AFA celebrates America's 250th birthday with patriotic apparel
: America's 250th birthday. It's a great excuse to have some extra cake and ice cream, but we can help your celebration go well beyond that. Show your patriotism with America 250 apparel that will become a memento of this special year. We also have special episodes on AFA Stream to help underscore that America is a Christian nation and help you find God in the Constitution. Find all of this and more in one place. Afa.net topics250.
Real Truth for Today features Pastor Jeff Shreve of First Baptist Church
Welcome to Real Truth for Today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Texas. Now, here's Pastor Jeff.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, good Monday morning, and welcome to Real Truth for today. Pastor Jeff Schrieve here. Hope that you had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. The Bible tells us in Psalm 33, verse 12, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. There were so many events taking place in D.C. for the 4th of July, and it was cool to see, the Lord being magnified and glorified and called upon. And I know that there, was big rain on Saturday night, but, they waited it out and were able to come back together. I couldn't stay up that late. We watched some of President Trump's speech, but we didn't get to stay up for the fireworks. Had to watch that later. But it is a great milestone for our country 250 years. And we want to talk about what is going on, currently, right now in America. Some of the big Supreme Court cases, the birthright citizenship was a big one for sure. And to help me do that, I always think about my friend Rod Martin. Rod, he is so in tune with what is going on. I love his insights into things, especially geopolitical things. So, Rod, welcome to Real Truth for today.
Rod Martin: Great to be here.
Democrats hate Donald Trump because he's cleaning up Washington
Pastor Jeff Schreve: All right, so, Rod, let me get your take on, the festivities for the 250th. You know, we had people from the left. They hated everything, of course, they hate everything that Donald Trump does. They hate the fact that he's cleaning up DC Cleaning up the crime, cleaning up the statues, tried to clean up the pond, the pool, which is really hard to do because it doesn't circulate that well, and you're limited as to what chemicals you can put into it. I know a lot about that. I came from water treatment background. but, you know, they're just going to diss him at every turn. I thought it was pretty cool what we did for the Fourth of July.
Rod Martin: Well, it was wonderful. And, of course, they're gonna diss it cuz they hate Donald Trump. But it's not just Donald Trump they hate. we have a Gallup poll that's been circulating, of late that shows the difference in, the number of people on each side who say they're proud of their country. And Republicans are pretty consistently at, 92% proud of their country, no matter who's president. It does not matter who is president. That's pretty much what they say. Democrats are now at 36% who will say they are proud of their country. They do not love this country at all. And you knew that when they told you for the last couple decades that they want to fundamentally transform it. Well, that means change it into something else they believe. And they'll tell you it is systemically racist, it is systemically corrupt, it is systemically oppressive. And then out the other corner of their mouth, they'll say that literally everyone on earth ought to be able to come here and live here. Well, does that mean they hate all those migrants? Yes, they do. They must hate all of the people outside the United States because they want them to live in the United States. So it's just nonsense. But, on another level, it's not. It's very, very deliberate socialism. It is a Marxist worldview. And the head of the Democratic Socialists of America just said the quiet part out loud a couple of days ago when he said to the assembled gathering, our goal is communism. You just said it flat out. So, so this is what we're dealing with. That's why they hate this country. This is the freest, most prosperous country in the history of the world. And they just can't bear it. And they really can't bear that Donald Trump gets to preside over something that was inevitably going to be a hu celebration. Kamala Harris running the same celebration. Can you imagine how terrible it would be? I mean, first and foremost, Biden banned fireworks all four years he was in office. I mean, this is ridiculous. Trump last year put on a heck of a show with 20,000 fireworks. It was beautiful. I don't know if you saw it, it was incredible. This year, not 20,000, not 50,000, nearly a million fireworks. Biggest display in human history. Which is exactly what you ought to have to celebrate. A milestone as great as the freest country in the world, making it a quarter millennium. It's just extraordinary. we are the oldest constitutional republic in the world. And, may God grant us another 250, 500, 1,000, whatever, whatever he'll give us before the Lord returns.
We're watching a modern day French revolutionary takeover of Democratic Party
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so Rod, I heard, from James Carville that he was basically washing his hands of things or whatever. He said something to that effect. He can't believe what's happening in the Democrat Party because it's being taken over by socialists and Islamists and that's who's running for office and those people are winning. I want to play you a little clip from Victor Davis Hansen. He talked about this, exact issue and then get you to comment on it.
Victor Davis Hansen.: We're watching a modern day French revolutionary like takeover of the Democratic Party. You can call it the Reign of Terror or the Democratic guillotine. What I mean BY that, in 1793 and 94, when the French Revolution was well on its way, to fruition, a group of radicals, called Jacobins, led by the Robespierre brothers, hijacked that revolution and decided that they were going to go far, far to the left of the effort to abolish the monarchy and, rename the days of the week, the months. Start with a year zero concept, go out and attack private property and execute people. Now I don't think the Democratic Socialists are going to do that, but their takeover is similar to the Jacobin takeover. And what is their agenda? Their agenda is radical green, NewSong Deal, war on fossil fuels, open borders, no deportations. No deportations even for criminally convicted. in addition to that, cut the defense budget, defund the police, institutionalize diversity, equity, inclusion, chauvinism. we're all going to go by our incidental affiliations. If you're trans or gay or female or black or Asian, that's going to be what you identify in as a large group of victimized with complaints against the white male, etc. Etc. Victimizer class.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: All right, Rod, what do you think about his, analysis there?
Rod Martin: Well, let me preface this by saying that I agree with the esteemed Dr. Hansen about 90 to 95% of the time on virtually everything. But I think he might be being too optimistic. And, if he were here to have this discussion with us, I suspect he would agree because there are really two revolutionary frameworks in play. One is that of the American Revolution, which actually decentralized power actually took it from a ruling class and diffused it among the people. And people today can critique that in many, many ways, but it's foolish to do so because it's anachronistic. They took a world of kings and dukes and earls and knight and all kinds of landed gentry and turned it in to just two social classes. The people as a whole and then slaves. Now it's terrible that they still had slaves, no question about it. But no union could have been formed if you hadn't allowed the continuance of that. And they built into the system the seeds of slavery's destruction. The Southern states wouldn't come along with the whole thing. Most of the Northern states, actually all of the Northern states at that point had abolished slavery. That was the dominant position in the country. But the Southern states still got a say. So that took longer. But to go from like 15 social classes to basically two really is an extraordinary revolution, a tremendous flattening of everything. And by the way, Martin Luther King said it better than anybody when he said that he, he wasn't in any way condemning the American Revolution. He thought it was magnificent. He just wanted to get to share in it. He wanted the Declaration, which he described as a promissory note to be paid to the rest of the American people. Well, that's exactly the right way to look at it. This unleashed this amazing concept of the equal dignity of man because he's made in God's image. So there isn't a king who is better by birth. There isn't a duke or an earl who is better by birth. And there certainly isn't an expert class, self credentialed by that same class to rule over us unaccountable in unelected bureaucracies. So that's one revolution and Trump is acting on that. Trump is doing everything he can to overturn the parts, of what America has done since the NewSong Deal era to diminish actual popular control at the ballot box through this technocratic aristocracy that too frequently governs us. On the left you have the exact opposite. And this was the case in the French Revolution. It was the exact opposite of the American Revolution. It used much of the same language. It even involved a few of the same people. Thomas Paine left America and went to be part of the French Revolution because he believed in those values. He was not the man we thought him to be. And then for his troubles, Robespierre threw him in prison. So, so, you know, that really worked out well for him. And the French Revolution went in short order from something that was somewhat liberal in the sense of, you know, believing that regular people should rule to a, regicide and then the terror. And Dr. Hansen says, you know, that he doesn't think the democratic socialists here would use literal guillotines. But I think if he reexamines that, he probably would realize that a lot of Them would. I don't know that they'll be the ones in power, but I don't know that they won't. And then it proceeded from the terror to a coup d', etat, a monarchy, another monarchy, m. Another monarchy, and then, you know, various, periods of revolution that have been ongoing into the 20th century. France is a disaster in lots of ways, as great a nation as it is. And it's because of that revolutionary inheritance that became the prototype for all the communist revolutions, all of which are about exactly one thing. Power. He gives a list of things that the Democrats want to do. All of those things are correct, but they all add up to one thing, which is power to a small elite who rules you in your name and without your consent. And it is the exact overturning of the American Revolution, which is exactly why they have spent most of our lifetime trying to demonize the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so, Rod, how does a mainline Democrat deal with the Islamification and socialism, however you would term that taking over the Democrat Party?
Rod Martin: Well, they've got a tacit choice. They're going to have to pick a side, whether they want to say so out loud or not. And a lot of them very clearly have chosen the wrong side. You know, these Democratic socialists. Which is which? Look, the head of the DSA got up at 4 in front of a DSA convention in the last couple days and said, our goal is communism, quote, unquote. It's on tape. You can watch it. This is who the Democratic socialists are. Don't. Don't buy the rhetoric. They'll tell you our goal is communism. Okay? So you can decide that that is the right path. And a lot of mostly lost people are going to do that because. Because communism, socialism, whatever you want to call it, is fundamentally about envy and executing on our basest, most sinful instincts. The rest of them are going to have to do what Bill Maher and Elon Musk and now James Carville have done and say, you know, there's nothing here for me, and all those people aren't going to join the Republican Party. But it's noteworthy that Elon did and Allen Dershowitz even did, and we're seeing quite an interesting exodus in a lot of parts of the country.
Preborn currently has clinics that do not have ultrasound machines
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, you're listening to Real Truth for today. Pastor Jeff Schrieve here, talking to my friend Rod Martin. We're talking about the issues of the day and the celebration that took place Saturday in Washington, D.C. and cities all across America celebrating 250 years of America's Birth. We'll be right back after the break.
: Candace talks about finding out she was pregnant. Thankfully, an ultrasound provided by PreBorn allowed her to hear her baby's heartbeat.
Jeff Chamblee: The sonogram sealed the deal for me. My baby was like this tiny little spectrum of hope and I saw his heart beating on the screen and knowing that there's life growing inside, I mean, that sonogram changed my life. I went from just Candace to mom. Thank you. To everybody that has given these gifts. You guys are giving more than money. You guys are giving love.
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Martin discusses the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the Bible says in Psalm 33, verse 12. And we were able to celebrate as a Nation on Saturday, July 4th, 250 years, as a nation, as a free and independent nation. The signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. And to talk about the current events and, issues of the day, my friend Rod D. Martin. Rod is a geopolitical commentator. he's a philosophical, capitalist. Isn't that how you refer to yourself, Rod?
Rod Martin: Well, the Guardian called me a philosopher capitalist. So I'm rather enamored of that.
The Supreme Court struck down Trump's executive orders on birthright citizenship
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, so we were talking at the break, the Supreme Court ruling regarding the 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship, they struck down Trump's executive orders, on that issue was, not the outcome that conservatives wanted by any stretch of the imagination. It seems ridiculous, it seems out of touch with what the Founding Fathers, if they were to, rule on that today, they would obviously, based on the things they wrote, they would not, say, yeah, that's what we wanted. So give me your take on what happened with that ruling.
Rod Martin: Well, the Founding Fathers just would have, would have scratched their heads in disbelief. Of course, the Founding Fathers didn't give us the 14th amendment. That was the radical Republican Congress during reconstruction in 1868. They would also scratch their heads in disbelief because, as we were talking about over the break, you know, there is a tremendous amount of verbiage recorded from all of the relevant parties in 1868. This was, The 14th amendment is long. It does a lot of things. And every jot and tittle got debated at length at every level of the process. So we know what they thought. And no one in either the House or the Senate thought that this meant anything like what the Supreme Court just said. The Attorney General of the United States promised the country that it didn't mean what the Supreme Court just said. The Supreme Court ruled in the same way that Clarence Thomas would have in the slaughterhouse cases in 1873, just five years later. There's nobody anywhere who thought that this established birthright citizenship for anybody except the slaves. They were trying to actually give citizenship and ultimately voting rights in the fifteenth Amendment to the slaves and the children of slaves, who, of course, famously had been deemed in Plessy versus Ferguson just before the Civil War. Not Plessy, I'm sorry, Dred Scott, just before the Civil War as not even really being human. So they certainly couldn't be citizens. And that is a huge, huge accomplishment. But it wasn't trying to accomplish Chinese birth tourism. That's just absurd. And nobody ever thought that until the middle of the 20th century. So even in the Wong Kim Ark case, which the majority cites to from 1898, it doesn't have anything to do with this. Wong Kim Ark establishes that the child born here of two legal residents, although not citizens, but legal residents, were, was a citizen. Okay, fair. I'm, I'm good with that. But what is not okay is the idea that literally anybody can just fly over the United States, give birth in an airliner, and their kid is a citizen, and they get to bring the whole family to Detroit. That's crazy. Especially in an era with a significant welfare state. You're just begging people to come here and live off the system, which is exactly what we're seeing happen. So I'm not overly disturbed by the ruling because all it does is ratify the way people have thought about the, the citizenship clause now for the last 50, 60 years. Nothing really fundamentally changes in the short term, but it's really bad law. It's poor interpretation, and it is demonstrative of a huge error that has existed in our universities, certainly my entire lifetime. Deconstructionism, which asserts the idea of, standpoint epistemology, standpoint hermeneutics, the idea of that the only thing that matters is how the reader perceives what is written. The author not only doesn't matter, but you're actually in error to consider what the author thought. So. So I think Roberts and. And Barrett, who ruled with the majority, along with, you know, the three. The three socialist justices. Robertson, Barrett. I think we're taking a textualist approach. They were looking at the text as written, and I think they came to the wrong conclusion, even on a textualist basis. But I can at least defend their point of view on that. The problem is that textualism, unmoored from original intent, the idea that what the author meant by it, what the legislature meant by it, what the people who ratified it meant by it, is just irrelevant. Textualism, unmoored from originalism, is just deconstruction in another form. It is radical. It is not Christian, and shame on them. So I'm hopeful that Molly Hemingway is right and Jon Roberts will retire soon, and maybe Trump can replace him with Clarence Thomas and get us a new associate justice more in the mold of Alito.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Rod, why do you think, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Why do you think? And Roberts. Why do you think they ruled the way they did? I mean, those people aren't dumb. you don't get to be a Supreme Court.
Rod Martin: No, not at all.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: most of the time, you don't get to be a Supreme Court justice if you're the village idiot.
Rod Martin: although, unless you're Ketanji Brown Jackson. Yes.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: they know the implications. They know the ramifications of their ruling. so why do you think they did what they did?
Rod Martin: You know, everybody is influenced by their peer group. You and I saw this a great deal with a lot of pastors in the SBC during the fight over Resolution 9 and all these other issues that we faced a, few years ago. And fortunately, that ship seems to be riding a bit with the election of Willie Rice. It's been president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I'm very hopeful about that. I think Clint Pressley did a pretty good job, too. and so maybe the future is brighter. But what we learned, as you know, is that sometimes principle doesn't matter as much as who you went to seminary with and who you roomed with and who your buddies are. And I think that has summarized a great deal of Jon Roberts time on the court. Jon Roberts is very happy with his clique in the Beltway, and, most of the time, he votes right. I really want to stress that. And Barrett has been fantastic on an awful lot of things, but Roberts is swayed by his social group. He also hates Donald Trump, but that's not what this was. Barrett is swayed by Roberts, and I'm just really kind of aghast. At the degree to which we've seen that to be true. So I think we just really need a personnel change. But we also need to solve a philosophical argument. In conservative jurisprudence, there has come to be a bit of a split. When you and I were younger, you know, people talked about original intent quite a lot. So certainly Reagan did. and that was a radical idea to a court that had been dominated by the left since the NewSong Deal. But now there's a more subtle debate, this debate between textualism and originalism. And, to split those two is just horribly wrong. I mean, it's exactly the same problem you're getting in the SBC in this fight over women pastors. You know, if you unmoor first Timothy 3 from first Timothy 2, then you get a different result than if you actually read it as one letter from the apostle to his. His mentee. And. And, you know, it's. It's just foolishness. These guys should know better, but they are. There's a philosophical debate going on there that I think can be resolved. And I think Donald Trump is a lot savvier than people realize, and he's going to know better questions to ask the next candidate for an appointment.
The conservative movement pushed for Amy Coney Barrett
I will say one last thing. In Trump's defense with regard to Barrett. The entire conservative movement begged and cajoled and arm twisted Donald Trump to get specifically Amy Coney Barrett. It's one of the few times in American history where the public actually had an opinion on who should be a Supreme Court justice, and. And she looked good on paper. So he gave the movement what it wanted, and that turned out to be flawed.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Hey, Rod, when it comes to those big decisions like that, I'm just curious, how many of those justices get together behind closed doors and talk through things? Which way are you going to vote on this and why? Or are they more siloed in how they're doing things?
Rod Martin: No, no. they have significant personal relationships. They do debate these things. there's, Yeah, it was interesting. Some of the people who, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, for instance, were famously friends. They disagreed on everything and they discussed everything. And so it's actually a much more collegial group than it might seem. And that normally doesn't prevent them from ruling very, very strongly in the way that they each individually choose to do. That's not the circle most influencing Jon Roberts. Jon Roberts has a social circle that just absolutely could not imagine overturning Obamacare, and he ultimately found a way to uphold it, even though it was blatantly unconstitutional, didn't have a severability clause. He just pretended that wasn't even true. that's absurd. And then we get this ruling here because no one in the beltway can even imagine a world where birthright citizens citizenship isn't the law. And you know, I debated a Yale law professor on this issue about a year, year and a half ago and she had been an official in the Obama administration. She's debating in good faith. She's obviously incredibly well educated, well knowledgeable about the issue. She literally just couldn't even imagine our position. It just flummoxed her that anyone could disagree. And, and that is the, the water in which Roberts swims. So you know, that's the problem and we've, we've got to solve that problem. But it's a personnel issue and, and these are lifetime appointments, so we may not get that solution soon. But none of these guys are young.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: It just seems like such a no brainer, that this is ridiculous. Somebody can just come over here, have a baby and then you're a citizen. It cheapens citizenship. That doesn't really mean much at that point. Okay, so what is the conservative response moving forward? Mike Johnson said we can have a constitutional amendment that would root this out. Where do we go from here?
Rod Martin: Johnson, of course is correct, but that isn't going to happen. I mean we're not going to get 2/3 in the House or the Senate, so we can't refer an amendment to the states. We could call a Constitutional convention that's provided for in Article 5. Everybody freaks out when you say that because they think it's going to be this runaway thing and they're going to replace our form of government. No, that's not how that works. Article 5 of the Constitution spells out the rules, very clearly. And anything that such a convention did would have to be ratified by three fourths of the states. I don't know if we would get 38 states. I'm not sure. So our best course forward is probably a change in personnel at the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh, in his ruling, which was partly in concurrence and partly in dissent, seems to have, and certainly some friends of mine, like Ken Blackwell have said, lays out a pathway by which Congress could do this legislatively. I think that's exactly wrong. And I don't think the court would uphold it because they actually ruled on the substance of the text. They didn't overrule a law. They actually ruled on what is or is not the proper interpretation of the citizenship clause? The 14th amendment, Congress doesn't have any authority over that other than by the amendment process. So I think in the short term, honestly, the answer is, is enforcement. If we keep illegal aliens out of the country, if we're aggressive on deportations, as we should be, if we, if we actually do the things we need to do to secure America, there becomes very little opportunity for birth tourism other than tourists showing up and giving birth on a tourist visa. And that shouldn't be that hard to regulate either. So I think Trump has this problem in the direction of in hand. And, certainly the ceiling of the southern border has gone a long way toward that. this is not an insoluble problem. We're just not going to have a perfect solution by Tuesday.
Rod Martin: Transgender sports ruling is extremely important on the constitutional level
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Okay, Rod, shifting gears a little bit. So the Supreme Court also ruled on the, no biological men in women's sports, but that they just kicked it to the states. So what does their ruling really say if it. If the states can just say, well, we're going to, we're going to allow that.
Rod Martin: Well, this is an extremely important ruling. And I want to stress, by far the most important ruling is the one we haven't talked about, which is the Slaughter case, that, that's transformative. This transgender sports ruling, though, is really, really vital because the assertion of the left has been that sex, as we understand it in our civil rights laws and equal protection, as we understand it in the 14th Amendment, means sexual, sexual orientation. And that was never true. And again, if you had tried to pass the Civil Rights Rights act with that position, it would have gotten three votes. So. So, they came down pretty strongly on the idea that if a state wants to do this, it can, but there's no constitutional right to let boys play in girls sports. And that's a huge, huge thing on the constitutional level.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Talking to Rod Martin. When we come back from the break, we'll be taking your calls. 888-589-884. That's 888-589-8840. Give us a call and let's talk.
: If you'd like to contact Pastor Jeff, email pastorjeffromhisheart.org now back to Real Truth for today with Pastor Jeff Schrieve.
Supreme Court overturns rule that made it impossible for president to fire anyone
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Welcome back to the program. Pastor Jeff here talking to my friend Rod Martin. We're talking about the issues of the day. Rod, we had talked at the break about this, Slaughter case. I wasn't very familiar with that, but you, said that is a major ruling from the court. Tell us about that one.
Rod Martin: We've had a lot of big rulings this term. This is the biggest by far. This overturns a 91 year old case called Humphrey's Executor, which, long story short, made it basically impossible for the President to fire anybody. Now, he could fire cabinet members, he could fire political appointees, but that only comes to less than 5,000 total people in a federal government workforce of 2.8 million. Although, to be fair, the President has been able to get rid of a lot of them through reductions in force which are permitted. And you know, there are various mechanisms by which you can reduce size but not fire individual bureaucrats who are working against the administration. And you'll recall, when Trump was inaugurated last year, there was a poll of federal bureaucrats that found that 42% intended to, and I quote, resist the Trump administration. Okay, that's a problem because in this country we're actually supposed to be ruled by elections. That means that you get to peace, peacefully overthrow your government every two or four years. And if you pick a president with a different point of view from the last president and he can't implement his policies because all of the bureaucracy is doing the same things it was under the other guy then elections didn't even matter. It just absolutely eviscerates the idea of the American Revolution. That's been the law we've been operating under since 1935. The Supreme Court overturned Chevron two years ago, which was a similarly huge decision in that the court had decided in the 80s that if an administrative agency, had an administrative law court and you had a judgment before one, you couldn't appeal to an Article 3 court. So they had created a subject matter dictatorship in each of these different agencies. This court overturned that in 20, 24. So again, let's praise Robertson Barrett there. They were very much part of that. This Humphrey's executor ruling, this overturn of it in the, in Trump v. Slaughter is really transformative. The only footnote to it is the Cook case. He fired Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. they stayed that while litigation is pending. We'll see how influenced Roberts is by his cocktail party circuit on that. But the logic of, the logic of the Slaughter case suggests very strongly that that will end well too, Rod, as
Pastor Jeff Schreve: it relates to people hating Donald Trump, people on the left hating Donald Trump, and, and maybe Justice Roberts circle of friends that hate Donald Trump. Is it just because he's bombastic or do they hate the fact that he's disrupting and overturning their apple cart.
Rod Martin: There's almost literally nothing about Donald Trump they don't hate. But it's the latter. Donald Trump is pointing the tip of a sword directly at the thief throat of the deep state that has incurred the wrath of the intelligence community of all of these federal labor unions that represent the lion's share of the federal bureaucracy. All of these different agencies like usaid, which fortunately is now shut down. USAID had a bigger budget than the state, State Department and the CIA combined, and supposedly was doing hunger relief around the world, when in reality we found out it was actually doing forced sterilizations of native women in Peru. It was doing LGBT versions of Sesame street in Iraq. It was overthrowing governments everywhere you could point at. And it was propping up left wing media in the United States, which was absolutely criminal in practice. So what we have seen since the end of usaid, as just one example, is that we have had virtually all of Latin America unelect their socialist governments. Every country you can point at in South America that's had an election has gotten rid of the social since the dissolution of usaid. So this kind of thing is not just national in scope, it's global. And the globalists who run that unaccountable, unfavorable, deep state benefit tremendously from it because they're using your tax dollars to advance their politics. And what Trump is doing is shutting that down, both through judicial appointments and through executive action, and of course, also through the legislation he's able to get through. we'll see how the midterms go. I'm actually pretty bullish. I think we will, we will hold our own. We may actually expand our majority slightly. I really don't think we're in nearly the trouble people are always talking about, but it's going to take every possible vote to make sure that's true. And if that goes well, the final two years of Trump, too, are just going to be breathtaking and the left is going to shriek for sure.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, we hope that takes place. Well, we're going to the phone lines. 888-589-8840. And we have Brett on the line from Ohio.
Rod Rut: Speaker Johnson should introduce Freedom from America Act
Brett, welcome to Real Truth for today.
Caroline: Hey, thanks for taking my call. We love the show.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Thank you, brother.
Caroline: I have a comment that I would like to see Speaker Johnson introduce legislation, and he can call it the Freedom from America Act. And if you're a politician or a citizen who doesn't like the country if you resign your position, resign your citizenship, the government will pay for your flight to whatever, nation you want to go to.
Rod Martin: Yeah, I'm very much for that. And I actually think the Trump administration could do that administrative, administratively, and probably would. You saw that, we incentivized illegal aliens to self deport, by giving them an iPhone app. And if they apply through the iPhone app and self report who they are and tell the government, look, I'm here illegally, but I'm leaving, we will allow them to get back in line to come legally, but wants their home. Note, I said in line, not the head of the line. And we'll give them $3,000 cash, plus a plane ticket. So that was all done administratively out of, I guess, INS's budget. And, and I agree with you, if somebody hates America so much, and Gallup tells us that only 36% of Democrats consider themselves to be even slightly proud to be an American or proud of their country. Okay, if you hate America, why are you here? And why are you flooding the country with foreigners that you think have a right to be here? Do you hate them? You know, yeah. So it's just, it's nonsense and it's got to stop. And I love your comment.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Well, Rod, what we're hearing from all these people visiting from foreign countries for the World cup, they say, man, America is nothing like what I had been told by the liberal media. We love it here.
Rod Martin: Well, and depending on the European country particularly that you're talking about, their media is shockingly anti American. And it's also very monolithic. If you live in Austria, there's pretty much one channel. There is one channel, and that's pretty much what you watch. And it's, you know, uniformly Trump is evil, and America is just falling down. Everything's dirty, everyone's a murderer, everything's terrible. And then they get here, and it's just the coolest place in the world. And the YouTube videos are amazing. So, yes, we probably just did more for America's public image by hosting the World cup, than everything we've done in the last 50 years.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Yeah, good point. Brad, anything to add?
Caroline: I'll hang up and let you answer. I don't understand why reason isn't applied to some of these potential candidates and some of these people who are participating in fraud with money and things in Minnesota. And, you know, people who want to run, like the woman in Colorado, you know, it seems to me that there ought to be a warning shot to them saying, look, if you want to Run on this. Go ahead. But understand, you may be facing treasonous charges if you do this. I don't. I don't understand why that's, not applied and why treason hasn't been more involved with some of these candidates. And I'll thank you for, listening to my message, and I'll hang up and let you answer.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Thanks, Brett. Rut.
Rod Martin: Well, first and foremost, amen. the technical answer is that treason is very narrowly defined in the Constitution, is literally giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which has been held to be an actual wartime enemy, and, arguably requires a declaration of war and not just normal hostilities, although I think that's very much debatable. so treason is a little hard to use in most of these cases. Cases. The last people we executed for that, of course, were the Rosenbergs for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets, which demonstrates that you don't actually have to be at war with the enemy. So it probably could be applied more broadly. But the founders were very narrow in their application of it because pretty much any opposition to the king got labeled treason and therefore punishable by death, and they didn't want that. However, you mentioned fraud. Anybody who's committing fraud can go to prison for a very long time. Oh, wait. If they're doing it in a conspiratorial way, they can also go to prison for conspiracy. Oh. If it's a big enough conspiracy of a particular kind, now you can get them for racketeering, and you can get into their networks. And my guess is we're gonna see the Trump administration use RICO to go after Antifa and the SPLC and some of these other outfits if that becomes necessary. But the SPLC indictments were really encouraging. And then, of course, you do have one other thing that will just completely flip out the left, which is if you committed fraud in your naturalization process to become a citizen, we can lawfully revoke your citizenship and deport you. And. And the administration is clearly looking at some of that. So. Okay, all of that, plus one more thing that is worth noting. It is still good constitutional law that you can prohibit people from being communists. It actually is that, we've done that legislatively. Those laws are on the books. The Supreme Court has never overturned that. Why? Because it is inherently a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. You do have the right of free speech. You do not have the right to overthrow the government of the United States. And that is, well, trod constitutional ground. So the fact that the president has taken up this, cause of explicitly opposing communism as the greatest threat to the country in his speeches over the weekend suggests strongly that they're going to start looking at that in a way that they haven't previously. And that could be very consequential.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Rod, as far as threats to America and to our continued existence, Socialism is a big threat. Islamism is a big threat. Which one do you see as the biggest threat?
Rod Martin: They are hand in hand. it is just staggering to see how this red green alliance has developed where you have people who absolutely hate each other. You know, the Muslims hate the communists, the communists hate the Muslims. Doesn't matter. They'll work together because they hate us more. And so, you know, you see these crazy things in our streets, like queers for Palestine, okay? So you're prancing around in, in garb that really shouldn't be allowed in public and, you know, doing all this stuff because you're in solidarity with Hamas.
Islam and communism seek to overthrow American system by using freedoms against itself
And a reporter went over to Gaza, two or three years ago and asked the head of Hamas, have you heard of Queers for Palestine? And he said no. They said, if the Queers for Palestine came to Gaza and held a demonstration here, how would you react to that? And he said, we would execute them. Just deadpan, we would execute them. Okay, that's the thing. When the ayatollah said, there are no homosexuals in Iran, he wasn't kidding. They kill them. And, and so why would people who would instantly be killed by the people they're working for work for those people? And the answer is Islam and communism both seek to overthrow the American system by using the freedoms of the American system against itself. And they are hand in hand in that aim until they finish us off, and then they'll kill each other.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Rod, we just have about a minute left. But the freedoms that the founders built into America, that we enjoy, do they have their own mechanism for our destruction being taken over by Islam or socialism?
Rod Martin: Well, they do. I mean, there's no question. You have an election and you persuade enough people to be a socialist, you're going to end up socialist. Reagan talked about that in the context of decolonialization in Africa. You know, everybody wanted one man, one vote. And Reagan said, yeah, but if you vote for the socialists, it's one man, one vote, one time.
: Ah.
Rod Martin: And so, yeah, you can use the system against itself, but the system is extremely robust. We just made 250 years. And the truth is, light is the best disinfectant. The more we talk about socialism, the more it's going to lose.
Pastor Jeff Schreve: Amen to that. Well, Rod, thank you for being my guest. It's always a pleasure, my friend. God bless you. And, go out today. As we always say, shine for Christ and share what great things the Lord has done done for you. And God will use you as his witness. God bless you.
