Rick Green: Welcome to At the Core. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution coach. In the aftermath of the election massacre, I guess I need to start by saying I was wrong. Man, was I wrong. I've been wrong in predictions before, but this was definitely the most wrong I've ever been. I really missed it. Rick Green: I thought, I think I said it Tuesday, that I really expected a much better outcome. I thought the Republicans were going to basically thank Trump for all the victories of the last two years. What I completely missed, and I think this is really the underlying reason for the disaster, is that most of the coalition that elected Trump in 2024 was focused on only a couple of the big things, none of which got delivered. They did not see the hundreds of wonderful victories, lots of ground taken back in so many different areas, and they didn't pay attention to any of it. Rick Green: They were so mad that we didn't do the DOGE cuts. That's when I think we lost this election, last June and July, when Congress said no to the common-sense DOGE cuts that everybody was excited about. Rick Green: Do you remember when we were at our most energetic and excited in the last five or six years? It was the summer of 2024, when Elon Musk, RFK, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, and all of them were out there together on the campaign trail at big rallies. The team was brought together based on the big things that everybody was so excited about: cutting the fraud, cutting the waste, and finally saying no to the corruption. Everybody was pumped about stopping the COVID cult, the jab, and all of those things. It was remarkable, the energy that everybody felt. Rick Green: Then, when we won the election in 2024, right out of the chute, the Trump administration was giving victory after victory after victory. We had all the things that we were asking for. It looked like there were going to be massive cuts in the federal bureaucracy and in fraud. DOGE must identify $2 trillion in fraud and abuse that could be cut, all of which would have spurred the economy on and put us in such a strong position that when the Iran war happened, we would have weathered that storm. Rick Green: If the DOGE cuts had actually happened, it would have been a totally different ballgame. There would have been momentum, the energy would have continued, and the coalition would have stayed together. Then, when Iran came along, it would have been a blip on the screen because there would have been unity. Everything would have happened faster anyway. Rick Green: Then we had a chance to save it, pun intended, with the SAVE Act. It was like the straw that broke the camel's back. There was already, I think, a huge chunk of the coalition that didn't leave at that point, but did say, "Okay, I'm on red alert status. I'm going to step back. I'm not going to do anything else to help. I'm going to watch and see what happens. I'm going to see if you can do enough other good things that I'll stay on board, and then I'll come out and vote in 2026." Rick Green: The fact that Congress would thumb its nose again at something so obvious, something that 80 percent of the country was for, I think when they refused to do that, it was the final straw. That was when people said, "There's no way I'm showing up. I'm not going to go vote." Rick Green: The Democrats absolutely showed up. They voted in presidential-year numbers, and Republicans stayed home. That's the bottom line. That's what happened. It was just an absolute shellacking because we didn't give them a reason to vote. Rick Green: Now, I had reasons to vote. You, as a listener of At the Core, had reasons because we talked about those things here. We're the core. We're literally the remnant. We knew that there were all these other victories and all these other good things that happened in the last two years. We wanted that to continue, and we wanted to reward the president for that. But that didn't work for most people. Rick Green: Most people don't pay attention. Most people can't. They're busy. They're running their lives, trying to make ends meet, coaching their kids' games. They're doing life. The big things didn't happen, and that was enough to deflate our side. They didn't show up, and the other side did. Rick Green: Where I probably got it most wrong was Texas. Even though I knew there was a very decent chance that the Democrats were going to take the Senate and the House in Washington, D.C., because that's what typically happens in these midterm elections, I wouldn't have been shocked by that. I just was hoping it wouldn't be that way and thought there were enough people who would want to reward the president and understood how evil the leftist agenda is. Rick Green: But not only did they take it nationally, the fact that they were able to do what they did in Texas was shocking to me. It was so shocking that I am not one of these people who immediately says they cheated or that somebody manipulated the election data, but it made me initially wonder how they had a million and a half more votes than they normally have on the Democrat side. That's a lot. I know we had two million people move into Texas in the last four years, but it just defies logic. Rick Green: However, here's what I really think we need to focus on. I think the real takeaway message from the election is this: the left won with our values. Rick Green: Here's what they did. Talarico wrapped himself in the Bible, and he talked like a Christian better than any of our candidates did. El-Sayed up in Michigan wrapped himself in the Constitution, and he talked about freedom and the principles of freedom better than our side did. Rick Green: Now, they were both completely deceptive, lying through their teeth to you, and deceiving you about what the Bible says or what the Constitution says. But they did it so well, and our side did not respond to it, that you basically had two medicines for sale in this election. Rick Green: One of those medicines actually works. It's biblical and civic literacy. It's biblical and civic principles that will actually make America great again. Unfortunately, it was in a bottle that had a label people didn't like. The other side had poison in their bottle, but they wrapped it in our values. They sold it as the real American dream, as what America was all about, and they did an incredible job at it. They smiled while they did it, and the American people bought it. Rick Green: I think that's what happened. Now, that means there's good news here. It means the right values will still work. I was just on a program that's going to air tomorrow with one of my friends from Victory News. Greg was saying, and I didn't realize this because I couldn't stomach the victory speeches from the left, that Talarico even had "Love thy neighbor" on his sign there on his podium. Rick Green: Here you have a guy who is a complete heretic. Every one of his positions is actually antibiblical. Yet, because he wrapped it in the Bible, it's an Orwellian, Animal Farm, four legs good, two legs bad message. The message was wrapped somehow, and people bought it and believed it. Rick Green: Because it was wrapped in the Bible, the uninformed, biblically illiterate and civically illiterate person, and I don't mean that as an insult, fell for this. We are illiterate as a culture. We don't know the Bible. We don't know civics. We don't know the Constitution. Good people fell for this because it sounded good and felt good, but it wasn't good. They fell for it because they didn't know the plumb line. They didn't know truth, so they fell for the lie. Rick Green: When you have these people get up and say, "If you really love your neighbor, then you will chop off their genitals," that's essentially what they're saying. "If you really love your neighbor, you'll let their children literally remove body parts based on a lie about transgenderism. If you really love your neighbor, you'll let them kill their baby up until birth." What happened? People stopped thinking. If you really love your neighbor, you'll let them kill themselves with assisted suicide. All these evil things that the left does, but they started with our values. Rick Green: If you love your neighbor, if you're a good Christian, if you love the Constitution and freedom of speech, if you love freedom of religion, then you'll prove it by voting for a Muslim because that means you love freedom of religion. It's all poison, but we fell for it. Rick Green: So what do we do? How do we respond to this? It's not as important what happens to you as what you do with what happens to you. David Barton, my mentor, whom I've been with for almost 30 years, had his daughter remind all of us on election night of David's three major lessons in life. Rick Green: Number one, none of this surprised God. None of this took God by surprise. He wasn't shocked Tuesday night like I was. He wasn't surprised by the outcome. Of course, He knew what was coming. Rick Green: Don't forget that God is still in charge. He knew exactly what was happening. Sometimes He sends the delusion. That's what Thessalonians says. If you reject truth, He is going to send an illusion. God wasn't taken by surprise. Rick Green: Secondly, He's not as concerned about what has happened to us as what we do with what happens to us. How do we respond to it? That's what we'll spend most of the rest of the program on. Rick Green: Thirdly, don't forget that all things really do work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose. We do believe that. Rick Green: I do see opportunity in what has happened with the election. I see an opportunity just like after 2020. By the way, I don't think this election was as bad as 2020. I think we're better positioned come January than we were in January of 2021. Rick Green: God used that to wake up a lot of people. We wouldn't have had 2024 and all the victories of the last two years if it hadn't been for the evil that was perpetrated on us in 2021, 2022, and 2023. I believe God will use this for good. Rick Green: Part of that is that, just like in 2020, it will wake up a lot of people, cause a lot of people to feel some pain, and cause them to get involved. For Texas, it's going to mean a lot of pain. We're going to go through some rough years, I believe. I think it makes Texas a battleground state where a lot more money is going to get poured in here. A lot more of the left is going to move to Texas to try to completely take it over. Rick Green: I don't know that it means we're a blue state or even a purple state. Rick Green: I think we've been purple for a long time. I don't think it means we're now going to become Colorado. We could become Colorado if we don't respond well. Rick Green: So, back to that second point of David's maxims: we have to look at how we're going to respond to this thing. What are we going to do with what has happened to us? I believe God will work it for good if we respond well and do what we're called to do. Rick Green: I'm going to spend most of the second segment talking about that. I will take your calls in the second segment at 888-589-8840, your thoughts on the election and how you think we should respond. Rick Green: If you want to make a comment about how we got here in the first place, you might want to blame it all on the Iran war. I don't agree with J.D. Vance on that. I do not think it was all the Iran war and diesel prices. I think, again, it goes back to DOGE and the SAVE Act more than even the Iran war. It was a factor. I'm not dismissing it completely, and I wish we had gotten in and gotten out. But I wish we had gotten in, been more aggressive, and actually created the regime change that needed to happen, then gotten out. Rick Green: There's a lot we can talk about in terms of what caused the election. I'm more interested in calls about what you think we should do at this point. What are your solutions locally, or your alternatives, I should say? I think Thomas Sowell has always been right about that. There aren't solutions. There are only alternatives. Rick Green: What do we do with it? I'm going to talk a lot about some of the action steps we need to take as a result of this. What does it mean? How do we define this defeat? How we define it will determine how it affects us in the future. That's vitally important. Rick Green: The take-home messages are very important, but do not despair. Do not buy into these black-pill messages that it's all over. Don't grab your guns and go to the ranch, or any of that stuff. No, we get up. We get back on the bull or horse, however you want to look at it. We get back in the fight. Rick Green: The question is, how do we fight? What are the action steps going to be? That's what we'll talk about when we come back. Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution coach, doing a little post-election analysis. Most importantly, what does it mean to us, and how does it affect our actions going forward? Rick Green: As we said before the election, no matter what happens, our duty doesn't change. Our responsibility doesn't change. Our principles don't change. We do need to learn from the election. We need to accurately define what caused the losses so that we can try to prevent them in the future. But don't take home the wrong messages. Rick Green: Sometimes I worry that people will say this happened because Republicans were too bold, Trump was too bold, or they did too much too fast. No, I think the opposite. I think we lost the momentum because of not passing DOGE and the SAVE Act. I think we need to be more bold. I think we need to double down. The contrast has to be clear for people. Rick Green: We have to fight because we have a real enemy in this country, and that enemy is gaining ground. They are winning hearts and minds in addition to winning elections. That's the most dangerous part. Rick Green: What it means is that we have to do better at our messaging. We have to get better at knowing what the values are. We have to be able to defend free enterprise. We have to be able to defend Christian values permeating the culture. We have to be able to define what it means to love your neighbor. Rick Green: If you have a candidate who runs on a campaign of "Love your neighbor," and love your neighbor means allowing them to stay in sin or encouraging them to sin, encouraging them to do things that are going to destroy their lives, we lose. We've got to define better that loving your neighbor means telling them the truth. Loving your neighbor means treating them the way you would want to be treated. Rick Green: If I were headed toward a cliff, I would hope my neighbor would tell me to stop. I would hope my neighbor would show me some signs and give me some warnings instead of saying, "Keep driving that way. You do you, drive that way, and head off the cliff." Rick Green: I think history proves that loving your neighbor means that you speak truth. Obviously, speak it in love because of love, but don't be afraid to speak truth. Rick Green: Let's not let the message or meaning of the election be that we're supposed to be softer and quieter and sugary. No, I think what it means is that we need to be tougher. We need to be stronger. We need to be smart and wise. This is not a time to back off. This is a time to show up. Rick Green: We lost because we didn't show up. Our team did not show up. Evangelicals were way down. I think David Barton told me that, looking at the numbers, roughly 24 percent of those showing up were evangelicals in the last couple of elections, but this time it was only 17 percent. Rick Green: A significant decrease, really a 25 percent decrease in our influence and impact on the election. That means the other side showed up in bigger numbers, and we have to ask why. What are they doing? Rick Green: How much of our electorate now are either noncitizens who have been allowed to vote in some of these states or have figured out a way to vote? Or are they new citizens, immigrants who have moved to our country and did not have the values of our country when they moved here? Those are major factors in these numbers. Rick Green: Then, as we always do, we come back to education. Have we educated another generation of socialists? Have we encouraged them? We have. We've allowed the education system to teach people that socialism is good instead of teaching them the truth that socialism is bad, very, very bad. We've shouted that from the rooftops for 30 years. Rick Green: Fortunately, here are some good things about the education system. In Texas, what we're about to see is an epic battle over whether the gains of school choice, the State Board of Education, and the education standards are all going to be erased come January when these Democrats take over the governor's mansion and House of Representatives. Can the Texas Senate hold the line and prevent those gains from being lost? Can the State Board of Education maintain the gains that happened this summer? Rick Green: That's going to be some real down-in-the-weeds blocking and tackling, scratching and clawing in the trenches. The State Board of Education is basically going to be an eight-seven split at this point. The governor will get to appoint the chairman, and that will definitely be a leftist. That's going to be a huge battle. Rick Green: We had these big wins at the State Board of Education this summer. Those wins would probably be implemented over a couple of years. The textbooks and the reflection of what the standards would actually be, and what that would mean in terms of what happens in the classroom, weren't going to happen for a couple more years. It takes that long for those things to be implemented. With this massive change in Texas, we'll see how much of that can be held on to. Rick Green: School choice is something whose impact we wouldn't feel for years, but it was going to allow us to break the backs of the teacher unions that are the reason such a leftist ideology is being indoctrinated into our children. School choice is how you break that, and we just now got it. Rick Green: I blame Republicans for us just now getting it. Had they done that 24 years ago, when we got the majority in Texas, we would have a totally different outlook in Texas. We would have had a good education system and more people being taught the principles. Rick Green: So what am I saying? The failure of Republicans to do what they're supposed to do and said they were going to do when they get the levers of power is why they're now losing the levers of power. Rick Green: What's the lesson? What's the meaning we give to that? It means next time the pendulum swings, which is a big part of all this, you do everything you can to use that power for good. If you've been given the ring, use the ring and do everything you can to advance the agenda in the right direction. Rick Green: The left always does that. This is why Glenn Beck had a book on this, I think 10 years ago, called The Overton Window. If the left gains significant ground, let's say they move the agenda, perspective, and discussion 10 clicks to the left while they have power. Then, when Republicans get power, they only move things back one click. The other side gets power again, moves it 10 clicks the other way, and now we think we're gaining ground by moving it back even five clicks. Rick Green: No, we've still lost ground. That's the Overton Window. We think that moving within the gains of the left a little bit back to the right is a victory. It's not. Rick Green: My big disappointment in this whole thing is that we had the chance to move the Overton Window significantly to the right. Because we didn't do DOGE and the SAVE Act, we lost the opportunity to move the Overton Window. We made some big gains within the window. We stopped a lot of the damage and evil and got a few clicks back the other way, but we missed our opportunity to move it back in a big way. Rick Green: This pendulum is going to swing. We know the nature of man. We know the history of how these things work. When it happens again, when we get the opportunity again to take ground, we had better take it. When we get the opportunity to move the needle, we had better go all in. We will get that opportunity, but we had better be prepared for it. We had better be preaching this between now and then. Rick Green: I think our energy at this point has to be put into the next generation and education. We have to be working on our messaging. We have to get better at articulating our values. That means pouring into the sharp young leaders of the next generation. Rick Green: That's what we do at Patriot Academy. That's why the Patriot Institute is so important. I've got several dozen students here right now at the Patriot Academy campus, and that's what we're teaching them to do. But it needs to be several hundred, and it needs to be not just at Patriot Academy but in some of these other programs out there. Rick Green: The emphasis on messaging, articulating, and being able to win the day has to be our focus. I'm going to do my part. We're going to do that here at Patriot Academy. We're going to turn out hundreds and hundreds of young leaders who will be capable of doing that, but it needs to be thousands and thousands. Rick Green: We have a few dozen who are with us for a whole year. Next summer, we'll have hundreds and hundreds whom we'll have for about a week at a time. I want to ramp that up tenfold. I want to do thousands in the summer, get them in a state capital across the country, give them some training, and then have hundreds of them for a whole year here at the campus. Rick Green: I want to do ten times what we've been doing. We've seen great results. We know what we're doing at Patriot Academy is working, but we need to do it tenfold. We're going all in. We're going to double down. We're not going to back off, slow down, or let up at all. We're reloading and reengaging. Rick Green: We're on a 50-state expansion. We did five leadership congresses last summer in Idaho, Colorado, Florida, Delaware, and Texas. This next year, I want to do 20 states. I want to be in all 50 states within the next two or three years. In every state capital, we're going to take ground back. In every state, we're going to start training a new generation that gets it, that's articulate and passionate, that knows what the principles are that produce a good society, and knows how to win the day with those principles. Rick Green: We're going to raise up a generation that knows how to win, a generation of the men of Issachar that understands the times and knows what to do. Rick Green: You can help us do that right now by going to PatriotAcademy.com and sending that link to young people in your life. Send them to one of our leadership congresses next summer. Sponsor them. Don't just give them the information. Sponsor them. Rick Green: Ask your local Republican women's group, local Tea Party, Lions Club, or church to sponsor a student next summer. It's a thousand dollars to be a torchbearer and sponsor a student to go to one of our programs next summer. That's chump change compared to what was spent in this election. Every club in America can afford to do that for one student every year. Rick Green: I'm asking you, in the sound of my voice right now, to be one of those leaders, to be one of those torchbearers. Find a group to sponsor a student, and then help us find that young person we should be investing in. Find a young person who has some grounding but needs to be solidified. Find a young person whom you believe could be an articulate leader for their generation, and send them to us. Help us train them. Help us prepare the next generation. Rick Green: I've been doing this for 26 years. I know what happens when a student comes through one of our programs. I know how grounded and prepared we can get them for what's coming. We're not 100 percent. I've seen some kids go off the rails even after coming to Patriot Academy. But most of them don't. Most of them get that grounding. They find their people. They find other young people who are interested in this. They sharpen each other, and they stay together. Rick Green: Some of them have now served in Congress. They've run elections at the local, county, and state levels. They've been involved in presidential elections. Many of them are working at the White House right now. I know what happens when they come through our program. Rick Green: I'm proud of what we've done at Patriot Academy. I want to do more of it. I want to tenfold this thing and get more of them out there. I'm asking you to help us identify young people who would be good to invest in, and then invest in them yourself by sponsoring them to attend one of our programs. All of that is available at PatriotAcademy.com. Rick Green: Another thing you can do in response to this is prepare the troops at the local level. You may not be able to suddenly become president and push through some of this. You can't suddenly become a congressman who pushes through some of this. What you can do is prepare the people at the local level. Rick Green: By hosting a biblical citizenship class or a Constitution class, over the course of eight weeks you're going to embolden a handful of people. It may only be five people in your living room or three people in your living room. It could be 50 people at your church. We've seen it all. I've had people have 500 in their classes. Rick Green: What we know happens when they go through those eight weeks is like boot camp. It's like equipping the soldiers of intellectual warfare. Something happens during those eight weeks. A light bulb comes on, and they get emboldened. They realize the country is worth fighting for. They realize the principles work, and they realize they can do something about it. They end up with action steps they can take. Rick Green: Your response to this election should be to double down. Find some young people you can invest in. Start hosting Constitution classes in your church or your home, wherever it might be. Look for ways to rally the troops, get people more involved, and double down on this wonderful election system that we have. Rick Green: Don't give up. Don't say they stole it again, the system doesn't work, or we have too many immigrants now. Don't give up. Say, "Yes, all of those things are problems, but they can be solved." Rick Green: It really does come back to the Petri dish where the virus of bad government grows: civic and biblical ignorance. If we solve those two things, if we pinpoint those two things and say, "I'm going to be the catalyst in my family, my community, and my church for a restoration of biblical principles and values, and for civic literacy that understands the principles and values that produce a good society," then we can make a difference. Rick Green: If you double yourself between now and the next election, if just one other person catches that spirit, you will be successful. I know people who have gotten thousands of others involved. Can you be one who gets a dozen or a couple dozen people involved between now and 2028? Rick Green: Can you multiply yourself tenfold by getting ten other people educated, equipped, inspired, and taking action? That's the answer. That is literally the right way to respond to this kind of election. Rick Green: As an individual, commit yourself right now and say, "I'm going to tenfold myself. I'm going to be a tenfold force multiplier." You have two years to do it. You have plenty of time. Rick Green: There are people listening right now who, if they commit to do that, could a hundredfold themselves. You could have a hundred times increase in your commitment, conviction, and level of giving of your life, your fortunes, and your sacred honor. You can a hundredfold that if you start right now planning between now and 2028. Rick Green: Imagine what that means for the election results two years from now. Imagine what that can mean if a thousand of us did that. That's 100,000 votes going the right way, 100,000 people committed. Rick Green: What happens if you become one of our super coaches at Patriot Academy and put 1,000 people through, not 100 but 1,000? If a thousand of us do that, that's a million. Folks, that math actually works. That's how movements work. That's how you move a society. Rick Green: How do you think they've been able to win with this small minority of LGBTQ and Muslim people, and everyone else who doesn't share our values? They've been willing to do what I'm asking you to do. Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core. I'm Rick Green. I was telling you some of the things that you can do. I hope you'll already be thinking about that. There's no time to give up or slow down. This is the time to double down and be a happy warrior. Be optimistic. Don't be one of these sour people who can light up a room by leaving. Rick Green: A lot of people feel really down right now because of the elections. What you can be is the person who comes alongside them and encourages them. I'm not talking about fake, happy hope. I'm talking about the fact that we have true hope in Christ and can have a solid optimism about our system. Rick Green: We know that if we work our system, the system works. What we also know is that we didn't work the system. Too many of our people stayed home and are disengaged. That means if we can get them engaged, which I know we can, then we can win. That's our battle. That's what we have to do. Rick Green: That's enough about the election. I want to do our final segment on something a little more optimistic. I love it when people go into the arts and take back the arts. Of course, I want to take back politics and business and have Christian principles in every one of those areas. I love it when there are good movies or music. Rick Green: Today I'm going to have an interview with a guy who does both of those things, Joel Smallbone of for KING & COUNTRY. He has a new movie coming out called Drummer Boy. I think you're going to enjoy this. It's a great way to go into the weekend, and I want you to go see the movie this weekend because it's opening weekend. Rick Green: We're talking about a new movie coming out for Christmas. It's amazing. It's called Drummer Boy. I think the way you put it is best. It's basically The Greatest Showman combined with The Patriot, combined with one other film you mentioned in your interview. Joel Smallbone: It's a thrill to be with you, Rick. I was just telling you off air that I'm literally in Burbank, which makes me sound like a real moviemaker. We just did a screening. Laura Harrier's mom is in the film. You might know her as Jan Levinson from The Office. She was just elated, so I'm sort of on cloud nine. She loved the film, and she sings in the film. Rick Green: The music is off the charts, of course. I expected no less from you. My only complaint was that I wanted more music. It was really good, even the dance scenes in the opening. Rick Green: So let's back up. Why Drummer Boy? Why the Revolutionary period combined with Christmas? How did this all come together? Joel Smallbone: It's crazy, Rick. You have those moments where you wonder, do you write life, or does life write you? It's the same with this. Does the music write you, or do you write the music? Does the movie write you, or do you write the movie? Joel Smallbone: I look at this film and think about how, from the beginning of for KING & COUNTRY, the song "The Little Drummer Boy," the Christmas classic, has followed us around. It's been such a defining song for us. We did our own rendition, put a bunch of drums on it, and played it on national television. I have TSA agents say, "You're from for KING & COUNTRY. You're the drummer boy guy, right?" Joel Smallbone: Simultaneously, I love storytelling. I've played my dad in the film Unsung Hero and been part of Young Washington. I love this medium of storytelling. Joel Smallbone: I grew up in Franklin, Tennessee, where there were massive battles fought in America. In a lot of these battles from a couple hundred years ago, they communicated through drum signals to spur each other on, to call a charge or retreat. Joel Smallbone: Again, you look at this and it seems like life is writing our story. You've got this band called for KING & COUNTRY, which is sort of a British mantra. You've got this song, "Drummer Boy." You've got this idea of two brothers ending up on opposite sides of the battlefield. I'm a musician. What if you take all of these pieces and put them together? We've been working on it for almost eight years. Joel Smallbone: Not to mention, it's the 250th anniversary of this great country. Rick Green: My son Reagan came over last night to watch it with me and screen it. There were a couple of times, including one of those opening scenes when he says, "For king and country," when Reagan was slapping me and saying, "Catch that, Dad. I see what they did there." That was cool. Rick Green: You have some big names in this. Iain Glen from Game of Thrones, for example. Joel Smallbone: Some incredible actors came along for the ride. Rick Green: You had to feel like a kid in a candy store. As much as you love acting and as good as you are at it, you were dealing with some next-level talent here. Joel Smallbone: They were all very kind. I'm a musician, and that's my day job, but I love the medium of acting. Actors can be very selfish, as musicians can be, but they were so kind and collaborative. Joel Smallbone: Charles Esten from Outer Banks and Nashville was incredible. His ability to improvise and understand motivation was magnificent. Then you had Iain Glen, with just the empathy in his eyes. I was really honored to bring this story to life with such incredible humans and actors. Rick Green: The young actor who plays your brother in the movie, I didn't know anything about him, but he was phenomenal. Joel Smallbone: He's an up-and-comer. He's actually on a BBC show called Crookhaven. It was interesting because I co-directed as well. You're meeting all these actors and they're auditioning for it. He came in and did the audition among some other really talented young men. Joel Smallbone: I directed him a bit, and then I got in a scene with him. I did this pivotal argument that forces the brothers to opposite sides of the battlefield at the dinner table. I went away and thought, "I really love him, but he'd never played a drum in his life." Joel Smallbone: I was so proud of our band leader, Garapitao, who's a drum major. He's excellent. Over three weeks, we basically built the drummer boy. Lucas worked so hard. I was in the hotel room next to him in Ireland, and you could hear him each night pulling up the snare drum. He really earned it. Joel Smallbone: It was very meta, too, because my brother Luke is the drummer boy in real life. I'm in a band with him, and this actor's name was Lucas. You had the real-life drummer boy with Luke and then the drummer boy with Lucas. Rick Green: I was going to ask you about Luke and the bit at the end after the movie. Is that going to play in theaters as well? Will you have that message at the very end? Joel Smallbone: It will. I'm glad you asked because this film is a gift to America for us. We are immigrants to this great country, and I love this country. Luke married an American, and they have four half-American children. We've dedicated our lives to singing the stories of God and the stories of life, primarily to America. Joel Smallbone: To have this opportunity on the 250th anniversary to share a story of forgiveness and freedom at a very pivotal point is not lost on me. The film comes out November 6, with the midterm elections just a couple of days before. We've all got a lot to look at. Joel Smallbone: I'm really proud to put it in cinemas. I'm excited to tell you that we are doing a BOGO. Are you familiar with that analogy? Rick Green: No, I didn't know what it was either. Joel Smallbone: My wife said, "No, we know this from Pinterest." BOGO is buy one, get one. I got together with Luke in the studio last week and said, "What if we offer America the first gift of Christmas? What if, for the opening weekend of the film, November 6, 7, and 8, for 72 hours, if you buy a ticket, you can bring a family member or friend for free?" They loved the idea. Rick Green: How do you do that? Do you go to your website? Joel Smallbone: Thank you for asking. The distributor is Angel. Go to Angel.com/drummerboy. Then the keyword is "gift." Go to Angel.com/drummerboy, use the keyword "gift," pick your cinema, grab your ticket, and get a second one for free. Rick Green: Opening weekend is critical. We need everybody to plan to go that weekend. If you're going to go, please go, because the math is rigged. In order for this to stay in cinemas until Christmas, we need a million people to show up in 72 hours. Joel Smallbone: That's right. So that needs to be your opening weekend. Rick Green: Friday night, November 6, and Saturday night. Plan your date night. Most of our audience is politically active and involved, so they're going to be worn out after November 3. They're going to need something cool to do that weekend, a good night for relaxing. Rick Green: If you want to celebrate freedom, forgiveness, and the 250th anniversary of this country, come see Drummer Boy in theaters. November 6 and 7 is opening weekend, and Angel.com/drummerboy will help you find theaters near you. Do the buy one, get one. Rick Green: Creatively, what a gamble. You have the Revolutionary period, all the costumes and everything, a new story, and then the music on top of it. To do this as a musical, and to have those scenes, I loved the hint at the beginning that it was going to be a musical. The beats and rhythm move. The way you guys moved with them was magic. Rick Green: You could have gambled on two of the three. You could do a new story and the Revolutionary period, but you're doing music too. How did you get peace about going for all of it? Joel Smallbone: Make no mistake, it's the most audacious project I've ever been a part of. It's the most expensive. I've spent the most creative time and investment on it ever. I spent four months in Ireland this year. I've never worked harder on a project in my whole life. Joel Smallbone: It's because I feel like we've got to take God-sized leaps. I really love that. Nothing good or great happens by just playing it safe. So, yes, you're right. It's three out of three. Joel Smallbone: I believe in music. I love music. I believe it can express something that speaking can't. It's an hour and 20 minutes of live action, with about 30 minutes of music, but it's predominantly a live-action film. Joel Smallbone: I love music, and I love this country. I love telling stories that are important for this time. So call me in a couple of weeks and talk me off the ledge. We'll see how we get on. Rick Green: Angel.com/drummerboy, keyword "gift." Remember that keyword to do the BOGO. I learned something today: BOGO. Rick Green: With The Greatest Showman, I still have the music on my favorites playlist on Spotify. Will you guys do that too? Will you release it as a musical track or musical scene? Joel Smallbone: The same day the film releases. The soundtrack will be everywhere you would like to find it. Rick Green: I appreciate you, man. God bless you. Keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to a big weekend next weekend. Joel Smallbone: Thank you for taking the time and for watching the film. It means so much to me. Rick Green: God bless you, man. I appreciate it. Rick Green: You could tell from what I was saying that I did that interview last week. Tomorrow is opening day, so this weekend is when you want to go see Drummer Boy. Go see it in theaters everywhere. Rick Green: Thanks so much for listening today. I hope you've enjoyed that interview. I'm excited about the movie, and I'm excited about taking back the arts, taking back politics, and taking back business. Rick Green: Come on, let's go be warriors out there and be good crusaders for Christ. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, see you guys. Have a great weekend. Walk with me, and I'll be back with you on Tuesday.
Rick Green: Welcome to At the Core. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution coach. In the aftermath of the election massacre, I guess I need to start by saying I was wrong. Man, was I wrong. I've been wrong in predictions before, but this was definitely the most wrong I've ever been. I really missed it. Rick Green: I thought, I think I said it Tuesday, that I really expected a much better outcome. I thought the Republicans were going to basically thank Trump for all the victories of the last two years. What I completely missed, and I think this is really the underlying reason for the disaster, is that most of the coalition that elected Trump in 2024 was focused on only a couple of the big things, none of which got delivered. They did not see the hundreds of wonderful victories, lots of ground taken back in so many different areas, and they didn't pay attention to any of it. Rick Green: They were so mad that we didn't do the DOGE cuts. That's when I think we lost this election, last June and July, when Congress said no to the common-sense DOGE cuts that everybody was excited about. Rick Green: Do you remember when we were at our most energetic and excited in the last five or six years? It was the summer of 2024, when Elon Musk, RFK, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, and all of them were out there together on the campaign trail at big rallies. The team was brought together based on the big things that everybody was so excited about: cutting the fraud, cutting the waste, and finally saying no to the corruption. Everybody was pumped about stopping the COVID cult, the jab, and all of those things. It was remarkable, the energy that everybody felt. Rick Green: Then, when we won the election in 2024, right out of the chute, the Trump administration was giving victory after victory after victory. We had all the things that we were asking for. It looked like there were going to be massive cuts in the federal bureaucracy and in fraud. DOGE must identify $2 trillion in fraud and abuse that could be cut, all of which would have spurred the economy on and put us in such a strong position that when the Iran war happened, we would have weathered that storm. Rick Green: If the DOGE cuts had actually happened, it would have been a totally different ballgame. There would have been momentum, the energy would have continued, and the coalition would have stayed together. Then, when Iran came along, it would have been a blip on the screen because there would have been unity. Everything would have happened faster anyway. Rick Green: Then we had a chance to save it, pun intended, with the SAVE Act. It was like the straw that broke the camel's back. There was already, I think, a huge chunk of the coalition that didn't leave at that point, but did say, "Okay, I'm on red alert status. I'm going to step back. I'm not going to do anything else to help. I'm going to watch and see what happens. I'm going to see if you can do enough other good things that I'll stay on board, and then I'll come out and vote in 2026." Rick Green: The fact that Congress would thumb its nose again at something so obvious, something that 80 percent of the country was for, I think when they refused to do that, it was the final straw. That was when people said, "There's no way I'm showing up. I'm not going to go vote." Rick Green: The Democrats absolutely showed up. They voted in presidential-year numbers, and Republicans stayed home. That's the bottom line. That's what happened. It was just an absolute shellacking because we didn't give them a reason to vote. Rick Green: Now, I had reasons to vote. You, as a listener of At the Core, had reasons because we talked about those things here. We're the core. We're literally the remnant. We knew that there were all these other victories and all these other good things that happened in the last two years. We wanted that to continue, and we wanted to reward the president for that. But that didn't work for most people. Rick Green: Most people don't pay attention. Most people can't. They're busy. They're running their lives, trying to make ends meet, coaching their kids' games. They're doing life. The big things didn't happen, and that was enough to deflate our side. They didn't show up, and the other side did. Rick Green: Where I probably got it most wrong was Texas. Even though I knew there was a very decent chance that the Democrats were going to take the Senate and the House in Washington, D.C., because that's what typically happens in these midterm elections, I wouldn't have been shocked by that. I just was hoping it wouldn't be that way and thought there were enough people who would want to reward the president and understood how evil the leftist agenda is. Rick Green: But not only did they take it nationally, the fact that they were able to do what they did in Texas was shocking to me. It was so shocking that I am not one of these people who immediately says they cheated or that somebody manipulated the election data, but it made me initially wonder how they had a million and a half more votes than they normally have on the Democrat side. That's a lot. I know we had two million people move into Texas in the last four years, but it just defies logic. Rick Green: However, here's what I really think we need to focus on. I think the real takeaway message from the election is this: the left won with our values. Rick Green: Here's what they did. Talarico wrapped himself in the Bible, and he talked like a Christian better than any of our candidates did. El-Sayed up in Michigan wrapped himself in the Constitution, and he talked about freedom and the principles of freedom better than our side did. Rick Green: Now, they were both completely deceptive, lying through their teeth to you, and deceiving you about what the Bible says or what the Constitution says. But they did it so well, and our side did not respond to it, that you basically had two medicines for sale in this election. Rick Green: One of those medicines actually works. It's biblical and civic literacy. It's biblical and civic principles that will actually make America great again. Unfortunately, it was in a bottle that had a label people didn't like. The other side had poison in their bottle, but they wrapped it in our values. They sold it as the real American dream, as what America was all about, and they did an incredible job at it. They smiled while they did it, and the American people bought it. Rick Green: I think that's what happened. Now, that means there's good news here. It means the right values will still work. I was just on a program that's going to air tomorrow with one of my friends from Victory News. Greg was saying, and I didn't realize this because I couldn't stomach the victory speeches from the left, that Talarico even had "Love thy neighbor" on his sign there on his podium. Rick Green: Here you have a guy who is a complete heretic. Every one of his positions is actually antibiblical. Yet, because he wrapped it in the Bible, it's an Orwellian, Animal Farm, four legs good, two legs bad message. The message was wrapped somehow, and people bought it and believed it. Rick Green: Because it was wrapped in the Bible, the uninformed, biblically illiterate and civically illiterate person, and I don't mean that as an insult, fell for this. We are illiterate as a culture. We don't know the Bible. We don't know civics. We don't know the Constitution. Good people fell for this because it sounded good and felt good, but it wasn't good. They fell for it because they didn't know the plumb line. They didn't know truth, so they fell for the lie. Rick Green: When you have these people get up and say, "If you really love your neighbor, then you will chop off their genitals," that's essentially what they're saying. "If you really love your neighbor, you'll let their children literally remove body parts based on a lie about transgenderism. If you really love your neighbor, you'll let them kill their baby up until birth." What happened? People stopped thinking. If you really love your neighbor, you'll let them kill themselves with assisted suicide. All these evil things that the left does, but they started with our values. Rick Green: If you love your neighbor, if you're a good Christian, if you love the Constitution and freedom of speech, if you love freedom of religion, then you'll prove it by voting for a Muslim because that means you love freedom of religion. It's all poison, but we fell for it. Rick Green: So what do we do? How do we respond to this? It's not as important what happens to you as what you do with what happens to you. David Barton, my mentor, whom I've been with for almost 30 years, had his daughter remind all of us on election night of David's three major lessons in life. Rick Green: Number one, none of this surprised God. None of this took God by surprise. He wasn't shocked Tuesday night like I was. He wasn't surprised by the outcome. Of course, He knew what was coming. Rick Green: Don't forget that God is still in charge. He knew exactly what was happening. Sometimes He sends the delusion. That's what Thessalonians says. If you reject truth, He is going to send an illusion. God wasn't taken by surprise. Rick Green: Secondly, He's not as concerned about what has happened to us as what we do with what happens to us. How do we respond to it? That's what we'll spend most of the rest of the program on. Rick Green: Thirdly, don't forget that all things really do work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose. We do believe that. Rick Green: I do see opportunity in what has happened with the election. I see an opportunity just like after 2020. By the way, I don't think this election was as bad as 2020. I think we're better positioned come January than we were in January of 2021. Rick Green: God used that to wake up a lot of people. We wouldn't have had 2024 and all the victories of the last two years if it hadn't been for the evil that was perpetrated on us in 2021, 2022, and 2023. I believe God will use this for good. Rick Green: Part of that is that, just like in 2020, it will wake up a lot of people, cause a lot of people to feel some pain, and cause them to get involved. For Texas, it's going to mean a lot of pain. We're going to go through some rough years, I believe. I think it makes Texas a battleground state where a lot more money is going to get poured in here. A lot more of the left is going to move to Texas to try to completely take it over. Rick Green: I don't know that it means we're a blue state or even a purple state. Rick Green: I think we've been purple for a long time. I don't think it means we're now going to become Colorado. We could become Colorado if we don't respond well. Rick Green: So, back to that second point of David's maxims: we have to look at how we're going to respond to this thing. What are we going to do with what has happened to us? I believe God will work it for good if we respond well and do what we're called to do. Rick Green: I'm going to spend most of the second segment talking about that. I will take your calls in the second segment at 888-589-8840, your thoughts on the election and how you think we should respond. Rick Green: If you want to make a comment about how we got here in the first place, you might want to blame it all on the Iran war. I don't agree with J.D. Vance on that. I do not think it was all the Iran war and diesel prices. I think, again, it goes back to DOGE and the SAVE Act more than even the Iran war. It was a factor. I'm not dismissing it completely, and I wish we had gotten in and gotten out. But I wish we had gotten in, been more aggressive, and actually created the regime change that needed to happen, then gotten out. Rick Green: There's a lot we can talk about in terms of what caused the election. I'm more interested in calls about what you think we should do at this point. What are your solutions locally, or your alternatives, I should say? I think Thomas Sowell has always been right about that. There aren't solutions. There are only alternatives. Rick Green: What do we do with it? I'm going to talk a lot about some of the action steps we need to take as a result of this. What does it mean? How do we define this defeat? How we define it will determine how it affects us in the future. That's vitally important. Rick Green: The take-home messages are very important, but do not despair. Do not buy into these black-pill messages that it's all over. Don't grab your guns and go to the ranch, or any of that stuff. No, we get up. We get back on the bull or horse, however you want to look at it. We get back in the fight. Rick Green: The question is, how do we fight? What are the action steps going to be? That's what we'll talk about when we come back. Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution coach, doing a little post-election analysis. Most importantly, what does it mean to us, and how does it affect our actions going forward? Rick Green: As we said before the election, no matter what happens, our duty doesn't change. Our responsibility doesn't change. Our principles don't change. We do need to learn from the election. We need to accurately define what caused the losses so that we can try to prevent them in the future. But don't take home the wrong messages. Rick Green: Sometimes I worry that people will say this happened because Republicans were too bold, Trump was too bold, or they did too much too fast. No, I think the opposite. I think we lost the momentum because of not passing DOGE and the SAVE Act. I think we need to be more bold. I think we need to double down. The contrast has to be clear for people. Rick Green: We have to fight because we have a real enemy in this country, and that enemy is gaining ground. They are winning hearts and minds in addition to winning elections. That's the most dangerous part. Rick Green: What it means is that we have to do better at our messaging. We have to get better at knowing what the values are. We have to be able to defend free enterprise. We have to be able to defend Christian values permeating the culture. We have to be able to define what it means to love your neighbor. Rick Green: If you have a candidate who runs on a campaign of "Love your neighbor," and love your neighbor means allowing them to stay in sin or encouraging them to sin, encouraging them to do things that are going to destroy their lives, we lose. We've got to define better that loving your neighbor means telling them the truth. Loving your neighbor means treating them the way you would want to be treated. Rick Green: If I were headed toward a cliff, I would hope my neighbor would tell me to stop. I would hope my neighbor would show me some signs and give me some warnings instead of saying, "Keep driving that way. You do you, drive that way, and head off the cliff." Rick Green: I think history proves that loving your neighbor means that you speak truth. Obviously, speak it in love because of love, but don't be afraid to speak truth. Rick Green: Let's not let the message or meaning of the election be that we're supposed to be softer and quieter and sugary. No, I think what it means is that we need to be tougher. We need to be stronger. We need to be smart and wise. This is not a time to back off. This is a time to show up. Rick Green: We lost because we didn't show up. Our team did not show up. Evangelicals were way down. I think David Barton told me that, looking at the numbers, roughly 24 percent of those showing up were evangelicals in the last couple of elections, but this time it was only 17 percent. Rick Green: A significant decrease, really a 25 percent decrease in our influence and impact on the election. That means the other side showed up in bigger numbers, and we have to ask why. What are they doing? Rick Green: How much of our electorate now are either noncitizens who have been allowed to vote in some of these states or have figured out a way to vote? Or are they new citizens, immigrants who have moved to our country and did not have the values of our country when they moved here? Those are major factors in these numbers. Rick Green: Then, as we always do, we come back to education. Have we educated another generation of socialists? Have we encouraged them? We have. We've allowed the education system to teach people that socialism is good instead of teaching them the truth that socialism is bad, very, very bad. We've shouted that from the rooftops for 30 years. Rick Green: Fortunately, here are some good things about the education system. In Texas, what we're about to see is an epic battle over whether the gains of school choice, the State Board of Education, and the education standards are all going to be erased come January when these Democrats take over the governor's mansion and House of Representatives. Can the Texas Senate hold the line and prevent those gains from being lost? Can the State Board of Education maintain the gains that happened this summer? Rick Green: That's going to be some real down-in-the-weeds blocking and tackling, scratching and clawing in the trenches. The State Board of Education is basically going to be an eight-seven split at this point. The governor will get to appoint the chairman, and that will definitely be a leftist. That's going to be a huge battle. Rick Green: We had these big wins at the State Board of Education this summer. Those wins would probably be implemented over a couple of years. The textbooks and the reflection of what the standards would actually be, and what that would mean in terms of what happens in the classroom, weren't going to happen for a couple more years. It takes that long for those things to be implemented. With this massive change in Texas, we'll see how much of that can be held on to. Rick Green: School choice is something whose impact we wouldn't feel for years, but it was going to allow us to break the backs of the teacher unions that are the reason such a leftist ideology is being indoctrinated into our children. School choice is how you break that, and we just now got it. Rick Green: I blame Republicans for us just now getting it. Had they done that 24 years ago, when we got the majority in Texas, we would have a totally different outlook in Texas. We would have had a good education system and more people being taught the principles. Rick Green: So what am I saying? The failure of Republicans to do what they're supposed to do and said they were going to do when they get the levers of power is why they're now losing the levers of power. Rick Green: What's the lesson? What's the meaning we give to that? It means next time the pendulum swings, which is a big part of all this, you do everything you can to use that power for good. If you've been given the ring, use the ring and do everything you can to advance the agenda in the right direction. Rick Green: The left always does that. This is why Glenn Beck had a book on this, I think 10 years ago, called The Overton Window. If the left gains significant ground, let's say they move the agenda, perspective, and discussion 10 clicks to the left while they have power. Then, when Republicans get power, they only move things back one click. The other side gets power again, moves it 10 clicks the other way, and now we think we're gaining ground by moving it back even five clicks. Rick Green: No, we've still lost ground. That's the Overton Window. We think that moving within the gains of the left a little bit back to the right is a victory. It's not. Rick Green: My big disappointment in this whole thing is that we had the chance to move the Overton Window significantly to the right. Because we didn't do DOGE and the SAVE Act, we lost the opportunity to move the Overton Window. We made some big gains within the window. We stopped a lot of the damage and evil and got a few clicks back the other way, but we missed our opportunity to move it back in a big way. Rick Green: This pendulum is going to swing. We know the nature of man. We know the history of how these things work. When it happens again, when we get the opportunity again to take ground, we had better take it. When we get the opportunity to move the needle, we had better go all in. We will get that opportunity, but we had better be prepared for it. We had better be preaching this between now and then. Rick Green: I think our energy at this point has to be put into the next generation and education. We have to be working on our messaging. We have to get better at articulating our values. That means pouring into the sharp young leaders of the next generation. Rick Green: That's what we do at Patriot Academy. That's why the Patriot Institute is so important. I've got several dozen students here right now at the Patriot Academy campus, and that's what we're teaching them to do. But it needs to be several hundred, and it needs to be not just at Patriot Academy but in some of these other programs out there. Rick Green: The emphasis on messaging, articulating, and being able to win the day has to be our focus. I'm going to do my part. We're going to do that here at Patriot Academy. We're going to turn out hundreds and hundreds of young leaders who will be capable of doing that, but it needs to be thousands and thousands. Rick Green: We have a few dozen who are with us for a whole year. Next summer, we'll have hundreds and hundreds whom we'll have for about a week at a time. I want to ramp that up tenfold. I want to do thousands in the summer, get them in a state capital across the country, give them some training, and then have hundreds of them for a whole year here at the campus. Rick Green: I want to do ten times what we've been doing. We've seen great results. We know what we're doing at Patriot Academy is working, but we need to do it tenfold. We're going all in. We're going to double down. We're not going to back off, slow down, or let up at all. We're reloading and reengaging. Rick Green: We're on a 50-state expansion. We did five leadership congresses last summer in Idaho, Colorado, Florida, Delaware, and Texas. This next year, I want to do 20 states. I want to be in all 50 states within the next two or three years. In every state capital, we're going to take ground back. In every state, we're going to start training a new generation that gets it, that's articulate and passionate, that knows what the principles are that produce a good society, and knows how to win the day with those principles. Rick Green: We're going to raise up a generation that knows how to win, a generation of the men of Issachar that understands the times and knows what to do. Rick Green: You can help us do that right now by going to PatriotAcademy.com and sending that link to young people in your life. Send them to one of our leadership congresses next summer. Sponsor them. Don't just give them the information. Sponsor them. Rick Green: Ask your local Republican women's group, local Tea Party, Lions Club, or church to sponsor a student next summer. It's a thousand dollars to be a torchbearer and sponsor a student to go to one of our programs next summer. That's chump change compared to what was spent in this election. Every club in America can afford to do that for one student every year. Rick Green: I'm asking you, in the sound of my voice right now, to be one of those leaders, to be one of those torchbearers. Find a group to sponsor a student, and then help us find that young person we should be investing in. Find a young person who has some grounding but needs to be solidified. Find a young person whom you believe could be an articulate leader for their generation, and send them to us. Help us train them. Help us prepare the next generation. Rick Green: I've been doing this for 26 years. I know what happens when a student comes through one of our programs. I know how grounded and prepared we can get them for what's coming. We're not 100 percent. I've seen some kids go off the rails even after coming to Patriot Academy. But most of them don't. Most of them get that grounding. They find their people. They find other young people who are interested in this. They sharpen each other, and they stay together. Rick Green: Some of them have now served in Congress. They've run elections at the local, county, and state levels. They've been involved in presidential elections. Many of them are working at the White House right now. I know what happens when they come through our program. Rick Green: I'm proud of what we've done at Patriot Academy. I want to do more of it. I want to tenfold this thing and get more of them out there. I'm asking you to help us identify young people who would be good to invest in, and then invest in them yourself by sponsoring them to attend one of our programs. All of that is available at PatriotAcademy.com. Rick Green: Another thing you can do in response to this is prepare the troops at the local level. You may not be able to suddenly become president and push through some of this. You can't suddenly become a congressman who pushes through some of this. What you can do is prepare the people at the local level. Rick Green: By hosting a biblical citizenship class or a Constitution class, over the course of eight weeks you're going to embolden a handful of people. It may only be five people in your living room or three people in your living room. It could be 50 people at your church. We've seen it all. I've had people have 500 in their classes. Rick Green: What we know happens when they go through those eight weeks is like boot camp. It's like equipping the soldiers of intellectual warfare. Something happens during those eight weeks. A light bulb comes on, and they get emboldened. They realize the country is worth fighting for. They realize the principles work, and they realize they can do something about it. They end up with action steps they can take. Rick Green: Your response to this election should be to double down. Find some young people you can invest in. Start hosting Constitution classes in your church or your home, wherever it might be. Look for ways to rally the troops, get people more involved, and double down on this wonderful election system that we have. Rick Green: Don't give up. Don't say they stole it again, the system doesn't work, or we have too many immigrants now. Don't give up. Say, "Yes, all of those things are problems, but they can be solved." Rick Green: It really does come back to the Petri dish where the virus of bad government grows: civic and biblical ignorance. If we solve those two things, if we pinpoint those two things and say, "I'm going to be the catalyst in my family, my community, and my church for a restoration of biblical principles and values, and for civic literacy that understands the principles and values that produce a good society," then we can make a difference. Rick Green: If you double yourself between now and the next election, if just one other person catches that spirit, you will be successful. I know people who have gotten thousands of others involved. Can you be one who gets a dozen or a couple dozen people involved between now and 2028? Rick Green: Can you multiply yourself tenfold by getting ten other people educated, equipped, inspired, and taking action? That's the answer. That is literally the right way to respond to this kind of election. Rick Green: As an individual, commit yourself right now and say, "I'm going to tenfold myself. I'm going to be a tenfold force multiplier." You have two years to do it. You have plenty of time. Rick Green: There are people listening right now who, if they commit to do that, could a hundredfold themselves. You could have a hundred times increase in your commitment, conviction, and level of giving of your life, your fortunes, and your sacred honor. You can a hundredfold that if you start right now planning between now and 2028. Rick Green: Imagine what that means for the election results two years from now. Imagine what that can mean if a thousand of us did that. That's 100,000 votes going the right way, 100,000 people committed. Rick Green: What happens if you become one of our super coaches at Patriot Academy and put 1,000 people through, not 100 but 1,000? If a thousand of us do that, that's a million. Folks, that math actually works. That's how movements work. That's how you move a society. Rick Green: How do you think they've been able to win with this small minority of LGBTQ and Muslim people, and everyone else who doesn't share our values? They've been willing to do what I'm asking you to do. Rick Green: Welcome back to At the Core. I'm Rick Green. I was telling you some of the things that you can do. I hope you'll already be thinking about that. There's no time to give up or slow down. This is the time to double down and be a happy warrior. Be optimistic. Don't be one of these sour people who can light up a room by leaving. Rick Green: A lot of people feel really down right now because of the elections. What you can be is the person who comes alongside them and encourages them. I'm not talking about fake, happy hope. I'm talking about the fact that we have true hope in Christ and can have a solid optimism about our system. Rick Green: We know that if we work our system, the system works. What we also know is that we didn't work the system. Too many of our people stayed home and are disengaged. That means if we can get them engaged, which I know we can, then we can win. That's our battle. That's what we have to do. Rick Green: That's enough about the election. I want to do our final segment on something a little more optimistic. I love it when people go into the arts and take back the arts. Of course, I want to take back politics and business and have Christian principles in every one of those areas. I love it when there are good movies or music. Rick Green: Today I'm going to have an interview with a guy who does both of those things, Joel Smallbone of for KING & COUNTRY. He has a new movie coming out called Drummer Boy. I think you're going to enjoy this. It's a great way to go into the weekend, and I want you to go see the movie this weekend because it's opening weekend. Rick Green: We're talking about a new movie coming out for Christmas. It's amazing. It's called Drummer Boy. I think the way you put it is best. It's basically The Greatest Showman combined with The Patriot, combined with one other film you mentioned in your interview. Joel Smallbone: It's a thrill to be with you, Rick. I was just telling you off air that I'm literally in Burbank, which makes me sound like a real moviemaker. We just did a screening. Laura Harrier's mom is in the film. You might know her as Jan Levinson from The Office. She was just elated, so I'm sort of on cloud nine. She loved the film, and she sings in the film. Rick Green: The music is off the charts, of course. I expected no less from you. My only complaint was that I wanted more music. It was really good, even the dance scenes in the opening. Rick Green: So let's back up. Why Drummer Boy? Why the Revolutionary period combined with Christmas? How did this all come together? Joel Smallbone: It's crazy, Rick. You have those moments where you wonder, do you write life, or does life write you? It's the same with this. Does the music write you, or do you write the music? Does the movie write you, or do you write the movie? Joel Smallbone: I look at this film and think about how, from the beginning of for KING & COUNTRY, the song "The Little Drummer Boy," the Christmas classic, has followed us around. It's been such a defining song for us. We did our own rendition, put a bunch of drums on it, and played it on national television. I have TSA agents say, "You're from for KING & COUNTRY. You're the drummer boy guy, right?" Joel Smallbone: Simultaneously, I love storytelling. I've played my dad in the film Unsung Hero and been part of Young Washington. I love this medium of storytelling. Joel Smallbone: I grew up in Franklin, Tennessee, where there were massive battles fought in America. In a lot of these battles from a couple hundred years ago, they communicated through drum signals to spur each other on, to call a charge or retreat. Joel Smallbone: Again, you look at this and it seems like life is writing our story. You've got this band called for KING & COUNTRY, which is sort of a British mantra. You've got this song, "Drummer Boy." You've got this idea of two brothers ending up on opposite sides of the battlefield. I'm a musician. What if you take all of these pieces and put them together? We've been working on it for almost eight years. Joel Smallbone: Not to mention, it's the 250th anniversary of this great country. Rick Green: My son Reagan came over last night to watch it with me and screen it. There were a couple of times, including one of those opening scenes when he says, "For king and country," when Reagan was slapping me and saying, "Catch that, Dad. I see what they did there." That was cool. Rick Green: You have some big names in this. Iain Glen from Game of Thrones, for example. Joel Smallbone: Some incredible actors came along for the ride. Rick Green: You had to feel like a kid in a candy store. As much as you love acting and as good as you are at it, you were dealing with some next-level talent here. Joel Smallbone: They were all very kind. I'm a musician, and that's my day job, but I love the medium of acting. Actors can be very selfish, as musicians can be, but they were so kind and collaborative. Joel Smallbone: Charles Esten from Outer Banks and Nashville was incredible. His ability to improvise and understand motivation was magnificent. Then you had Iain Glen, with just the empathy in his eyes. I was really honored to bring this story to life with such incredible humans and actors. Rick Green: The young actor who plays your brother in the movie, I didn't know anything about him, but he was phenomenal. Joel Smallbone: He's an up-and-comer. He's actually on a BBC show called Crookhaven. It was interesting because I co-directed as well. You're meeting all these actors and they're auditioning for it. He came in and did the audition among some other really talented young men. Joel Smallbone: I directed him a bit, and then I got in a scene with him. I did this pivotal argument that forces the brothers to opposite sides of the battlefield at the dinner table. I went away and thought, "I really love him, but he'd never played a drum in his life." Joel Smallbone: I was so proud of our band leader, Garapitao, who's a drum major. He's excellent. Over three weeks, we basically built the drummer boy. Lucas worked so hard. I was in the hotel room next to him in Ireland, and you could hear him each night pulling up the snare drum. He really earned it. Joel Smallbone: It was very meta, too, because my brother Luke is the drummer boy in real life. I'm in a band with him, and this actor's name was Lucas. You had the real-life drummer boy with Luke and then the drummer boy with Lucas. Rick Green: I was going to ask you about Luke and the bit at the end after the movie. Is that going to play in theaters as well? Will you have that message at the very end? Joel Smallbone: It will. I'm glad you asked because this film is a gift to America for us. We are immigrants to this great country, and I love this country. Luke married an American, and they have four half-American children. We've dedicated our lives to singing the stories of God and the stories of life, primarily to America. Joel Smallbone: To have this opportunity on the 250th anniversary to share a story of forgiveness and freedom at a very pivotal point is not lost on me. The film comes out November 6, with the midterm elections just a couple of days before. We've all got a lot to look at. Joel Smallbone: I'm really proud to put it in cinemas. I'm excited to tell you that we are doing a BOGO. Are you familiar with that analogy? Rick Green: No, I didn't know what it was either. Joel Smallbone: My wife said, "No, we know this from Pinterest." BOGO is buy one, get one. I got together with Luke in the studio last week and said, "What if we offer America the first gift of Christmas? What if, for the opening weekend of the film, November 6, 7, and 8, for 72 hours, if you buy a ticket, you can bring a family member or friend for free?" They loved the idea. Rick Green: How do you do that? Do you go to your website? Joel Smallbone: Thank you for asking. The distributor is Angel. Go to Angel.com/drummerboy. Then the keyword is "gift." Go to Angel.com/drummerboy, use the keyword "gift," pick your cinema, grab your ticket, and get a second one for free. Rick Green: Opening weekend is critical. We need everybody to plan to go that weekend. If you're going to go, please go, because the math is rigged. In order for this to stay in cinemas until Christmas, we need a million people to show up in 72 hours. Joel Smallbone: That's right. So that needs to be your opening weekend. Rick Green: Friday night, November 6, and Saturday night. Plan your date night. Most of our audience is politically active and involved, so they're going to be worn out after November 3. They're going to need something cool to do that weekend, a good night for relaxing. Rick Green: If you want to celebrate freedom, forgiveness, and the 250th anniversary of this country, come see Drummer Boy in theaters. November 6 and 7 is opening weekend, and Angel.com/drummerboy will help you find theaters near you. Do the buy one, get one. Rick Green: Creatively, what a gamble. You have the Revolutionary period, all the costumes and everything, a new story, and then the music on top of it. To do this as a musical, and to have those scenes, I loved the hint at the beginning that it was going to be a musical. The beats and rhythm move. The way you guys moved with them was magic. Rick Green: You could have gambled on two of the three. You could do a new story and the Revolutionary period, but you're doing music too. How did you get peace about going for all of it? Joel Smallbone: Make no mistake, it's the most audacious project I've ever been a part of. It's the most expensive. I've spent the most creative time and investment on it ever. I spent four months in Ireland this year. I've never worked harder on a project in my whole life. Joel Smallbone: It's because I feel like we've got to take God-sized leaps. I really love that. Nothing good or great happens by just playing it safe. So, yes, you're right. It's three out of three. Joel Smallbone: I believe in music. I love music. I believe it can express something that speaking can't. It's an hour and 20 minutes of live action, with about 30 minutes of music, but it's predominantly a live-action film. Joel Smallbone: I love music, and I love this country. I love telling stories that are important for this time. So call me in a couple of weeks and talk me off the ledge. We'll see how we get on. Rick Green: Angel.com/drummerboy, keyword "gift." Remember that keyword to do the BOGO. I learned something today: BOGO. Rick Green: With The Greatest Showman, I still have the music on my favorites playlist on Spotify. Will you guys do that too? Will you release it as a musical track or musical scene? Joel Smallbone: The same day the film releases. The soundtrack will be everywhere you would like to find it. Rick Green: I appreciate you, man. God bless you. Keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to a big weekend next weekend. Joel Smallbone: Thank you for taking the time and for watching the film. It means so much to me. Rick Green: God bless you, man. I appreciate it. Rick Green: You could tell from what I was saying that I did that interview last week. Tomorrow is opening day, so this weekend is when you want to go see Drummer Boy. Go see it in theaters everywhere. Rick Green: Thanks so much for listening today. I hope you've enjoyed that interview. I'm excited about the movie, and I'm excited about taking back the arts, taking back politics, and taking back business. Rick Green: Come on, let's go be warriors out there and be good crusaders for Christ. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, see you guys. Have a great weekend. Walk with me, and I'll be back with you on Tuesday.
Rick Green opens with a candid post-election assessment, arguing that Republicans lost momentum when promised DOGE cuts and the SAVE Act failed to materialize and many evangelical voters stayed home. He examines the Texas results, the struggle to communicate biblical and constitutional principles, the role of education, and the need to respond with renewed courage rather than despair. Green calls listeners to invest in young leaders, host biblical citizenship and Constitution classes, and prepare for the next election.
In the final segment, Green talks with Joel Smallbone, musician, actor, and co-director, about Drummer Boy, a Revolutionary-era Christmas film built around music, freedom, forgiveness, and two brothers on opposite sides of the battlefield. Smallbone discusses the film’s ambitious production, its cast, and the challenge of bringing a faith-and-America story to theaters.
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