Voters Support Mount Rushmore – GOP Majority In Court Of Appeals And More: Join us today for some good news! Polls show strong support for Mount Rushmore, 7 out of 12 judges are Republicans in the Court of Appeals and more!

Air Date: 07/17/2020

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. Let’s make sure our faith is informing our position on every issue in the culture. Our culture needs truth right now. So, we need to know the biblical, historical and constitutional perspective on all the hot topics of the day and that’s what we address here at WallBuilders Live.

My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s constitution coach. And I’m here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You can send in your questions to us at [email protected]. We get to those on our Thursday programs, that’s called Foundations of Freedom Thursday.

Today, it’s Friday though, it’s Good News Friday. So, David and Tim have been collecting all the good news over the last few weeks and months that you’re not hearing about. I know you’re thinking, wait, Rick, have you been hiding under a rock or good news? I mean, have you noticed that we have tyrannical governors across the country shutting down our economy, shutting down our states, we have chaos and rioting in the streets? Yes. Yes. Yes. I know all the bad news out there and it’s bad. There’s things that we have to address and we’re working hard to combat these things. And no doubt you need to be prepared for those things as well. And by the way, most all of those things are a result of civic ignorance. We don’t know our history. We don’t know our Constitution. We’ve allowed the left to spew its poison into our children as a nation through the university, so we got to defund the left. There’s a lot of things we can work on a lot of things we can do, but everything that’s happening, not unexpected, not a surprise, we’re reaping what we sowed.

And so, what we have to do as a nation is step back and say, okay, wait a minute, if we’re going to reap what we sow, then we want to sow good stuff, we want to sow good principles. And that’s what WallBuilders Live is all about. We teach the principles that made America the greatest nation in the history of the world. We can sow those principles once again, but we have to know them ourselves. Would you come alongside us and help them to do that?

Check out wallbuilderslive.com today, make a contribution there. Those dollars make it possible for us to spread this truth far and wide to get people get citizens equipped, inspired, trained, educated, get them running for school board and City Council’s and all these different things. You can be a part of that by donating at wallbuilderslive.com. You can be a part of educating America on the founding principles. Thanks for being a part of that. Check it out, wallbuilderslive.com.

Let’s get to some good news. Our first piece of good news today is going to come from David Barton. David.

David:

Okay. When you look across the nation in the last month, one of the things that has been dominating the visual news, also, the printed news is the protests and it’s defacing the monuments and the tearing down of statues, etc. So, now polling is out on what Americans think about that. Now, based on what you see in here, I think the numbers we would associate with those who support this is probably going to be different from what the actual numbers are. But it’s interesting, the poll actually took a quote from President Trump and asked Americans how much do you agree or disagree with this?

So, the quote, President Trump said, “Together, we’re part of one of the greatest stories ever told, the story of America. It’s the epic tale of a great nation whose people have risked everything for what they know is right.” What percent of the nation agreed with that statement? Well, let me do it this way. What percent of the nation disagreed with that statement that the story of America is great, that we’re risked everything to do what’s right, we were one of the greatest stories ever told. What percent would disagree with that?

Rick:

So basically, what percentage is kind of turned into anti American out there and things were our history of a bad country? How many have they won over?

Tim:

Though, I would guess, somewhere in the 30 to 40%, just kind of from a more realistic perspective, but also it kind of makes a difference on the day’s news when they ask this poll. Because sometimes you see, for example, leftists that their hand gets overplayed and some of these protests when they’re burning things down, when they’re destroying things, there’s not many Americans that are real supportive of that kind of behavior. So, I do think it can make a difference when this polling was done. But I would think somewhere in the 30s, maybe 40%, Rick, do you think?

Rick:

Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of where I would aim too. Because it especially if you just watch social media, the number of posts, the number of hashtags, all of that, I would think they went over somewhere in that range, 30% or so.

David:

In answering Tim’s question about time, and this happened in the latter part of June and at that point in time, we’d seen a whole lot of monuments defaced and statues torn down. So, there’s a lot that’s gone on, this is not really early in the movement. It’s a lot this happened. And then kind of, Rick, to answer your question. Only 12% of Americans disagreed with President Trump. Only 12%. 73% agreed with him, 12% disagreed. It is great news that. I couldn’t believe that and so I had to read deeper, because they asked about a whole lot of other things.

You remember not long ago, we had Lieutenant Governor Larry Rhoden on from South Dakota and there’s this movement to tear down the monument Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. So, Mount Rushmore has four faces on it. And two of those faces are of slave owners Jefferson and Washington. So, with the canceled culture, you got to take down everybody who’s a slave owner. If you say let’s take down Washington and Jefferson, how many would support taking down Jefferson and Washington off the monument Mount Rushmore?

Tim:

So how many people are part of that cancel culture who say just burn the thing down? Man, I got to think it can’t be that high. Mount Rushmore as certainly had attacks against it, but this is a newer attack. I’m going to say it can’t be more than 20% of people that support that. I’m going to say it’s probably closer to maybe to 10 or 15% work. Rick, what do you think?

Rick:

Man, it feels like on social media and that’s a wrong way to measure this, right? But it feels like just watching social media and we’re all kind of in our own bubbles, but I try to watch what’s out there beyond the bubble. It’s feels like 25 or 30%, but I hope not.

David:

Well, there’s 17%. Now, you take the fact that you have and by the way, do you know who the highest supporter of taking down Washington and Jefferson off Mount Rushmore is Democrats? Democrats, they support it by a level of 28%, only 9% of Republicans and Independents are only 12%. So, three times more Democrats and Republican support taking it down, two and a half times more Democrats than Independent support taking it down. So, Democrats are really kind of the front leaders in this thing up front.

But take Jefferson and Washington, you got to slave owners. So, let’s go to the cancel culture kind of thing that we should take down statues of all bad things from the past, we should not acknowledge bad things from the past, what percent of the nation agrees with the fact that we should erase all the wrongs of the past not let them to be seen?

Tim:

So, erase all history is what you’re saying?

David:

Yeah, that’s right.

Tim:

Yeah. Because we’re not talking about correcting the wrongs of the past. Not like that kind of erasing. We’re talking removing anybody say something bad, which is just pretty much everybody in the history of the world…

David:

So, don’t acknowledge the wrongs of the past.

Tim:

Yes. So, who…

Rick:

It’s essentially a 1984, you know, Orwellian 1984, we’re going to burn every record and rewrite history and make sure there’s no evidence of what actually happened.

Tim:

I got to think that’s a small number too, but that might be closer. That’s where I feel probably more that 37% range.

Rick:

Yeah, because it’s kind of a virtue signal. You know, they feel good about themselves if they say, yeah, tear down those statues of all those bad people. Yeah, so I’m going to go with you, Tim, about 30%.

David:

Nationally, only 10% support that. And even among Democrats, 77% of Democrats oppose doing that. So, Democrats who are the one strongest in favor taking the stuff down, even with them, is three out of four that you don’t take this stuff down. So, this…

Rick:

So, I thought Biden was stuttering around on his answer there, just because he’s Biden, but maybe it’s because he actually doesn’t know what to do with this one since even his fellow Democrats are saying stop this nonsense, but yet he can’t speak out against the “peaceful protesters” that are tearing down the statues because that would be, they would come after him at that point.

David:

Now, not surprising here. The strongest support for taking out all the statues, the cancel culture is voters under 40. And that says something about education. And what’s gone on education last few years, maybe instead of defunding the police, we should defund a lot of the schools or at least change the teachers or get some people in there that kind of love America, maybe we’re the funding the wrong institution we’re trying to. But nonetheless…

Rick:

At least, the colleges, defund the colleges.

David:

Defund the colleges, yeah because you can now get good stuff online and you don’t have to get the indoctrination of the teachers that are going with it. And while there are good teachers, they are and it’s almost the old axiom, you can count them on one hand kind of stuff and that’s unfortunate. But nonetheless, it’s voters under 40 that are this. And by the way, only 5% of your oldest voters agree with doing this.

So, it’s definitely age driven right now, which means it’s education-driven. And so much of the activism we do see coming out of universities, universities’ professors really pushing kids to go out and protest, etc. So, good news, is a whole lot better than it looks like. With all the focus, that’s been on what’s been torn down, it really is just a very small minority of the nation who supports that.

Rick:

You know, and that only makes me think our inoculation to leftism because of past generations being so strong on good principles of liberty had to have been so much better than I thought it was. Because think about it, we’re two generations of university education being really leftist and the professors been 90% Democrat, twice the national average and yet somehow, we’ve repelled that with roughly 80% of the country still saying no to that philosophy. That’s actually…

David:

Rick, I’m going to disagree a little bit with you on there. It’s not the Democrat professors are twice the national average. For every one Republican history professor at universities, there are 33 Democrat history professors. For every one Republican journalism professor, there are 20 Democrat journalism professors. For every one Republican economics professor, there are 9 Democrat economic professors. So, it’s not twice as much, in some cases…

Rick:

That was my public school math saying twice as much.

David:

Yeah, that’s right. In some case, is 30 times as much.

Rick:

30 times, just think about that. 30 times. I mean, no wonder they’ve been able to rewrite it. No wonder they’re all adopting a Howard’s in books and all that. Oh, wow. Hey, guys, got to take a quick break. Let’s get back to the good news. Right? The good news is that despite that disparity that the American people are still with us on preserving history, preserving the timeless principles of liberty, saying America is good, we’ve been a force for good in the history of the world. We still got most Americans with us. That’s why we should not be cowering and being silent. We should be speaking up. Stay with us, we’ll be right back with more good news here on WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live, Good News Friday today. We got more good news coming up. And it’s this next piece of good news coming from Tim Barton.

Tim:

Alright, guys, this is going back to June in the US Senate, which I know, it seems like not much has been done in Congress for a while with all the chaos we’ve seen in the world around us.

David:

That’s one of the good… we haven’t covered that on Good News Friday, we should have covered that Good News Friday.

Tim:

Inactivity of Congress has been good news. Yeah, it means they have not been able to take away more of our rights for the time being. Oh no, this one is actually a positive thing. It is the confirmation of Trump’s 200th Judge. 7 of 12 Appeals Courts now have a GOP majority, which is super interesting. This one is the fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals, which I’m pretty sure was already a conservative court, that is something that oversees Texas. We know some of the Judges there, some of their background record, very, very strong.

David:

I hate the fact that we say Judges oversee Texas. I mean, that’s really not the way it’s supposed to be. That’s just the way it has become. And the Fifth Circuit, it has Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and we shouldn’t be saying the Judges overseeing these.

Tim:

But that’s well, and probably to be more clear, yes. With the Texas in their district, although unfortunately, with this Judge climate we live in. Unfortunately, Judges have way too much power and authority and, you know, it’s something we have. I’ve seen a lot of frustration with people recently. In fact, I think just a week or so ago, we had Kelly Shackleford on, actually, I think that was just this week. Time really goes fast and then slow, sometimes in corona too. Nonetheless, so as Kelly pointed out, we often look at some of the recent Supreme Court decisions and we are disheartened, disappointed, frustrated with, for example, Gorsuch decision when it came to this sexual identity case and what does that going to mean for businesses and the nation and just very disappointing that Gorsuch made such a, but weird view, a terrible blunder.

And as Kelly pointed out, he really is good on so many issues. This was one case he got wrong, although, very big case to get wrong. It shouldn’t discount all of the other positive Judges that have been put there. And even when I heard on Monday after the interview with Kelly is dad, you know, that’s something that could be a Good News Friday, the fact that Kelly said we’re going to be much more involved going forward. We’re going to make sure that we get the right kind of Judges. And I know that these guys have been involved in helping to vet and nominate some of these guys. So, when we look at the fact that Trump is at 200 Judges going, and now these 7 to 12 Appeals Courts are having a GOP majority, which technically, Judges don’t have a political affiliation, but they were appointed by a president with a political party, there’s a lot of really positive things looking at the judicial branch of government knowing that unfortunately, these guys do seem to have lifetime appointments. It’s not really the way it’s supposed to be, but it’s the way it operates in the world we live in America today.

And knowing that you’re getting guys who by and large, do support the Constitution, who support religious liberty, who support the Second Amendment, there’s a lot of really good things looking at Judges. So, I know and in the midst of chaos, in the midst of frustration or disappointment because the Supreme Court decision, I mean, dad, I think even pointed out on Monday that even though we’re disappointed with Gorsuch on this, dad, it was a 6-3 decision. And so, even of course, Gorsuch had been on the right side of this, the case still would have been lost, because Robert siding with the Democrat justices, the liberal justices as the case were. But even with all that being said, you have so many federal judges now that are able to hopefully make good rulings and decisions before it even gets to the US Supreme Court.

So, there is a lot of positive happening even in the midst of almost quiet Congress, we don’t hear what’s going on, we don’t know a lot about it. There are good things still happening. And the Judges, Judge Corey Wilson, who was appointed to serve on the fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals, so that’s good news.

Rick:

Alright guys, quick break, we’re going to be right back with more good news. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

We’re back on WallBuilders Live, it’s Good News Friday today. David Barton’s got the next piece of good news. David.

David:

I’ve got some good news, but before I do that I forgot to take, Rick, this goes back to your days in legislature. I’m going to take a point of personal privilege here, just want to say something. We were talking about protesters and the nature and the profile of protesters and you know, a lot of them are younger and they’ve recently come out of college and a lot of this been led by college professors there’s pushing this. And we’ve all heard about the Chaz and the Chop stuff that’s gone on in Seattle and finally, that has come to an end. But the irony for me is it didn’t come to an end until the protesters went to the mayor’s house and protested and then within a matter of a day or so, she says we’re stopping this, she couldn’t believe she got protested. And this is the exponential side of so much of this nonsense. It all sounds good on paper till the happens to you and then suddenly principles kick in, and when principles kick in, you take a stand. And, you know, bless the heart, for somebody liberals, they don’t understand what principles are until it touches them specifically, it’s good on paper and that’s the way schools have been.

So, back to this thing of the polling that we looked at in the very first segment had that, really overall, the nation supports so many of these statues and that was also true racially. In the polling numbers, you found out that even with various races and we’re talking about slave owners like Jefferson and Washington, should they come down? No, even minority races, like black races, they supported keeping those statues up.

So, it’s interesting to me that this news article here says, “Watch black Americans turn out to defend the Lincoln emancipation memorial from radical activists.” Is interesting that what saved that memorial in Washington DC was black neighborhoods turning out to say, look, leave the statue alone, get away from it, because the activists and professors again have been saying, well it has a kneeling black in front of Abraham Lincoln, therefore it’s showing subjugation, is showing this racism, etc. You know, that statue is paid for by emancipated slaves whom Lincoln had freed through his actions and through the Civil War and Frederick Douglass actually gave the oration to that statue. There’s two of those statues, one in DC, one in Boston, but they defended the one in Boston and it was the black community who did so, which again, reaffirms what the poll said. By the way, the mayor of Boston said, well, I’m going to take it down because it is a bad deal. You know, craziness again.

But nonetheless, to see the black community defend that which polling shows that’s their position, they, like other Americans believe the statue should be defended and we can learn from the past, that’s good news.

Rick:

Alright, guys, we got one more break and one more segment of good news. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

We’re back on WallBuilders Live, final segment of good news today. Tim Barton, how are you taking us out today?

Tim:

Alright guys, we are looking at some polling related to President Trump and it’s kind of interesting to me seeing some with the chaos around, some of the backlash and you see people kind of go in different directions, the support for President Trump. One of the questions we get a lot at WallBuilders in more recent weeks has been, okay, what do you guys think about President Trump, whether there’s chances, he’s going to win, what’s going to happen?

And a survey came out at the beginning of July and it was done by Pew Research Center. And it was among evangelicals asking their support for President Trump. Interestingly, support for President Trump has Increased among evangelicals, specifically they do have the breakdown. But white evangelicals, there has been an increase and that’s kind of what they’re highlighting in this poll.

But why there’s an increase is interesting. Because when they clarify why they support President Trump more, it’s not exactly the reason I would have chosen. Although once they said it, I thought, well, absolutely, I support that too. Guys, why do you think there’s more support among white evangelicals for President Trump? And it’s something that certainly is an issue, it’s of concern. It’s just with all the chaos and craziness around, it’s not the answer that initially I would have looked at, why would they support President Trump more?

Rick:

I would have thought it was just, you know, basic defense of American values, the prolife, the things that most white evangelicals are for.

David:

I’m going to say I don’t have a clue. The way you set it up makes me think somebody who’s surprised. I will say that I’m really interested in hearing because I’ve seen polling over recent weeks where the evangelical support for Biden has crawled up at a steady rate and that’s why they think Biden has the chance of winning the election when it comes down to it because evangelical support has been waning for Trump. Now, this is a poll from a month ago, so clearly, this is much newer. And I don’t have a clue what it is.

Tim:

Yeah, so this is up. White evangelical support is up 5%; for Biden, it’s gone down. But they say, specifically, because of how prolife he is. But the reason I think is interesting is, in the midst of all the statues, in the midst of the craziness, in the midst of coronavirus, you would think there would be other issues that would be depressing and pertinent and they would be thinking oh, because he’s such a strong leader here, because he’s done well there, because… No, they’ve not been distracted by all of the chaos. They are looking and saying we’ve never had a president more prolife than done interesting. It’s certainly, again, not what I would have expected.

Now, first of all, it is an article. But I was reading the details in the article about this polling and as they’re breaking down the numbers of the poll and even when it comes to Joe Biden, in the survey, 26% of these white evangelical said that Biden would be a poor, President 49% said he would be a terrible president. In contrast, 70% said, President Trump has been a good or a great president. But the issues that they’re evaluating him by, that seems to be the most pertinent issue is the issue of life. And there is a level of encouragement to me that among white evangelicals and it really just among Christians in general, doesn’t matter to me what color your skin is, but as Christians that we can prioritize what should be the main issues. It should be faith. It should be family. It should be life and religious freedom. There are issues that as Christians, it should be the most pertinent to us. And at least according to this Pew Research Center survey that came out on or at least this article came out July 1st highlighting that survey, his support among evangelicals is growing because of his prolife positions.

Rick:

Well, that means we are learning the biblical, historical and constitutional perspective on all these issues and more people need to learn that. We’ve got to get truth out there into the culture and you get to be a part of that when you become a partner of WallBuilders Live. What happens is you simply go to our website wallbuilderslive.com, you share the programs through social media, you let other people know about the program, get them educated on these things as well. But also, you donate at that website. Those dollars make it possible for us to add stations, for us to do our trainings for pastors and for legislators, for young people. Become a part of the solution. Check it out at wallbuilderslive.com.

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Thanks so much for joining us today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.