Texas Weighs In On The Election – Plus, More From Barnstorming Georgia!: What did the Supreme Court grant injunctive relief? Did you hear about the case Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed? What are the five complaints the Trump campaign is filing against Wisconsin? Did you know the Revolution started with a black patriot laying down his life? Tune in to hear some major developments in election 2020, as well as a special segment from Barnstorming Georgia!

Air Date: 12/09/2020

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.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

You found the intersection of faith and the culture. This is 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. And of course, the hottest spot at that intersection of faith and the culture right now is the election, not only of President, but of Congress, all the local elections all across the country. 

There’s been some big changes in this election, a lot of victories, a lot of good conservative folks got elected to Congress and state legislatures across the country, so a lot to be very, very optimistic about. And then, of course, the election debacle, and all of the fraud and all of “irregularities”, all of the breaking of the laws, the election laws that had been passed by legislatures across the country is something to be very concerned about, and we must continue to fight to fix those things. It’s no longer about Trump or Biden, as much as it is the Constitution and upholding the rule of law. And so that’s what we’ve been talking a lot about 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, America’s premier historian, and our founder at WallBuilders, Tim Barton’s national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You can find out more about all three of us at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. 

That’s the place to get archives of the program and that’s also a great place to make your contribution. You know, if you haven’t noticed, truth is hard to come by and we here at WallBuilders Live are proclaiming that truth in all of these different areas. We take a biblical citizenship perspective. In other words, we believe the Bible applies to everything in life.

 

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And so here at WallBuilders Live, we apply that biblical, constitutional, and historical perspective to every issue of the day. And that truth needs to get out there. So when you make a contribution at wallbuilderslive.com, you are coming alongside us, you’re locking shields with us, you’re helping us to reach more people, you’re doing your part, now, just as the Founders did lives, fortunes and sacred honor, your donation helps us to get that truth out there. So we really do appreciate all of you out there. 

We’re a listener-supported program, so all of you listeners that have been supporting, thank you. If you’ve been listening and haven’t supported yet, we would sure appreciate you considering that right there at wallbuilderslive.com.

Alright, David, Tim, there’s a lot that’s been happening, of course, again, in the last 24 hours, some good, some bad, a lot of new lawsuits. There was probably the worst news yet was the rejection by the Supreme Court of injunctive relief in the Pennsylvania case. This was an area that we had hoped they would intervene with injunctive relief which would be immediate, a lot of signs pointing that direction.

They have not denied cert yet, so we don’t know yet what’s going to happen there. The Trump campaign, Jenna Ellis is saying they haven’t denied cert, they only denied injunctive relief. But let’s just be blunt, it’s bad news. It is a bad sign that they denied that injunctive relief.

That could be and some people are theorizing that they’re doing that because of these other cases that we’ll be talking about today, some of the new ones that were filed, they’re broader, more states involved and so maybe they’re wanting to take one case and deal with all of these at once. But we’ll just hit the bad news right up front, get that out of the way and start getting into some of these other states and other things that are happening.

Pennsylvania

But that’s the latest on the Pennsylvania case that happened yesterday, a lot of people talking about that. That’s the one that was filed by a couple of the congressional candidates, some incumbents, some challengers, and the one that we really had hoped would give the Supreme Court the chance to strike down those Pennsylvania changes to the election law. It is not the only opportunity for them to do that, but it was the one that we were hoping would take place. So that’s Pennsylvania, there’s some other states to look at as well. Tim, what’s the next one we want to look at?

Tim:

Then guys, looking at the court also in Arizona, the Supreme Court of Arizona agreed to hear a filing from the Republican party chair, Kelli Ward at the end of the series of debacles in Arizona some issues that came up. Kelli ward had attempted to file a suit in Maricopa County, and there was a Judge in Maricopa County who rejected that attempt.

And so, she’s been able to appeal now to the Arizona Supreme Court, and she’s looking for signature verification process, which is one of the many issues in these mail-in ballots, we’ve seen that in Georgia and different places as well. But also she identifies a duplication process, where if ballots came in and the machine wasn’t able to read them, then people were able to take those ballots and get a clean ballot and write on the clean ballot what was supposed to be on the other ballot.

And so she is contesting just some of the process of what happened. She says there’s 100,000 ballots that this could impact in Arizona, which certainly could change the course of the election in Arizona. And so we’ll see what happens with the Supreme Court ruling hearing that. The lower level Judge said he didn’t see enough evidence for anything to happen, but this was quickly appealed. So that is now on its way to the Supreme Court of Arizona.

Texas?

David:

And going to the US Supreme Court for a minute, this one actually came out of Texas. You go whoa, that’s not one of the battleground states. That’s not one of the states we’ve been hearing about in elections. That’s right.

Because what happens is Texas filed a suit against four other states. Texas has filed suit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Now, all four of those states are the battleground states that have been having legal cases and now Texas is filing against them. What’s up with that? Well, Texas is arguing that if the Supreme Court allows those four states to make the changes the way they did, and all four of the states, it’s like Pennsylvania, you had officials changing the law leading up the election, changing the election law.

And Texas says, wait a minute, if you allow that to happen, you have undermined the election process for all 50 states and Texas is going to be hurt by that. We think the Constitution means what it says, only the legislature can change election laws, and we’re challenging these other four states because their elections went off without the legislature changing the laws. And if you allow that to happen, then the other 46 states are going to be hurt by it.

So Attorney General Ken Paxton from Texas filed this. Now, the reason is significant, this is what’s called Original Jurisdiction. US Constitution gives just a handful of issues, that if they file suit, they go immediately to the US Supreme Court. You don’t go to the state courts. You don’t go to the lower federal courts. You go right to the Supreme Court. And one is if there’s a controversy between states, it goes right to the Supreme Court. So this is called an Original Jurisdiction case. We don’t have to wait for anything on this except to see whether the Supreme Court’s going to pick it up. If the Supreme Court picks it up, it’s a big deal.

And Ken Paxton, the Attorney General for Texas when he filed this, he explained, he said “Those four states violated statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution. By ignoring both state and federal law, these states have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizen’s vote but of Texas and every other state that held lawful elections.

Michigan and Dominion

Their failure to abide by the rule of law cast a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election. We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.” And so that essentially, in essence, is the issue. Can entities other than the legislature change state law? And hopefully the answer is going to be no, but we’ll see whether the Supreme Court picks us up.

Tim:

Well, guys looking also at Michigan, there is issue right now in the state legislative body and the Michigan House Oversight Committee is investigating the Dominion servers. And so they’ve asked Dominion CEO John Polis to come in. And to this point, they’ve got no response from John Polis, who’s the CEO of Dominion.

And right, Dominion is where there’s been a lot of conversation about Dominion machines that were used for voting. There’s been accusations and speculation that these machines had some kind of cheating mechanism instilled into the software, the hardware, whatever it is, that they’re able to alter the votes that were cast.

Anyway, a lot of speculation, a lot of things being said, at this point, there hasn’t really been evidence, but the Michigan House Oversight Committee said, we will look into that. So they’ve asked for the CEO to come testify, at this point, he is not and so the Michigan State House Oversight Committee said that if he doesn’t respond, then they’re going to issue a subpoena for him to compel him to be there, because their state does use their machine, so this is a business related thing. So there should be some accountability, he should come talk to them about the business that he is conducting in their state anyway. So that is unfolding.

Now, if he does show up and testify, I am sure that will be a big deal and we definitely we’ll cover those details as it unfolds. But at least for now, the House Oversight Committee of Michigan is looking into Dominion, their voting machines ,their servers, all they’re doing, and so we will keep you up to date on what happens in Michigan.

Legislatures Are Getting Involved

David:

Yeah, there’s a real interest in getting to the bottom of this. As Dershowitz, we talked about yesterday, Professor Dershowitz said look, Giuliani’s made a lot of claims, we need to see whether they’re true or not. And so this is simply investigating the evidence trail to see if it leads anywhere. Maybe it doesn’t, but the Dominion guy ought to show up and at least talk about it.

And Michigan is one of the legislatures who has actually had the legislature become involved. And some of the other states, we saw in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and the legislature didn’t want to get involved. It was kind of ad hoc committees out of the legislator, individual legislators who took on this., But it’s good to see Michigan doing that.

And to that end, Wisconsin has now announced in the legislature that it is going to hold public hearings on the alleged irregularities. They want to get the bottom of this as well. And as they point out, “The goal of the investigation is transparency. Wisconsin voters deserve fair and accurately counted elections. We must ensure that every legal vote was counted and begin working to eliminate questionable practices that undermine the integrity of the vote. And that should be the goal for all these states. But it’s good to see Wisconsin now taken at the state legislative level to look into this.

Tim:

And guys, speaking of Wisconsin, the Trump campaign have filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin alleging denial of meaningful access, multiple vote cast, voter ID violations. And so there’s essentially five things that their complaint is alleging and what they say is that there was a wide swath of granting for mail-in voting for people who were physically able to cast votes in-person. And generally, if you are doing an absentee ballot, you need to show a valid reason that you’re not able to vote in-person. That did not happen in Wisconsin, they’re alleging.

Ballot Harvesting

The second thing is they’re looking at ballot harvesting. Because there were ballot boxes where people could come and dump off balance, but there was nobody there overseeing to make sure that there wasn’t fraudulent activity or multiple ballots being cast by the same person, etc.

The third thing they allege is that poll watchers were not allowed access to the visibility of the numbers of mail-in ballots were being processed and counted. The fourth thing is the elimination, or at least vast reduction of mandatory voter identification information. And so there’s, again, that lack of confirmation that who was actually casting the ballot was the person whose name was on the ballot. And then also ballot tampering, where people were coming in to certify the vote more than mail-in ballots, but were sometimes shifting it from one ballot to the next.

Anyway, so that those are the five accusations, all this to say there’s still a lot going on. We expect to continue to see more things day to day. And at this point, this is the process that we want to see happen. We want to see this go to courts, not because merely we want President Trump to win, although I can tell you from my perspective, I would love another four years of Trump.

But more specifically, we want to make sure there is transparency. We want to make sure justice does prevail, and that we can have confidence in the voting system in America. And that is part of what these lawsuits should help accomplish, that at least evidence can be presented, that justice can be done, and there will be transparency.

So at the end of the day, if Joe Biden does become president, we can at least rest on some level of confidence knowing that he won the election and know there wasn’t vast fraud and cheating, etc. And so, this is important for the American people going forward that these things do get resolved. So this is good news that these lawsuits are going forward.

More Transparency

There will be more coming. We expect in the next days and the next week and really, probably by next week, a lot of this stuff will largely have unfolded, because that’s when you expect the electors to cast their votes. And, at that point, you kind of expect that’s more permanent. Whatever happens, that’s kind of the end of a lot of this. Now, not at everything, because there can be more lawsuits filed based on certain scenarios. But generally speaking, we’re kind of down to the last week or two, and so we certainly do want to see these things go through court and transparency in the end.

David:

And Tim, I want to echo what you said about the transparency, because you and I both have background in athletics. We don’t care if we get whipped on the field. But we hate getting whipped because somebody bought off the referee, or because they changed the rules of the game after we got on the court, whatever. And even though you and I both want to see Trump reelected, it’s more about the process and it’s more about making sure of the integrity of the process than anything else right now. And if Trump loses at a fair and square manner, that’s okay. But at this point, we don’t know that that’s the case and that’s really what all this is about. So truth is the ultimate goal of everything we’re talking about.

Rick:

Okay, that’s more election news. We’ll have more as we go throughout the week. Every day, really rest of this week, maybe some in next week, we’re going to sort of split the program, we’ll have election news at the beginning of the program and then the second half of the program, we want to catch you up on our fun barnstorming events throughout Georgia last weekend.

We had a lot of great presentations, a lot of great speakers and input. It was a great time, we want to share it with you here at WallBuilders Live. We did that on Monday and gave you the opening of one of those barnstorming events. And so we’re going to pick up, when we come back from the break, we’ll pick up where we left off at that barnstorming event for the remainder of today’s program. Stay with us, we’ll be right back WallBuilders Live.

The American Story

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.

Rick:

We’re here back on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. As I said, going into the break, we’re going to pick up right where we left off on Monday with the barnstorming Georgia event, here we are in Dalton, Georgia.

Tim:

America passed the first antislavery law. America is the fourth nation in the world to end slavery and America is doing more right now. America actually has a pretty exciting record being antislavery when you compare her to the rest of the world.

Don’t Look at America in a Bubble

The problem is, we only look at America in the bubble of America and say, we’re so bad for doing this. Yes, it was very bad what happened in America and then praise God, that has been outlawed, but we don’t do that anymore in America, right, and the people that do human trafficking, I hope they all get caught and I hope bad things happen to them in the love of Jesus. Right?

But this is important to understand because even the argument, right, if we talk about in America, we believe that America began with the American Revolution and there are people that say no, no, America began at 1619 when the first shipload of slaves driving Jamestown. There’s a lot more context to that, because the first shipload of slaves actually became indentured servants and then they were offering, became landowners, slavery wasn’t legal Jamestown until 1651. So there’s even a lot of context lost in that notion, but I’m not going to digress and go there.

Let me point out, when we look at the American Revolution largely agreed to begin in 1776, that’s actually not when John Adams said it began. John Adams said the American Revolution began in 1770 with an incident known as the Boston Massacre, because this was the first bloodshed in the American Revolution. Why does this matter?

Because guess who the first person killed at the Boston Massacre was? It was a black patriot named Crispus Attucks. Crispus Attucks has been a slave in the south, he escaped to the north and found freedom and he was a free patriot at that time, and he was one of the leaders opposing the British. And when a fire shots in the crowd, he was one of the first ones killed in that Boston Massacre. Why does that matter? John Adams says, that’s what started the revolution.

A Black Patriot Was the First…

The revolution started with a black patriot laying down his life for the cause of freedom for America. That’s interesting. Right? That’s interesting, because what that tells me is that the revolution was not just purely white people against white people, there’s maybe more to the story.

And actually, this is when the revolution began. If you look at the last major battle of the revolution, 1781, the last major battle is a battle of Yorktown. One of the guys involved in the Battle of Yorktown was Marquis de Lafayette, he was a French Major General. When he came to America, he becomes the military leader. Washington puts him in charge of tracking all of the British officers’ movement, where they’re going.

And so Lafayette had an idea that he was going to develop a spy ring and they were going to send spies inside the camp. And inside the camp, they were going to track the movements of the British and then they were going to enforce the Lafayette. He was going to report to Washington. But one of the guys that signed up and served under Lafayette was a guy named James Armistead. James Armistead had been a slave in Richmond.

When Richmond was attacked, he went to his master said I want to go help the Patriots. I don’t like what the British are doing. And in Virginia, the time the law was if you fought for a year, you could receive your freedom. His Master says that’s fine, sign up. He got assigned under Lafayette.

James Armistead

So Lafayette makes James Armistead one of the spies working in the British camps to get intelligence and to do this was a big deal, because as a spy, if you get caught, you’re hung on the spot or you’re shot on the spot. So this was definitely a life and death mission scenario he’s gone, but he goes in the camp. There’s two really cool letters from Lafayette to Washington.

The first letter Lafayette says I have a brand new spy, his name is James. He is the best spy I have in all my spy ring. He gets me the best intelligence. Well, what happened is when James decide he’s going to sign up, the guy who had been an American leader, Benedict Arnold, and then right, he’s the guy who famously tried to sell out Washington in West Point, he then goes and becomes a British officer, Benedict Arnold.

James Armistead goes and he actually starts serving a Benedict Arnold camp, who was also the guy that led the attack on Richmond which is reason James got involved in the first place. He starts serving in the British camp and does such a good job that Benedict Arnold sees him and says a guy who serves as well as you shouldn’t serve the common man, you should come and serve in the officers tents.

So Benedict Arnold bring James to serve in the officers tent where James is now hearing all of the officers talking information, getting it back to Lafayette, Benedict Arnold is so impressed with James that he makes James his personal assistant for Benedict Arnold. Benedict Arnold then he gets reassigned under Cornwallis. James Armistead goes under Cornwallis and James Armistead is the guy who found out that Cornwallis was going to be relocating to Yorktown.

The second letter from Lafayette that’s very cool to Washington, Lafayette says, remember that spy I told you about he’s the best spy have? He just got me Intel that Cornwallis is going to move his forces to Yorktown. If he gets to Yorktown, we might can surround him. If we surround him, we might be able to capture him. This could be the break we’ve been hoping for, we’ve been praying for. We might could actually capture Cornwallis and win the revolution. Why does that matter?

A Strategic Spy

Because when Washington goes and they actually are able to surround and capture Cornwallis, Washington says that this saved countless lives, took months off the war, James Armistead got credit for this. Why does this matter? Because James Armistead was the guy who his intelligence led to the end of the American Revolution. The reason this matters, the American Revolution, right, If you look big picture, now, by the way, any kind of military intelligence we just talked about today, like it has its roots back in the American Revolution with guys like James Armistead, right?

So this is kind of early operator kind of guy intelligence what he did, the revolution began with the death of a black patriot and the revolution ended because of the work of a black patriot. That matters because you can’t even properly understand the story of the American Revolution without understanding the role that black patriots played in helping America gain her freedom and independence.

So when you read something like a 1619 project, and the only thing it says is that white people oppress black people, you’ve lost a lot of context. Did that happen? Absolutely. There were white people that oppress black people. But it’s also true that not every white person oppressed every black person.

It’s also true that not every black person was oppressed. And this is where we’ve lost some context in understanding America. When you look at America, you didn’t understand the world in which she lived, in which our nation was formed, America started legal opposition to slavery before any other nation in the world. America paid a higher price in ending slavery than any other nation in the world because slavery ended at the end of the Civil War. More than 600,000 lives were lost in the Civil War.

America also opposes or does more to post slavery than almost any other nation today. So America actually has a really good record of this. And on top of the fact, if you look at America, big picture, we could not have become America without the contributions of black patriots.

Simply Not a White Nation

And this is where today, right, if the only thing we’re learning is that the only legacy that any black people had in America was a legacy of slavery, you’ve misunderstood the vital role that countless black heroes played in America. And this is something that if you’re not familiar of Wallbuilders, we’ve gone through dozens of these black heroes in their stories. It is absolutely amazing the part that they played.

And what you will discover about America, is America was not simply a white nation. America was a nation where all kinds of people were striving for freedom, and equality and there was great diversity. In fact, every great accomplishment America ever made, was made because of the unity in diversity with people having a common goal and fighting for to do something significant. And this is where we’ve lost some perspective in America today. And so when people say, well, America is all bad, no, no, understand.

America has absolutely doing bad things, but you start with a notion that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So we are never surprised when somebody does something bad. I’m never surprised, because my expectation is that everybody is jacked up and needs Jesus, right, that’s my starting place. So sin doesn’t surprise me. Instead, what is more impressive is seeing how a perfect God used imperfect people and did great things through those people and made America one of the most special nations in the history of the world.

David:

Picking up where Tim left off, there’s so much more to the stories he said. For example, did you know that we had blacks elected office in 1641? Matthias de Sousa elected in office in Maryland.

You had Wentworth Cheswell elected to office, the black man elected office in 1768 in New Hampshire, was reelected for 49 years. He’s a black man serving the white community, he was reelected 49 years, eight different political positions. Same with Thomas Hercules in Pennsylvania, so many black patriots.

No Absolute Moral Truth?

And if you look at the American Revolution, it is white, and it is black, and it is also a lot of Cubans. Role of Cubans in the American Revolution, role of Hispanics in American Revolution, it was Christians and Jews, it was women, it was men. Washington had over 20 generals who are foreign descent. We had a number of Polish generals. America was a melting pot even back then.

And so when we see American history today as being white, that’s not true. And that’s really kind of what I want to talk about for a second is the aspect of truth, because truth today is under fire in a way that is never been before. What we’re seeing happening with truth today, whether it’s in politics, whether it’s in education, whether it’s in religion, or anything else, it’s under fire in a way we have not seen.

Quite frankly, truth is on life support. And I don’t mean that. I don’t intend that to be just useless hyperbole. I’m not given to hyperbola. I say that statistically. We do a lot of polling work, and what we know is that right now in America, three out of five Americans believe there is no absolute moral truth.

Now, I will tell you, a nation cannot survive if you can’t get at least half the people to agree on what’s right and wrong, because all your laws are based on some standard, right and wrong. And if you got 60%, who don’t think that there’s any moral right and wrong that they make up their own, that we create our own truth, you cannot survive as a nation. And that’s where we are right now. Among the young people, next generation is actually four out of five Millennials think there’s no absolute truth, and that’s the next generation to everything.

And then among Christians, it’s one out of two Christians who believe there’s no absolute moral truth. And that’s one that astounds me. I would have thought most Christians would have known the Ten Commandments. And I guess maybe in the minds of many Christians, those were the ten suggestions, rather than Ten Commandments.

Texas Weighs In On The Election – Plus, More From Barnstorming Georgia!

I mean, there’s absolute. We’ve known that, but that’s not where we are now. So what’s happened is objective truth has given a way. we don’t think objective truth matters anymore. So many areas we can point to. 10 years ago, we all knew that that there’s two genders. Now, we don’t know how many there are.

We know that three years ago, we stopped counting at 90, there were over 90 legal genders and now they gone from LGBTQ to now the new terminology is LGBTQIA+, which encompasses the several 100 more whatever it is genders because you get to define your own. Same thing on religion, all religions are equal all the same, even Christians believe that.

Rick:

Alright, friends, we are at a time for today. That was a Barnstorming Georgia event, where we had David Barton, Tim Barton, myself, Rick Green, we had congressman Barry Loudermilk, Brad Stein, Kirk Cameron, Charlie Kirk, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, it was just a great, great time of encouraging people to do their duty to be biblical citizens, not just in this Senate election, these two run offs in Georgia, but in every election and in every area of life. Folks, when we apply the Bible, to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our states, and to our nation, we get good results.

If you’d like to be a part of the solution, one of the things we’re challenging, not only those places in Georgia where we went, but every one of you as listeners is to start hosting biblical citizenship classes, in your home, at your church, in your library, wherever you like, you do it online, on Zoom, however you want to do it, you can be the catalyst for restoring biblical values and constitutional principles. To learn more about how to sign up as a coach and you don’t have to know anything about any of this to be a coach, we will train you on it, all you got to do is get people in a room and hit play. To learn more about that, go to constitutioncoach.com.

We sure appreciate you listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.