a lot about is that often times the voter turnout and so many of these races is so low but for so many in the Muslim community they will vote as a block. And so, if there's only you know, there's only let's say 15,000 people that voted in a local election and there's Only 7,000 Muslim of the community will probably all 7,000 Muslims eligible to vote, voted. And so it really does make a difference that that people that care about this if you're a Christian constitutional conservative, you need to make sure that you are recruiting people to show up to vote and you need a show up the vote. Well, guys, we are out of time for today, but tomorrow we are going to have Good News Friday where we only cover good news stories from around the nation. We want to encourage you tomorrow. So, make sure you tune into tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the WallBuilders Show.