At the Core on American Family Radio is about religious freedom
>> Walker Wildmon: We inform religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith, live out their convictions, no matter where they are. We quit. Sacred honor is the courage to speak.
>> Rick Green: Truth, to live out your free speech.
>> Walker Wildmon: We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character. This is at the Core on American Family Radio. Welcome to the corps here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you joining us on this edition of the program. We're broadcasting all around the country, in over 30 states, 170 markets, through our radio signals. And, we're also on the app [email protected] and the AFR app all around the country and folks listening even all around the world. So we're glad to have you with us on today's edition of at the Core here on American Family Radio.
Walker Wildmon welcomes back Jenny Korn, Faith director in the White House
Once again, I'm Walker Wildmon, and, we have a guest in the first segment, so we want to jump straight to our guest and respect their time. Jenny Korn's back with us. She was on a couple weeks ago, to talk about some of her work in the White House Faith Office. Jenny serves as faith director in the, ah, newly announced in recent months, White House Faith Faith Office there in the West Wing, and she's with us now. Hey, Jenny, welcome back.
>> Jenny Korn: Thank you so much for having me on. And God bless everyone.
>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely.
President Trump celebrates National Day of Prayer with faith leaders
Jenny, this, week has been a busy one, and yesterday was a National Day of Prayer, and President, Trump went all in on the National Day of Prayer. And I saw you were there at the services there in the Rose Garden right outside the West Wing. so tell us a little bit about, what happened with the National Day of Prayer and President Trump's time there, with many faith leaders.
>> Jenny Korn: Right. Well, thank you so much for covering this. And you know, President Trump is so amazing, so different from so many other previous presidents, especially the last president. We have honoring faith and bringing National Day of Prayer to the White House in the Rose garden. With over 200 faith leaders of very diverse, denominations and just, from different parts of the country, different ethnicities, it's just great to celebrate such diversity within faith and to uphold, the religious freedoms of all of Americans.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, Jenny, this, President Trump, there's so much to say, but how he's just leaned in to people of faith and brought them around him is just amazing to watch. And it's not just something that happens during campaign season, but this is genuine. I mean, this is who he is. And you can tell because here he is in his second of his two terms, and he's still bringing in faith leaders all around the country, and your office is working on that and bringing them into these, weekly, almost daily into the White House. another announcement that came from this was not just, to celebrate the National Day of Prayer, which the speech President Trump gave talking about the founding of our nation. And even, you know, a couple years before our independence, we were still setting aside a day of prayer and fasting, but also the, Religious Liberty Commission that he announced, while, participating in this National Day of Prayer event. So talk a little bit about that commission.
>> Jenny Korn: Right. And I think it bears repeating, that, you know, President Trump, a, little bit over a year ago, his pastor, Pastor Paula White and myself, went to meet with him and proposed this idea to create this White House faith office. And he was all for it. I mean, obviously he put his edits to it and elevated basically the White House faith office to the highest level. So I just want to give him, him credit for doing that. A promise made, promise kept. And then Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick from Texas floated the idea with him about having this commission on religious liberty. And again, once he was elected, promises made, promises kept. And so this commission is so important. It established a Religious Liberty Commission and it safeguards and promotes America's founding principle of religious freedom. So we have such great minds that are together, who are going to be meeting on a regular basis, and those meetings are going to be open to the, to the public, and they're going to make sure that they are defining what religious freedom in and ensuring that all Americans have this religious freedom.
JennyKorn: Task force to target anti Christian bias within federal government
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah. The, another thing I wanted to highlight is an event that you were at recently. I believe it was within the last week or so. And that is the task force, very similar, event, but with a different agency, and that is with the Department of Justice, Attorney General Pam Bondi. There were multiple other cabinet members present. You were there, and it was the task, force, to target anti Christian bias within the federal government. And for those who don't, believe that that exists, you haven't been paying attention because y'all brought in multiple people, whether it's former military or Navy, seals or otherwise. These, federal government employees, or in this case, service members that were targeted because of their religious beliefs or they were denied promotions or otherwise, punished because of their religious beliefs. Tell, our audience a little bit more about that and what the Attorney General is doing there.
>> Jenny Korn: Right. Well, it was one of the most impactful days I've had here at the White House. Obviously, the meeting was at Department of Justice, hosted by Attorney General Pam Bondi with about 15 cabinet members. And I thought, wow, this is so powerful. The only time you see that many Cabinet members together are with the president for Cabinet meeting. And because this is so important to eradicate Christian bias, they cleared their schedules and got together. And, you know, they had been tasked with a week before to go and, and ask, their staff where they have either experienced or seen Christian bias. And it is really unfortunate that the federal government, the state government, the local government, has really discriminated against people of faith. And just a few examples, you know, Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised several concerning allegations of bias, including some against Christian Foreign Service officers who preferred to homeschool their children. And in one case, the family was threatened with an investigation for child abuse and curtailment if they insisted on homeschooling. Just think about that. somebody who's in the Foreign Service, who's defending our country, giving of themselves to our country, is being investigated for child abuse because they want to homeschool their children. And in another case, a family was referred to the irs, threatened with prosecution, and investigated by Biden's Inspector Jennifer, insisting they homeschool their son. Here's the problem. I'm only giving you two examples. He let us know that when he put that email out, in only one week, he had over 150 examples of anti Christian bias. So we're going to root, going to make sure that this government is not discriminating against people of faith. And it's not just Christians, it's all people of faith. There's also a task force on combating, anti Semitism. So we are looking out for all people of faith.
>> Walker Wildmon: Very encouraging. And, the Civil Rights Division is getting back focused on its core mission and its core purpose. I saw the shakeup there. The media tried to describe that as a bloodbath. But the Civil Rights Division, as you know, has been weaponized under Biden, to target people of faith. A lot of the, examples, some of the examples you're talking about were actually, targeted by the Civil Rights Division. So President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi is also bringing that civil, rights Division back into focus, back into right order with Hermeet Dhillon there as the head. Jenny Corn, thanks so much for coming on the program. Appreciate your work there at the White House. send our regards and, let President Trump know that believers all around the country are proud of him, we support him and we appreciate the work that you guys are doing.
>> Jenny Korn: Thank you so much. And thank you for talking about our amazing event for National Day of Prayer and, you know, off the cuff. The President said, all of those who have been with me, come up to the stage and Instead of having five people who were going to pray, he had 50 people, we all prayed together and then sang Amazing Grace. So if you have not seen that, go to whitehouse.gov and watch that video. I was up on stage with the President and I got teary eyed going, this is an amazing country we live in.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, I saw that. It is amazing. Praise worship coming from the White House lawn. Absolutely amazing. Hey, thanks, Jenny. Appreciate you joining us.
>> Jenny Korn: Thank you, Walker. Have a great evening.
>> Walker Wildmon: Absolutely.
That's Jenny Korn, faith director in the White House Faith Office and, representing us well there in the White House, her and others. And I'm telling you, the folks that are around President Trump are the best of the best. And I talked about this during the transition after the election. Some of the names that I saw coming up in positions in the administration, these are the best of the best. And, I'll go as far to say that these folks are even better than the first administration. And don't get me wrong, President Trump's first four years were amazing. I mean, the work that he did, despite the overwhelming opposition, despite the lawfare, despite the leaking and the other subversion, which is very, very unpatriotic, by the way. this is even better. I mean, the folks are just great. And what I notice is now this isn't always the case, but just looking at the people I know working in the White House or in some of these agencies, once, again, I'm talking to our Christian audience here through American Family Radio. There is a lot of believers around President Trump. There are a lot of people of faith. There are a lot of born again believers that are either in the White House, in these agencies, over at the Department of Justice. And, it's excellent to see. It's excellent to see. And it shows that, our movement is gaining momentum. It's gaining momentum. And the reason it's gaining momentum is because people are just fed up with the godlessness in our culture. They are. When you look at, we have, wrote an article recently on this, it's going to be published in a few months in our magazine. But when you look around the country at the record levels of anxiety amongst our youth, depression, the out of wedlock, birth, Rate. You have the terrible divorce statistics and substance abuse on the rise. You have record, ah, level numbers of, you know, these illicit drugs flooding into our country. And people are desperate, they're desperate for truth. They're desperate, desperate for purpose. And that's why I think people are flocking to the president and this movement and this momentum because we know that a lot of the trajectory of our culture stems from our laws, stems from our policies, stems from who's in behind the microphone in the White House.
Some say politics is downstream from culture; others say it's interrelated
And I really want to counter this notion that well, politics is downstream from culture. And I actually was corrected on this in recent years because I kept regurgitating this statement that I had heard over the years that politics is downstream from culture. And there's a little bit of truth there, right? There's a little bit of truth there. But what I came to realize is that the culture, media and entertainment, law and policy, government, all of this is interrelated. All of it is interrelated. And it's not just culture that drives politics, that drives government, that drives policy. It can be in the reverse order as well. You can have government that drives culture, that influences culture. And God obviously is the Institutor, is the creator of government. Government was his idea. And he designed government to uphold righteousness, to punish the evildoer. And when you have a government that is not in line with God's will, with God's purpose for the institution, that's going to have a negative impact on our culture, that's going to have a negative impact on our people. And you're going to see unrighteous, unjust things happen from the government, from an institution that was designed by God to uphold righteousness. And so I just want to emphasize again the significance of having righteous leaders. The significance of having leaders that respect, Judeo Christian values, that respect God, that respect the founding precepts of our nation and understand that this country was founded on Judeo Christian principles. And if you don't recognize that, that's how you get off track. And that's where our country unfortunately has been in recent decades. We've been completely off track because we lost sight of our roots, we lost sight of our original purposes and we began to drift. And when you begin drifting folks, when you deny our Creator, when you deny God, and specifically in this context of this country, when you deny God's fingerprints on our history, on our Constitution, on our founding, on our system of government, when you deny that you reject, takes you to very, very dark places. And so An America that protects constitutional rights, an America that protects religious freedom, an America that protects the First Amendment and upholds righteousness and justice, is an America that is good for all people, people of all backgrounds. And so that's the long winded explanation why, President Trump is on the right track. And the steps that he's taking at the White House and through the executive branch is good. It's right. It's just for our country. Thanks so much for joining us for this segment. We got a few left here on at the Core. You're listening to this edition of the program. We'll be back in just a few minutes at the Corps. Podcasts are [email protected] now back to, at the Corps on American Family Radio.
Welcome back to the second segment of the program. Walker Wildmon here with you...in the last segment, if you missed it, we interviewed Jenny Korn, Faith Director over at the White House Faith Office, talking about the National Day of Prayer this week, talking about the brand new Religious Liberty Commission that President Trump has established now, and the caliber and the quality of people that are around President Trump. So if you missed that, go back and listen to the podcast [email protected], go to today's episode or you can, go to your podcast library, wherever you listen to podcast and subscribe to the show. And you can catch today's full episode and others there, wherever you listen to podcasts. Well, we didn't have time to get to our scripture, for the week in the first segment, so I want to turn our attention to that now. We've been in Proverbs chapter 8 this week and what you see throughout the entirety of this chapter is wisdom being talked about and wisdom being kind of used as an example, being referred to as a person. And, the essence of it is that when, well, the essence of it that I, that I drew away from it towards the latter part of the other chapter. Once again, we're in Proverbs chapter eight. Is that, listen, to this. This is verse 22. The Lord possessed me talking about wisdom at the beginning of his way before his works of old. From everlasting I was established from the beginning, from the earliest times of earth. That's verse 22 and 23. And so it is the Lord that is wisdom. All right? It is the Lord that is wisdom. And, there is no wisdom found outside of the Lord. And you can look throughout, our society, especially looking in, at the upper education, the higher education realm, anybody who's been through kind of a collegiate course, especially those who've gotten their master's or PhD, maybe done a little bit of philosophy study. You'll have these professors talk about things like wisdom. And it's kind of humorous looking at it from a Christian vantage point, a biblical vantage point, having people, professors or others talk about wisdom, but they don't talk about God, they don't talk about the Bible, they don't talk about where wisdom comes from, but they just talk about wisdom. And the dangerous thing in that, is you end up going down a path that detaches itself from true wisdom. Right? Because true wisdom comes from the Lord and it comes from his precepts. And so there is no wisdom outside of the Lord. Now, unbelievers and believers alike, they can display wisdom, they can exercise wisdom and not recognize God in their exercising of wisdom or where it comes from. So even the unbeliever can do things that are wise in the eyes of the Lord, but they may not realize, that their wisdom comes from their Creator. But, at the end of the day, all wisdom comes from the Lord. Whether we recognize it or not, all wisdom comes from the Lord. That's Proverbs, chapter 8, verse 22 and 23.
All right, a couple clips I want to get to. Speaking of the White House and the National Day of Prayer, let's listen to a brief clip of President Trump talking about the National Day of prayer.
Clip 3 Today, as the American people turn to God in prayer, we continue.
>> Walker Wildmon: A tradition older than our independence itself. Nearly 250 years ago, on June 12, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed a day of fasting and prayer so that Americans fighting for their liberty could seek the
help of the Almighty. And when you look at that, June 12, 1775. So we have a very, very special day coming up. There you have it. That's President Trump talking about the history of prayer in our nation. And even before the Declaration, of independence was signed and our nation's independence was declared in 1775, there was a time, a day of prayer and fasting, that, many of our founding fathers participated in, that, I believe, played a critical role and element in the eventual independence and victory over Great Britain in our nation's history and during the colonial period. And President Trump, he's, going through our true history, and, he's got some great speechwriters there as well.
Well, the, other subject matter that I wanted to talk about is this. This, loosening, really, of the grip of oppression and the grip of tyranny that was beginning to take hold in our federal government, where you had, under the Biden Administration, the government was just really targeting, good people. They were really targeting good people and they were turning a blind eye to, to lawlessness and illegality. And you look at the scourge of illegal immigration alone, that's enough to justify that statement. Well, the agricultural, commission. I'm, sorry, the agricultural Secretary, Brooke Rollins, she recently learned, of. Not recently learned of, but she recently took action on a family out of South Dakota. Now, when you hear this clip and you kind of hear the backstory, quite astonishing, it's really unbelievable. But we've seen over the years, and some of this started under Obama, but we saw where the Bureau of Land Management and some of these other federal agencies, the Department of Interior and others, the Department of Agriculture, went to bat, if you will, or went to the mat with, these family farmers over land disputes and where your cattle can graze and where they can't graze and really use this kind of iron fist approach and threatened jail time, locked people up, took away their farms. I mean, it was really, ah, tyrannical. And they talk about how President Trump's behaving like a dictator and authoritarian when it's really the Democrats that do all this stuff. I mean, they're the ones that are providing these textbook examples of what authoritarianism looks like. And this story goes back to a family, the Maude family in South Dakota. Fifth generation farmers, by the way, cattle ranchers. And the federal government was targeting them over 25 acres of grazing land that their cattle were occasionally using and went way overboard threatening to take their kids. I mean, it was just way overkill. Or threatening rather to lock them up so their kids didn't have parents. But listen to this backstory of these South Dakota farmers.
>> Heather Maud: My name is Heather Maud. I am the officially elected spokesman by these three. We would like to thank you all for being here. We would like to thank the people behind us for being here. Secretary Rawlins, Secretary Noem, Dusty Johnson, Larry Rhoden and Mike Browns from the state of South Dakota, and Harriet Hageman. we are incredibly grateful to the Trump administration and all of these key players that have done so much so quickly relative to what we were facing before to get us where we are today. And I would just like to take a moment to briefly reiterate a bit of what Brooke said. we are both fifth generation farmers and ranchers. Our families have a combined 250 plus years in production. Agriculture, we paused briefly in that pursuit in our grandfather's generation when and both of my grandfathers fought in World War II. And Charles great grandmother is a four star war mom, meaning that four of her sons went to war and all four went home. But before and after fighting for the freedoms of this nation, we have pursued our primary passion that led Charles and I to find each other, which is, production, agriculture. And when, you know, when this hit, it hit at the heart and soul of our place that been in Charles family since 19, 10. They came to the area in 1907 and purchased the adjoining property in 1910 and have managed it without issue and with great care since. And when this unnecessary, grievance came to our family, we knew that we were innocent of any wrongdoing and we sought to find a resolution. And that was not forthcoming from the other side.
>> Walker Wildmon: So let me get this right. You heard that, right? The federal government got their feathers ruffled over 25 acres, 25 acres that this family's cattle was grazing on, directly adjacent to their private property, by the way, and didn't, you know, go the civil realm, didn't try to settle this privately. Instead they went full court criminal charges and, and tried to, eventually lock up this family. And they even warned them that you're going to want to, you know, make sure that your kids have somebody to take care of them because you may not be able to take care of them because you might be behind bars. This is, this is the Biden administration. And so let's get this right. Let's kind of, let's go back, right? We let 10 million, 8.8 million plus that were processed and then you have the gotaways. So let's just say 10 million illegal immigrants in a four year period under Biden getting, getting mass released by the federal government in this nation. You have the cartels, you have the gang bangers, you have inner city crime, all over the map. You've got all these examples, you've got Democrat officials doing illegal things. And we could go back a long time on that. And here we've got a farm family in South Dakota, that the federal government doesn't have anything better to do than to absolutely destroy their lives and throw all their resources at trying to lock up this South Dakota family. And so when I talk about people that were victimized by Biden folks, these are not just kind of one offs, these are not just few and far between, if you will. These kind of stories are all over the place. They're all over the place. And so I'm just glad that Brooke Rollins, the Agricultural Secretary, is, on top of this and has dismissed, but not just dismissed, but actually apologized on behalf of the government to this family. And let's listen, to the Agricultural Secretary herself, Brooke Rollins, on dismissing these charges. Clip 2.
The Biden administration criminally charged the Maude family for theft of government property
>> Ag Sec'y Brooke Rollins: This UN American sentiment, this claim to the right to rule without recourse, is also precisely the prerogative that some bureaucrats under the Biden regime decided to assert. And their targets were an innocent and unimpeachable American farm and ranch family, the Mods of South Dakota, who join us here today. This family, targeted solely over what should have been a minor civil dispute over grazing rights on 25 acres of public land, was prosecuted credibly threatened with jail sentences so extreme that they were told to find alternatives to raise their young children. Charles and Heather Maude live on a fifth generation family farm in Pennington County, South Dakota, close to Mount Rushmore. There they farm 400 acres. They raise about 250 head of cattle and about 40 sows. 25 acres of their property touched upon the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, which is administered by the U.S. forest Service. The Forest Service allowed them an informal agreement for their cattle to graze for decades, and the family assumed that a process was underway to clearly survey and establish the boundaries. But that didn't happen. The Biden administration criminally charged the Maude family for theft of government property. And for too long, for too. For years now, they have endured a torturous legal process and suffered as victims of the Biden regime's reckless lawfare. Just imagine, a government that would be willing to de facto orphan American children over a mere dispute of, 25 acres of land. The men of, Lexington and Concord knew what sort of government was like, knew what that sort of government was like, and they knew what to do about it. The Maude family, too, faced with destructions at the hand of the state, made their appeal to heaven, and providence answered. Thanks to the leadership and the unequivocal and bold leadership of President Trump and his directive to put Americans first, we have the pleasure to announce that the criminal prosecution of the Mods is now over. They will not be driven from their home, they will not be jailed, they will not be fined, and their children will grow up with the mother and the father they love and who love them.
>> Walker Wildmon: They have it. There you have it. That's the Attorney General, Brooke Rollins, talking about the complete dismissal of the charges against the Maude family in, South Dakota. And, folks, this is why leadership matters. This is why who is in the White House matters. And I'll keep saying this like a broken record. We have to have control, our movement has to retain control of the White House and executive agencies for a long time. We're talking eight to 12 years minimum. Probably 16 would be ideal in order to deeply root out this type of behavior, this type of mindset at the federal level. And this is, I want to, there's so much good happening but I don't want to get so, so caught up in the good that's happening that we miss some of the challenge that, challenges that are taking place. But folks, the federal government is massive. The federal government is massive. They employ millions of people and there, there's some, some deeply entrenched bureaucrats that, that are still there that don't like President Trump, they don't like his agenda, they don't know what, like what he's doing. Now they might not be saying that because they might be afraid of getting terminated but the, the, the, the deep state if you will, is a real thing. All right. And so there's a lot of uprooting that's still going to have to take place. I mean we're 100 days in a, little over 100 days in and there's just no way that all the work is done. So we're going to need a long time to uproot this big government, heavy handed government ideology that is so deeply entrenched in the federal government. And we're not talking four years folks. I'd like to see 8, 12, 16 years of conservative constitutional law and order type control at the federal level. Elections have consequences. That's what Obama said and it rings true today. Elections have consequences. We'll be back in a few. At the core podcast are [email protected] now back to at the on American Family Radio.
Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us today on the program. Chris Woodward is with us each week on our Friday edition of the program, bringing us news from a Christian perspective from American Family News. AFN.net is that. URL. Chris, welcome back.
>> Chris Woodward: Thank you very much.
>> Walker Wildmon: Well Chris, a lot to talk about. We'll talk some economy, in a little bit.
Nearly 11% of women who take abortion pill suffer severe health issues
But, but one story that you guys have been tracking for some time now is the debate over what's called mifepristone.
>> Chris Woodward: Yes.
>> Walker Wildmon: Otherwise known as the abortion pill. And Biden's FDA I believe actually signed off on it as giving approval if you will. But this is a debate that's still stirring today, and I know a lot of folks would like to see Trump's FDA actually reverse that.
>> Chris Woodward: Yeah, I'll get to that in just a minute. But to kind of bring everybody back. Since Monday, the Ethics and Public Policy center put out a study, and researchers there, including Ryan Anderson, who's been a guest on many AFR programs, they looked at insurance claims from 2017 to 2023 and found that nearly 11% of women that take the abortion pill have suffered severe health issues, including sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, all within, like, 42 days of taking the abortion pill. And that leads EPPC to say the abortion pill is not safe. I don't know if our listeners are fully up to speed on this, but people that are in support of abortion have long argued that the abortion pill is. It's no worse than Tylenol. But clearly, when you have something that 11% of women are having issues with, that's a big cause of concern. And so, ever since Monday, we've done stories featuring the authors. we've had, Charlotte Lozier Institute talk about this. We've had Life News, all kinds of people, and, they've all been in an agreement pretty much, that if this many women are having severe health issues, we need to get this information out there, share it on social media. It hasn't gotten a lot of national news coverage. No shock there.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Chris Woodward: but many people are saying, like Stephen Ertelt, even at Life News told me that this is all the more reason for people to reach out to the president and members of Congress to get them to do something. M. You want to get Trump on board because he oversees fda, which could put a big cramp in the abortion pill.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, this is a problem that the FDA ever approved this to begin with. And this pill's. I mean, the purpose of the pill is to end the life of the baby, which in and of itself is wrong and justifies the, ending of the FDA approval, because no medication should have a sole purpose in this instance, to end the life of a child or in the life of anyone. That's not the role of government. That's not the role of medicine. That's not the role of the FDA as, to approve things that end life. That's just counterproductive and counter to the core mission of drugs and medicine. But this pill has got a spotty record. And as you mentioned, now 10 to 11% of women have severe side effects, severe, hemorrhaging, many of them are admitted to emergency rooms. But we don't get that story, Chris. We don't get that story. And what do you think about the FDA here? I mean, I know they've, they haven't yet really brought down or showed their cards on this, but you gotta be thinking, surely Trump's team over at the FDA is looking into this.
>> Chris Woodward: Yeah, you would hope so. I do know from confirmation hearings, both, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And even Dr. Makary have talked about how they would do what President Trump wants done. So if President Trump were to say, this is dangerous, too many women are being harmed, certainly babies as well, we need to put an end to this. they would, by their own statements and confirmation hearings, sworn testimony in front of senators, they would, you know, put an end to this. So, hopefully this won't be the last time that we're talking about this on the program or really in the US in general.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah, yeah, we got to keep highlighting this because the, FDA should have never signed off on it to begin with. And I know it was litigated up to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, we didn't win there. But I can't, you know, I can't. that's really, this stuff shouldn't be really decided at the Supreme Court. I understood that was kind of a last ditch effort.
>> Chris Woodward: Yeah.
>> Walker Wildmon: To get it overturned, but unfortunately a lot of this rests at the hands of the fda, at the hands of the executive branch, and, to some degree it rests at the hands of the state regulators.
>> Chris Woodward: Right. You know, listen, if the federal government can say, I don't like you using that kind of light bulb anymore, they certainly have the power to say, you shouldn't take this pill.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yes, no doubt, no doubt. The fda, this falls right under their purview. That's their job. They're the chief regulator on medication and drugs being approved in the country.
The GDP number for the first quarter, meaning January, February, March, was negative
Chris, the economy, the, GDP report, the headline GDP report, wasn't very good, but, some of the underlying numbers were actually pretty, pretty good.
>> Chris Woodward: Yeah. And this is all the more reason not to panic, and sell everything and go live in a bunker. when you see a bad headline number. The, GDP number was terrible. there's no way you can, like, make that better.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Chris Woodward: The GDP number for the first quarter, meaning January, February, March, was a negative 0.3%. Market watch and some other news outlets thought we would see somewhere in the neighborhood of positive 0.4%. So it's really bad. Market Watch and others talked about how this is all Trump's fault because of the tariffs and other things that are already starting to have an impact. And oh, by the way, if we have two, quarters of negative growth, that means we're in, officially a recession. Are we now gonna look at a Trump recession and all these things? And, oh, by the way, he ran on making the economy better. And Democrats, are all these things. Okay, So I bring it all up and I kind of dramatize it that way because news outlets have covered it that way. But when you actually read beyond the headline in the first paragraph, you find out that it's not necessarily all that bad. Number one, imports were the reason why we had a negative number. People were trying to get their product here ahead of tariffs, possibly having an impact on Americans.
>> Walker Wildmon: Right.
>> Chris Woodward: So it's not. This doesn't mean that all of a sudden you're not going to be able to find all your favorite stuff at the store. They're going to have plenty of things at the store for a while now based on the fact that they rushed all this stuff over here.
>> Walker Wildmon: So, okay, this is interesting to know, and I'm still learning on this as far as the GDP formula. But what you're saying is a, lot of these major corporations that have products, produced in China or overseas, they saw the handwriting on the wall about the tariffs. And as I told somebody the other day, for anyone acting surprised about the tariffs in the business world, either they're a terrible business person or they're lying. Because all the major corporations, right after election day, I can guarantee you they were planning for this. And to your point, they were bulk shipping and ordering, the goods that they needed to kind of get through the tariff saga, if you will, for a couple months or whatever. So they basically mass ordered a lot of products, and as long as the product leaves the dock, it avoids the tariff.
>> Chris Woodward: Yes.
>> Walker Wildmon: So as long as the ship departs the port from China, they, de facto avoid the tariff. And so you're saying that bulk ordering to kind of get through the tariff bump was in the formula that threw the numbers off?
>> Chris Woodward: Yes. Now, you know, exports are a factor of many factors that involve, gdp. GDP involves a whole bunch of stuff. Here, I've got it. this is from a conversation I had with Dr. Parker shepherd at the Heritage Foundation, a man much smarter than me. he talked about how we measure GDP by a number of things. consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports. Government, spending has not been as bad. Investments have been Great. in the past few months here, based on Trump's policies, including the, hey, if you build stuff here, we're not going to tariff it, consumption, all these kinds of things. It's. I mean, Parker even told me, quote, this is not a cause for panic. And one reason why we can say it's not a cause for panic is that even after the terrible, no good, very bad GDP number, stocks still closed in positive territory yesterday, or Wednesday, rather. The Dow ended 141point. Yesterday's numbers. The Dow ended 141 higher. The S&P was up 8, and the Nasdaq pretty much broke even. Yeah, people are not freaking out, even though people on television might be.
>> Walker Wildmon: Well, and, let's remember the fundamentals under Biden were broken. I mean, the fun Biden, Elon Musk was, is on record saying that we were headed towards de facto bankruptcy. With the deficit levels where they were, with no plan to correct it and inflation still out of control, we were headed towards de facto bankruptcy as a federal government. And so I want to remind people that things were not rainbows and butterflies before January 20th. And so Trump inherited a very, very messed up situation on multiple levels economically. And the government was, subsidizing the economy, propping it up through, spending, through printing of money. And President Trump is trying to restructure it and reorient the economy towards the private sector. And whether it's a cooling GDP or whatever, you're going to have some bumps along the way. There's no doubt.
>> Chris Woodward: There's three reasons Donald Trump is president again today. Number one is the border. Number two, the economy was in terrible shape. And three, Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate. Now, people were gonna vote for her regardless of what the economy and the border looked like. But a lot of people that were not traditionally Republican voters sided with Trump because, A, the economy was humming while he was in the office the last time, and he clearly had a better idea on how to handle the economy than she did in her word salad explanations. Yeah, that's one of the reasons why. So, I mean, Joe Biden's economy is part of the reason, a big reason why Donald Trump is president again today. Which proves your point that it was not all suns and rainbows when Joe was eating a bowl of ice cream in the Oval Office.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah. With Pelosi, with our $30,000 refrigerator. yeah. So I think, I think we're going to be. I think everything's going to be okay.
Chris Woodward: The fundamentals of the economy are strong right now
The, I actually saw a CEO of which the Company escapes me right now because I read too many news articles every day. But this was a mainstream major corporation. And the CEO now, he said some other things I didn't agree with, but basically, regarding the tariffs and the uncertainty, he basically said, everything's going to be all right. All this is going to level out. And, the fundamentals, the underlying fundamentals are strong. And this is. You can't expect. And, Chris, this is where Wall street gets, their feathers ruffled. When we have one bad stock market day or one GDP print doesn't look great, is the fundamentals of how we were operating was so backwards with the money printing the fake GDP numbers. I mean, if Dan Silver were still around, he would lose it over the GDP prints. Are you kidding me? From Biden's years. Because he would talk about how the government is like, a drug addict with pumping up the GDP numbers artificially. And it's not private growth. It's not private growth. it's. It's government.
>> Chris Woodward: Yeah. Joe Biden grew one thing when he was president, the government.
>> Walker Wildmon: That's right.
>> Chris Woodward: Most of the jobs reports for the last couple of years, really, most of his presidency, were government jobs were among the first things mentioned in the job gains, every month.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yeah. Yeah. And so when you. When you're gonna pivot the entire approach at. At the economy and government's role and the private sector's role, when you're going to pivot, you're not going to pivot in 90 days, and then everything, we're going to be good to go, and the stock market's going to be hot. I think that back to Wall Street, Wall street, they live by the minute, maybe the hour. They want to see green. They want to see green, and they don't care how they get there. All right. And if you're into investments, that's fine. everybody should be there. And the stock market's overall, a very good thing to be in. But I guess my point is the shortsightedness has infected Washington to where President Trump's doing some major reforms here, and there might be a few bumps along the way, and everybody just needs to calm down, because the structure was very bad when President Trump got here. Yeah.
>> Chris Woodward: And had they listened to us months, ago when we talked about these things, you and I both said it's pretty much gonna be Christmas of this year at the earliest before you really start to see an impact. I'm still thinking, like, it's gonna be around Easter next year before you really start to see, the positive impacts, if Trump's policies all come into play, I mean, mind you, he's only been in office for 100 plus days. I know people act like he's been in the office now for like two years. I can't believe this. We got to vote him out.
>> Walker Wildmon: Biden was there four years and didn't do anything.
>> Chris Woodward: Yeah.
>> Walker Wildmon: Actually destroyed things.
>> Chris Woodward: He sure did. And again, that's part of the reason why Donald Trump's in there.
>> Walker Wildmon: Well, the tax cuts are moving along pretty well. And what I'm encouraged to see, Chris, is that there's not just a renewal or an extension or a permanency being brought to the tax cuts. There's actually some expanded coverage.
>> Chris Woodward: Yes.
>> Walker Wildmon: Whether it's no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security. I, saw some business incentives, being added to the tax bill. But that's going to be done in the next, let's say 60 days or so. And, around July 4th. Ish. I think that's going to be a boon. And then you're going to see some trade deals being struck.
>> Chris Woodward: And this is kind of wonky. it's kind of hard to maybe, to get and certainly poorly communicated by news outlets. but when businesses pay lower corporate taxes, that means they have more money to spend on things like, new equipment to new, to build new factories. That trickles down to things like construction spending and manufacturing, because those tools that were bought had to be made and then they have to be replaced and all these other things. So the lower the corporate tax rate. I know people think, oh, McDonald's and Amazon, they make billions of dollars, they should pay more taxes. But actually, if they pay less taxes, the better off you are.
>> Walker Wildmon: Yes. Because that money's gonna be freed up to go into the business, which is either you're investing in employees just sitting around on it.
>> Chris Woodward: They're doing things.
>> Walker Wildmon: That's right, because it's a growth model. That's the whole capitalism model. It's, it's actually a biblical model is growth, expansion, flourishing. And, you can't do that when the government has their, boot on your neck from a tax standpoint. Chris, thanks so much for coming on.
>> Chris Woodward: Thank you.
>> Walker Wildmon: All right, folks, a lot to cover. And we're gonna be here throughout, Lord-willing, The Trump administration 2.0 covering all of this. And, hopefully Chris and I'll be proven right. And if we're proven wrong, well, you can talk to somebody else about that. All right, thanks, folks. We'll see you next time because of listeners like you. PreBorn helped to rescue over 67,000 babies. You have $28 to sponsor. One ultrasound doubled a baby's chance at Ah Life. Your tax deductible gift saves lives. Please join us in this life saving mission. To donate, go to preborn.com afr Here now is your show host Walker Wildmon.
