Ed Vitagliano: Welcome back, everybody. Ed Vitagliano sitting in for Tim Wildmon this week. I'm joined in the studio by Wesley Wildmon, and Dr. Ray Prichard joins us remotely. Ray, tell our listeners a little bit about your ministry, Keep Believing Ministries. Give us a website and tell us what's there. It's Christmas time, and you've got something cooking.

Ray Prichard: We had Pastor Jerry Lawson on last half hour talking about these wonderful AFR buttons. By the way, I think this year's design is amazing. Here's another way you can get ready for Christmas. We've got a brand new Advent series coming out. In fact, it's available now. It's called The King Is Near: Advent from the Gospel of Mark.

It's Christmas like you've never thought about it, because you've got the manger, the wise men, and the star, but that's mostly in Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. This year, we're going to take 25 days, from December 1 through December 25, and walk through Mark's Gospel. We're going to see Jesus in a brand-new way.

If you want to download the e-book for your Kindle or, if you use EPUB, we've got that as well. If you want a PDF, go to KeepBelieving.com. There's a big banner across the top of our website that says, “The King Is Near.” Click on the link, and it's a free download.

If you want a printed copy, and I've got one in my hand right here, you can get it through Amazon, not from us. Either way, get it as a free e-book or order it on Amazon. For 25 days, you're going to have a devotion, a prayer, and a QR code that takes you to Christmas music on YouTube that goes with the daily readings.

It's called The King Is Near: Advent from the Gospel of Mark. Go to KeepBelieving.com and download your free e-book today. Join us starting December 1 for Christmas like you've never seen it before.

Ed Vitagliano: That sounds great. Thank you, Ray.

Wesley Wildmon: I've just had two thoughts. First, generally speaking, and thinking about my generation, I'm 37 years old, and I've seen all phases of life over the last 20 years. You may have had a similar experience when you were growing up, but I've seen a rampant increase in selfishness among American people in general, on a level that I would have never thought possible to recover from without a revival or a spiritual awakening.

In addition to absolute selfishness, one part of that is the complete lack of care for human life and other people's lives. We see that in particular in the abortion issue. The pro-life movement had a monumental win in overturning Roe v. Wade, but when the issue goes back to the states, many of them turn around and want to find ways to salvage or keep their abortion mills and continue killing innocent babies.

People are inconsiderate. They don't put themselves in other people's shoes, and they're callous. That callousness hardens people's hearts toward others who are suffering.

In spite of differences in ideas, as many people have already pointed out, Charlie Kirk was a father. He provided for his family, and from all the images and people's testimony, he showed up for his wife and his kids. He was a leader at work. He was a boss, and people looked up to him in that capacity.

In spite of your differences and ideas, as humans, and especially as Christians, we have to be able to appreciate good leadership and good husbands. There are several people on the Democratic side whom I can look at and say, “They are showing up for work. They're not using profanity in public when a lot of people are listening to their speeches.” There are a lot of things I can appreciate in spite of having great differences with them and, at times, harsh words to say about their views.

I would never wish them dead. I would never want to dig them up and rebury them a second time, which I guess is the audio we have.

Ed Vitagliano: We may not get to that, but I think those things are linked. I think the callousness toward unborn babies has seeped into every other area of life because there is just hatred for human beings.

Guest: That's what came to us. The first gift to man was life, and that's what came under attack.

Ed Vitagliano: We're all recovering from Tuesday's debacle, and it turns out the whole thing was an operation. Van Jones was on CNN talking about something called the American Accountability Network.

Wesley Wildmon: We were talking about this on Monday. You're going to hear about it again tomorrow, because Abe is going to be talking about it.

Ed Vitagliano: I want you to listen to Van Jones. Basically, what he's saying is that there was an organization that organized an online campaign to make affordability the number one issue of the election, shutting out every other issue. They found the playing field and set the rules of the game. Is it any wonder that they won? Think about next time if they want to do this with any other topic. How are we supposed to fight this? Let's listen.

Van Jones: How did we win the narrative on affordability, with just these nice little Democrats out there running for office and going door to door? No. The Republicans never figured out what we were doing.

There's something called the American Accountability Network. Tens of thousands of online humans, not bots, coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online. Thirty-two and a half million people hit Instagram every day. Eighty-eight point eight million hit Twitter, or X, every single day, and 185 million hit Facebook every single day.

The Republicans could not understand that it wasn't bots. It was actual human beings. The most effective online organizing campaign called the American Accountability Network flew under the radar screen. We had been talking about the issue, saying you need Democrats to deal with the kitchen-table affordability message, and tying that to Democrats in a positive way and Republicans in a negative way.

The Republicans never figured out what we were doing. Everywhere you went, people were talking about affordability and kitchen-table issues. They couldn't get any traction on these cultural-war issues anymore because we figured out how to get around all that.

It wasn't just all the door knocking that was done, which was amazing. It wasn't just our amazing candidate quality. We had something called the American Accountability Network. Don't get mad at me. I was given permission to reveal this. They never figured it out.

That network is going to continue to push kitchen-table issues and hold our Democratic lawmakers accountable.

Wesley Wildmon: There's a lot to say about him revealing something that worked. I don't know if that's great from a strategic standpoint, because I would keep doing it and not tell anybody. Why give us time to combat it?

When he got to cultural issues, he started to say, “We found a way to get around that.” No, it didn't work. The cultural issues Van Jones and the Democrats have used for the last couple of years were losing issues for the majority of the American people, independents, and some Democrats. That's why they went in a different direction.

Ed Vitagliano: Are you saying that cultural issues like abortion and marriage were losing issues for the Democrats?

Wesley Wildmon: No, I was talking about men in women's sports and the border. There are three or four issues like that that the American people were fed up with. They were using those issues, but you're right, those are still effective.

Ed Vitagliano: Instead of dealing with those issues, as he says, they went around them.

Wesley Wildmon: That's right. I would also say that Van Jones was, quote unquote, given permission. He's supposed to be an impartial commentator and analyst on television, but he is clearly part of the Democratic machine because he had to be given permission to reveal something very newsworthy.

The fact that they are revealing it, when you said they probably shouldn't have revealed it and should have just kept doing it, speaks to the arrogance that is now on the left. The right has had its share of arrogance whenever it won, but this arrogance reveals that the left thinks it has won and that there's no need to hide this anymore because it's in control.

The other thing I want to mention, and I want to ask our guest to fill this out a little bit more, is that these individuals who are part of the American Accountability Network were very intentional about saying these weren't bots. These weren't just computers spinning out messages. These were people paid to propagandize, thousands of them.

Guest: The numbers are staggering. I think you're absolutely correct that they are now arrogant about this, but it is going to take a momentous effort to counter it. The only thing I can think of is that if conservatives put together the same kind of program, they might be able to pull even. But they now get to determine and define the playing field.

What happens when these organized people decide to put out anti-Semitic messages? They're going to double down on the anti-Israel position because they've already got a head start on that, and then that becomes the issue.

Ed Vitagliano: I guess the question is, was there ever really an affordability crisis, or did we just create one because perception is reality? Now everybody thinks there was an affordability crisis. I was talking with Fred, and he noted that people were going on vacation the same as they always were. Things cost a little bit more, but it wasn't a crisis.

I don't think they can put anything into this machine and define the playing field for any election. How are we supposed to fight back against that? Assuming that what Van Jones said is the literal truth, and that is a big assumption because he advocates for his leftist positions, is it possible that the Republican National Committee and the people with millions of dollars never knew this was going on under the radar?

Guest: I think it's likely, because you don't know the people you're talking to or communicating with on social media. It's not like I talked to Jerry down at the Piggly Wiggly, and he told me something, and we had a discussion about it in aisle three. These are people we don't know.

I think it's entirely likely, because we see this in other areas. We see protests spring up out of nowhere, energized by social media. There are teams already ready with signs printed.

Look at the Palestinian issue and the anti-Israel sentiment. You see the same signs all over the country saying the same things. During the riots initiated in Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd, people went to protests and drove by pallets of bricks. They asked, “Where did these bricks come from?”

I think this is entirely likely, that it is absolutely true. When we were discussing this issue in our leadership meeting Monday morning, I mentioned something Abraham Hamilton the Third had talked about when he was a guest on Today's Issues. He talked about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party using radios. They made sure every home had a radio and that radios were always playing in public places and schools because they were always broadcasting the Nazi message.

If you want to brainwash an entire generation, that's the kind of thing you do. That's what this sounds like.

Ed Vitagliano: It does. The fact that we know there are millions of bots out there creates a whole bunch of noise that makes the effort we're talking about here with real people blend into the background.

Guest: It's genius. As Wesley said, maybe he shouldn't have admitted this to the national media, but it's genius that they pulled it off.

Ed Vitagliano: Perception is reality. Do we really have an affordability crisis? It's in the eye of the beholder. We've heard a lot about gas prices. The president was playing defense on gas prices for months ever since the Iran war started. When gas prices get above four dollars, it feels like an affordability crisis. It also feels that way when you go out to eat lunch and the bill comes in at 55 or 60 dollars. It feels that way to the average American.

Wesley Wildmon: The person who posted this also said that oil crashed the day after Democrats took Congress. The day after the election, Brent crude fell 8.7 percent in a single day. The other index of oil fell 13 percent on the week, the worst week for oil since COVID. Nothing about the war changed overnight. Only the election ended.

It was still falling this morning when he was writing it. The tankers are still getting hit near the Strait of Hormuz, but the fear is gone right on schedule. The official story is that traders think the Democratic Congress will force President Trump to end the Iran war.

Ed Vitagliano: Hold on to that thought, because if fear was driving oil prices, they are creating the fear with this program. Also think about this: polling is affected by it. When polling shows that affordability is the only thing Americans care about, President Trump gets very pragmatic and decides that maybe foreign policy and our aid to Israel are not the things we need to focus on. We need to answer these critics, so we're going to cut funding to Israel. This is affecting foreign policy now.

Wesley Wildmon: Another reason I think this probably is true and was extremely effective in turning the tide in the election is that I'm not discounting the fact that there were a lot of people who were upset. We need to be careful here. I talk to people, and I don't know whether they were influenced by this, but one reason I think this process was effective is that the Republicans, and especially President Trump, seemed unconcerned about it.

He would talk about the fact that the economy was doing great and say not to worry about it, that it was temporary. But what he didn't know, and what Republicans apparently didn't know, is that behind the scenes, underneath the surface, Democrats were talking to people through these paid workers.

These people may not have other jobs. Their job is to affect elections. They were speaking to voters without Republicans having a clue about it. There were millions of interactions, and these are staggering numbers because they are daily numbers: 32.5 million daily hits on Instagram, 88.8 million daily hits on X, and 185 million daily hits on Facebook.

Ed Vitagliano: How many individuals were working for this?

Wesley Wildmon: He said tens of thousands of real people.

Ed Vitagliano: So listen, folks. This is a real thing. This is how revolutions occur. This is how propaganda influences and sways people. We've seen it with other types of revolution, fascism, communism, and so forth.

There is blue splatter everywhere in this country. For Texas to turn blue, something is going on. I don't think this is the whole story. I still have questions about Texas, but this is significant.

Wesley Wildmon: Abe Hamilton is going to be a guest on Today's Issues tomorrow, so we're going to talk about this with Abe tomorrow.

Ed Vitagliano: We'll read your emails and get more details.

Wesley Wildmon: He probably has been talking about this, or he mentioned it yesterday morning to our leadership team. He'll provide more commentary and details.

Ed Vitagliano: I'm sure he's fleshing this out.

We have some Christian leaders who have been reacting to the elections. We had recordings from several of them, and some of them are fairly dark. If you listen to what Al Mohler has to say, he believes it could take years, if ever, to pull out of this. But I did want to bring one encouragement.

Alan Jackson has a podcast, and he had this to say about the elections.

Alan Jackson: I woke up Wednesday, and there was a historic shift in our nation. It was a historic election. I didn't wake up with a sense of great stress or even fear. In a way, I woke up with a sense of freedom, and I'm going to talk about that.

I wasn't elated by any means over the outcome of the election. In fact, it was very uncomfortable to watch what happened and to see the choices that were expressed. But I would remind you of something I have said over and over on multiple platforms for many years: Elections reveal our spiritual well-being and our spiritual condition.

I think a good diagnosis is halfway to a resolution of a problem. The diagnosis is a big step toward getting to a healthier place, and I believe elections are that way. When we get a diagnosis, even if we don't like it, it gives us a starting point.

Ed Vitagliano: From a Christian perspective, Ray, we'll toss this to you. We're almost out of time. Now people know how to pray. They know they need to do a better job of talking to people about Jesus.

Ray Prichard: If there's ever a time for God's people to pray, get on our knees, and cry out on behalf of America, this is it. I agree with what the pastor said. You have to have the diagnosis before you can get the remedy.

Ed Vitagliano: The diagnosis has been received. Here's our assignment: keep on doing good, keep on serving the Lord, keep on speaking out, keep on standing for the truth, and pray like crazy.