The First Presidential Debate of 2024

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00:12

Welcome once again to my humble abode here on the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris.

00:18

It is just a wonderful, beautiful day in my neck of the woods. Not a cloud in the sky, deep blue, nice clear breeze, and I'm just enjoying it.

00:28

I'm also enjoying my daughter, Anna. I went to the town hall today to register for a birth certificate, which is something most parents who have their kids in the hospital do not have to do.

00:39

I asked the town clerk, when was the last time you had someone come here to register their child to get a birth certificate?

00:46

Because we had a home birth. She said, you're the first one this year, and it's late June. It doesn't happen often, but I got to say for this audience,

00:54

I know many of you have lost faith in the medical establishment. Maybe the idea of a home birth would have sounded crazy to you a few years ago, but now it's something that you might be open to considering.

01:08

I was a little skeptical myself, but I was open to considering it. Boy, I'll tell you what, what a great experience.

01:14

My wife was able to get in her own bed right after having the baby, and both mom and the baby slept.

01:21

There was a lot of peace in the house, so different than a hospital. We do live a few minutes from the hospital if we needed to get there because of a complication, so the risks might not be as big for us as someone living out in the country, but the midwives really seem to know what they're doing, what to look for if there is a problem that needs hospitalization.

01:41

I just really, really was ... It exceeded my expectations, so I just want to put that out there for people, maybe something to check into if you're a parent and you're going to have a baby soon.

01:55

I want to talk today about the debate last night a little bit between President Biden and President Trump, and I'm going to play some clips from the debate as well as some analysis from left -wing media.

02:07

There's a lot being said about this, obviously, today, so I'm just going to weigh in. It'll be short, but hopefully it'll be a good, succinct analysis of what happened.

02:19

I did not view the first half of it because I was doing an interview last night for the 1607

02:25

Project that was promoting that, and for those of you who haven't seen that yet, this is a great documentary that I ...

02:32

I did a lot, let's just say. I did a lot of the legwork to make this happen, so if you're a fan of this podcast,

02:40

I think you'll appreciate it, but 1607project .com is the website if you want to go check it out there, or you can go to LastStandStudios .org,

02:48

which is my LLC that I make documentary films through, and so you can go check it out there as well.

02:55

This is a really, I think, important documentary to challenge this propositionation myth.

03:02

You've heard me talk about it on the podcast before, and this is a documentary that is a tool in your hands for sending to people who believe in this myth, who believe that America is just an idea.

03:15

It's not a people, it doesn't have to speak English, it's not a particular people, it's a universal idea.

03:22

It's the most ridiculous thing, and this is the way the left shoves all their agendas in our faces, is by saying it's about equality.

03:29

Even the right gets in on this, and it's just about freedom, but what does that even mean anymore?

03:35

They reduce America down to these abstractions, which is no people in the world is reduced to an abstraction.

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We don't treat any other country this way, but that's the justification for not having strict borders.

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It's the justification for why we need to expand the privileges and the rights and the access that LGBTQ plus people have.

04:02

This is just the way the left gets their nose under the door in about every social dynamic and institution.

04:11

I just wanted to put that out there, check it out, watch it, and leave a positive feedback if you really liked it, and if you didn't, you can leave a negative feedback.

04:22

This morning, I decided to go back and watch or listen to what I didn't watch. I watched, I guess, about a third of it, because that's when my interview last night ended, and then this morning,

04:32

I listened to the first two thirds, and I'll tell you what, this debate just felt, man, surreal.

04:41

I don't know if anyone else felt that way. I don't know how many people even watched it. I think our expectation was that we were going to have a geriatric display, that it wasn't even going to be a debate, but just a pathetic display of age and lack of senility, and that's essentially what it was, unfortunately, coming from Joe Biden, especially.

05:12

Not even a comparison, really, between Biden and Trump as far as their mental acuity.

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I just sense, I don't know if it's just in me, I don't think it is, though, I just sense it more broadly, just from the people

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I know and from social media, that there is a general disinterest in the election this year, including in the debates.

05:33

I think that was the motive, to see, hey, how much of a train wreck is Joe Biden going to be in this?

05:39

There really wasn't a enthusiasm for either candidate.

05:45

There wasn't excitement to watch one policy compared to another and look better, and one side to really do well and convince, maybe pull away some people from the other side because we had better arguments.

05:59

I just don't even sense that that was a factor. And that's kind of a sad thing. That's so different than what we'd been used to.

06:08

So the fact that there was no crowd also contributed to this. You have no background noise, no people cheering.

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It's just a small little room with Jake Tapper, and I can't remember the name of the female co -anchor there, but two very far left

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CNN co -anchors. And of course, all their everything was framed from the CNN vantage point, little substance in the answers.

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I mean, they even got into a discussion at one point about who's a better golfer. I mean, it's just silly. And I thought

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I had this thought as I'm watching. This is how republics die. It's just like this is like late stage republic stuff where we are.

06:52

It's like an old outfit that doesn't fit anymore. And we're still trying to put it on.

06:57

And that's how it feels like it just doesn't fit anymore. Well, one of the most replayed clips, and I think for good reason, is this one.

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The total initiative relative to what we're going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers.

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President Trump. I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either.

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Look, we had the safest border in the history of our country. The board, all he had to do was leave it.

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All he had to do is leave it. Now, of course, you see in this clip that Biden many times.

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This is just one of the times, maybe one of the worst times, because President Trump caught it and didn't miss a beat that Biden just didn't make any sense.

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And this is probably his biggest problem. And I think even the CNN anchors, they understand that.

07:48

And their commentary after immediately after this, quote unquote, debate ended, was freaking out about the fact that Biden couldn't answer basic questions that he his age is showing and he doesn't look good up there.

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And maybe that's an encouraging thing. There was also this this clip at the end.

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Well, it's not at the end of the debate. This is after the debate. This is Jill Biden. And it's just it's surreal.

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It's just how is this has to be a joke, you know, pinch me where Joe Biden is just standing there looking utterly confused.

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And Jill Biden is trying to rally the troops, right, trying to rally the Democrats. And she just shrieks to the crowd, you know, about Donald Trump.

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It's just she comes across so unattractive, just both of them.

08:39

So unattractive. It's well, here it is. Joe, you did such a great job.

08:45

You answered every question. Now, the one thing

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Biden had in his corner, of course, was the entire media apparatus, the way that this whole debate was framed by CNN, including the topics chosen, the questions asked all from a left wing vantage point.

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You know, President Trump, what are you going to do to end the climate crisis? What do you say about January 6th?

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I mean, it was all the things that the left cares about, that President Trump was being asked to answer for.

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And the things that were asked, I consider the things that Joe Biden was asked to be somewhat softballs, to be quite honest with you.

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I mean, age is a concern, but that's not a hardball substantive topic, really.

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I mean, it's I guess it should be asked, but that was, I think, the first question Joe Biden was asked about whether his age should be a problem.

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And that just gives him the opportunity to talk about how mentally fit he feels, which didn't go over well because he's not that mentally fit, but they would just save him every time it seems like he was on the horns of a dilemma and confusing himself and rambling.

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They would they would jump in there. And you didn't see the same thing with Trump. Trump seemed to answer his questions more so surprisingly, actually, there wasn't a lot of banter between him and the moderators.

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It just seemed like he answered the questions on time and they didn't really have to jump in. But with Biden, they were interrupting him.

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It seemed like a whole lot more. But of course, the whole media apparatus didn't just frame the questions, but all the commentary afterward is from the media.

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And I think that there was one I don't have the clip, but there is this one on CNN where I saw the and I watched maybe 25 minutes of CNN coverage of this.

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And they were talking about the spin room. They have this thing called the spin room. And the anchor who is running the spin room says,

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I know this is the spin room, but where's really she's kind of let the cat out of the bag and said, we can't really spin this.

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Biden, Biden didn't perform so well, but they were trying to make all kinds of excuses for him, everything from, well, he had a cold to, you know, he he is not a good candidate because he can't communicate well, but he's a great leader.

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And they had Gavin Newsom out there and some are speculating he's going to be at the convention, the actual nominee.

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But I don't think so. And and this is one of the things I want to address somewhat, is that there's a lot of people freaking out on the

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Democrat side and there's a lot of people also on the Republican side that are saying this was the plan all along.

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They knew when they put this geriatric man on the stage that he would not do well.

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I don't buy it. I don't buy. I think obviously you can't watch Joe Biden and not know that he's got this problem.

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But, you know, some people are theorizing they didn't give him the pills that he should have taken to make him look even worse because they're going to replace him with Gavin Newsom.

11:53

I don't buy it. Maybe there's some people who feel that way. Maybe there's there. I'm certainly there's people who probably want that.

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But I do not think that that's what's going on. And my evidence for that is primarily the fact that they are freaking out.

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If there is a plan in place to replace Biden and this was part of the plan all along was to pull a surprise and put

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Gavin Newsom or Michelle Obama in there, and it would probably be more Michelle Obama. Everyone who seems to communicate at the highest levels in the

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Democrat Party, they do not seem to have the confidence that Republicans, certain

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Republicans have, that that is the plan. They don't seem to have a plan. And for some evidence on this,

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I think that this segment from CNN with Joy Reid should be considered in a slight cold as well.

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So I understand not feeling well. And, you know, obviously, Joe Biden comes in with certain deficits. He has a stutter.

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You know, he is it is more difficult for him to communicate for that reason. So there's a lot to mitigate the way that he speaks.

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And you can understand it. And we've observed him for a long time. That said, I, too, was on the phone throughout much of the debate with Obama world people, with the

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Democrats, with people who are political operatives, with campaign operatives. My phone really never stopped buzzing throughout.

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And the universal reaction was somewhere approaching panic.

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The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak.

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And, you know, I'll just reiterate what I said earlier. President Biden had one job tonight and it was one primary job.

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And yes, it was to litigate Donald Trump's, you know, criminality and all of those things.

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But he had to settle his own party. He needed to settle Democrats, Democrats.

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You know, they always talk about the Democrats are bedwetters and Democrats are always panicking. Yes, Democrats are always panicking. They're always scared.

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Right. They're always thinking they're going to lose. Like Democrats are very pessimistic. This is just who they are.

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They're neurotic. But Joe Biden's job was to reassure them tonight. His job was to calm his party, to make them feel that, yes,

14:09

I can do this. I have four more years in me. I have the ability and the stamina and the strength to do four more years.

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He did not do that. He did the opposite of that. He made them more panicked. The people who were texting me were even more panicked.

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They actually expected it to be better than it was. And now they're in a I won't say a full fledged panic, but it's getting better.

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The people that you're talking to are expressing these concerns. Are these people who are involved in Democratic politics or these liberals watching

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TV? This is not liberals watching TV. These are these are campaign people. These are people who are either Democratic operatives.

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These are people who were former, you know, sort of Obama administration people. These are people who are in the business. OK, so the civilians are also panicking.

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They're also texting me. But I was trying to kind of ignore the civilians and really talk to the campaign folks. People are they're worried.

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And there is you know, it's not a full drumbeat yet. But there is talk of look, here's the thing we know.

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I know a lot of politicians. I just happen to know a lot of them at a lot of levels. They all believe that they have a unique ability to run the race that they passionately want to run.

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And I know for a fact that Joe Biden passionately believes that he is the only person who can beat Donald Trump.

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And he has evidence of it because he did it before. Right. He knows that he has certain demographic strengths that Donald Trump cannot counter.

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He is the real working class white guy. That's actually Donald Trump's base. So he knows how to talk to them. He believes that he is the only person that can do it.

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The problem is after tonight, his party doesn't believe that. I want to hear that.

15:39

Joy Reid, of course, says she talked to the highest level Democrats and, you know, and she's freaking out.

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They're freaking out. Everyone's freaking out. I mean, that's who she's talking to. It's not your viewers. It's the elites. And it's funny they even say on that segment that Democrats are neurotic.

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And I'm just so used to Republicans being called the fear mongers and they're scared of immigrants.

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And they're scared of women having choice and scared of their homophobic and all this.

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And it's just funny to hear them say all the Democrats. We know the Democrats are neurotic. Yeah, they are. And it sounds like they don't have much of a plan.

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And the whole time the split screen is killing Biden because he's got his mouth open. He looks confused, doesn't know where he is.

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He's lost his train of thought at least twice in disastrous shape. Those are going to be played a billion times in viral video after viral video.

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This is an epic disaster. Like I see people online saying, well,

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OK, that answer wasn't so bad. No, it doesn't. Any particular answer doesn't matter at all. This thing is over.

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He looks like he's barely surviving. I don't mean the debate. I mean, life.

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And so there's no person that has a single brain cell left in their head who thinks that Joe Biden is the best candidate to take on Donald Trump.

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You would have to be even crazier than Donald Trump to think that this thing is over.

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Over. I'll guarantee you this. I would bet any show me a Democratic politician and I will bet them any amount of money that Joe Biden is going to lose this election if he's the candidate.

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It's a guaranteed loss. You tell me this is the most important election of our lifetimes. You're telling me that democracy is on the line and you're going to put on a guy who can't even talk, who can't even sit there and look normal.

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This thing's a bloodbath. He's going to get annihilated. That is OK. Now the

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Democrats have to decide. Are they happy to lose? Are they willing to lose? Because this is a guaranteed loss.

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This is so much worse than my worst nightmares of what it could be like in every way.

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The visual stuff is obvious. Staring off the looking down. It just it looks terrible.

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His voice is so utterly weak and feeble. And honestly, like that immediately hits you when you see him.

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But what he says and what he doesn't say on the most important core issues of the election are even worse. Trump won on abortion in the debate.

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Trump comes out of the January 6th stuff looking fine. He comes out of the criminal conviction stuff looking fine.

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Joe Biden looks worse on democracy after that. He looks worse on criminality after that. So if there's anything that I pull out of this that's encouraging, it's that I mean,

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I am not under any delusions about the integrity of the election. Obviously, I saw what happened in 2020.

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I'm still you know, I just don't even know how the Republicans face that. But I think the hope is at this point that it's just so it's going to be so overwhelming for Trump and so underwhelming for Biden that no amount of rigging fraud, any of that will have any effect or at least it won't have the effect that they need.

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That's that's the hope the Republicans have pretty much at this point, which is kind of a pathetic hope if you think about it.

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As far as the Democrats are concerned, though, if they're scared, that's a good thing. That's all I have to say really about that.

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Now, the most substantive difference between Biden and Trump, I think, comes down to this clip.

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And I haven't seen anyone else sharing this clip around. But check it out. The other thing is he doesn't fire people.

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He never fired people. I've never seen a fire, but I did fire a lot. I fired Comey because he was no good.

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I fired a lot of the top people at the FBI, drained the swamp. There were no good, not easy to fire people.

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You'd pay a price for it, but there were no good. I inherited these people. I didn't put him that input. Call me there. He was no good.

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I fired him. This guy hasn't fired anybody. He never fires. He should have fired every military man that was involved with that Afghan, the

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Afghanistan horror show, the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.

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He didn't fire. Did you fire anybody? Did you fire anybody that's on the border that's allowed us to have the worst border in the history of the world?

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Did anybody get fired for allowing 18 million people, many from prisons, many from from mental institutions?

20:13

Did you fire anybody that allowed our country to be destroyed? Joe, our country is being destroyed as you and I sit up here and waste a lot of time on this debate.

20:23

This shouldn't be a debate. He is the worst president. He just said about me because I said it. But look, he's the worst president in the history of our country.

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He's destroyed our country. Now, all of a sudden, he's trying to get a little tough on the border. He come out, came out with a nothing, a nothing deal, and it reduced it a little bit, a little bit like this much.

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It's insignificant. He wants open borders. He wants our country to either be destroyed or he wants to pick up those people as voters.

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And I don't think we just can't let it happen. If he wins this election, our country doesn't have a chance, not even a chance of coming out of this rut.

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We probably won't have a country left anymore. That's how bad it is. He is the worst in history by far.

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Thank you, President Trump. President Biden, we are the most admired country in the world. We're the United States of America.

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There's nothing beyond our capacity. We have the finest military in the history of the world, the finest in the history of the world.

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No one thinks we're weak. No one wants to screw around with us. Nobody. Number one. Number two, the idea that we're talking about worst presidents.

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I wasn't joking. Look it up or go online. One hundred fifty nine or fifty eight.

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Don't hold the exact number. Presidential historians, they've had meetings and they voted who's the worst president in American history.

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One through best to worst. They said he was the worst in all of American history. That's a fact.

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That's not a that's not conjecture. He can argue the wrong, but that's what they voted. The idea that he is knowing doing anything to deal with child care.

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He did very perversely nothing to child care. We should significantly increase the child care tax credit.

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We should significantly increase the availability of women and men or single parents to be able to go back to work.

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And we should encourage businesses to hold to have. Thank you, President. President Trump, the question was about what would you do?

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And what you'll notice in this clip is Trump paints a dismal picture of the direction of the

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United States. And I think this is actually pretty interesting because for a long time, this was not what

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Republicans were supposed to do. You you're positive no matter what. You're always positive. That's what you have to be.

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And America's future is going to be brighter. And we're looking forward to a new day tomorrow. And it's going to be morning in America.

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That's how Republicans have operated for now, decades. Trump breaks that mold. And Trump is telling you that your eyes aren't lying to you, that when you're trying to pinch pennies to pay for groceries, that it's your eyes aren't lying.

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Biden is just saying things that I think normal average American people know is not true. The economy isn't roaring.

23:04

He hasn't created all these new jobs and made the economy better than Donald Trump because we're all feeling it.

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We all know that's just not the case. Instinctually, we don't even need any stats. We see it all around us. So unless you're in a boomtown, unless you're living in D .C.

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that doesn't get hit by all these economic things, it seems like as much then, you know, you're in the rest of the country. You're feeling it.

23:24

And I think that Trump being honest about that and it just I thought this was the most important segment of the debate because Biden's fake optimism landed so flat.

23:38

It does not come across as genuine. It's he's accusing Trump of lying, but he's coming across as the liar in that circumstance.

23:46

And it's just a bunch of gimmicks. It's just a bunch of slogans. We're the

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United States of America. It's like it's honestly, it's a lot of the post -war like post -World

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War II kind of boomer con, if you want to call it that, sentiments of America's greatness.

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We're better than the Soviet Union. We're just the best. This kind of like hyper exceptional talk.

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And we should like I pointed this out before, like we should just like we love our dad on Father's Day.

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We should love the United States. If you're if you live here, you should in some ways think that your country is the best.

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There's nothing wrong with that. Right. And when and oftentimes it's left wingers saying that your country is not that great.

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And, you know, I think what they often mean by that, though, is like intrinsically at a fundamental level from the very foundation, your country's terrible.

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And Trump doesn't mean that at all. Trump thinks that the country is actually a good place, but it's Biden and these innovators who have come and ruined it.

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And and he's pointing out things that are just obvious. And it's Biden who's appealing to these kind of gimmicky

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America's the best place, but is vacuous. Why? What makes us so good now?

24:58

What makes us like in the in the context in which Trump is saying we're not doing well and we're importing the third world and there will be.

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And I think it was just it was super. It's just a breath of fresh air for me to hear him actually say it, to acknowledge it, that will cease to be the

25:12

United States. There won't be an America if you keep this going. Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. There won't be. I already think that's the case to some extent, to be quite honest with you.

25:21

I just don't think even the America that I was born into as a child, I don't think it exists anymore except in heartland places.

25:30

You have you have to get away from urban areas, it seems like, and get into country areas, maybe some suburbs to even find what that that kind of America, the kind that I grew up with, the kind that was a high trust society, the kind where people were friendly towards one another and not suspicious of one another.

25:50

You know, the kind of America where people seem to have shared shared values and shared loves and shared pastimes that doesn't really exist in even in the area

26:05

I live now. And I moved to the area I live in right now to kind of get away from the influence of New York City, in part.

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That was one of the reasons. And the influence has found us anyway. And it's

26:18

I can say for a fact, it's changed even this area, which is kind of apple orchard country or was and still is to some extent.

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But it's and I love this area, you know, it's it's it's beautiful, like I said. And there's still there still is a lot of America left here, but it's changing is my point.

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And I think a lot of people feel that change. And they know that when you import large groups of people who do not share the the shared loves of the people around you, they don't have the generational investment in that particular piece of land.

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And the trust that comes with that with intermarriage and loving the kinds of things that are unique to that area, you don't have

27:03

America anymore. And that's really where where we're at. And I think Trump, his analysis hit a nerve with that.

27:10

I think Trump, because even just because of that line, I think it was a knockout for Trump. I think he won.

27:16

I think he doesn't often have numbers and substance when he answers questions. There's a lot of heart in it.

27:22

But but compared to Biden, of course, there was there seemed to be a lot more senility. So that's my analysis of the debate.

27:29

In closing, I'll say this, because I know many Christians who listen to this podcast, you're very concerned about abortion.

27:36

There was a whole section on that. And in Trump, you know, obviously heads and shoulders above where Biden is on that topic still paints.

27:45

I thought it was a good strategy for him to paint the Democrats as the radicals. You know, you're you're OK with infanticide, basically.

27:51

That was a good move on his part. But, of course, he said he would not not even just acknowledge, but support the

28:00

Supreme Court's decision to allow the abortion pill. He seemed to want to leave it up to the states.

28:09

And I think that's been his, honestly, mode of operation the whole time. I don't think I see a change in Trump on this stuff, really.

28:16

He's always wanted to. He's never been like a big pro -life. That's like not been his biggest issue.

28:23

But I think a lot of pro -lifers got excited and rightly so, because Trump on every issue that he was concerned about and abortion was one of them.

28:32

He seemed to put a lot more heart and soul behind it than previous presidents. Like he even addressed the

28:38

March for Life in Washington. I know previous president had done that. And he actually appointed

28:45

Supreme Court justices that ended up overturning Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision.

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And he's willing to own that. He's willing to be proud of that. And just in many ways, even though his official positions have never been completely anti -abortion, the the the gains that he's made for the pro -life and anti -abortion movement,

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I think have been more significant than previous administrations. And and and so there

29:15

I think pro -lifers and anti -abortionists, you know, even abolitionists who want to operate on the state level,

29:21

I think there's a lot of encouragement there. But no, I'm going to acknowledge, no, it's obviously not perfect.

29:26

He's he is not a completely. What's the word?

29:34

I guess. Consistent would be the word. He's not a completely consistent anti -abortion pro -life advocate, but he's never been.

29:44

So I and I think the question that Christians need to ask is, what's the issue of this election?

29:50

You know, that is an issue. The Democrats want to make that the issue. That's what I see. The Democrats want to make that the issue.

29:56

Republicans want to make the border stuff the issue. I think the border stuff is honestly, in some ways, a bigger issue.

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And I notice I'm not saying that it's morally more, you know, more or less egregious. I'm just saying in the context, the unique context we're in right now, if you get permanent

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Democrat majorities, kind of like what happened to the state of California, if you get that on a national level, then you can you can say goodbye to any potential pro -life legislation on the national level in the future.

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It takes one more Biden presidency, I think, to do that. I think Trump's right about that. That is the issue here. You can say goodbye to all of it if you get permanent majorities because of illegal migrants over the next four years.

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So if that's the issue, and I think it probably is, you know, what pagans do with their children, killing their children is absolutely awful and must be condemned.

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It must be. I mean, we need to take the most drastic measures possible to stop that.

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But I think that's still on a political level, in a long term perspective, as horrible as that is, that is less important than the damage that will be inflicted upon not just the pagans and their children, but upon the righteous and their children and everyone if the

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Democrats get permanent majority. So I'm I'm voting for Trump and I've thought through it.

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No reservations whatsoever on that. He I only see one option at this point.

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I don't think Kennedy is an option, certainly if you're a pro -lifer and that's your issue.

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Of course, of the three, Kennedy is not going to be the option, but he's got a far left VP and obviously

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Biden's not an option. So I think it's Trump. So I think there are reasons. I mean,

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I'm pretty blackpilled on elections, but I think there are reasons to be somewhat encouraged today that Democrats who are in high places seem to be freaking out about this.

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So there you go. There's my two cents today. Hope that helps you. Maybe gives you a little encouragement towards the future.

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And whether Biden wins or Trump wins, you know, we're going to be heading to some hard times.

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And culturally speaking, we're going to still have a drift. And so we just need to keep praying. We need to pray that the

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Lord changes hearts and minds in this country, that conviction happens, conviction of sin in the people as a whole, but also in our leaders.

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And I think a big thing we need to be praying for is that true, actual leaders willing to make hard decisions who are actual men and have character and virtue rise to the highest levels.

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And I think that can happen in a Trump administration. And they will be set up to take power when it becomes necessary.

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And to use that power for righteousness. People freaked out that I tweeted something the other day.

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Some people freaked out. I said that Christians should gain power and use it for righteousness.

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And people, all these, it's funny because it's like the typical Tim Keller type responses, only a lot of it was coming from people who

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I think are probably more John MacArthur fans than Tim Keller. It's kind of weird. But, you know, the Lord never wanted us to seek power.

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This isn't New Testament Christianity, blah, blah, blah. And what I would say to that is that power is not gaining earthly temporal power is not the driving force and the most important thing necessarily of our lives.

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But gaining power and using it for good and using it to prevent evil people from doing evil is a great righteous and moral thing to do.

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And there are tons of examples of it throughout scripture in both the Old and the New Testaments.

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But if you look at the Old Testament, you have specific instances of this in the political arena, even in pagan context.

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Look at Daniel. You know, look at Esther. She helped craft policy, if you think about it, for such a time as this to uphold righteousness.

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And that's what I think this should be a no brainer. This shouldn't have to be argued for. But of course, we want

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Christians to rise to higher levels and to gain power and to use it for righteous causes and use it to prevent evil.

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Use it to do the job that governments are called by God to do, to be a deacon, to be a servant of the

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Lord, to punish evil and promote good. That's what a government does. It's not really that complicated. So this whole thinking about like we're supposed to give up power and this and that, yeah, like power for serving ourselves.

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If you're just after prestige and you want people's accolades and things like that, then yeah,

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I guess not. I mean, if you're if you're just after it for selfish ambition and that kind of gain, sure, that's not what

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I'm talking about, though. And so let's just pray for that. Let's pray that someone who matches the character of what the archetype is called the

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Christian prince throughout Western civilization, Christian civilization. Let's pray for that kind of Christian princely character to arise.

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And I see George Washington is kind of that emblematic emblematic of that kind of a person.

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And that's who we need. And I'm under no illusions that Donald Trump is not that person.

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He's not. He's. But I'll tell you one thing, one thing that comes across loud and clear is he seems to care about the people of the

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United States. And he seems to understand that the elites of this country are lined up against them.

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And he wants to defend the actual ordinary, decent Americans against those people. And that's all it takes at this point.

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It's kind of a low bar and he shows he's got skin in the game. He's willing to risk it. He's willing to I mean, he talked about it many times, like, look, if Joe Biden did a good job,

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I'd rather be golfing. You know, that little bit of virtue, that little bit of character, that little spark there of just,

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I would say, common, instinctual, loving your people kind of stuff.

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And we see this throughout scripture, like, right. Good fathers give their kid a fish when he asks for it. Even the rich man,

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Lazarus. Lazarus is, you know, he's going to hell, but he's concerned about the people that he's leaving behind.

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You see, you're worse than an unbeliever if you don't take care of your family like these pagans, even people who aren't

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Christians. Right. And who are pagan in the way that they've lived in some ways still have these natural loves or should have these natural loves that God's wired into creation.

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And this doesn't accomplish, you know, heavenly good that pleases God, but it is a temporal good.

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And Trump seems to have enough of that that it endears some people to him.

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And I know it contrasts with Biden and it definitely helps me pull the lever, as it were, except now

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I guess I'm just inserting the paper. Into a machine for Donald Trump. So there you go. Those are my thoughts. God bless.

36:44

Hope that was helpful. Bye now. We're standing about in the mid midpoint of Black's Hollow.

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So we've walked in, I guess, about a quarter mile from where we parked a third of a mile. But as you can see, we can we can barely see the cars past those trees down there.

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And this is all this is what they call a holler around here. Hollow. It's a valley between these ridgetops.

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So, you know, again, you're standing here and you own to both ridgetops. And as you can see, there's lots of good building sites along this valley, both down this way and then further up the valley, running for another half mile in that direction.

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Yeah, I notice there's a creek over here. You have some bigger hardwoods that are along the creek, which are very beautiful.

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And and this would be the land if you wanted to plant a garden or something. This is where you would do it. Yeah, the soil down here and this is bottomland soil.

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This is it's good soil for gardening, you know, some crops. Certainly you can fence it and run livestock in here.

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But yeah, this is it's all the runoff coming down from the hills and it kind of stays down here and it gets really good fertile soil.