Jan 6 Updates and City Leadership – on Good News Friday: Lets work through our stack of good news today with David, Tim and Rick on this Good News Friday! New light has been shed on the January 6th incident after footage has been reviewed. New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks in favor of religion in schools. Local Chicago election sets a new standard for pushing progressivism out by not re-electing incumbent mayor. All of this and more on Good News Friday!

Air Date: 3/17/2023

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

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Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders. Taking on the hot topics of the day, from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, but specifically today, we’re going to dive into some good news, looking forward to some encouragement today as we look at some of the places where people have made a difference, gotten involved, and then we’ve got to see some good results. And so there’s some little turns happening in the culture, maybe even big turns happening in the culture and we get to see a lot of those indications and talk about them on Fridays. What’s that first piece of good news going to be today, David?

David Barton
Well, it’s going to start with the additional footage that speaker McCarthy released from the January 6 incident back at the election time. So they’ve had the insurrection committee going in the house, going after people who entered the Capitol on January 6, and that has turned out been select footage. So speaker McCarthy said, look, we got a lot more footage, I’m going to release it. Tucker Carlson initially, it’s going to whole public, but it’s going to be out there. Now, Just for scope, guys, do you remember how many hours of footage they released?

Rick Green
I remember hearing that there’s 40,000 hours of footage, but I don’t know, or something like that, and I don’t know how much has actually been released.

David Barton
Okay, so 40,000 hours of footage, somebody has to watch that to see what’s in there, and what they’re going to pick or not pick or whatever. So 40,000 hours. So Rick, if you’re sitting down to watch 40,000 hours, how long is that going to take you to do that?

Rick Green
I guess? 40,000 hours? Idon’t know.

David Barton
How many hours in the year?

Rick Green
Oh how many? How many? How many days? or months? or years? How many hours in a year? I don’t know. 24 times 365? Not 40,000. Probably 10,000. What is it?

David Barton
Yeah, 24 times 365 is about 8700 hours. So if you were to review that, you know, that’s going to be five years of your life just watching the footage they have on that. And I think people understanding how much footage…

Rick Green
I’ll see you guys in 2028. After I get done, I’ll come back and do another program. 20… I’ll see you guys in a while. No eating, no sleeping.

David Barton
Exactly! Now, granted, you know, you could do 100 viewers on there, whatever. And then somebody’s got to review that. So you’re talking about a massive, massive project to cover all the cameras and all the different rooms in the capitol that, you know, had cameras and I mean, it’s just a massive project. So what happens is they’ve released some footage and Tucker Carlson ran with Adam Fox, and showed some things like the Qanon Shaman that, you know, people really thought he was just absolutely berserk, violent, crazy. And then you see all this footage of him just walking casually through the Capitol, and police officers interacting with him. And, you know, it’s just it’s not at all what the January 6 committee had there. And so people are seeing that, and they’re seeing all this other footage of people just, you know, just doing photos, going through the Capitol, this is cool. And wow, what is this, and picking up and looking at things and laying it back down and being very respectful that there was just so many non violent moments and what happened there and it was just tourist who kind of wandered in, found theirself there. Now there’s some stupid stuff too, you know, Tim and I were watching some of the footage. Anytime you break a window of the capital and come through the window, that’s wrong. I don’t care if you’re a tourist or who you are. You don’t destroy property, you don’t come through. You don’t bypass security officers to get in. That’s just that’s a bad deal.

Tim Barton
To clarify, if you’re breaking windows to get in, you’re not tourist, right? At that point, you are breaking and entering. You’re not a tourist. But what, right, what, I mean, what the footage showed, was that there’s more to the story, right? You know, we talk about at WallBuilders so often that we, at times we try to be the Paul Harvey of American history, where we try to show you the rest of the story that’s being left out. What the footage we saw on Tucker was the rest of the story. It’s not that some of the other stuff that was shown wasn’t true to some extent, although we also saw through some of what Tucker released how the media had definitely strategically edited things like Senator Josh Hawley, when he was running down the hall. And the claim was that he was escaping and he was the first one and all these things. And then you saw the footage and realized that he was part of the Senate chamber when everybody was being evacuated. And he was apparently one of the last ones to leave. So the idea that he was cowardice and his actions led to the insurrection and he ran away when it happened. We saw that, again, there’s just more to the story. And part of the more to the the story we saw is that not everyone who was there was there doing something willfully wrong, some of them and we’d actually seen and heard some interviews early on, where some of them said that the doors were open and they were talking to police officers and they even took selfies with police officers and they were walking through and they were not violent protesters. They were not breaking and entering at that point. The door was open they walked in. Now, you might argue it was illegal entry. But how would they know that if the door is open, and there’s police officers, they are not stopping them taking pictures with them? Again, it just showed us there was more to the story than what we had initially been told. And certainly then way more than what the January 6 committee had led us to believe.

David Barton
So with the new footage with what’s out there, the good news is that I saw this article, and Rick, this may be a name you recognize, but do you remember Naomi Wolf? Do you remember that name at all?

Rick Green
Oh, yeah, she worked for, she worked for Bill Clinton, right? She, so she’s a Democrat that worked for Bill Clinton, but she was also very outspoken against the misinformation from the government on COVID. And on the shots, especially for pregnant women.

David Barton
Yeah, so she’s on the liberal progressive left, she’s been a feminist leader for years, you know, help the women’s rights movement really take off. And so she is definitely Democrat. And she came out with a formal letter of apology to Republicans and conservatives, because she had believed what they had in the January 6 committee. And then she also watched the Tucker programs, both of those. And while she said that she disagreed with some of Tucker’s conclusions. She didn’t disagree with the footage. And so part of the statement, here’s what she says she says, Republicans, conservatives, I am sorry, I also believed wholesale so much else that has since turned out to be not as I was told by NPR, MSNBC and New York Times. She said anyone in leadership who misrepresented to the public the events of that day, so as to distort the complexity of an actual history event, they must be held accountable. And so she went on and she said, Look, you don’t have to agree with Carlson’s interpretations of the video to notice the latest hypocrisy by the left. My acquaintance and personal hero, Daniel Ellsberg was rightly lionized by the left for having illegally leaked the Pentagon Papers. Now, Pentagon Papers goes back to 1970-’71. there abouts. And so these were papers that were leaked, and, you know, people went after him, but he was a hero because he leaked stuff that should have been leaked. And that’s where she putting Tucker, is look, this is the same stuff we’ve had for years. And we on the left, you know, we were attacked for releasing stuff that should have been released. Why would you attack people in the right, like Tucker for doing that. So I just got to say, it’s really nice to find someone on the left, who is honest about facts, can disagree with conclusions, but honest about that. That’s where you can start having a discussion. This is somebody who clearly recognizes that there is truth that you don’t make up your own truth. You can interpret things. But I love the fact that Naomi Wolf who clearly is on the left side of issues, is willing to acknowledge truth when she sees it. I think that is terrific news. I think that’s good news for America. I hope that people on her side, that she’s calling out, will listen to her and say, look, you know, there’s wrong stuff that happened and… She even picked on Qanon Shaman and said, hey, you know, I had a very definite opinion of him from what I saw from January 6. But when I see the rest of that footage, that’s a whole different, different thing. So she’s even picked some of the most, what do you want to say, controversial pieces of footage and said, there’s more to it than what she thought. And I really appreciate that. I hope more and more people from our side and their side, are willing to look at truth and have discussions over truth. Even if we disagree on opinions. I love the fact that she apologized for her opinions, for her part in having jumped to conclusions, I just think that’s really healthy, really wholesome. I think we all can learn from that. And I hope we all adopt that. Our side and her side as well.

Rick Green
Man, guys, I couldn’t agree with you more. And like you said, for both sides, when we speak out sometimes passionately, or emotionally or whatever, and, and then realize later, that what we saw was… what we thought we saw was not what we saw, we need to apologize as well. And, she’s not alone. You know, actor Tim Robbins, I mean, this is a guy that’s again, an ultra liberal. And he’s been very vocal lately on apologizing to, you know, the people that chose not to, you know, get the jab or mask or whatever, and basically said, we were wrong. We went way, way overboard, because he was one of the, you know, one of the ones that was, definitely championing shut everything down. And if you didn’t do everything the government was saying, then you were evil and wrong. And he just completely reversed as he saw more data and saw more information, which is what these videos are doing for J-6, they’re showing people that was really, you know, a lot of different angles here. There were a lot of different things that happened. And no question, there were bad players and no question things were broken and no question those people should be prosecuted, they should be prosecuted with equal justice under the law, blind justice under the law. Should be no, you know, they shouldn’t get worse than what BLM and Antifa people got. But there were also tons of people that were totally peaceful, did nothing wrong. Literally were invited in by Capitol Police, walked through the rotunda and then left. And so thankfully, you know, with Speaker McCarthy releasing this to Tucker. And now also I want to add to your good news here, David, because the J-6 defendants finally have access to this footage. That was a really, in my opinion, a total travesty of justice if these people were being prosecuted and not given access to this very important evidence that could, maybe not, but could completely exonerate them. And not even given the chance to see this stuff? A shame, shame on whoever made those decisions at DOJ, or the Capitol Police or whoever. But thankfully, Speaker McCarthy has made that available to any defendant that wants to have access to it. And some of those defendants have delayed their trials. So think about that. They’d been in the Gulag for a year or two years or whatever completely mistreated, you know, not even allowed bail not allowed to be out, and not given their speedy trial. Now their trial is happening and they’re asking for a delay so that they can view this footage. That’s how important this move was by the House Republicans. So thankfully, I just emphasize again, this is really, really good news. Sunlight again, best disinfectant, and we’re getting more of that, more of that sunlight on here. Alright guys, we’re going to take a quick break. I know we got a lot more good news to share with folks. So stay with us. We’ll be right back on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
This is Tim Burton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. The year after the American War for Independence ended, we began addressing the issue of Muslim terrorists in North Africa who were attacking American ships and killing and enslaving American seamen. Congress dispatched John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to negotiate peace. And when they asked the Muslim Ambassador the reason for the unprovoked attacks, he told them that it was written in their Koran, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them whenever they could be found. 16 years of negotiations failed, and in 1801, America sent its military to crush the terrorists. When that war ended in 1805, the first American edition of the Koran was published, urging Americans to read the Koran to see for themselves that its teachings were incompatible with the safety and peace of non Muslims. To see the first American Koran and to get more information about America’s first war on Islamic terror, go to WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
We’re back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us on this good news Friday, bringing you some more good news and Tim Barton is up to bat.

Tim Barton
Well, guys, this one’s from New York City. And some of you might remember New York City Mayor Eric Adams, made some headlines, put some waves and ripples in the water, so to speak, when he came out in favor of religion in schools, in favor of faith in government institutions, on some level. Several quotes from him- one he said, when we took prayer out of schools, guns came into schools, he came out against the notion of separation of church and state. And one of the things he said in regard to that is, don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body, church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies, I can’t separate my beliefs because I’m an elected official. And really, when on this pro faith pro God movement. I actually got interviewed for a article in the Washington Times asking for some comment about this. And of course, I said, Look, this isn’t keeping tradition, actually, with nearly every single founding father, who was ever a political leader. When you go back to the ones who were governors, the ones who were presidents, the ones who were leaders of Congress, they issued prayer proclamations calling on their state, calling on the nation to pray. These were the people that encouraged that individuals attend churches and go to Sunday school, etc, that they wanted there to be a growth of faith because they knew the natural outflow of the inculcations of the principle of faith would be a good moral behavior in society. And they knew the only way freedom was going to work is if we had a good foundation of morals and that’s going to come through Christianity. So there’s just so much in this, but when you look at Mayor Adams, he took a lot of heat for saying something that fundamentally was true. And yet today is just, because he’s a Democrat, it’s out of line with the Democrat position. And not every Democrat, I understand. But overall, the overarching Democrat position. We remember several years ago when at the Democratic National Committee, they removed God from their whole convention and platform. When someone brought up bringing it back in there was no’s and boo’s and, right, all this issue. This is largely the Democrat position, the one they’ve taken, and yet with all the pressure that Mayor Adams has been under, he did not back down. He recently, earlier this month, was on CNN State of the Union with Dana Bash, and he doubled down and he said, look, let’s be clear. The last words I said after I was sworn in is so help me God. On our dollar bill we have in God we trust. Every president touched a religious book, when they have sworn in, except for three. Faith is who I am. And anyone who takes these words, is stating that I’m going to try to compel people to follow my religion. No, I’m a child of God. I believe that wholly I’m going to follow the law. I’m not going to compel people to believe in whatever faiths. They could be if you’re in a synagogue, a Baptist church, a Buddhist temple, I’m in all of them. And that’s what was in my service. On he goes, but the point is he didn’t back down from being pro God in his statements and acknowledging that we need more God in our public life, in schools and in government. And I mean, guys, it’s really encouraging on some levels, when you’re seeing Democrats come out and saying, we need more God in America. It’s something that we’ve come to expect from a lot of Republican leaders. Over the last couple decades, we haven’t seen a lot of this from Democrat leaders. So this is something that certainly kudos to Mayor Adams, New York City, I obviously have a lot of political disagreements with many things. But this is something that certainly we think is great news, when you have the mayor of New York City saying we need God back in schools, we need God in government. That’s a great thing.

Rick Green
I was so excited Tim when I saw this. I mean, I read this article, and all I could think was, you know I mean, we’ve said this stuff, you know, for decades. A lot of Republicans have said this stuff for a long time. But even fellow Republicans have chastised Republicans that said these things, and very few from the Democrats have said this. Now in the past, as we talked about all the time, Democrats in the past sometimes said this stuff, but for him to say this, I, the first thing that came to mind, you guys shoot me down if I’m totally off my rocker here, was we could see revival in the Democrat Party, folks. I mean, what would happen if both parties returned to a belief in God, and started talking about the importance of a belief in God, this is the liberal mayor of New York that said these things. I am literally, I got chills right now even thinking about it. What if this spread? So this, you know, Naomi Wolf, Tim Robbins, the mayor of New York? I don’t know. I’m just, not quite speechless. But I’m close. It’s really, really good stuff.

David Barton
Rick, I think one of the good things is happening here is I think there have been a lot of people who held these positions who have been shoved back and out of public sight. And I think what’s happening, the courage that you’re seeing here with these guys is going to bring a lot more normal people back in the debate. And hopefully, that will depolarize a lot of what’s going on, because there’s a lot of people who don’t want to have fights over this stuff. But they don’t want to be in the middle of a fight either. And so the fact that you’re seeing some guys willing to take the heat and stand up for what a lot of other silent people believe, I think that’s really super positive for the future.

Tim Barton
Well and I think too, it’s, we’re seeing people have the courage to stand up and speak out like Mayor Adams did. But then I mean, Rick, to your point about this revival, God doing something in America that we are seeing happen right now is there’s people like you mentioned a Tim Robbins. And that’s, he’s not one of our guys. He’s not even a faith guy. It’s not that now he’s having the courage to speak out. It’s people are beginning to have epiphanies. God is opening people’s eyes. And some of it is their eyes being open to tyranny. And we could, you know, you could argue, was it God? Or was it just communist oppression, that open their eyes to that tyranny? Nonetheless, people’s eyes are being open. And people of faith are having the courage to stand up, God is doing something and it’s very encouraging.

Rick Green
It is so encouraging. As we go to break guys, you know, for people at home that might be saying, What’s the big deal? So he acknowledged God? Man, that’s the beginning right there. You know, the Jefferson quotes about acknowledging God, all the founding fathers about it. But if we remove God from the equation and don’t acknowledge God, that’s how we get in the mess that we’re in. So being able to at least find that common ground and that acknowledgement of, you know, that there is a God, and that our faith and our foundation in him is what everything we believe comes from, oh, if we can get that other side to get back to that point, there’s going to be so many more areas of agreement and so many areas, we can rebuild with. Another actor, the the guy that plays Dwight from The Office had a tweet this week about, you know, just the bias against Christianity and a bias against faith. And it was about a series that he was watching and how they, you know, made the Christian look like a crazy person again, and he was just pointing out this has got to stop. So it just good stuff, guys, that’s movement stuff. These are anecdotal, but they’re, you know, they’re good signs of what’s happening underneath in the culture. Okay, very quick break. We’ll come back and get some more good news before we close out today. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders.

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We’re back on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. It’s good news Friday, today. Let’s dive back into some good news. David’s got the next piece of good news.

David Barton
Next piece of good news comes from local elections, although it’s a really big local election. It happened recently in Chicago, they voted for mayor, the city races there in Chicago. And Lori Lightfoot has been the mayor of Chicago for the last term. And she is now the first incumbent mayor in 40 years not to be reelected in Chicago. So her loss is kind of shockwaves for the progressive community. She was not reelected.

Rick Green
And by the way, David, just to put her in context for our listeners who may not be familiar with her. She’s the one that threatened those Romanian pastors back at the beginning of COVID with destroying, literally tearing apart their church, if they continued to meet, even though they were doing masks, six feet apart, all that good stuff. You know, I went up there and spoke at their church and she was literally saying they were going to implement summary abatement which would allow them to tear down the church. That’s how bad she was. And that was just at the beginning. She got even worse later on. But that’s who we’re talking about here.

David Barton
Yeah, so Lightfoot has been the, oh man, what do you want to say, the epitome of secular progressive. And she’s been out there and she got whipped. I mean, she got whipped in this election. There were a number of candidates, she only came up with 16.4% of the vote. Now for secular progressive city to reject a secular progressive that strongly is pretty big deal. But what’s really significant, now and Chicago, I mean, this is America’s third largest city. So this is a big city. And the guy who got elected is, I think he ran the schools there in Chicago. He’s 69 years old. He’s the guy that was endorsed by the police in Chicago. So the cops in Chicago said, this is the guy we like, and the people lined up with the cops, not with the mayor. She’s the one that really let the city burn down in so many ways. And they’re averaging about two murders a day. And so they got to the point, we don’t care who you are and how progressive you are, we’re getting killed out here, and you’re doing nothing about it. She was defending the place and all the other things that went with that movement. So really significant. And of course, she didn’t handle the loss very well. Her comment was, well, these are people who just don’t want to see a black woman in leadership. Really? You’re going to make this about race, with the crime record you have and the growth of crime in the city? So it really is good that even in a very liberal city, they’re just not buying into all the policies, and especially the fruits. I think a lot of people bought into the sound of the policy initially, but when it didn’t produce good fruit, they’re not on board anymore. And we’ve seen that with a lot of cities, you know, in Texas Austin is our Chicago. This is our progressive city, and they have cut cops there. And now I think I saw in the last month 272 Cops have resigned in Austin. They do not even have enough cops to answer 911 calls anymore. This progressive stuff, even for people who like working in progressive cities, they don’t like the fruits of what’s happening there. And so Lori Lightfoot, and what happened there in Chicago, I think is an excellent example. I think it’s really good that even with a progressive city where they only elect Democrats, and they reelect Democrats, they still want some standards out of their Democrats that meet some common sense standards. And one of those is law and order as opposed to lawlessness and anarchy.

Rick Green
Yeah, in that Austin cut, it was a third of the police budget, was like $150 million. And so now people have to live with the pain. And maybe that’s part of it. We’re seeing pain in the citys, pain in these areas. And people are saying, enough is enough. Let’s get back to foundational principles that’ll get rid of that pain. So it’s a good turn to see. Tim, what’s our last piece of good news today, man?

Tim Barton
Guy’s this one’s coming in from South Dakota, this is really good news. And we really don’t have time to do the due diligence to explain this in the detail and it really deserves. We need to spend more time on this in another program. But there’s a uniform commercial code, UCC. It’s something’s being introduced in I think over 20 states, this legislative cycle. And it’s… now the states have done this forever Uniform Commercial Code. You just pass this because it’s what all fifty states do; they work together. The problem is, in the version that was drafted this year. The updated change from last year to this year is changing the way money is defined, and it’s laying a foundation, saying that they’re going to approve digital currency. And we know that Joe Biden has already working with people rolling out a central bank digital currency, which then falls into social credit scores just so many issues. Well this has passed in every state it’s been introduced in and part of the reason is because, we’ll talk so many state legislators and they’re totally against it. And then the bank lobbyists will show up and they will put pressure on them. And these legislators are going man, we, you know, we really don’t have the means to fight against these banks and what they can do and take us out of office. And it’s really ridiculous. Nonetheless, the good news from South Dakota is governor Noem actually vetoed this bill, saying that we shouldn’t be changing the definition of money, and including a digital currency, which doesn’t even exist yet. Doesn’t make sense. So kudos to her for having the backbone to do something that needs to be done. And really, this is something that shouldn’t pass in any state. So I encourage you… and we actually have information about this on the WallBuilders website, you can go check out on the website, look for the Uniform Commercial Code. It’s one of our ProFamily Legislators Network initiatives. Nonetheless, something that is good news that she vetoed it, something that needs to be fought in all 50 states. Hopefully we’ll see more pushback in the days coming forward. But this is great news coming out of South Dakota.

David Barton
And let me add in too that it’s not that digital currency is bad on its face. It’s that in this specific case, they have planned for what’s called programmable digital currency, which allows the government to program what you can and can’t buy. And that’s why this is so bad. That’s why it needs to die in every single state. The Biden definition for digital currency includes programmable and you don’t want that.

Rick Green
Alright folks more good news will be on our website and also next Friday. So make sure you tune in to all the programs next week but definitely good news Friday at the end of the week. Thanks for listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.