We Need To Be Biblical Citizens No Matter What – More Election News – Our duty as citizens doesn’t change based on who’s in office. Join us for election updates from the past few days, martial law, and more.

Air Date: 12/21/2020

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

Listen:

Download: Click Here

Transcription note: As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, where we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy and faith and the culture, always from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. I’m here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And my name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach.

As we look at all those issues of the day, from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, we must also look at the election from that perspective as well. We’ve been doing our best to keep you informed on the battles over this election, the challenges, all the things that have been happening over the last few weeks, while at the same time keeping our eyes towards the future and realizing that we as citizens, our duty does not change based on who gets sworn in on January 20th, our duty continues. We need to be biblical citizens applying God’s Word to our entire life, including how we form our society, our neighborhoods, our state and our nation.

So David, Tim, yeah, I guess first let’s catch everybody up. I mean, a lot happened over the weekend in terms of some lawsuits being filed, and some things kind of breaking. But we’ve been getting a lot of questions too, so we’ll try to get some of those questions later in the program. Let’s start with this whole idea of martial law. I’ve had a lot of people saying, oh, Trump’s going to declare martial law, there’s going to be a lot of… What have we heard about that? Is that a real claim or what are we talking about here?

David:

Well, like everybody else, I’ve heard a lot of as well. I’ve gotten a number of texts from people across the country, political leaders, even asking about that, that kind of came up with Lin Wood, the attorney out of Georgia has been handling cases there. He’s calling for Trump to have Martial Law in town, the mini voting machines. Even General Flynn was on I think, Newsmax talking about how that 64 times Martial Law has been declared in the United States and Trump can do this, impound the voting machines and see what’s there.

And so there has been this noise kind of made by individuals like that, and then suddenly, I see text going around blast going around, that Trump is invoking the Foreign Interference Act of 2018 because of foreign interference, and so we got Martial Law, we got Foreign Interference Act, we got all this stuff going, that press is going to shut it down. And he came out and he just said that’s fake news. He said, that’s bad reporting. He particularly blamed the New York Times for it said that’s not happening, he’s not going to do it. And I didn’t see how he could do it from political standpoint. I mean, if you want to precipitate a conflict, that’s probably one way to do it, because of the lack of substantial evidence that we’ve seen thus far. You know, we haven’t seen this overwhelming wave of evidence that was promised from Linwood and Sidney Powell and others. And so with the lack of evidence, if you reach out and do something in terms of Martial Law, or Foreign Interference Act, or whatever, it would not go down well with most people.

Rick:

Well, even with substantial evidence, you’d still have to make a strategic decision of, you know, is it better to continue the fight in the courts in the process, let January 6th, let the constitution play out rather than taking that gigantic step of Martial Law? And it seems to me they’re just trying to make it look like, you know, they want that image of Trump having tanks surrounding the White House and not going to leave. They’ve tried to paint that for a year and none of it is true.

David:

That’s exactly right. And that’s the bottom line, is this is not true. There have been some folks have talked about it, but the media has really blown it up as if it’s going to happen. And that’s just not the case. So Trump made it real clear that is fake news. And you know, again, even though all those guys in the Right we’re talking about it, he’s blaming the New York Times for blowing it up, making it a big deal.

Tim:

Guys, even with that, we also saw the military come out, specifically the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who came out and said, look, we’re not doing Martial Law, but not something that the army is going to militarize in the US and go try to take over the election, etc. And so now, it becomes such a story that even the military and military officials are having to come out and say, that’s not what we’re doing. So not only is Trump come out and it’s fake news, now, different military leaders are saying that as well. So really what we seen at this point across the board, is everybody saying that Martial Law is not something that’s going to happen right now. Certainly, we do expect there to be continued court battles and legal challenges, but certainly not Martial Law from what we’re hearing and seeing.

Rick:

And I think we talked about this last week, guys, but that executive order is mostly about getting a report of investigation and information from the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, and then ask the FBI and Department of Justice to follow up. So it’s not even really about, okay, if the President thinks there was interference, he can declare Martial Law and do all these things. It’s really more of requiring those agencies and some of the folks in the administration to do to just do some due diligence, and then run port that and then if there are things that should be followed up by the FBI and DOJ, then for them to do that. At least that’s the way I read the executive order.

David:

Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. There’s nothing groundbreaking, earth shattering anything about to happen even though there’s a lot of clamor, both from the far Right and the far Left at this is eminent and it’s about to happen. There’s just nothing substance that we can find that has any real balanced basis to it. So you’re exactly right, Rick.

Rick:

Well, let’s head around the country then and catch up on some of these individual lawsuits and recounts and different things. Where you guys want to start?

David:

 

Let’s start with Georgia. I mentioned that I was in Georgia last week, another one of the barnstorming tours like we had two weeks ago. And so there’s a lot of activity and obviously a lot of focus on voting.

Rick:

Hey, you guys have had a ton of pastors too, right? You all met with a lot of pastors around the state?

David:

Yeah, we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pastors. And at this point, you know, it really is going to be the conservative kind of Christian vote that makes a difference. One of the pastor’s running there for the senate seat against Loeffler is a black pastor who, a lot of black pastors have come out and said, hey, don’t know what he’s reading, but it’s not the Bible we have. Because the Bible we have is not pro-death or pro-abortion. And so there’s been a lot of voices against that, even though we were with a lot of pastors that tend to be that the more Bible-believing pastors, both black and white were in some of those meetings. So there’s a lot going on there and so we now have polling.

Rick:

And David, if I could ask, this probably came out with you and some of the pastors there when you visited, but isn’t this “Pastor” that’s running? I mean, he had Jeremiah, right, the guy that was Obama’s very communist pastor years ago, he had Fidel Castro in his church and actually had a standing ovation for him. Is that right? I mean, that’s what I’ve seen on some of these ads out there.

David:

Well, I don’t know so much about Castro, but I didn’t know he’s really far extreme out there. And the biblical thinking side of the black church has really come out on the side of the Bible on this. It’s kind of like Catholics did with Biden. You know, Biden says, I’m a devout Catholic, and no, you’re really not, because where are you on moral issues, and marriage and life and everything else. You may call yourself a Catholic, but you’re not what the Catholic church is. And that’s where a lot of the black pastors have come out and said, well, you may be black pastor, but it’s not biblical.

So we’ve seen that distinction being made. And the news comes out now, and I hate to say this, but it’s polling news, and we know how bad polling has been throughout this whole process. Matter of fact, the last five years has been abysmal. However, right now, the polling shows that both Loeffler and Perdue have gone up over the 50 point threshold. And that’s always a big threshold in polling. When you get at least half of the state or the nation or whatever, having decided for candidate, that’s usually very hard for the other side to overcome. And so right now, both Republican candidates are up over the 50% threshold in that polling. But again, going out, we know how notoriously inaccurate polling has been for several years now.

Rick:

Well, let’s certainly encourage all of our friends in Georgia, and if you have, if you’re listening, and you’ve got any friends in Georgia, this election is critical. It is close, every vote counts. Let your friends and family know, tell him to go out and vote for the folks that are actually most standing for true biblical principles and everything we see when we look at those nonpartisan voter guides, clearly, that’s Perdue and Loeffler. And it’s going to be a critical election and every vote is going to count. So everybody can do a part. No matter where you are in the country, you know, somebody in Georgia, so everybody get out there and vote if you live in Georgia, and if not, let your friends and family in Georgia know, encourage them to do so. We’re going to take a quick break, we’ll be right back. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called “The American Story”. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out of statement, Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story. Starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America, not as the story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out wallbuilder.com “The American Story.”

—

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. The second amendment to the Constitution which guarantees to every individual the right to keep and bear arms has been targeted for years now by those who are determined to dismantle the individual right to self-protection.

Opponents argue that only the militia, the military, and law enforcement are to have and used firearms. But those who wrote the Second Amendment strenuously disagreed, including founding father Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration, a president of the Continental Congress, and one of those who actually framed the Second Amendment. He declared, “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young how to use them.”

For more information about Richard Henry Lee, in the history of the Second Amendment, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live Thanks for staying with us today. We were talking about Georgia and the election there, but there’s more going on in Georgia than the runoff that’s going to happen on January 5th. There’s also still counting happening, and voter roll cleanup trying to happen from the last election. So what’s the latest we’ve heard there on those things, Tim?

Tim:

Yeah, the Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration has just come out and said that, this was actually toward the weekend, they said that the challenges to the voter rolls are going to be thrown out, they’re not going to change anything right now. Even though it’s been disputed that there are tens of thousands names on the roster for the Georgia elections who are no longer Georgia eligible voters. But the election board says we’re not changing anything right now, we’re going to leave it as it is.

One of the things they argued was that just because you can show the names of people that moved doesn’t mean that those were all Georgia names, maybe there’s lots of people with the same name. And so they’re arguing back that we really haven’t been able to verify the authenticity, not we as in like WallBuilders Live, but as far as their team that we haven’t been able to verify the authenticity of all these accusations. Now, it’s too close. There’s too much going on, we’re just going to let it go.

So at least as of now, they’re letting it slide. And it looks like there literally are tens of thousands of names of people who are no longer eligible to vote in Georgia, who will still be eligible to show up and get a mail-in ballot, show up at the ballot box, whatever the case is. So certainly, something worth challenging going forward, but at this point, the elections board said they won’t do anything right now.

David:

But also, in Georgia, that was one lawsuit that was thrown out, there was a second lawsuit thrown out at about the same time, and that second lawsuit dealt with signature matching. When we talked before that the Secretary of State there entered into a consent decree which we think was poorly advised, where we said, well, Stacey Abrams, Democrats only want two signatures to be matched, not three. And we’ve talked about why that really three is the safest, that way, you know, there’s not fraud. So they were suing over that and saying, hey, let’s not go into this runoff election using that same system, let’s get something totally different. And so the court also dismissed that case roughly the same time as a different court, but these two cases now.

So what’s happened is they have appealed that dismissal to the federal appeals court, and they’re saying that, look, you just need to be a lot safer in this election, and we need to make sure. And it’s interesting at this point, we wish that we had the results back from what the Secretary of State has announced there, where he’s given to the University of Georgia do signature matching. They’re actually doing a signature audit on the last election back on November the 3rd. And if we had some results from that, if they hadn’t waited so late to start that, we might actually know something in time for this election. And it is still possible that the appeals court will do something that we will know something about the time of the election. Yeah. But it’s interesting that these things that have been concerned for a while are just now starting to percolate up if you will, and starting to make forward progress.

So we don’t have clear answers yet on whether there’s fraud or whether it makes a difference on the signature ballots. But the University of Georgia comes back and says we checked them with two ballot verifications and they all appear to be good, then that’s the end of the story. If they come back and say, well, we found a whole bunch of more often, now we’ve got another big one on, it’ll affect what happens on the 5th of January as well. So we’ll see, but that’s the status of the second lawsuit that’s been going in Georgia.

Rick:

Alright, guys, when we come back from the break, we’ll hit Pennsylvania. But as we’re going to break, Tim, there was some things on the software, the Dominion and Smartmatic software that we learned.

Tim:

Yeah, Rick, Newsmax came out with an article entitled “Facts About Dominion, Smartmatic You Should Know”, and they just break down a lot of the speculation accusations that have been leveled against Dominion and Smartmatic. And in their brief synopsis is that there’s no evidence that Dominion uses Smartmatic software or vice versa that really, apart from like Los Angeles, Smartmatic hasn’t had software used in the election, especially on battleground states. Dominion has stated that its company has no ownership or relationship with people like Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein and their family, the Clinton family, Hugo Chavez, government of Venezuela, a lot of the accusations that have been out there. It’s just Newsmax said they’ve not been able to substantiate really any of them.

And so even though there certainly could still be problems with Dominion and Smartmatic, at least Newsmax is reporting that a lot of the accusations are merely speculation that they have not been able to substantiate any of those, so that at least important to know about these different voting machines and systems.

David:

Yeah, you know, that’s really something that we’ve noted for a while, is that the claims by Sidney Powell and Lin Wood have been the furthest out there and had the most claims of the biggest amount of fraud. And we just haven’t seen that develop. We’ve watched the forensic evidence come back and there’s been some indications, but certainly not the massive amount of billions of votes that it looked like, and so it’s interesting. We’ve kind of arrived at the same conclusion about what we’ve been able to investigate and find and what we’ve been watching. And it’s interesting that Newsmax is now out there saying, well, you know, all this has been claimed, but we also can’t find the stuff out. And I think that’s really important for us to keep perspective on, which does not mean the fraud did not occur. I believe it did. But it’s still a deal between smoke and fire, you got to be able to prove this fire behind the smoke. And at this point, we found no smoking guns do that so far. But there’s still more to come.

Rick:

Alright, guys, quick break. When we come back, we’ll jump into Pennsylvania. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read.

And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well.

I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders live. Thanks for staying with us. We said we’d go to Pennsylvania, that’s kind of ground zero, where there’s been a ton of lawsuits, and recounts and all kinds of things. What’s the latest on Pennsylvania, guys?

David:

Well, the latest in Pennsylvania is despite the fact that there’s been several things happening in the US Supreme Court, the Texas case was thrown out and the injunction asked for by the two congressmen in Pennsylvania that was not granted, etc. Despite the fact that we’ve had Pennsylvania news for a while, we’re not done with Pennsylvania. Over the weekend, the Trump campaign just made it really clear that we’ve got some more cases coming and they’re coming in Pennsylvania. We’re going to file more here, and we’re not done with the Supreme Court. We’re not just waiting on what’s there, we got new stuff coming, new challenges.

And so they have announced that out of Pennsylvania, there is more yet to come. And I would assume that that means that they’re going directly to the Supreme Court rather than through the entities they use before, whether it be Texas, be the congressman or whatever.

Tim:

Guys, what happened over the weekend at this point, probably most people who are paying attention know. I don’t know whether I would say most Americans, although maybe, probably not. But at least people listening, if you’ve been following the news, you are very aware that the Trump legal team actually filed a case with the US Supreme Court regarding Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania awarding their electors to Joe Biden. And the Trump team is challenging that the way this was handled in Pennsylvania violates the Pennsylvania State Constitution, which in actuality, it does violate their state Constitution; the way they change the election law, that election law, it actually requires the state legislative body to not only vote to change something, but then to approve it the following year. And that did not happen in some of these election changes.

In Pennsylvania, the Trump team is going in and asking that all of these changes took place in this election that were not constitutionally done through the legislative body be thrown out, and if those things are thrown out, it would go back to where more or less than election night when Trump had an a massive lead until there was that really big vote dump and Joe Biden got ahead from that massive dump that took place. So this is something challenging what happened in Pennsylvania going directly to the US Supreme Court. And they’re asking to get an answer back, expedited consideration for the Supreme Court here back by the 23rd or 24th to make sure they have time to get to Supreme Court and its argument before Congress meets on January 6th to consider the vote of the Electoral College.

So that’s kind of the latest big update and it very well could be today, sometime this week that we find out what the Supreme Court’s going to do. And then certainly we’ll cover that as it happens.

David:

This is a really curious thing to me, because this is what Texas was trying to get at by saying, hey, you got to follow the law except, you know, the courts that Texas really didn’t have standing to say that. But it’s certain that Trump has standing to say that. There’s no question. And I’m just curious why the heck, they didn’t do this a whole lot earlier. You know why it has gone this long, this late in the game before the Trump attorneys had gone directly to the Supreme Court with the same argument that they wanted to be made. They just wanted everybody else to kind of make it. So we’ll see what happens. But I’m curious about the strategy behind it and how they do it. And I’m certain they’ve got some kinds of plan in their thinking about how they do this and why. But again, it seemed really strange that they’re waiting until right now to do it, when I would have thought that this is one of the first things you would have done right after the election.

Rick:

Yeah, I agree. David, I’ve really wondered why they didn’t do that early on. Who knows what happens here. And even if this only gets Pennsylvania before the Supreme Court, we don’t know if they would make a ruling that would apply to any of these other states. And maybe, on some level, I’m just going to throw this out there. Maybe this is the chance for the Supreme Court to be able to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, but Joe Biden still win. In other words, they throw out Pennsylvania, but not these other states. And so it gives us a chance to fight for the Constitution and rule of law and future elections. But yet Biden still wins and the court isn’t afraid of rioting, or whatever reasons. They might have stayed out of this up until now. I don’t know. I hope that they will uphold the rule of law in the constitution in all of these states.

But at least this case, potentially, has the chance to do that. And there’s still time, even though it’s a couple of weeks, and we’ve been getting a lot of questions from folks about the timeline, I mean, isn’t all of this coming to a head very quickly? And that’s true. But let’s not forget that the Hawaii electors in 1960, the Democrat electors came in later in December and those were the ones accepted by Congress whenever they opened the ballots. And so there’s a chance of that now that these state legislators could still meet, they could still send electors, courts could still rule, and you could still have a situation on January 6th where these key states do not count; disputed electors are potentially count Republican electors instead of Democrats. So there is still time, but it is definitely getting close.

And so really with that in mind, with what we have left to do here, a couple of questions from our audience, first one comes from Sarah. She said, “Hello, everyone at WallBuilders. I’ve been listening to your live show on and off since the beginning of November, and I really appreciate your biblical perspective and knowledge of the Constitution. Like many other people, this election has shown me how much I do not know about the Constitution. Seven states have sent a separate slate of Republican electors. Would you please explain this? I’d like to know what this means and how that can help President Trump’s legal battles? Thanks so much.” Sarah, great question. So guys, we do. We have seven sets of electors This is not new. This has happened in the past. And certainly the right of those states that are in question to do so.

David:

Yeah, what it is and what is about to simply preserving the legal challenge. If Trump on election night, he had said I could see the election, every legal process would have shut down at that point, essentially, unless they had found something substantial, and then you can go reopen it. But essentially, what he’s doing is keeping it open. So in keeping it open, he has to go forward as if he is the President-Elect. And that means that when the electors meet in each state, they have Republican and Democrat electors and Independent electors and Green Party electors and everything else. And so the candidate comes out of that state, his electors can count the Electoral College.

So for Trump to still be in this thing in January when they score the count, he’s got to have electors that have voted for him. Now, the states may not recognize these electors, but this is part of the legal stuff he has to do to still be on the table for consideration in case decisions come down between now and the election that are substantial in what happens in the election. So that’s just part of the process. And that’s a great point that so many of us are not aware of what the Constitution says about this or how the Electoral College works. We’re now getting a great civics lesson that we’ve needed for years. I hate doing it this way, but at least the information is coming out.

Rick:

And this is so similar to 1876 where three states sent two sets of electors and Congress had to decide which ones to count and that’s what’s going to happen on January 6th. All seven of these states with two sets of electors, Congress on the on January 6th will be meeting together, the House and Senate together will look kind of like the State of the Union. Mike Pence will preside the 12th amendment of the Constitution, lays out how this will work, and he’ll be the President of the Senate still until January 20th.

So the new Congress will be sworn in on January 3rd. So this will be the new Congress, the new House members and new Senate members and Vice President Pence and they’ll have to decide what to do with those dual slates of electors and they may decide to throw out both, so some of those states may not count at all, or they may decide to accept the Democrat slates or they may decide to select and accept the Republican slate so we’ll see what happens on January 6th. Everybody be watching on January 6th.

Next question is about the timeline. It is coming very quickly, January 6th we’ll be here very quickly. And Sumi had asked, if two main concerns, he said, “I’ve heard frequently on the show what might unfold. We’re in a time race, aren’t we? Is it too late for these things to happen? And next, will the results of this produce any new precedents that we won’t like? How do we keep that from happening? And more importantly, how do we make sure that it doesn’t happen again? So it is a little bit chaotic.”

But guys, sometimes, you know, living in a free society is chaotic. I mean, that’s part of the republican form of government. You have representative government. You have elections. Sometimes it’s close. Sometimes it’s messy. But that’s why we have a Constitution. That’s why we’re a constitutional republic. And maybe one of the precedents that need to come out of this is that we will investigate voter fraud, that we will uphold the rule of law. Those are the things we want to see happen here. That’s the reason we’re pressing so hard in all of these states, and what happens with Congress on January 6th will set some precedents. I hope that it’s good precedents. But it may be that, you know, there needs to be a constitutional amendment to even more finely tune how those things are done so that it’s very clear and everybody knows what will happen. So we’ll see, it’s going to be very important to watch on January 6th and then what comes out of that may be a lot of citizen action in state legislators across the country, certainly to tighten up the election laws, certainly to make sure that we follow those laws better. And that’s what we’ll be encouraging citizens to do all across the country.

One of the things we want to make sure happens here on WallBuilders Live is that we uphold a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective, but that we act on those things as well. Thanks for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.