COVID-19 And Its Consequences – With Mat Staver – What are the consequences of government overreach in regard to COVID-19? Once the government starts regulating your life, it is hard for them to stop. Join us with Mat Staver to hear more about this issue as it affects us today.

Air Date: 01/25/2021

Guest: Mat Staver

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

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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, and we’re talking about the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And we’re glad you’re here with us, you can learn more about our program at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. That’s a great place to get archives, which means we got programs from the last few weeks and months available to you to download right there on the website.

And it’s also a great place to find out which stations we’re on across the country, in case you want to listen locally. And then of course, it’s a wonderful place to make a donation. So if you’d like to be one of those listeners out there that supports the program, we would appreciate it. Thank you to all you folks all over the country that send in donations regularly, we thank you for that: as a listener-supported program, that’s how we’re able to reach more people. So if you’d like us to speak truth louder, and reach more people with that truth, then go to wallbuilderslive.com today and make that donation.

I’m Rick Green, America’s Constitution coach and a former legislator, here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian, and our founder here at WallBuilders, and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And guys, Matt Staver will be back with us on the program here in a little while, always good to have Matt from Liberty Counsel, especially with a lot of these big legal questions that we’re facing with regard to how to deal with the regulations from COVID, how to deal with some of the things that are coming soon from a federal government not so near you, but definitely near enough to reach you. But as these things start coming out, we’ve got to know what constitutionally we can do to respond to it, whether it’s the vaccines or the requirements to travel, a lot of not good things headed our way.

David:

Well, I would say even before that, Rick, not only do we need to know what’s about to happen, we need to know what truth is. Because there’s so much going on with this COVID atmosphere right now that that’s being forced on. You know, we’ve had the debate over mask or no mask, whatever. And so on the pro-government side, it has been oh, you have to have a mask, this is the only way to keep people safe. And yet on the free market side, you’ve had the Great Barrington declaration, where that you have tens of thousands of medical professional says that no, this is not a good idea at all. Also, in addition to the fact that there’s a lot of evidence that the mask may not even be working. I mean, maybe they do, maybe they don’t, it’s not conclusive, in addition to what’s happened, even with the debate over mask. Just the fact that people are being quarantined and isolated and being forced to stay at home, that you get these mandates, these lockdowns that, you know, you get to stay here.

And so we see all this pressure to isolate. And okay, they’re doing that, but there’s also the unintended consequences that aren’t being talked about all that much, which is much higher suicides, much higher drug overdose, deaths, much higher domestic violence, etc. And so there’s a lot of factors. So even in considering what we’re going to cover today over question with COVID, and really, maybe some unintended, or maybe unintended consequences, who knows, nonetheless, you got to be able to discern what truth is. And we’ve always taken the position given by the Bible in Proverbs 18:17, that one side sounds good until you hear the other. And so in this debate, you know, this thing with the new vaccines being out, there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of push now to do things with vaccines.

Tim:

Well, and let me point out to you that it sounds almost like we’re contrasting that one side sounds good till you hear the other, meaning that if you’re in favor of masks, because you’re in favor of social distancing, that’s because you haven’t heard the other side? Well, no. Maybe you’ve heard both sides and you go, well, here’s just what I’m choosing to do. This is where we totally respect the freedom of conscience, we totally respect the freedom of choice, we totally respect the free market that you should be able to make that choice. But this is where we always should hesitate.

Anytime the government is going to come in and say it is for your good that I must take away some level of your freedom, that’s always a pause and think moment. Because the government historically, anytime they start infringing on your freedoms, the government historically does not known where to stop infringing on the freedoms and it’s that slippery slope down the hill. Once you start that first step, it’s very hard to slow down this big government. And especially, if we need the big government to come in and now we’re going to mandate masks and we’re going to have more lockdowns and we’re going to do these things that we know have produced devastating consequences and effects for individuals and families.

And it’s not to take away from the fact that we know a lot of people have gotten very sick, a lot of people have died because of COVID. I mean, on this program, we know several people, Rick, in your family, and like in my family, we know people who have been very threatened with COVID. There’s no doubt this is an upper respiratory virus. This is very serious. And depending on your age, it can be more serious, and also, depending on underlying health conditions. We get it.

But this is where if our solution, and I’m not saying ours as in WallBuilders, because this is not our solution, but if the cultural solution is we need the government to come in and government to mandate and government dictate, when the science is not settled on this, when there’s more than a 99% recovery rate for people that actually get this, it doesn’t make a lot of sense unless there’s just a push for more government, for more control, for less freedom. And that’s where it becomes more of a scary conversation and position we are in culture.

Rick:

Yeah, Tim, you’re exactly right. I mean, it’s all about rights of conscience and getting truth. I mean, you’ve got to be able to get good information exactly, as David was saying. That’s why it’s so important to have good sources. And right now with the echo chambers out there, and the willingness to censor anyone with an opposing view, our job’s a little harder or a lot harder, actually. We have to dig a little bit and do that homework and not just expect government to come save us because the government, one-size-fits-all solution usually does not fit all and actually can cause as much damage as it does good.

And 100%, you nailed it. I mean, we’ve had people close to us be affected by this, but it is a very, very small percentage of the population that is truly at risk here. And this one-size-fits-all and shutting down the whole thing is not working. So let’s look for some answers for Matt Staver, who’s dealing with some of the legal battles on many of these issues in almost every state. I mean, he’s out there all over the country. Matt Staver from Liberty Counsel, when we returned on 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 for 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 and 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:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live, thanks for staying with us. Honored to have Matt Staver back with us, Liberty Counsel. The website is LC.org. You need to go to that website today, folks. If you’re not on Mat’s email, you should be. I so enjoy getting his emails, updates on the lawsuits across the country and just encouraging words even in tough times, but also very realistic as well. Mat, God bless you, brother. Thanks for some time today.

Matt:

Oh, thank you, good to be with you.

Rick:

Hey, also, when encourage people to go to your website, not just to get on your emails, but to donate. What you’re doing a tax revenue. I mean, you’ve got lawsuits going almost in every state across the country. You’ve been on the forefront, not just this last year during all the COVID crackdowns, but for years. It’s just that the workload has greatly increased. So folks, go to that website, make a contribution today, and help Matt and his team continue their great work.

Mat, we’ve had you on a lot in the last year to talk about different things dealing with the COVID crackdowns, the lawsuits, trying to get churches open all those things. But we had a listener question on specifically the issue of the vaccine, whether or not you can be forced to take the vaccine, where this thing might be going. And so David, Tim, and I thought, man, let’s get Matt on see if he’s looked into this and what he thinks. So we’re curious what you think about where the vaccine mandate could potentially go? There’s not a mandate yet, but they’re certainly signaling that they’re headed that direction.

Matt:

Well, I think there’s no question that that’s the direction they’re headed, and that is to mandate the vaccine, either directly from state or federal government or from the various providers such as airlines, for example, having a green passport or a health passport, if you will, in order to fly an aircraft…

Rick:

Now, man, I have a green passport. My passport says Rick green. But I don’t think it’s going to get me on without the vaccine.

Matt:

It’s not going to get you on without the vaccine. And that’s where, I think, we’re headed is some like Israel’s calling it a “Green passport” in that nation, in other places, it’s called a Health passport or a digital passport that has your vaccination schedule. And if you don’t have the most recent COVID vaccine, then you have to get that in order to actually travel. This has been in the works long before COVID. COVID didn’t start this. COVID actually put it on steroids. But people like Bill Gates and many others, the pro-vaccine, population-control people and others, they have been pushing to trace track and vaccinate for a number of years and they use COVID as the springboard to advance that agenda.

Now, here’s the problem. We already have now a number of deaths in the United States that have been reported with regards to this vaccine. We have a 56 year old doctor in Miami pro-vaccine, he wanted to take the vaccine. He did, within 72 hours, he was in serious health complications. He went to the Mount Sinai ICU and ultimately, they found he had zero platelets. The normal is 150,000-450,000 platelets in small measures of your microliters of your blood, he had zero. They spent two weeks to try to infuse more platelets. They used a lot of platelets, nothing happened because his body was now destroying the platelets as a result of the vaccine. His wife says that she’s 100% convinced that he died because of that Pfizer vaccine.

So we’re seeing deaths around the world. We’re seeing health complications. We also know that some of the vaccines have been made in their development phase with aborted fetal cells. We know that some of them in their deployment phase like AstraZeneca, for example, actually has aborted fetal cells, is part of the actual vaccine itself. So there’s a lot of moral issues, there’s health issues.

Bottom line is people ought to have their own choice, whether to be vaccinated or not, should not be the airline’s dictate, or the government dictate. So we’re going to be fighting that as a huge battle. We have litigated this issue of vaccines, it’s not COVID, because it’s just brand new, but other vaccines in the past, where people object either for general health reasons, or they object because of the prolife component, the aborted fetal cells that are in some vaccines.

And here’s where we are. Most of the states had religious exemptions or conscience exemptions around the country. But last year, and the year before, they began to repeal that, about a handful of states have repealed the religious exemptions and the conscience exemption, so you no longer have that state protection of the statutes. Still, most of the states in the country continue to have a religious exemption and a minority have a conscience exemption. All of them have a medical exemption, but that’s very, very narrow. And you’re not going to know, for example, in COVID, whether you have a medical contraindication to it until you actually take the vaccine and you end up with conditions that are very serious, and even life threatening, or that includes death. So it’s going to be a big issue.

Rick:

And Mat, I cut my teeth on this issue. As a young legislator, this was a passionate issue for my wife and me. I got the conscientious exemption added for Texas after several years of working on it. So I’m pretty, fairly well informed and very passionate about this. But I always tell people, you know, look, I look at the COVID vaccine the same way we did any other vaccine with our kids, a cost benefit analysis, what’s the likelihood of getting the disease, how bad would it be if you got it and weigh that against, even if it is a small percentage chance that something would happen with a vaccine.

And for me, you know, COVID does not pose enough of a risk to be worth the vaccine. For others, it might. But you said it, it’s it should be their choice, they should get to decide. And boy, the level of just a polite society not accepting you without it that is coming, let alone the travel restrictions, I’ve pretty well figured out, you know, I’m probably going to end up having to drive everywhere, if they go this direction. How does that work on travel? Because you have, of course, it’s a private entity, certainly with a lot of government favors and bailouts and everything else. What do you do with the airlines, if they’re seen as a private entity they’re not going to let you on their plane, how do we respond to that?

Matt:

Well, you know, there’s a lot of people that are opposed to this particular vaccine. If you look at the actual research to development, and then testing phase of the typical vaccine, it takes 10 years, 5 years of which is actually the testing phase, 93+% of all the vaccines that begin in the research and development phase never make it to full deployment, only about 6% or 7% of those 100, if you will, or 6% or 7% actually make it to deployment.

You think about the COVID vaccine, it was not only from research to deployment less than a year, but we really had no testing, the testing is on the people right now that are taking it. The testing has been minimal. It’s not what typical vaccines go through. So we know a lot of the side effects, but we don’t know many of them, because it’s never been properly tested. So consequently, I think what will happen is a lot of people will push back. The airlines are already suffering anyway from the COVID restrictions and people traveling less. And I think it’s going to be a market situation.

But here’s where we have a problem. If the CDC or the FAA then mandates that these particular airlines have to have people vaccinated as a criteria, then they’re not going to have a choice and that’s going to…

Rick:

You couldn’t even have an airline that would say, hey, we’re not going to require master vaccines, you can travel with us, market solution, tons of us would flood to them.

Matt:

They were flooded them, but then they get their license revoked by the FAA or the CDC comes down on with the federal government under a Biden administration. So I think that’s what we’re going to have a big battle, and we’re just going to have to push back. Because this is a serious issue that many people are opposed to. And if they require this, it’s going to cut down obviously on travel, but it’s not even just travel. You know, the model that’s actually being used by these people in the United States and some other training is China.

In China, you have to have an app that tracks and traces all of your movements and all of your connections, and it also is going to trace your vaccination record, your health records, and that you have to show to get into certain places, whether it’s a restaurant or some other public place, let alone travel. And that’s the direction that these Marxist want to head and that’s really going to be a serious threat to our freedom that we’re going to have to resist.

Rick:

All for a virus, that 99.0, pick your number based on the study, survive and do just fine with. It’s just unbelievable how much has happened in the last year with this thing. One of the things I got to ask you about, because I’ve been struggling with this when honestly, I’ve had some conversations with friends is when your employer, if your employer says to you, you have to have the vaccine, or you can’t work here anymore. You know, I’m a free market guy, I’m all for employers being able to hire and fire for frankly, any reason. But this one gets dicey because now you’re talking about a medical decision for your employee. I mean, haven’t nurses been able to win lawsuits to not have to take the flu vaccine and other things like that and then not get fired?

Matt:

Yes, they have. In fact, there are some lawsuits that are on that very issue where medical professionals like nurses and other health care providers, refuse to take the vaccine for religious reasons, or the kind of health reasons and so forth, and they’ve ultimately won some of those cases. So those kinds of lawsuits will have to ultimately be presented as we move forward. Some of that is in part because of President Trump, but not exclusively, providing these conscience exemptions for healthcare providers. And obviously, this would fall in the conscience exemption, but we’re going to see a lot of challenges to that under a Biden administration, for sure.

It is something obviously, and outside of some of these situations, you know, the employer might put the foot down and say you got to have a vaccine like, they have, for example, a dress code, but a dress code is a lot different than injecting something into your body that has mRNA that has consequences concerning which you don’t know, whether you’re one of those individuals that’s going to get Bell’s palsy or some other condition, or for goodness sakes even have an allergic reaction, even die from it. And no employer should force you to do something on an untested vaccine. But that’s going to be a big battle.

Rick:

You alluded to this earlier, but finding accurate information and truth is so difficult right now. I mean, if they censored out, even doctors that are on the frontlines of COVID from being able to just give the data and the information of what they were discovering when all this was so new last summer and I mean, they put me in “Facebook Jail” just for sharing an interview with a doctor with regard to this sort of thing, if they had prevented just scientific information on COVID, I can only imagine how much they’re going to silence any opposition to the vaccine.

Matt:

I know. And you know, even talk about for example, hydroxychloroquine, which has been known to be very effective in treating early stages of COVID. Now, Ivermectin…

Rick:

Yeah. It saved my dad’s life, man, personally.

Matt:

I’m telling you. I know people exactly, yeah, that took it early on. And I’m so frustrated when people say they got COVID and they’re going through symptoms and the information is out there, but they have not learned about it because of the censorship. Ivermectin is a very tried and true drug, so HCQ Hydroxychloroquine. Both of them are very effective. And so with that kind of censorship, when you say anything against this vaccine, where you’ve got billions of dollars at stake, the reason why these pharmaceutical companies don’t want to promote or talk about Ivermectin or HCQ, is because they’re not going to make billions of dollars. But they’re making billions and billions and billions of dollars off of this COVID vaccine.

Rick:

Oh, boy. Well, folks, one of the places you can get truth and Barton talks about it all the time, we’ve got to seek truth, it’s harder and harder to find. But one of the places you can get it is LC.org. Get on Matt’s email, make a contribution there, help him continue to do what he’s doing on the front lines. Brother, we love you, we appreciate you. We’re praying for you. And I feel like we need to be over there holding your arms up or giving you coffee or something, I don’t know. But I know you’re going around the clock and we just appreciate you, man. Thanks for some time today.

Matt:

Thank you. God bless.

Rick:

Thanks so much to Matt Staver, for joining us. We are back in the studio with David and Tim now. Be sure and check out that website, LC.org that’s Liberty Counsel. LC.org. Get on his email list, make a contribution, and ask for help if you need help in your particular area. So hit that website today, LC.org.

Guys, I’m so thankful. Can you imagine, I mean, David, you were part of starting to get Christians to go into the legal arena and some of these things like Alliance Defending Freedom and all these organizations out there decades ago realizing, man, we need the legal warriors as well, not just people running for office, not just pastors not just all these other arenas, we need people in the legal community to fight these battles. So thank the good Lord for Matt Staver and so many others like him that are doing this.

David:

And by the way, if you’re not an attorney, we need you in the battle fighting as well. We need you as a teacher. We need you as a janitor. We need you as a mechanic. Wherever you are, you need to be fighting the battles. You don’t have to be in one of that white collar, professional governmental type positions of being attorney in front of the Supreme Court or wherever. We need everybody engaging and fighting the battle around them where they are, fighting for the hearts and minds and souls of individuals, fighting for freedom and fighting for less government intrusion, etc. And Matt just happens to do it in the legal community, but everybody needs to do it where they are in their areas as well.

And so responding to what Matt was saying, you know, Rick, you made the joke about the “Green” passport, so you got a green “Green” now. But I mean, this really does start looking back to things in history, where you had to have certain stamps or certain passes to be able to do certain things, you start regulating freedom. Now, it’s no longer the free market doing this.

And so this really is kind of a dangerous, slippery slope that we’re going down. And I go back to something, I don’t know, this has got to be what, 10 months ago, when this COVID thing started. We talked at the time that they were looking at some kind of vaccine. And as I remember the articles we read at that time, Bill Gates was predicting that they were expecting to have up to 775,000 deaths as a result of the vaccine, but that was an acceptable level to get everybody vaccinated. And you go, wait a minute, why… but they were predicting millions of deaths worldwide, global etc. But they knew that there were going to be consequences to the vaccine, even as they were producing it back then.

Tim:

Well, and what the argument was based on how many people take it is a small percentage, of how many people would then be cared for or taken care of, and something certainly a lot of people gave Trump credit for, and arguably, he deserved credit for cutting through some of the red tape of getting these vaccines done very quickly, but the fact that you’re also talking about there wasn’t FDA approval, which again, not to sidetrack, I don’t think the FDA needs to approve everything we do and don’t do in our life. So that’s another side rail that we don’t need to go down.

But the reality is, there wasn’t the level of testing to know what is going to be the consequence for injecting this into your body. And I know there’s a lot of people out there who are not fans of vaccines, because they would argue that’s not great to go in your body. And we don’t need to have that debate or discussion right now. But the point is, there are many examples of very healthy people who were very pro-vaccine, actually, many examples of medical professionals who took the vaccine and within hours or within days end up very, very sick, ended up dying. And it does raise the question of, we are now arguing about you will not be able to travel unless you have a vaccine to cure you from a disease that was already 99+%, not hindering people, right, 99% of people who are already recovering from this and yet, we’re going to say now we’re going to mandate you to take a vaccine, which could cause lethal harm and damage? It’s a crazy time we’re living in.

And Dad, I guess, Rick, you pointed out to you it’s great having some of these Christians in the workplace, and especially in this legal community to help fight for the rights of conscience, for constitutional values, to help stop the infringement of government, the oppression of government saying you were going to mandate what you do and don’t do. It’s an interesting time and certainly grateful for guys like Matt.

David:

I want to throw just an aside on real quick, just an innovative story. Matt Staver mentioned Ivermectin, how it was affected. I go back months ago, I was speaking at a cowboy church in West Texas. And there was a cowboy out there who was talking about the fact that, you know, I just had COVID and didn’t know what to do about it. But I knew that ivermectin which is what we give the cattle all the time, that it’s an anti-virus, and he said, so I just figured my weight compared to a cow’s weight and gave myself an injection of Ivermectin, and it sure worked really, I thought, man, that itself was just so funny. Now it’s medically proven, but I mean, this is just cowboy.

Tim:

Yeah, we’re not medically prescribing this for anybody listening right now. Right? Don’t say I heard it on WallBuilders. We’re not medical professionals. So it’s not what we’re saying. It’s kind of funny though. This cowboy say no, no, I got stuff I give the cows and horses I’m just going to give myself a shot. That’s the cowboy way.

Rick:

Who want cowboy common sense, though?

David:

It was common sense. And a lot of that’s needed.

Rick:

Well, the fact is, as we’re closing out today, in our final few minutes, let me throw a question to you guys. This is from one of our listeners, really ties into what we’re talking about. And he say, “Can employers legally require you to supply a negative COVID test after showing symptoms of COVID to be able to return to work?” Okay, that’s actually a more specific question than what I initially thought it was which was just generically, can they require test at all before you’re able to show up for work?

If you’ve actually shown symptoms of COVID, you know, I would almost side on the employer side there to say, if it’s your business you get to decide if there’s enough there that you want to be sure that person is not coming to work sick. But what a lot of employers are doing is, well, not employers, but even put government like the state capitol, they’re required to test every time you walk in the building, and not a test, a temperature and some of our requiring a test every time you come in the building. And I guess some employers are potentially doing that as well.

Tim:

Well, this is certainly where we would have a different perspective of a private business, versus maybe a Capitol building on some level. And taking temperature, I might feel a little different about than taking a swab or test or whatever else. But certainly, we are on the side of private businesses largely have the freedom to operate according to the dictates of their belief in value system. And so generally, we’re going to sign on the free market aspect of private businesses going to be private businesses, and they can kind of make the rules as they go.

Rick:

Yeah, I mean, it’s the same reason we’ve said all along you can hire and fire for whatever choice. You’re creating that business. You’re creating that environment. If you’re the owner, then that’s your choice, and if I don’t like it, I can go work somewhere else.

But I mean, clearly with these invasive type things like a vaccine, and as Matt was saying, it gets into a whole new arena, so we’re going to see all this stuff litigated and folks are going to be asking for more answers. So we’re going to have to have Matt on again soon and some of these other folks that are dealing with these things on the frontlines. Err on the side of freedom, folks, that’s really, if you’re an employer or whatever position you’re in, err on the side of freedom and let’s start getting some of these liberties back. Boy, it seems like every part of the Constitution has been violated over the last year and it’s got to come to a stop. And it might be you standing up in your community that makes it stop, be willing to say no.

Alright, folks, check out the website wallbuilderslive.com. That’s also the place where you can download those archives and make that contribution. We sure would appreciate that. Be sure to tune in throughout the week, we’ve got a special program from Glenn Beck at the pro-family legislators conference we’re going to be bringing to you.

Thanks so much for listening today to WallBuilders Live.