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In this episode of the National Crawford Roundtable podcast, the guys talk with Steve Shwetz from Thru the Bible ministry as they celebrate over 50 years on air. John and Bob will then talk about last night’s Presidential debate. How well did each candidate present themselves? What topics covered in the debate are at the top of the list of Christian concerns?
Welcome to the National Crawford Vowntable Podcast. A view of culture, current events, and politics through a biblical lens brought to you by preborn, saving babies and souls. Join us in the fight to save babies from abortion. Your gift provides a free ultrasound for a mother in need. 80% of the time she will choose life. Visit CrawfordMediaGroup.net and click on the preborn logo to donate to save babies now. And now here are your hosts, Neil Boran, Bob Duco, and John Rush. Back with another week of the National Crawford Roundtable podcast with some of the guys. Myself, Bob Duco out of Detroit. We got John Rush, Rush to reason. I did an Enver Colorado. Neil Boran, Neil Boran, live out of Buffalo, New York, not with us this week. So we’ll make fun of them behind his back. John, how you doing today? – I’m great, Bob, are you? – Oh, good. I’m looking forward to talking with you and having some analysis between you and me on last night’s debate. We’re recording this, folks, on Wednesday morning. So we just want to– – 9/11 by the way, 9/11, I’m thinking what date is this. – I know, we got that to talk about as well. And that’s going to very much tie into, I believe, the debate last night, the discussions on terrorism, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris. We have a lot of things to address in this podcast. And before we get to them though, I want to invite to the podcast, a special person. You folks know through the Bible. I mean, the phenomenal ministry of through the Bible over the decades, and of course, the legacy of Dr. J. Vernon McGee. And through the Bible just continues to help and to bless so many people. And of course, there are so many people that are on the Bible bus and have been for a long time. And so we’re going to talk about through the Bible specifically related to some special program that we’re going to be doing in Crawford media. Crawford stations across the country beginning September 16th. We’re going to take a week and do some special programming features on through the Bible itself. And we’re going to be inviting you folks in the audience to share your stories with us because your stories will be part of the features that we do starting September 16th. And who better to talk about through the Bible than the chairman of the board of directors of through the Bible, Steve Schwats, who is also volunteer host of the program since the early 1990s. He leads successful real estate business out of California serves in the elder board of his church. And he is a chairman of the board of directors of through the Bible and Steve Schwats joins me. Now Steve, how are you today? Bob, I’m doing great. Thank you so much for taking the time to have us on. We really appreciate it. Oh, absolutely. Well, it’s great talking with you. And before we get to the feature that we’re going to be doing starting September 16th, let’s talk a little bit about through the Bible and what you folks are doing now. Obviously, the legacy that’s been established by Dr. McGee. But where are you taking that legacy from there and how do you folks continue to grow at through the Bible? Yeah, I’d go out a great question. Dr. McGee talks about on the program about just flinging the seed and basically taking the seed of the word of God and the good news of the gospel and getting it out into as many languages as possible. And I like to talk about through the Bible as really being the bumblebee of Christian radio. And that is if you talk to– my understanding is if you talk to an aeronautical engineer, a bumblebee should not fly. And that’s what the minister through the Bible should not fly. You take a preacher pastor who’s been gone since 1988 in the presence of the Lord. And when he went to be with the Lord, we were in somewhere in the low 30s, 33 different languages around the world and still on Christian radio. And I think Dr. McGee figured, well, it’s probably going to go for maybe another three to five years and it’ll sunset. And the Lord in his providence and sovereignty has really allowed the ministry just to boom since that time. Today, we’re still predominantly in Christian radio in the US and Canada and now in over 250 languages all around the world. And our commitment is the same today as it was back when Dr. McGee went to be with the Lord. And that is at least 50% of what comes into the ministry goes out into the international translation work and broadcasting and digital throughout the world. God’s continued to bless that. Boy, you’ll wonder what Dr. McGee would say if you’re going to talk with him right now about, wow. As you said, he’s thinking, well, maybe it’ll sunset after three to five years. So it’s really amazing what he trell blazed and what he started with this. The Bible bus, so many people around the Bible bus. And for those that aren’t familiar, tell us about that nickname, the Bible bus. And this really the five year cycle. Yeah, that was something that was developed by Dr. McGee and he really brought it into the program talking about, if you think about a school bus, what does a school bus has? School bus picks up kids and takes them to school and they have a set route. And they turn around and they do it again. And again, and again, throughout the school year. And that’s the picture that he wanted to paint for the ministry of through the Bible. And that is it is unique in Christian radio and digital and that it’s a five year program going systematically through the entire word of God, Genesis through revelation. And people really resonate with the picture of a Bible bus. They talk about, I’ve been on the bus for my, this is my fifth trip, this is my 11th trip. This is my first trip on the Bible bus. Save me a seat, those types of things. And it has just been a great picture of what the family of through the Bible, those that listen, how we participate together. Right. Well, and one of the things that strikes me too, Steve, is the multi generational nature of the people on the Bible bus because you’ve got, look, we got grandparents out there that’s like, oh, I’ve been on the Bible bus for a long time. But we got kids in their 20s as well. Why do you think that it’s been so cross generational? That’s easy question to answer. I think it’s because the word of God is timeless and relevant, whether it’s for a grand, someone who’s in their 80s or someone who is eight years old. And we get kids that even go below the 20s. Some people use it as part of their homeschool in curriculum. And I think it’s the gospel, it’s the Bible, and it’s combined with Dr. McGee’s unique teaching. Most ministries, most pastoral teaching ministries today are a byproduct of a pastor’s pulpit ministry. You’re hearing his sermon typically, not exclusively, but typically. Dr. McGee was unique and then he had a pulpit ministry, but he also had through the Bible. And that’s where he basically sat down in his office, kicked off his shoes, opened his Bible, and systematically taught through the word of God. And people feel that when they’re listening to the program that he is talking to them, just one person, he’s not preaching to an audience. And I think that’s one of the unique features of the ministry as well. – Right. Well, and one of the phrases, of course, that he coined is taking the whole word to the whole world. And there is a simplicity in that. And that sounds like a very core mission that you guys have upheld. – Yeah, we really have. And that core mission has remained the same, but the delivery method has changed over the years. I mean, before it was primarily terrestrial radio, that was the only distribution method. And internationally, it was predominantly shortwave. And those mediums, particularly shortwave, have for the most part, sunset. And there’s Africa, it still makes sense, but most of the world has really transitioned. Everybody’s got a smartphone. And so people more and more are engaging with the ministry digitally in addition to terrestrial radio. – Right. You know, I do want to ask you about scripture itself and the authority of God’s word, because I certainly don’t need to tell you, one of the challenges that we have today is the lack of respect of biblical authority. And it almost seems as though the level of biblical illiteracy is getting higher and higher and higher. And we just somehow, someway, Steve, how do we get the body of Christ to get back into the, what it says in scripture, God’s word, recognizing the authority of God’s word, the value of God’s word, and saying, hey, it’s not that we can’t have opinions, but let’s make sure that everything we look at is through a biblical lens, a biblical worldview. This, to me, is also a very key component of being on the Bible bus and everything that through the Bible teaches. – Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that’s a real softball for me, Bob. I would say, listen to through the Bible. (laughing) Systematically go through the word of God. And if it’s not through the Bible, that’s fine. Our goal is to get you to engage with the Bible. And we would love to have, through the Bible, be a part of that. But if there’s some other way that you can do that, you need to do that. And there are many resources to help you. And then the other thing that I would say, and Dr. McGee would resonate with this is, get into a solid Bible believing Bible teaching church. You know, ideally a church that goes systematically through books of the Bible and it’s teaching expositionally, not so much topically, and get to know your Bible in that way as well. – Right, absolutely. Well, one of the things that we want our listeners to do, obviously is to partner with you, but we also want them to share their stories. First though, how can our listeners partner with you folks sit through the Bible and in your mission? – Yeah, the first thing that we always encourage people to do, even before they give financially on that, certainly is an important part, is to pray for the ministry. And we’ve made it really easy for people to do that. They can go sign up for our world prayer team. We’ve got basically a website, you go to ttb.org/pray, and you sign up and you get a daily email Monday through Friday that talks about a different part of the world and gives you a brief testimony of how the ministry is being, is being impact, the impact that it’s having, particularly on a person’s life, and then an opportunity for you to pray. And people over and over again have said, “Thank you so much for the opportunity “to be on the world prayer team,” because it’s giving me more of a vision of how the Lord is moving around the world. You know, especially in light of the debates recently happening for us just last night, you can get very down into the, you know, “Oh, this world is just going down, down, “and where is the Lord in all of this?” And God is moving and He’s moving in significant ways throughout the world, and the world prayer team gives you a window into that world and how the Lord is moving. And people say that as they’re on the world prayer team, it has been such an encouragement to them. So I would say the one thing to do is to go to ttb.org/pray and sign up for that email. It will revolutionize your prayer life and really open the scope of what you’re seeing as God’s moving around the world. – You know, it’s such an important point that you make because you’re absolutely right. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that no matter what happens in the world, in our culture, in society, in politics, the debate, elections, any of that kind of stuff, nothing changes the fact that Jesus Christ is still Lord and God is still on his throne. And the Bible is still God’s word. And none of that changes whatsoever. And we may hope that things go a certain way in culture, in society, in America, in politics, in elections. We may hope for certain things, but our hope is not in those things, our hope is in Jesus Christ and what a huge difference that is. Now we are asking you folks listening to share your stories with us because starting September 16th on Crawford stations across the country, we’re gonna be airing some special programming featuring through the Bible and we’re gonna be sharing stories that you folks have. Maybe these are stories of you and family members and how you got on the Bible bus or whatever it may be, but we want you to share your stories and then we’ll feature some of those stories in these special programming features. So here’s how you share your story. Go to Crawfordmediagroup.net, all right? Crawfordmediagroup.net. And when you go there, you’ll see a place where you can go ahead and share your story. We invite you to do that, everybody. We’d love to include you in the feature. And through the Bible, of course, has heard all across the nation, including certainly on Crawford stations as well. I know here in Detroit, we were, I broadcast from people love through the Bible here on WM Museum, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. Sunday mornings at 7 a.m. Also on our sister station, WRDT 560 a.m. Monday through Friday, 830 a.m, 1230 p.m. And 830 p.m. And other Crawford stations and many, many other stations all around the country and really around the world. So folks, it’s through the Bible. Again, share your stories with us. You’re through the Bible stories and BibleBus Stories at Crawfordmediagroup.net. Go there and do that if you would. And Steve Schwartz, chairman of the board of directors of Through the Bible. Steve, we appreciate your time today. We certainly appreciate the ministry of Through the Bible. And thank you so much for being with us for a little bit on today’s national Crawford Roundtable podcast. – Oh, Bob, thank you so much for having me on and also for the entire Crawford network. You guys have been a great, great supporters of Through the Bible. I listened in Southern California on KBRT. My exposure to Through the Bible actually came through a couple of stations, one of which was KBRT even before I was involved in the ministry in my early 20s. So I have a very soft spot on my heart for Crawford and the work you guys do. – Well, we very much appreciate that. We certainly have a soft spot in our heart for you. Thank you, Steve, great talking with you. God bless. – Thanks, Bob. – You bet. And folks, we are going to continue this national Crawford Roundtable podcast with John Rush and myself. We’re going to be talking a little bit about 9/11. That’s right. We’re recording this Wednesday morning on 9/11. So it’s the 23rd anniversary of that horrific day. But then also we’re certainly going to be analyzing all the aspects, the good, the bad and the ugly of last night’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. So that’s all coming up. Before we dive into that, I do want to remind everybody that this podcast is sponsored by Preborn. And we very much appreciate the ministry of Preborn because Preborn saves babies lives. They do this every day. And the way that they stop abortions is by showing ultrasound images of unborn babies to expect at moms. And when a mom sees a picture for a baby and ultrasound image, you realize that’s the first time she’s ever seen what her baby looks like. And those moms statistically choose life almost all the time. That baby lives. She usually ends up accepting the Lord too. So it’s very important that we show as many ultrasound images to as many expected moms as we can. But these ultrasound images cost money, folks. And that’s where you come in. We’re asking you in this audience right now to pay for as many of these ultrasound images as you can. What you’re doing is you’re saving as many babies lives as you can. It’s $28 to stop one abortion. That’s the average ultrasound expense to save one baby’s life. So pray about a number of babies lives you’d be willing to save. Take $28 times fill in the blank. Whatever number that is, maybe God lays on your heart, that’s your gift to pre-born. And 100% of what you give goes to fund ultrasound. It’s nothing for overhead. So would you give right now? Here’s how easy it is. Just go to CrawfordMediaGroup.net, click on pre-born. CrawfordMediaGroup.net, click on pre-born. Or if you want to give to a real-life person over the phone, you can call 833-850-Baby. That’s 833-850-Baby. Just mention national Crawford Roundtable when you call. $28 times fill in the blank. Whatever that number is, that’s your gift to pre-born. And we appreciate you folks doing that. We very much do. So John Rush, first, ’cause I want to talk with you about the debate, but I would like to get your thoughts on, today we’re recording this on Wednesday 9/11. This is the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on this country. We tell ourselves we will never forget, and we don’t want to ever forget. We do not. And I would say there is certainly an easy transition from talking about 9/11 and the debate last night. Absolutely. Kamala Harris and oh my goodness, but some of your thoughts on this 23rd anniversary first. Well, first of all, to your point, yes. And I do believe the other side would love us to forget 9/11. They would rather us concentrate on J6, which we’ll talk about a little bit ’cause that was in the debate last night as well. They’d rather do that. Don’t forget, J6 was a bigger threat on our democracy than even 9/11. According to them, yes. Absolutely, yes. So they believe he, folks, there is a plan in place to transition us from remembering 9/11 to forgetting it and remembering J6 instead. I’m surprised they haven’t tried to institute monuments and other things along those lines, Bob, when it’s all said to them, they probably will. I mean, that’ll end up happening. It’s just absolutely ridiculous. And yeah, they want to erase what happened with 9/11, concentrate on the wrong areas. And this is part of a Marxist takeover of the country. Right. Well, you’re absolutely right. And I mean, I think about 23 years later, this is a horrendous attack that happened, but we’ve got to remember something. And this is where I’m going to connect it to, to last night and specifically, Kamala Harris and her plans. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have had open borders for the last three and a half years. We’ve had anywhere from 10 to 15 million, if not more, illegals flooding into this country. And we have no idea how many hundreds, if not thousands, of Islamic, jihad, terrorists right now have infiltrated this country and are operating below the radar screen. What does everybody think that they’re doing? Do they really think that they just came to this country so they can get a job at Starbucks? No, they’re clearly coming into this country in the hopes of planning 9/11, 2.0. And we got to remember the Biden-Harris administration, their own numbers show that they have several hundred Islamic, shihad, terrorists on the terror watch list that they were able to catch coming over the border. Those are the ones we know about. We have no idea how many, that’s right. There are not a ways there are. We have no idea how many of them, we don’t even know that are not a ways. And we happen to also know that there were a hundred of them that were actually released by the Biden-Harris administration into the country. So we’re talking about several hundred, if not several thousand, Islamic, shihad, terrorists who would love to carry out another 9/11. How can anybody think they’re not plotting and planning something like this? We do have right now a September 10th mentality and it’s this Kamala Harris border, Zahar, her policies that she’ll just continue with the open border that’s making this so dangerous. And we gotta remember, too, John, it only took 19 terrorists to carry out 9/11. We’ve got hundreds, if not thousands of terrorists, that they have let into this country now makes me nervous about what’s coming up in the future. Which, you know, lots of talk about when it comes to the debate last night. I wish point by point, Trump would have done some of the things you just said. He, you know, he kind of, at times talks in circles and yeah, he kind of said some of the things that you’re saying. But to the average independent listener, I wish he would have just gone through and named off point by point by point some of the things you just mentioned, Bob. – Well, let’s dive into this. I’m gonna guess that your eye was probably twitching as bad as mine was last night. – Oh, it’s true. – All right. So let me give you, first of all, my general overview take, my general overview take away from last night and then I’m curious to get yours, all right. First of all, there is no doubt this was a three on one debate. – Absolutely. – To watch David Mure and Lindsey Davis, quote unquote, fact checking Donald Trump in real time, even going so far as to say things like, well, you say that that was sarcastic, but I didn’t hear sarcasm. And what moderator says stuff like that? There were zero fact checks in real time of anything Kamala Harris said and she told some whoppers last night, but they fact check after fact check, they were times where Donald Trump was actually debating them back and forth, especially David Mure. It’s like you have to be kidding me. So this is a three on one debate, one way fact checking. With that said, I have to acknowledge, okay, Donald Trump, I thought did a poor job last night. He just, he really did. He unfortunately just kind of, he took bait that allowed himself to be taken down rabbit trails. He went ahead and focused on those rabbit trails. He did not have memorized a lot of good talking point issues to stick with. And so he kind of meandered and then recycled the same platitude statements over and they’re destroying the country. They’re just going to destroy the country, okay. So huge missed opportunities. He had a poor performance. I don’t think we can sweep that under the rug. Kamala Harris, I do have to say that we can look through the job that she did and we can see the emptiness of her presentation and that all she did was basically memorize a bunch of different talking points that Donald Trump should have memorized, but she memorized a bunch of and repeat and repeat things that have already been completely bunked about Donald Trump, but she’s still on that gravy train. That’s right. So she kept, she just kept on repeating these overall bullet point talking points. She was doing them over and over again, but she was also injecting that with a bunch of Bill Clinton, ask Academy Award Performance you’re voting. She was able to look in the camera and say, “I just, I care about you and lifting people up and we can do better than this.” You only have to look forward, Bob. Don’t look at the past. Don’t look forward. Not denigrating people, lifting them up. Okay. And by the way, all Marxists talk, by the way, every one of those lines is a Marxist line. I hope people realize that. Exactly, but here’s the, here’s the, the warts of this. And I think we need to acknowledge this, okay? That is the kind of thing that scores points with some independent swing voters and soccer moms and such. So I do believe she scored points with them. I do believe that she’s going to move the needle in her direction. Unfortunately, she used dishonesty, smoke and mirrors, and Academy Award Performance presentation in her style of voice inflection and facial expressions and everything else. The kind that she was, you know what? She was coached well. And so in that regard, she did well. She didn’t go off on her weird word salads. So she did the stuff that she needed to do. It was dishonest, but she did what she needed to do. I would argue that this can still be won, but Trump and his campaign do have a hole they need to dig out of now. And that’s how I see it. Yeah. And he’s got a big hole to dig out of. I’m afraid, and to your point, I wish last night he would have taken even some of those things where she’s talking about, let’s not look at the past. Let’s look forward. I mean, he should have jumped in at some of those points and said, you’re the incumbent. Yeah, you’re the incumbent. You’re the administration that now wants to say we’re going to do an about face and change everything that you’ve had three and a half years to actually do. He could have, again, memorized your point, Bob, some talking points, four or five, 10. However many you got to memorize and just throw those things out there. Inflation, the national debt. I mean, on down the line, you go, the fact that the groceries cost more now than when he was in office and gas and so on. And he did a little bit of that in some areas, but to your point, he just sort of went in circles without just point blank, hey, you independent voter, remember these things right here. He did not do that. And he had a great chance to do it and didn’t. And I was very frustrated by the, in his closing statement, he said something that I was like, I’ve been waiting 90 minutes for him to say this. And that is, you’ve had three and a half years. You’ve been in power for three and a half years. Everything that you talked about, why didn’t you do that in the last three and a half years? Correct. I’m glad he said that in his closing statement, but it’s like, oh my goodness. If there’s one phrase that you can’t seem to get off of the loop on, let that be the phrase. Could you get off of the loop? Yeah, and the problem with the closing statements is, ’cause I watched some of the, the dialogue on social media and so on, even this morning, as much as that was good he did that in the closing statements, you wonder how many people lasted that long. I know, I know. So that’s the problem with leaving those things until the end. And whoever’s helping him along those lines is a whole nother discussion because I think Donald Trump is uncouchable as part of the problem we’ve got here. I’m sure he was coached on a lot of these things and a lot of the memory talking points and so on that we’re getting into right now. I’m sure he was coached on those things, Bob, but I doubt very seriously if he takes those to heart because he’s gonna do it his way, no matter what, right, wrong or otherwise and unfortunately it costs him when he does this. I know. And so now what we have to do is we have to figure out how we respond to this because that’s something I wanna talk about as well in the second half, but we’re also, John, I wanna do kind of a little bit of a deeper dive now into some of the specifics last night, some of the specific things that were discussed. Do some of the fact checking of Kamala Harris that David, Mure and Lindsey Davis should have done but didn’t do. And that in all fairness, Donald Trump should have done and didn’t do as well. So there’s a lot to uncover an unpack in the second half of this National Crawford Roundtable podcast. We do wanna ask you folks, if you haven’t given to pre-born yet, please do that now because we wanna save as many babies lives as we can. Don’t forget $28 saves one baby’s life. You’re paying for ultrasound images. $28 is the average ultrasound expense to stop one abortion to save one baby’s life. So take $28 times fill in the blank. Whatever that number is, that’s the forever legacy of how many abortions you and your family will have stopped. So give that gift to pre-born if you would and 100% of what you give goes to fund ultrasound, nothing for overhead. Now, there are some of you out there that are well off financially. Maybe you have a business or whatever the case may be, we need some of you to buy ultrasound machines. They’re $15,000 a piece. And your forever legacy will be that you stopped thousands and thousands of abortions. It’s a nice tax write-off for you too. So whichever camp you’re on, if you’re in the camp that you can buy ultrasound machines for $15,000 a piece, or if you’re part of everybody else where it’s like, well, I can’t do that, but I can stop a certain number of abortions. Okay, $28 times fill in the blank. That’s where everybody else is. So either camp, here’s how you give. Go online right now to Crawfordmediagroup.net and click on pre-born. Crawfordmediagroup.net, click on pre-born. You can give right there. And if you want to give to a real live person over the phone, they answer the phone’s 24/7. So call right now, 833-850, baby. That’s 833-850-baby. And we’re going to continue the second half of this national Crawford Roundtable coming up with myself and John Rush. And of course, we welcome your five star reviews. We thank you for that worthy listen to this podcast, everybody. Second half coming up next. This has been a Crawfordmediagroup production. Continuing the second half of the national Crawford Roundtable podcast with myself, Bob Doo, co-the-Bob Doo, co-show out of Detroit, John Rush, Rush, the reason I did Denver, Colorado. John, that’s it. It’s a John and Bob show. Neil Bell, Neil Bell, on us this week. So, well, fine, fine. They’ll go prodigal, but they’ll be back with us next week. So let’s do a deep dive then into last night’s debate if we could. And first thing I do, let’s deal with the three-on-one nature of what ABC News did. First of all, I don’t know if you saw this report, John, but Media Research Center did some analysis on the coverage of Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump among ABC, NBC, and CBS, since Joe Biden dropped out of the race. So this is when Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee. And during these last nearly couple of months, they analyzed every single second of news media coverage on ABC, NBC, and CBS. They’re mourning in evening news programs, including the weekend news programs as well. And remarkably, John, not 99%, 100% of every comment made about Kamala Harris was positive. 93% of every reporting comment made about Donald Trump was negative. 100% positive Kamala Harris, 93% negative to Donald Trump. This was ABC News. And by the way, one of these moderators, Lindsay Davis, during the DNC convention actually tried to connect Donald Trump to the KKK because Donald Trump had visited Howell Michigan and one of the many cities in Michigan that he’s gone to and Howell happened to be one of them. Well, I can tell you as a Michiganer that here in Michigan, there is a small KKK presence. And you have some of the KKK members that happen to live in or around Howell Michigan. That doesn’t mean Howell Michigan is KKK Central. It’s not. But you do have some KKK members there and they held a rally a few years ago in Howell, Michigan. Okay, fine. But what does she do, Lindsay Davis? She brings out, he’s going to Howell, Michigan, ask Gretchen Whitmer about this. What do you think about the connection here to the K, as though he’s come into visit the KKK. Never mind the fact that Joe Biden visited the very same Howell Michigan in 2021 as president and nobody in the media, liberal or conservative media tried to accuse him of visiting the KKK. This is who moderated the debate last night. And I’m telling you, these are not journalists. These are not news anchors. These are Rachel Maddell commentators. That’s right. Falsely as objective journalists. That’s right. Which kind of goes back to the whole and doesn’t matter now, because it’s already been done. But why would you agree to that knowing that’s what you’re going into, knowing that you’re not going to get him to do the things that we’ve already talked about. You’re not going to get him to do these talking points and really be able to rebut. And it was a prime opportunity rebut him and them at the same time. But that did not happen. So knowing that that probably wasn’t going to happen, because this was my biggest fear, why do you agree to it in the first place, Bob? I know. You know what? I don’t understand the answer to that. I suppose it has to do with the, if I can call it fearless nature of Donald Trump that he’s like, I don’t care. I’ll jump in the shark tank. I’ll go anywhere. But there’s a difference between… The problem is you’re not just fighting the shark and the tank, you’re fighting all the handlers of the shark. I know. And that’s why there’s a fine line between fearless and reckless. And I do believe that there’s a certain reckless nature to this with Donald Trump. Well, to throw the biblical side into it, Bob, it’s called ego. It’s called pride. Well, it is. It is. I love the guy. I love the guy, but that’s part of the problem he’s got. As his pride gets in front of him, he should have looked at this more calculated. And to your point, instead of being reckless, look at this methodically and say, okay, if I’m going to do this, I’ve got to do x, y, z to make this work. Otherwise, I’m out and I’m not going to do it. We need to be on more of a neutral playing field when it’s all said and done. Personally, I would have just said, hey, I debated the first guy you guys threw out as a campaign in the first place. You know how that one ended? I’m not doing this again. I’m done. Right. And that probably would have been the smarter thing to do. And unfortunately, he is just convinced that I can go out there and wing it. Because… I mean, here’s part of the problem, is though, John. And I don’t know what the answer to this is. But Donald Trump actually really does have the truth on his side. He’s got substance on his side. He’s got the record that he did. So, you know, he’s basically… He’s basically the guy who is saying 2 plus 2 equals 4, all right. And Kamala Harris is the one who is using emotion to say, you know, it equals 5. And I’ll tell you why because I care about you, you know, and that ends up tricking swing voters into thinking it’s 5. But Trump is not the guy to say, actually, I brought the calculator with me. And here’s a 5 point evidence. And here are the names of 5 mathematicians that confirms it’s 2 plus 2 equals 4. He doesn’t do that. Do that. What he does is… Oh, she doesn’t know math. She doesn’t even know English, okay. It’s 4. Trust me. That’s just not enough. Yeah, he feels like he can wing it and he can’t. And he can’t. No, he had opportunity last night to methodically go through some of her talking points. And for that independent swing voter in the middle literally say things like, listen, you all are struggling. Even she’s talked about how much you’re struggling. It’s funny. She talks about how you’re struggling underneath her watch, by the way, but you’re struggling. Guess what? You weren’t struggling as much when I was president. I had a X GDP. I had X interest rates. I had X money, you know, X, you know, gallons, you know, dollars at the pump, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Which by the way, you know, constitutes into everything else that you guys do on a daily basis because, you know, fuel is the root of every single thing we do in this country, every single good for the most part that you end up with has some sort of a gas price figured into it. So the reality is I had all that rock and an oil. And yes, in some ways, he talked about the fact that, you know, gas and oil was shut down by them and then they didn’t have any choice but to release more of it and so on and so over. You know, he did a little bit of that, but you had to be on our side and be somebody like you and I, Bob, I think even pick up on some of those things. The average independent voter, I don’t think even pick would have even picked up on what I just said. I know. And that’s, that’s the frustrating thing that it wouldn’t have been that much to memorize. No, we have, but we have, I know. I don’t have notes in front of me. I’m doing all this for memory. I can do it. You can do it. Why can’t he? I know. And so it’s just, it’s not that tough. And really quick, I know for a fact because I’m usually the dumbest guy in any room. Because I cue is far higher than mine. He does have a high IQ. That’s amazing. And this, well, and I have to acknowledge, just goes to what you said before. Yes, there is, I think a pride issue there in that, you know what, I don’t need to prep for this. I got the truth on my side. I’ll go out there and wing it because, you know, it’s, no, it’s not enough. You do have to put it in the light. She’s the babbling idiot. I can take her anytime and he plays. That’s his mentality. I know. And you know, something, if he had just, if he had just along the lines of what you said, said, look, it’s really, really tough. It’s really this simple, okay? The people watching right now, let me just ask you point blank, do you remember when I was president paying $2 a gallon for gas? Do you remember that? Okay, because that’s what it was. Do you remember when I was president? Well, for Fred was under two bucks. Yeah. Inflation was 1% when I was president. Okay, do you remember that? Do you remember what your grocery bill was when I was president? What has your grocery bill been for the last three and a half years? What’s it cost to fill up your tank over the last three and a half years? What about crime? Do you remember how many illegals were flooding over this, over the board? Did you remember how many fentanyl deaths there were when I was president compared to now? Okay, just remember the way things were as far as foreign policy goes. Do you remember that they were not one, not two, but four Middle East peace deals with Israel during life, for years in White House? Okay. This is the actual record. I’m not running on promises that I will do. I’m running on the record that I did do and that I’m going to do again. They’ve had three and a half years. What does your bank account look like? What does the security and safety of your own neighborhood look like? What does the Middle East look like? They’ve had three and a half years. She’s the incumbent. Okay. You want to move forward, moving forward is telling her you failed after three and a half years. The other thing I would have interwoven into things last night, given that today is 9/11 and this was the eve of 9/11. I would have wove some of those things into some of the terrorist things talking about I ran the funding of and all those different things and he did hit on some of that but you could have tied that into even, hey, guys, remember 9/11, guess what happened? This is the eve of 9/11. We had no idea it was going to happen the next morning. Guess what? Under this next administration, even the current administration, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. But guess what? When I was president, you knew exactly what was going to happen to tomorrow because I wasn’t going to allow any of that stuff to happen on our soil period. That’s right. So true. And really quick, real on the inflation side too. Keep in mind, he could have said this as well because it’s true. He was being criticized and we were teetering on deflation as an economy which isn’t necessarily good either but he was being criticized on some of that at that time. He could have even thrown that out there because deflation lowers prices sometimes not in a good way but that’s a bigger discussion for maybe a later podcast but Bob, he could have thrown some of that in some of the experts out there even accused me of being deflationary meaning you guys were paying even less than you were prior to me taking over in office. Okay. Now, you’re absolutely right. So here’s what I want to do, John Nex. I want to talk about what do we do from this point? What do we do with Trump from this point? Because this is where I think all of us who would rather Trump win, we all know he’s going to be way, way, way better president than Kamala Harris would be. So now we have to, are we being honest in analyzing the warts and his shortcomings in his failings and how he blew it last night? Yes. I think we’re absolutely right about that. So now what do we do about this? Again, for those of you listening that will criticize of this, you have to know how to counter this in the world we live in because to your point, Bob, it’s now going to be up to us. Those of you that are out around the water cooler, those of you that are talking to your neighbor, those of you that are at the church social and this, this type of topic comes up. You have to know some of these things. Since Donald Trump’s not saying it, we have to do it for him, Bob. That’s right. And we’re going to address that and how we respond to this then coming up next as we continue through this national Crawford Roundtable podcast. In the meantime, you know, one of the things they talked about last night is the issue of abortion. And I know that that’s a contentious issue in this country. We are strongly pro life. And I would love to see abortion banned in this country. I would love to see that. Okay. Like slavery was banned. Abortion needs to be banned someday. Is that realistic? Mathematically right now. No, it’s not. The votes just aren’t there in Congress. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to stop abortions. We can pre-born is the main pro life group that shows ultrasound images, fund-born babies to expect it moms in pro life centers all across the country. And those moms choose life when they see a picture of their baby. And they usually accept the Lord too. So what we want to do is we want to provide as many ultrasound images to as many women as possible, but it takes money to do this. And this is where you folks come in in the audience. We’re asking you to pay for ultrasound images as many as you can because that means you’re saving as many babies lives as you can. $28 is the average ultrasound expense to stop one abortion to save one baby’s life. So pray about a number of babies lives you’d be willing to save. Take $28 times fill in the blank. And that’s your gift to pre-born. By the way, maybe you gave to pre-born last year. And it’s like, yeah, you know what? Maybe I should do this once a year. That’s great too. Okay. Just as often as you’re able to and as much as you can, it’s the legacy of your family that here’s how many abortions we are stopping. $28 times fill in the blank. And whatever that amount is at your gift to pre-born, 100% of what you give goes to fund ultrasound. Nothing for overhead. So here’s how you give to pre-born. Just go online to CrawfordMediaGroup.net and click on pre-born. CrawfordMediaGroup.net click on pre-born to give right there. Or you can give to a real life person over the phone 24/7 they answer the phone. So call 833-850 baby. That’s 833-850 baby. Just mention national Crawford Roundtable when you call. We appreciate you folks doing that. We really do. As John Rush and I continue to analyze last night’s debate. So okay, John, it is what it is. Donald Trump has certain strengths and he has certain weaknesses. A major weakness is his ability to articulate a message clearly and to kind of think on his feet and be a debater. He is just weak in this area. And I kind of liken it to a heart surgeon who is one of the most skilled heart surgeons that there are. But the guy is lousy at articulating why heart surgery is right for you. He’s a lousy salesman if you will in the way that he communicates something like that. I want that guy working on my heart. But I don’t necessarily want him giving a symposium speech about heart surgery because he’s not going to be effective at it. That’s what it is with Donald Trump. Donald Trump has proven he is an extremely skilled and competent leader. He knows how to get the economy running hot. He knows how to get inflation down. He knows how to get energy prices down. He knows how to inform policy, make America strong. He knows how to build up NATO. He knows how to get peace in the Middle East. He knows how to secure the border. He knows how to fight crime. He does know how to do these things. So he’s very competent as a manager. He’s very incompetent as a communicator. And so to your point, what do we do with this now? We can either just sit around, throw up our hands and complain about Donald Trump. All right. Now, we complained about him earlier, but that’s because we’re being intellectually honest and saying let’s acknowledge his flaws. Okay, we acknowledge us. So now what do we do about it? What we do is say, then you know what? We’re going to fill in the gap where he’s unable to. If he’s not effective at communicating his message and staying on substance, we will, because the substance he presents is true, the rhetoric surrounding it is what’s weak. So let’s pick up the slack for him and let’s not throw him under the bus and say, well, then fine, we’ll just give up on Donald Trump. So we don’t have a choice, Bob. The alternative is so bad and so bad. So the country is so bad for the Christian community and go down the list. The reality is these are two vowed Marxists that are on the ticket right now. As I said before, not sure we’ve ever had a time in history. We’ve had both a president and vice president nominees being vowed Marxists. We have that right now. There’s just no way we can allow them to win. So we literally have to do every single thing we possibly can and be that voice of Donald Trump. He just can’t be for himself. He just doesn’t have it in him, which, again, not beating the guy up, but I just don’t know where the shift from 2016 to now has come from other than just him fighting, I guess, the news media and all of those that are against him, the legal system and so on. I guess at some point he just feels like he has to be this cage tiger at all times rather than being stealthy being the cheetah if you would that’s out there hunting for prey. He’d rather be that cage lion if you would and the reality is that’s the only I can figure Bob that’s changed him from them till now because in 2016 he wasn’t that way. He could communicate then. You know something. I, here’s where I’m going to give a little bit of grace to Donald Trump as well. The guy is tough as nails. First of all, we know that he takes a bullet to the ear. He came within a half an inch of dying in his immediate reaction with blood running down his face is I’m going to stand up and say fight, fight, fight. So the guy is tough as nails. There’s no doubt that this is the tough guy that you want in the room with Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping or any of these guys. So he’s got that, but he’s still a human being and think about the relentless attacks and assaults that he’s had to deal with him and his whole family. All right. Here’s a guy who his first presidency was marred with the false claims of Russia collusion and him being a traitor impeached twice on sham impeachment claims. The countless trials against him that are sham trials where the government’s being weaponized against him. There is an active effort right now to throw him in prison for the rest of his life and a news media that is anywhere from 90 to 100% against him and in favor of their opponents. This is something I don’t get unless your data from Star Trek, I don’t care how tough Donald Trump is. He’s still a human being and there’s got to be a point where this just wears the man down. And so what I think by the way, Bob, I think that’s part of the other side’s plan. I everything you just said fully agree. That’s why I think there’s a difference today versus 2016. It does wear on you and I get all of that. That’s why we have to be his voice, his mouthpiece because it’s also a fact we’re on you. Yeah. But here’s what we do. Okay. Let’s have his back. This is a guy who came up short last night. This is a guy who his weaknesses were on full display. His frustrations were on full display. But the substance of what he offers is real. And so let’s have his back. Let’s defend him. Let’s not sweep under the rug. His poor performance. Let’s not try to spin this in a dishonest way. What are you kidding? He won the elect. He won the debate last night. I don’t know. I think that you’re looking at it with rose colored glasses if you think that. Yeah. So no, he lost the debate. Okay. He pretty much imploded and Kamala Harris put on a good performance. It was an acting job. Just like an actor in Hollywood in a movie, they’re reading a script. They’re performing a character that’s not really who they are. She performed the role of a character last night that is not who she really is and she got away with it. So let’s have his back in this in the areas that he that he falls short. And by the way, John, I just got to say I get to get back to ABC for a moment here because this is what drove me nuts. All right. They they fact checked that they argued with Donald Trump repeatedly throughout last night. Well, you said no, that’s not true. That’s not true. They’re like, but they let her get away with the very fine people, hoax falsely claiming that Donald Trump called neo-nazies very fine people. They let her get away with the blood bath hoax where she claimed that he said there’s going to be a blood bath if he doesn’t win the election. No, he was talking about an economic blood bath and the auto industry. He was talking about the auto industry. My industry is what he was talking about. Exactly. Exactly. And that’s true. And by the way, if you go to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary and look up the word blood bath, you know what it’ll tell you. There’s two different meanings for it. One is a literal blood blood in the streets. The other meaning is an economic blood bath to describe economic disaster. And that’s what he was talking about. You can watch the context of that. They let her get away with that. David Mure didn’t say to her. No, actually, he was referring to the auto industry and that is the term that’s used for an economic blood bath as well. He was referring to that. They didn’t fact check her on that. They didn’t fact check her in hiding from interviews or when she said, I declared in 2020 that I would not ban fracking. No, she didn’t declare that in her debate in 2020 with Mike Pence. She was asked what Joe Biden will do about fracking. And her exact words were Joe Biden will not ban fracking. He has made that very clear. At no time did she say she would not ban fracking. As a matter of fact, when in the primaries, she said the words, I will ban fracking on day one. Well, they let her get away with that. They just let her get away with lie after lie after lie with zero fact checking. It really did make my eye twitch, John. Which again, we talk about this all the time. It shows you how much in bed with the left or how much the left controls the media sources that are out there, the majority of mainstream media. There’s just a couple exceptions of what they don’t own and control when it’s all send done. It’s funny. I was on vacation last week and just talking to people. You always want to wear somebody’s politically. And somehow or another always kind of rounds itself back. Now the good news is Bob, I didn’t talk to a single person of all the people I met on vacation voting for Kamala, not one person. That’s good to know. That’s the plus side. I mean, now, granted, you kind of probably gravitate, you know, like, it gets like kind of a thing. But most people were like, you know, I really don’t like Donald Trump back to what we were talking about a moment ago. I don’t like how he says things. I don’t like his pit bullness that’s in him on some things. They like it and other things, but they said basically at the end of the day, we don’t have any choice. We can’t vote for her. Yeah. Well, you know, something I’d write, I’ll go back to my heart surgeon thing. If I have a choice between a competent heart surgeon who is one of the best with a proven track record, but he’s a jerk as far as his personality goes. Yeah. Outside manner. Who cares? I’ll take him all day exactly. I’ll take the bad bedside manner, skilled heart surgeon over top of the warm and fuzzy person who knows how to create facial expressions that make me feel warm and fuzzy. But, you know, there’s another thing that the January 6th, the moderators bring up January 6th because after all, that has to be a date that lives in infamy, right? But when Kamala Harris said that was the largest, that that was the biggest threat attack on our democracy since the Civil War, if either one of those two moderators were actual journalists, then they would have followed it up with Madden vice president. So are you saying that January 6th, the riot at January 6th was worse than 9/11, worse than Pearl Harbor, worse than World War I, worse than World War II, Adolf Hitler, worse than the Cold War and the nuclear scare, worse than the Bay of Pigs, worse than the Black Lives Matter Antifa riots where dozens of people were actually killed. Are you saying all of those things are less of a threat on our democracy than a couple hundred knuckleheads storming the Capitol? No questions. They didn’t even have to go through the whole list, just since the Civil War. So you’re saying that what happened on January 6th was worse than 9/11, is that what you’re saying? You know, see what she says? Put her on the spot. Yeah. No, no, and again, those were some of those missed opportunities that, you know, we, again, we have to come back in now, do some damage control JD Vance. You know, he was mentioned a little bit last night when they were talking about abortion, some of those things, which again, that was one of the other missteps in Trump. Those two have got to get their heads together and figure out what’s each one saying because you can’t have one saying something that the other doesn’t agree with. If you’re on the same team, now you sound like, you know, Joel Biden and Kamala Harris, you got to be on the same team here, guys. Come on. Now, this is clearly a case last night where Trump realized, uh-oh, I risk losing some of my pro life base by saying that I wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban because some pro life has got mad at me about that. So I got to back off that. I don’t want to give that sound bite again. And so he was afraid of giving that sound bite again, but unfortunately, yes, then it created what appeared to be a conflicting message. And all he had to say is easy. One line are coming back. We believe we believe it to state’s rights issue and move on and pivot into something else. Exactly. Exactly. Certainly don’t, by the way, it would have been good for Trump to say, by the way, did you notice that you asked her? Is there one or any restrictions on abortion that you would support? And she didn’t answer the question. Her answer was, you know, I grew up in a middle class family. Uh-huh. And then she started going through her talking points. So, and by the way, when Trump said he did say to her, by the way, would you support banning abortion? Should abortion be legal in seven months, eighth month, ninth month? Okay. The golden opportunity for David Merrill and Lindsey Davis to say, Madame Vice President, is there one to the ninth month? Would you support, would you support banning abortion in the ninth month? Yes or no? And then when she doesn’t answer the question, then say, with all due respect, that wasn’t a question I asked, would you ban abortion in the ninth month? All right. But of course, they’re not going to do that if you recall what he said was, all right, well, we’re going to move on. Wouldn’t even give her a chance to answer Trump’s question that he asked her. So, it is what it is. Again, another area that he missed out on, where it wouldn’t have taken much to find the dad. I mean, this could have been very easily found. I mean, we’ve got one of the worst doctors in the entire world in Boulder, Colorado, Dr. Her, and that we’ll do, you know, do abortions all the way up to the day of delivery. She poo-pooed that and basically said that never happens. We have a famous doctor in Boulder, this built his entire practice off of doing that. That’s all he had to say was, well, maybe she talked to Dr. Her in Boulder, Colorado, that advertises, he’ll do that because you’re claiming they never happen. But this guy’s built his entire legacy on that. I know. And by the way, nothing from the moderators about her 2019 declared position that she wants to use taxpayer money to pay for sex change surgery, for sex change operations, for convicted felons and illegal aliens and decriminalizing all drugs, cocaine, heroin, all of it. That’s what she said in her ACLU questionnaire. So what we need, you know, Bob, in return, we need to make sure that we have a lot of all of those talking points, all of you out there listening, put together what you feel in your circle of interest are the key talking points that people would like to hear and make sure that you’re hammering those hard when it comes to those individuals on what our side and Donald Trump believes in. That’s right. And we got to make up for the stuff where Trump is just going to be weak, like bringing up stuff about the JD Vance, illegal aliens, eating cats and whatever. Right. Right. Right. Let that stuff go. And that’s what Trump’s, this is part of his war. It’s this part of where he, these are his weaknesses. He’s around his strengths. His, his strengths are the jobs and policies that he enacted as president. Those are his strengths. The substance is a strength. His style is his weakness. So let’s make up the gap. Let’s fill in the gap for his weaknesses and style and communication ability. That’s all. So, all right. Well, it is what it is. And you know what? Yep. That’s right. Jesus is still Lord, no matter what, but we’re going to keep on fighting. And we want you folks to keep on fighting to save baby’s lives, give to preborn if you haven’t already. Go to Crawfordmediagroup.net, click on preborn, give right there. Remember, it’s $28 times fill in the blank. Whatever that number is, that’s the number of baby’s lives that you will save $28 since fill in the blank. Crawfordmediagroup.net, click on preborn or you can call 833-850-Baby. Just mention National Crawford Roundtable when you call. John Rush, Rush, reason out of Denver, Colorado, my soft bob, Duke of the Bob Doo, Coach Show out of Detroit. Look forward to being joined next week by Neo Boron, Neo Boron, Live out of Buffalo, New York. John, good talk to you. Thanks a lot. Have a great week. You bet we’ll see. You do the same. You’ve been listening to the National Crawford Roundtable podcast. A view of today’s culture through a biblical lens brought to you by preborn, saving babies and souls. Join us in the fight to save babies from abortion. More gift provides a free ultrasound from mother and need. 80% of the time she will choose life. Visit Crawfordmediagroup.net and click on their logo to donate. You can download this podcast from Apple Podcasts and more from your local Crawfordmedia group station or at Crawfordmediagroup.net. And please give this podcast a 5 star rating on your Apple app. Look for the notification on your app for when the next weekly edition of the National Crawford Roundtable podcast is ready for you to download. This is a Crawford Media Group production. [Music]
