A pollster who called it right in Virginia, and who in my book calls it right more often than most, Robert Cahaley, joins the Great America Show with Lou Dobbs to talk about the results in Virginia and New Jersey.
00:11:07.760A bunch of junk, and yet it's being perpetuated by the national left-wing media daily, emphatically, energetically.
00:11:15.600And as you reference, as my wife and I watch a sporting event on television,
00:11:23.400we're struck by the commercials and the lectures and the messaging that is just,
00:11:30.660they're inundating those television audiences with propaganda, for crying out loud.
00:11:37.240There was a time in this country where commercials were the voice of business.
00:11:42.380They represented the values of the nation, the values of business and society.
00:11:51.040It's just, it's become quite something.
00:11:53.520It is really stunning to watch what businesses are doing with shareholder money.
00:12:00.360But keep in mind, a lot of it is because the businesses have been sold a bill of goods by pollsters with agenda who tells them this is what the public wants.
00:12:39.820And, by the way, parents still think they should be in charge of the local school system, in charge of what is being taught their children, and that, yes, they are not just simply, you know, bystanders as the state takes control of their children's lives and education.
00:13:00.480That was a powerful state, particularly in Virginia.
00:13:07.440And, you know, one of the – I've been talking to a lot of legislators around the country, and there's this movement to get rid of these school board elections that are always on these off years and nonpartisan.
00:13:18.760There's movement to put those things on the ballot at the same time.
00:13:25.900Know where they are because when these elections are standalones, then the teachers' union can organize and win them.
00:13:31.520If you put them on the same time they're electing your senators and your reps, you're going to get more accountable school board members.
00:13:38.160Robert, that's a great point and a great idea that I assure you this broadcast will be driving as part of the solutions to what we're dealing with in this country.
00:13:50.940We're not going to just talk about it on this podcast.
00:13:54.400We're going to actually do things here for the American people, American citizens.
00:14:00.600And I think what you've just outlined is one of – a critically important step.
00:14:05.880Another critically important step, and that is to actually begin to change the narrative on mandates of all kinds in this country.
00:14:19.340There is a – in the course of 11 months, the Biden administration has brought in an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants.
00:14:28.460The border that President Trump worked so hard to secure is now wide open.
00:14:35.740This president, Biden, is not persuading and communicating with the American people.
00:14:42.140He hunkers down in a bunker and issues a mandate as if this were some sort of ridiculous authoritarian regime rather than the greatest constitutional Republican history.
00:14:57.560What are we going to have to do to awaken the American people and perhaps awaken the Republican Party to what must be done?
00:15:08.160Well, you know, as I'm a pollster, so I'm going to keep coming back to this.
00:15:16.320We need to call it out when people are putting out this phony information.
00:15:20.840I mean, every now and then we know where Biden's approval rating is.
00:15:24.020So when you see these phony polls that show it like at 48, 50, we know that's not real.
00:15:29.280But the thing is, people react until there's an election, they react to what the polling is.
00:15:39.640And Manchin and Sinema live in the real world, okay?
00:15:51.600And in the House, they weren't hardcore liberals, even though they were Democrats.
00:15:56.240So – but they don't – they are actually in touch with their constituents, and that's why they balked on this thing.
00:16:03.380But so many of these guys, you know, get elected, go to Washington, stay in that echo chamber, and they don't have any idea what people really think.
00:16:18.040So the key is elections like these are wake-up calls, and what they have to start understanding is when people give you polling with an agenda, they're not giving you the advice you need to get reelected.
00:16:29.880And in the end, representatives and senators want to get reelected.
00:16:33.580And when they see how unpopular mandates are, I think you'll see a broad coalition that goes beyond just Republicans to stand up to this because as much – if you don't like mandates and you're a Democrat, think about what happens next time a Republican's in the White House.
00:16:48.820I mean, this has to have a limit put in there.
00:16:54.660And what has been so important, and I think this was a key for Youngkin, and it'll be a key to a lot of elections, the importance of governors and state government has been showcased in the COVID era.
00:17:06.340People didn't really understand the difference between state and federal government, and boy, oh, boy, have they gotten a crash course in it.
00:17:22.540And I say to this audience every day, nowhere do you have more influence over our political future than in your own home, neighborhood, and community.
00:17:37.080You have a greater opportunity to control, whether it's the quality of the air you breathe or the water you drink, the education system, your police department.
00:17:53.060There has to be participatory democracy in this country, or the most active force, ideologically, will prevail, whether good for America or bad for America.
00:18:07.100Self-governance requires, I mean, if you're going to self-govern, that means you've got to participate.
00:18:13.120And we've also got to have confidence in the information that we're seeing and reading and hearing about.
00:18:18.780And my confidence in that regard is perhaps at an all-time low.
00:18:25.240You've talked about phony polls, and I think it's a wonderful point, Robert.
00:18:28.700But the question then becomes, are these polls phony?
00:18:32.180Are they archaic in their methodology because of willful ignorance?
00:18:37.580Or is it because they're driving agendas, whether it's to corporate America, whether it is corporate America, political parties and ideological groups across our society?
00:18:56.640Some of the ones that are the academic ones that you see all the time sponsored by the colleges, I think it was an apology from the guy that runs Mama today.
00:19:22.660So you end up reflecting the opinion of those who are on the extreme of the left or the right.
00:19:29.300And the right is afraid to give their opinion because they're tired of being canceled and everything else.
00:19:35.300So it disproportionately emphasizes the left opinion.
00:19:38.500Now, some of the more corporate types, some of, you know, some of the names you hear out there that have gotten out of the game of doing elections because the accountability stinks when they do elections.
00:20:02.760You know, they have some kind of consulting in the morning and then decide what the polls are going to say.
00:20:08.360Well, you're describing a, it seems like an ever-growing number of those kinds of pollsters.
00:20:18.920And I want to say again, Robert, we thank you for your both integrity and intelligence and great success and accuracy.
00:20:27.060I want to turn to really the national mood right now because we seem to be a fickle bunch, Americans, always have been.
00:20:40.580We've been suspicious of our government.
00:20:42.500We've been skeptical of our government.
00:20:44.340But right now we are caught in a period of polarization and alienation that for the life of me, I can only compare to this country when I was a young fellow in the 1960s.
00:20:57.800And where are we headed and what is this, what is the real mood of this country and your thoughts about the way in which we go about improving that mood?
00:21:13.860Well, I mean, in general, I'm probably a little different.
00:21:21.900I'm kind of a founding father type belief that I don't think two-party system is healthy because one party has to win and one party has to lose.
00:21:37.820Could there be a solution for the border which involves having limits on birthright citizenship, having limits on people being able to come across to work but not be citizens?
00:21:52.280Of course there could be a compromise worked out.
00:21:55.300But one party would lose and one party would win.
00:21:57.460And so often that's the problem, and that polarization is so inherent.
00:22:08.760When the Democrats have control, they want to make sure that the Republicans – the Republicans will make sure the Democrats achieve nothing when the other side has control, and it's always about the next election.
00:22:20.520And so I think that's a very bad thing.
00:22:28.640The Democrat Party has probably bitten off more than it can chew and gone so far to the left that the center has moved back right.
00:22:37.100And I think that that's what we're going to see next is more – not necessarily just a Yunkin type, but this idea that a Yunkin, a mansion, a cinema, these kind of – these people that are on the right all the way to the – just the left side of the middle are where the country is.
00:23:04.220The Democrat Party has gotten so far off to the left that it no longer represents the country.
00:23:09.980I mean, you've got people like Pelosi and Schumer fighting to keep their party pro-Israel, for God's sake.
00:23:15.720I mean, we did a poll on that earlier, and we found that the majority of Democrats thought the Israelis were to blame for what was happening in Gaza.
00:23:24.120Now, I'm not saying that's what Schumer believes.
00:23:27.380I don't think that's what Pelosi believes.
00:23:28.660I don't think that's what Biden believes.
00:23:30.460But they don't – I mean, they're like on the back of a stagecoach without reins.
00:23:36.280And these horses are running, and they're just trying not to get thrown off.
00:23:39.580I don't know what they believe, but I do know what they've done.
00:23:44.740And what they've done is turned their back on Israel in their policies and in their rhetoric and in their leadership of the Democratic Party.
00:23:53.980Because they're afraid of their left wing.
00:23:56.140Well, you know, if they're not going to be part – a chapter in Profiles in Courage, the least they could do is think about the American national interest at the time – you know, at the same time they're putting a finger up to see which way the wind is blowing.
00:24:34.540We're going to give you the last word, and I'd just like to ask you this if you would consider it in that last word.
00:24:40.700What are – in your judgment, what are the odds that this party is capable of turning its back on their left wing, radical, even Marxist wing of the Democratic Party, and reaching out to the middle class, to the center of our body politic?
00:25:01.500I would never underestimate people who live and die by the opinions of voters' ability to reinvent themselves to reflect what they believe to be the current opinion of the voters.
00:25:18.800Yeah, and I've got to ask you one last question in this.
00:25:24.540Donald Trump, his name hasn't come up as we've discussed this.
00:25:29.440How important is he going to be in 2022 and 2024?
00:25:34.860Well, remember at the beginning in Virginia where I told you how important it was for the two parties to gin up their non-traditional state election voters?
00:25:45.060That doesn't happen without the aggressive work that Trump and Trump supporters and activists on the ground did in Western and Southern Virginia.
00:25:56.960They blew right through the goals of where they had to be to get those things done.
00:26:01.420And so to not understand that there is a mass of people that – a lot of Republicans might – there might be a lot of Republicans who just wish they'd go away, but if they'd go away, your governing coalition, your ability to win elections in the future is going to go away.
00:26:36.560They will do it at the peril of being successful in 2022.
00:26:42.280And that nonsense Karl Rove published in the Wall Street Journal, people just need – let them start and rewriting this stuff.
00:26:51.520Because this has become a party that represents average working people, and that is a good place to be, and it makes – it's stupid for us to do the same thing, divide ourselves the way the Democrats are doing, because we'll fall apart too.
00:27:06.740And with that, we appreciate it so much.
00:27:10.540Robert Cahaley, the best pollster, in my opinion, in the country, until somebody knocks him off his perch, and I think that's going to take a lot of work.
00:27:31.600And now let's do something we do, perhaps not frequently, but certainly regularly on this podcast.
00:27:37.660Let's talk about religious liberty, the First Amendment, the freedom of religion.
00:27:42.580Not the freedom from religion, as many on the left like to think about it.
00:27:47.040It's freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment, as I said.
00:27:51.420And as you know, the Marxist left in this country has tried to drive God from the public square, to drive God out of classrooms, and to deny public school students prayer and even silent worship.
00:28:05.120There is a cultural crisis in this country that's worsening because the leadership in America is, in my opinion, worsening.
00:28:12.620And certainly the President Biden agenda reflects deepening threats against our constitutional rights.
00:28:20.160I want to take up all of this with radio talk show host, best-selling author, columnist, and Christian conservative, Salem Radio's Eric Metaxas, who, by the way, has a new best-seller book just out, and we recommend it to you highly.
00:28:39.140Congratulations on the book, Eric, and a delight to have you with us.
00:28:44.380I can't wait to have a conversation and to begin, if we may, with what is a cultural crisis that has risen to levels I don't think, even at our most despairing, either you or I would have anticipated 20 years ago.
00:29:02.720Your thoughts on where we are and the forces at work in our society.
00:29:07.920Well, first of all, a joy to be with you, Lou, very long-time fan.
00:29:13.880And I want to say that when you say we're at a moment culturally that we couldn't have dreamed of 20 years ago, I think that's the first point that needs to be made, is that we have to recognize that what we're going through now is lunacy.
00:29:31.160And I think we have to encourage other Americans that if you think this is lunacy, it's because you're sane and there are more Americans who see the lunacy as lunacy than you would ever believe.
00:29:44.460They may not have voices in the media, but the fact is people see what is happening.
00:29:52.420And in some ways, I will say it is a great thing because it is waking us up.
00:30:02.920Keeping the republic is something that takes effort, and sometimes things have to get even this bad before some people realize, uh-oh, maybe I better do something.
00:30:22.540The reason we call this the Great America Show is because we truly believe America is great.
00:30:29.660It is about a great America and not a sullen or oppressive nation, but as, to use your word, Eric, a joyous and free nation and free people.
00:30:44.500All of that freedom is under threat, it seems, almost daily.
00:30:48.500But we are still a great nation, and we have nothing to apologize for in being a great nation.
00:30:57.160I want to turn to the wokeness that you reference.
00:31:02.520I love the fact that the Marxist left in this country is talking about woke, which is sort of fitting that they would be upside down on the language
00:31:15.120and in verse to the semantics and the actual meaning of language, what they mean is they want us to continue to slumber and to give them free reign to attack our national institutions,
00:31:29.800to destroy our American values, and to deny us and our children and our grandchildren the promise of the American destiny.
00:31:40.820Well, you say, you know, I mean, the irony is that wokeness is the opiate of the masses.
00:31:50.600That's, you know, obviously an inversion of Marx's infamous statement that religion is the opiate of the masses.
00:31:58.080But in fact, wokeness is the opiate of the masses because it tells them things that maybe they want to believe,
00:32:05.120but that can never be true in any universe, we don't need to talk about it now, but my new book is called Is Atheism Dead?
00:32:15.140And we have to remember that at the heart of everything that is true and good, not least American-style freedom and self-government,
00:32:26.300this thing we call liberty, this thing we call liberty, at the heart of it all is the idea that our rights come from God and that he made us to be free.
00:32:36.080Marxism, cultural Marxism, wokeness, is the antithesis of that.
00:32:41.140It is explicitly, usually not explicitly, but often explicitly anti-God.
00:32:51.000So whether it's BLM or Antifa or Nancy Pelosi's party, you have people that have pushed God out.
00:32:59.480They have created a, they're in the process of creating a secular utopia, just as Lenin was trying to create it and Stalin was and Mao, and they can't do it.
00:33:13.520It's like, I mean, again, there's great irony.
00:33:40.720But what's comical in a way, if you want to say how good is America, America is so good that its own idea of religious liberty, which is at the heart of everything, even says to the atheist,
00:33:54.400even though what you would do ultimately would undermine all of this, nonetheless, we're such a free country that we give you religious liberty.
00:34:05.800The question is, will the atheists and the cultural Marxists give everyone else religious liberty?
00:34:27.180And it's simply it is simply an assault.
00:34:32.120Now, this wokeness is just an expression of the assault that the left in this country has undertaken against our institutions or values,
00:34:43.540but against, indeed, the very idea of America itself.
00:34:47.620I wish I were comfortable with the thought or confident in the thought that, oh, these folks who want to deny conservatives access to the student bodies of universities and their campuses,
00:35:05.320you know, that's just a misunderstanding.
00:35:07.080Those who want to control the language in the public arena and thereby control thought.
00:35:16.680At every turning point, there is an effort to remove freedom, to destroy liberties, not just simply minimize.
00:35:26.720They want to eliminate freedom of speech and thought.
00:35:29.780The academia, at one time in this country, was hallowed ground for individual liberty, for free speech, free thought, and expression.
00:35:43.040It has become something constricted and suffocating, denying expression of whether it be liberty, whether it be freedom of speech, whether it be freedom of religion.
00:36:20.820And I knew that they had gone pretty woke already then.
00:36:24.500And so I said, I'm going to take this opportunity to deliver a speech very, very anodyne in tone.
00:36:33.820But I said, I want to talk about free speech and the vital importance of having a conversation with people who are on the other side of various issues.
00:36:46.060And it could not have been more measured and civilized.
00:36:50.440I went out of my way to make this point as kindly and gently as I could.
00:36:55.640But to make the point, the firestorm that came out of it, some student wrote to the paper.
00:37:01.440He says this was the most hateful thing he had ever heard in his life.
00:37:04.780You know, he was probably 19.1 years old, but he thought he would use that.
00:37:08.380And then after that, it was almost funnier.
00:37:15.140They are now threatening to revoke the honorary doctorate.
00:37:19.280So simply talking about free speech, what does it tell us?
00:37:23.700If you can't agree on these super basics like freedom and speech and the Constitution, you're at war.
00:37:33.140And it's a war that right now, we're at mid-pitch of the battle, it seems.
00:37:41.920We are neither winning nor entirely losing, but we know what's at stake.
00:37:47.380And now we have a government that is in league with forces in our society, whether it be the doctrinaire efforts of the left on college campuses, universities, whether it be labor unions, whether it be the Democratic Party or the radical left itself.
00:38:09.720If there is sometimes a difference between the Democratic Party and the radical left, not often as there used to be, but sometimes it's it's starting to to we're starting to see people actually afraid in this country.
00:38:24.400Yes. Afraid to say something that might be considered offensive.
00:38:29.180I say good. Good on you for your your speech at the University of the South.
00:38:34.660Well, again, that was a wonderful thing to do or six years ago.
00:38:38.340But I thought to myself, listen, I you know, you may know I wrote a 600 page biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great heroes of 20th century who stood up to the Nazis as a Christian, felt an obligation to God to speak out for the Jews, to speak against the Nazi doctrine.
00:38:58.520Most Christians who were actually just churchgoers calling themselves Christians, they they they look the other way.
00:39:05.840They didn't want to get in trouble. They didn't want to get in trouble.
00:39:07.620That's, of course, where we are in America today.
00:39:10.260Are enough people going to wake up and be willing to use the freedom that we still have to speak up, to defy nonsense, to encourage those who see the madness?
00:39:24.480Are we going to do that or are we going to say not yet?
00:39:28.080I don't want to lose my job. I'm just going to go with the flow.
00:39:31.240If you tell me to get a vaccine shot that I don't think is going to do me any good or might do me harm.
00:39:37.560I can't think about that. I want my job.
00:39:40.540I'm just going to do it. The government says do it.
00:39:42.840I'm feeling this pressure. That's precisely what the good Germans were feeling in Germany.
00:39:48.840They were not some evil tribe. My mother came from there. My my family is from there.
00:39:54.280These are good people who simply lacked courage in the moment when it was needed.
00:40:01.060We are in such a moment in the United States.
00:40:03.400If people do not stand up and live out their freedom and spend what you've got now in this war tomorrow,
00:40:12.180what you thought you could spend will be taken away from you.
00:40:15.400And I don't just mean money. I mean your voice. So this is really, really serious.
00:40:20.700And we did not, of course, declare war. Once somebody says to you, free speech is out.
00:40:26.500What you say is hate speech and we're going to come after you once that happens and people go along with it.
00:40:33.480And of course, many Republicans, craven as they are, have gone along with it.
00:40:37.160Corporate America, ultra craven. They have gone along with it.
00:40:40.300The few of us willing to speak can make the difference between whether we go down the path that Germany went down or whether we remain free.
00:40:50.080I believe God's hand is on this country.
00:40:53.400We couldn't have lasted or come into existence if that weren't the case.
00:40:58.000But he doesn't force us to do the right thing right now.
00:41:01.160We have to exercise our courage. Everybody has to do that.
00:41:07.000It is absolutely vital. We do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past.
00:41:12.840I do believe we are unique. There has never been a country like America.
00:41:18.140And I don't think it's our time to vanish.
00:41:21.100But sometimes things really need to get horrible for a lot of good people to finally wake up.
00:41:28.660And one of the things, one of the most important things I wanted to talk to you today about, of course,
00:41:36.980is the role of religion and the reception of the current American society to religion.
00:41:45.620Because, and I do so with the full knowledge that there are some people listening in the audience
00:41:50.500who may not believe in God or are agnostic, who do not want to talk about religion in a secular sense,
00:41:59.040where we're talking politics and economics and other issues that certainly involve religion.
00:42:08.280Religion is involved in all our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not.
00:42:12.340But to see, and I want to speak, I want to get your opinion on this,
00:42:18.480because I'm starting to see signs, whether it be in our church or whether it be our pastor or just across the country.
00:42:28.280I'm seeing evangelicals, Christians certainly, starting to stand up and say, you know, this is wrong.
00:42:39.540And President Biden, let's pray for him.
00:44:28.760America has always been about, we respect differences.
00:44:34.560You can never force someone to have faith or to not have faith.
00:44:38.940That's the whole point of religious liberty.
00:44:41.520The founders said, we need faith in this country to make people virtuous and to make them on their own do the right thing so we can have limited government,
00:45:28.780It was this monolith of power that they wanted to get rid of.
00:45:33.920But in America, the faith of the people made them freer.
00:45:38.460The churches were free to speak whatever they liked.
00:45:41.980And so it's a dramatic experiment in liberty, this United States that we have been privileged to live in.
00:45:50.140And I simply think that it's part of the theme of the book of my book is Atheism Dead is that in the last 60 or so years, we've taken our eye off the ball.
00:46:01.480We believed that secularization was the answer.
00:46:06.720In other words, rather than say we can't force religion on people and we have to have separation of church and state, we took that fatal step and said we're going to secularize everything.
00:46:15.020We're going to take God out of everything.
00:46:16.700Well, that's no different than imposing God.
00:46:20.420Imposing secularism or an atheist view is no different than imposing a certain kind of Christian view or a Muslim view.
00:46:27.900We've really blown that, and it has ultimately led to where we are today.
00:46:33.920One of the, I think, great achievements of the Trump administration was restoring religion to the public square.
00:46:42.740And I think he doesn't get sufficient credit.
00:46:46.280In some cases, that contribution is ignored altogether.
00:46:49.760But no president in recent history has done more to restore the church and religion to the public square, the public arena, and political debate in the country.
00:47:02.100Well, it's one of the reasons so many love him.
00:47:04.240Yeah, it's such a critically important turning point in our history that I believe sets the groundwork, if you will, for even more achievements as we confront the tests, the challenges, and threats to religion in this country.
00:48:20.920I, over the years, I became very serious about my faith around my 25th birthday.
00:48:27.460And since then, you know, I went to Yale and I grew up in a very secular environment.
00:48:32.020You know, even though we went to church on Sundays, nobody was reading the Bible and praying at meals or anything.
00:48:37.480So I had this experience at age 25 and I started reading books and I was astonished to see that, you know, there's no reason to say that science is the enemy of faith.
00:48:52.360And I was reading these books over the years and reading what, you know, we call apologetics, realizing that there's nothing more reasonable than the Judeo-Christian faith.
00:49:02.740It has led to every kind of great thing.
00:49:05.380Well, as we know, in 1966, the Cognoscenti, the powers that be, decided to put this idea of the death of God in America's living rooms.
00:49:46.140And it is surprising, but that since that Time Magazine article came out, it's 1966, roughly since then, the evidence from science, from various disciplines in science, has been absolutely clearly pointing to the existence of a creator to the point where it's an open and shut case.
00:50:11.280You can hate the idea, but science has been steadily pointing more and more clearly to the idea that there is zero chance that everything emerged randomly, that the Earth just happened to be perfectly tuned for life, and that the first cells emerged 4 billion years ago.
00:50:32.060A cell is an unbelievably complex thing.
00:50:34.500The idea that it emerged out of the random sloshing of the primordial soup, we now know enough from science to know those things are preposterous.
00:50:43.580So the question is, what do you do with it?
00:50:45.360Well, I bumped into a scientist in Houston, where I'm going tomorrow, actually, and he gave me yet another piece of information on this.
00:50:54.780And I said, you know what, I've got to write a book, because people can't believe that we haven't been hearing this information.
00:51:02.300It's been piling up like snow overnight.
00:51:04.720You're sleeping, and you wake up, and you can't even open the front door.
00:52:13.060But to make the statement, there is no God, and to be a committed atheist, based on what's in this book, and of course, much else, but I say it is intellectually untenable.
00:52:24.360The science has, over the last, let's say, five decades, piled up quietly, people haven't looked at it, they bought the thesis that God is dead, and they just moved on.
00:52:35.100They said, you know, even when evidence comes up, and I make the case later in the book, that those atheists who look most rigorously, unflinchingly, at the idea of atheism,
00:52:48.300both ended up coming to faith in God, which to me is a gigantic headline, and no one has ever heard about it.
00:52:56.920And when I discovered it, I fell out of my chair, I said, this is, this also has to go in the book, because it tells you everything.
00:53:02.900You mentioned archaeology, one of the most exciting to me, because I'm interested in space, and the technology of imagery from space, particularly when the cameras are trained on the Middle East, in particular.
00:53:21.620For there to be the, and we'll call this the possibility, of Sodom having been discovered, fitting in the place where the Bible suggests it would be.
00:53:40.920Also, the ark, now there is a very real possibility that they have discovered the actual ark.
00:53:48.360I know that there have been claims before, but this has the rigor of science and technology and imagery to back it up.
00:54:00.920And suddenly, there are a number, I would say at least a half dozen, of these examples to support your view on the evidence that is becoming significant,
00:54:14.920and perhaps compelling to the point of conclusion, that, my gosh, the book is actually throughout, far more than allegory and metaphor,
00:54:28.420there is demonstrable evidence of the events and places that occurred in the Bible.
00:55:07.380So to say that we found something from 1700 BC that's talked about in the Bible, and 21 scientists were so astonished that in a peer-reviewed,
00:55:16.180you know, probably one of the most prestigious, certainly one of the most prestigious academic journals on the planet,
00:55:22.880they refer to Sodom and the destruction of Sodom because it's so uncanny that they have to mention it.
00:55:29.700When I discovered this, and then, you know, first you're shocked because, I mean, I really looked into it with skepticism.
00:55:36.940And then I said to myself, and not only is this true, no one knows this.
00:55:43.360There's no, I said, this is gigantic news.
00:55:48.140And the same thing is true of, Christopher Hitchens was asked once, what's the strongest argument for God?
00:55:53.400And in a very rare moment of candor, honestly, he said, oh, the fine-tuned universe.
00:55:59.580And the argument for the fine-tuned universe that the more science discovers about the nature of the earth, the nature of the universe,
00:56:08.400the more science discovers that if anything were ever so slightly different, just a tiny, tiny bit different, no life would exist.
00:56:20.180And this is discovered daily, more and more.
00:56:24.200In other words, the more science discovers, the more it points to the idea that there's zero chance this was not created by some infinitely intelligent designer.
00:56:36.500This narrative has not been out there.
00:58:24.280And if we have to get to this level of wokeness and madness, you know, the build back Brandon, you know, theme that we're just going to destroy everything and we're going to start afresh.
00:58:40.100I think, ironically, the opposite is happening.
00:58:43.640People are waking up to the things that, you know, we took them for granted.
00:58:50.420So, as I say now, I said in the beginning, I am cautiously but very seriously hopeful for this nation, not least because of folks like you.