Pastors, Politics, and Gold: America's Hidden Truths- with Andrew Moran

Two pressing questions converge in this thought-provoking episode: What role did faith actually play in America's founding, and is there really gold in Fort Knox? David and Tim Barton call in from Washington DC, where they're conducting a pastor's briefing that reveals the forgotten Christian foundations woven throughout our Capitol's history, from the first English Bible printed in America with Congressional approval to church services held in the Capitol building itself.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when we explore President Trump and Elon Musk's recent statements about verifying the gold reserves at Fort Knox. Financial journalist Andrew Moran joins to explain why this isn't just idle curiosity—if the reported $500 billion in gold reserves aren't actually there, the economic consequences could be catastrophic for every American. Moran traces the controversial history of Fort Knox's gold, much of which came from FDR's confiscation of citizens' private gold holdings in the 1930s, and explains why even Kentucky's own Senator Rand Paul hasn't been allowed to tour the facility.

This episode illuminates how government transparency (or lack thereof) affects both our spiritual and economic foundations. When institutions hide truth and manipulate history—whether about America's Christian heritage or its gold reserves—public trust erodes and conspiracy theories flourish. The solution? Leaders committed to transparency and truth-telling, even when the news isn't what we want to hear. As the team points out, this aligns perfectly with biblical principles of leadership: "able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness."

Subscribe now to join us at the intersection of faith, culture, and current events as we work to restore America's constitutional foundations.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture
• 4:22 Pastors' Briefing in Washington DC
• 8:42 Summer Educational Programs
• 11:47 Is There Gold in Fort Knox?
• 19:20 Andrew Moran on Fort Knox Gold
• 25:41 Economic Implications and Government Transparency

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. Thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders Show. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. You can learn more about us at our website, wallbuilders.com and the WallBuilder Show is at wallbuilder.show. So if you want to catch up on radio programs, wallbuilders.show, and if you want get all of our other resources, wallbuilders.com. That's later in the program, Andrew Moran is going to be with us. We're going to hit in that Fort Knox issue, is the gold actually in Fort Knox? Huge issue. A lot of people have been asking about, it's going to be an important one to cover. You guys are actually calling in for the program today from Washington, DC, got a pastor's briefing going on there. You got pastors from all over the country came in. You got a bunch of the congressmen briefing on giving them a tour or late night tour of the Capitol too late for pastors to sign up for this one. But you got another one coming up in September and I'm telling you this for any pastors out there, or if you want to send your pastor, there's nothing quite like this roughly 24 hour crash course on the history of the country and the faith that founded this country. 

Tim Barton [00:01:06] Yeah, it really is one of our favorite things that we do every year. This pastor's briefing, we actually, uh, also this summer are doing one for legislators. We have our legislative conference every November and we opened up and, wanted to invite some legislators to come and be a part. We actually even have a trip for some of our, our donors this year. We're, we're doing several trips this year up to DC and that's in addition to sometimes when congressmen ask us to come up and lead trips for some of their constituents, some of, of their teams. So we are up here a lot, but the pastor's briefing is one of our favorites when we can help pastor see the faith connection when we do the spiritual heritage to the Capitol and we're able to show them in specific rooms and sometimes in the statues, in the paintings where there are some obvious faith things, we take documents, artifacts, books with us and so we will be able to show them these original documents as we go and help them, again, making the connection where in culture, we've often been incorrectly taught that faith has no part of government, that there should be a separation of institutions because there's a quote seperation of church and state. People like to point at the first ammendement where it says Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion and they say see, we cant have Christianity, but the reality is,  one of the earliest churches in Washington DC and actually one of the largest churches in DC, especially during the time of the founding fathers with a church held in the U S Capitol building, it was actually Congress that are responsible for approving and then endorsing the very first Bible printed in English in America. And, when the request came before Congress to print it, the request came from Robert Aitken, who was a printer of Congress. And he actually pointed out, we have a Bible shortage in our schools, we need more Bible in schools. Congress agreed. They approve his printing they then give an endorsement to it and encourage every American to see it. Just so many things like this is just two examples of the dozens we go through for pastors and helping them see that connection. And then we also have several congressmen senators that will come through and they'll share some of what they're dealing with, some of what they are navigating up on the Hill. Got to give an insider's view for the pastors to see, but also sharing how their faith is guiding them in this process. And part of why they're here is because they believe as Christians, they've been called this kind of stuff. And so helping pastors see the connection, the reality with the founding fathers pointed out that without religion and morality, without Christianity in the Bible, America couldn't sustain, couldn't survive in political prosperity. Our constitution wouldn't work without Christianity and the Bible. What they called religion and Morality as the founding father's referenced it over and over again. And again, just helping pastors see that connection is always so powerful and so encouraging for then these pastors to be able to go back home and realize that they can be more involved in the local political arena. They can be involved in a cultural arena, speaking out on some of these issues. So it's a very exciting time for us to be up in DC these next couple days to be working with pastors, connecting with congressmen and senators, and hopefully helping these see the connection between the spiritual and the political in this reality. 

Rick Green [00:04:24] And it's good camaraderie for them too, right? They get good fellowship with pastors from across the country, realize they're not the only ones interested in these things and wanting to preach the whole council of God, so it's a great event for them to be a part of. 

David Batron [00:04:36] Yeah, and you know, the interesting thing about this is this stuff that every single individual that's ever been on these tours with us, they all love it. Now, you know we love taking people as well that are not pastors, that doesn't happen as often just because of the restrictions. So it's the kind of thing that if you can help get your pastor there, maybe you can say, hey pastor, you need a two or three day vacation, I'd love to send you to Washington, D.C. You know, get involved and help them do that because when it comes back it does rejuvenate the church and it does help educate Americans on things they really haven't seen before. So it is a way to strengthen the impact of the church because I think everybody we've ever talked to that's been there goes back home and saying, man, I never realized pastors are so involved in the arenas that they were and I'm really motivated to do something. So it does have, I think, a long-term impact. And that's just part of being in Washington DC and seeing how that really faith and history come together to create the people that we've become. Well... actually not the people we've become, the people we used to be that we want to get back to being in some ways. 

Rick Green [00:05:40] Well, Tim, you were also mentioning before we go to our interview today,  some of the other things that are happening,  other tours in DC, but also other things happening this summer. Some of those things happening in the DFW area. You've got the teachers conference, you got the student leadership program. Families can come in and be a part of American journey and what you guys are doing there. So let's get, let's see, what are we, mid April already or beginning of April, so only a couple of months left to really plan the summer. But June, July, and August, a lot of things happening. They can find out about all of those things at wallbuilders.com. But remind us again, we talked about the teacher's conference a couple weeks ago that doesn't have to be a particular kind of teacher, right? It could be public school, private school, as long as they're in education, you guys want to help train them.

Tim Barton [00:06:20]  That's exactly right. And as long as we have spots still available, I am not the one in charge of that. So in fairness, I don't know how many spots we have for either one of the sessions. They're both the week following the 4th of July, which will be a super fun time for us to be together. It probably will lead to us telling some additional stories, maybe even some different stories than sometimes we share at the teachers conference, trying to help these different individuals in the educational arena understand some of these stories, the history connection, finding old documents, learning to navigate those, and even understanding some of the legal changes that have happened in the educational arena because of Supreme Court decisions that now give teachers more opportunities in public school, challenging those that maybe are in a Christian school, a private school, and sometimes even some of this homeschool co-ops to be emboldened in some of what they do. And so... Definitely we encourage everybody who is interested in, or involved, a part of the educational arena, go to WallBuilders.com and you can sign up there. And Rick, one of the other things that we are super excited to always do is partnering with you every summer where Patriot Academy does the Leadership Congress. And this time it's even more exciting. Every year it gets a little bit better because you guys have developed an even better campus. You've done so much building. I mean, really, how much building y'all have been doing is rather crazy. It's so impressive and now you're able to host this leadership Congress entirely at your facility, not to mention you're going to be doing some constitutional defense, some firearm training, which we'll probably bring our staff down again, at some point that this summer, maybe the fall, we'll see how the schedule goes, but so much going on for people to find out and be a part of this summer. Whether at wallbuilders.com or patriotacademy.com, a lot of great opportunities. 

Rick Green [00:08:08] In fact, I haven't mentioned this anywhere yet, but we're going to have, normally we have our one week leadership Congress. We're going do a one month Patriot Institute intensive this summer. So any families out there, you got a 16 to 25 year old that would be interested in coming to the campus and spending not only get to do the national leadership Congress that one week, but come in three weeks early and get a lot of other great training as well, including that constitutional defense course and just a lot of in-depth training on, you know, a lot of educational issues, but also leadership skills as well. So all of that available. at PatriotAcademy.com and yes, looking forward to some great events this summer with both organizations. Now, this kind of leads me to our guest today, Andrew Moran, we're going to be talking about the issue of Elon Musk talking about is the goal really in Fort Knox and President Trump talking about that. But before we get to that, guys, I think all of these different programs we're doing, the pastors conferences, the legislators conferences, The Approach that WallBuilders has always had, David, you instilled this in us a long time ago, you teach the good, the bad and the ugly. And you keep that intellectual honesty so that people, first of all, can trust that when we bring stuff to them, we've resourced that well, we've researched it, we're going to original documents, we're not just spinning it so that it sounds best for us. And I think that the lack of that in the quote unquote political world the last few years where you don't have that kind of that honorable civil discourse. Instead it's, you know, whatever it takes to win and, and twisting the facts to get what you want. And even lying about things has created a massive amount of distrust in our institutions to where we literally don't believe anything we hear from the politicians or from the media. And I think that's at the root of this whole, is there really gold in Fort Knox? It's kind of not, not really tongue in cheek. A lot of people really are curious about this because it does have an impact on faith in the, in the credit of the United States and that sort of thing. But it is a symptom of a bigger issue, which hopefully we're beginning to turn around and the exposure of all the corruption helps people, you know, say, okay, at least they're telling us the truth now, even though it causes some distrust because you know we were lied to in the past, exposing truth or exposing corruption and telling truth now helps to rebuild that faith in those institutions. I didn't mean to filibuster guys, but y'all, get what I'm saying here? We need to do this in every area.

David Batron [00:10:26] And I think it really is important because people may not recognize, but there is impact to whether or not there is the gold at Fort Knox that's supposed to be there. There's several impacts economically, not only faith in government, but economics. If it turns out not to be their man, what that's going to do to inflation, what's that going to do to public credit and the use of the dollar overseas, et cetera. It's all going to go crazy if it's not there. But I can tell you, I've already seen the movie in 1964 when Dr. Goldfinger tried to steal the gold out of Fort Knox. Sean Connery, James Bond was there he protected it, so I'm telling you the golds in the treasury is still there. Cause I've watched the movie, bro. 

Rick Green [00:11:08] And that was a good James Bond Sean Connery. Wow so all right so this is I'm glad you said that there David because not the Sean Connory part but the other part because it isn't just a curiosity thing it does have an impact economically so it is it is an impact. 

David Batron [00:11:25] I'm going to reemphasize, Rick, if it is not there, all of us are going to suffer inflation like we thought under Biden was bad. It's going to be worse. We've seen China trying to replace the dollar with their currency. If the gold is not in Fort Knox, that really puts the Chinese back in play for a world currency. Everything is different, we're not the same nation if the gold does not in Fort Knox that we expect it to be. It will affect the pocketbook of every one of us. And it will go back to the government having essentially lied to us for several generations because the public trust and the world trust have been built on the fact that they think it's there. And because they think it's there, they're acting appropriately economically. But if it's not there, man, it's a different game. 

Rick Green [00:12:11] Yeah, good point. All right, guys, well, we'll take a quick break. When we come back, Andrew Moran is our guest. He's been covering this, and we'll talk about what might happen with it. Stay with us. You're listening to TheWallBuilders Show.

Rick Green [00:13:27] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Andrew Moran with us, Andrew. Is there gold in Fort Knox? That's our discussion for the day. How are you, man? 

Andrew Moran [00:13:35] I am well. Thank you for having me on your show. 

Rick Green [00:13:37] You bet, so what's the story here? Is there actually gold? Why is Elon so interested in this and what do we know so far? 

Andrew Moran [00:13:46] So it all started back in February, Zero Hedge posted on X asking if Elon Musk is going to dig into the gold at Fort Knox. This caught Elon Musk's attention, and he said, oh, yeah, maybe we'll start digging into what's actually really inside Fort Knox now, if your viewers aren't aware, it's been a source of theories for a long time saying that there isn't any gold at Fort Knox. So, you know, President Trump, he said maybe we will live stream some events and we'll go to Fort Knox and tour the facility. and see if the gold is really there. 

Rick Green [00:14:17] Are they just having fun with this or is this a real question? Like is this, do you think this is, is this for real? 

Andrew Moran [00:14:24] I mean, well, so far everything has been surprising about the Trump administration, you know, from DOGE to, you now, actual talking about the national debt and budget deficits. So perhaps it is a real thing that they're gonna do. Now, it's been a while. It's been probably, it has been about a month or more than a month since they actually last talked about gold at Fort Knox. So whether or not it's gonna happen, I mean you know stay tuned to the Trump show. 

Rick Green [00:14:45] So take us they take me back. I mean this was you know I don't know if we want to go all the way back to you know FDR confiscating gold and and get this off the gold standard all those things But yeah, you know if you know that then please do give us a give us the primer on the history of this 

Andrew Moran [00:15:00] Well, actually, so the Fort Knox started off as a military installation back around early, early 20th century. It wasn't about many years later that actually turned into a secure location for America's gold holdings. Now, the dirty little secret, and you alluded to this, the real secret is that a lot of the gold hold is inside Fort Knox is from when gold was confiscated from the American people under the FDR administration. This is your aware probably reviewers are aware He signed an executive order taking gold from the people because the US was on a gold standard and FDR he wanted to increase the money supply, but because there was a connection to gold he was unable to do so. So he confiscated the gold from people and then a few years later the US government actually fixed the gold price and they took a profit off of that. So that's the secret that a lot of people in government don't want to talk about the history of Fort Knox. 

Rick Green [00:15:59] Well, and it breeds distrust, right? Because if you have that kind of government control, then you start wondering, okay, why? And how did they profit and why are they manipulated? And you know, some people would, you know say we got tin foil hats or whatever just for even questioning this stuff. But these are legit questions. And I mean, wasn't it, I mean it was Ron Paul that really raised this a lot 10 or 12, 15 years ago. And then I think Rand Paul, of course just Senator from Kentucky was talking about how I don't think even he has been allowed in there. Has he now? I can't remember if you got to do a tour or not 

Andrew Moran [00:16:29] He says he hasn't, and I also think Utah Senator Mike Lee, he also that he's requested entry into the facility, but he hasn' t. Now there was a scene a few years ago under the first Trump administration. and then Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, he did a tour with Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. But it seemed a strange photo opportunity just because the photos that were released, it just seemed strange as if there was some sort of hostage negotiation taking place with the gold. Now, to mention to your previous point, you know, that, because the government has routinely said that there is gold at Fort Knox, there was a congressional hearing, and you mentioned Ron Paul, Ron Paul held a congressional hearing back around 2011, and he was speaking with the then commissioner of the Government Accountability Office, he says, yeah, of course we've audited Fort Knox. We have all this documentation, you know, all the numbers are inside of our financial reporting. But if you were to actually go to Fort Knox and see that either the gold is out there, or it's less than what is reported. Or there's some swaps occurring which some people are worried that have happened, then it calls into a broader question of, okay, what else is the government hiding or lying to the American people about? So this is why it's such a fascinating story for a lot of people who question the veracity of a lot the government's claims. 

Rick Green [00:17:52] Yeah, and I would think even even economically, even though we're not on the gold standard like we should be, in my opinion, but even though not, just the fact that they're supposed to be, you know, so much gold in Fort Knox gives some level of trust to backing the US dollar. I think you mentioned in your article on Epoch Times, it's like a half a trillion or something for four or 500 billion. So if it's not there, then it would cause one to have less faith in the dollar, right? So it does, it does have an impact on the, you know, the viability of the dollar. Am I wrong on that? 

Andrew Moran [00:18:25] Yeah, you're absolutely correct. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, he was on Bloomberg News a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about the confidence in our and paper money. And the reason why it's so strong and why why they're so liquid and why the why foreign investors and central banks hold so much of it is because of all this confidence in the US government, the rule of law, the liquidity of it, the size of the charging market. So if the government is lying about a half a trillion dollars with the gold inside Ford Knox, then there could be an erosion of confidence in the US dollar and everything else related to the United States government. 

Rick Green [00:19:01] Yeah. All right. So truly big questions for sure. Andrew, thanks for reporting on this, man. Thanks for the article and I appreciate you coming on WallBuilders. 

Andrew Moran [00:19:09] It was a lot of fun to compose and thank you for having me on your show. 

Rick Green [00:19:11] Alright, stay with us folks, we'll be right back with David and Tim Barton. 

Rick Green [00:20:21] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Andrew Moran for joining us as well and shedding some light on this. And David, like you said, I mean, it really does have economic impacts. He pointed that out as well.  I just wonder guys, what, what would the world be like right now if Donald Trump had not won and he hadn't been willing to make all these appointments of these people that are completely outside the system. So they're willing to ask these questions. They're willing challenge their swamp. They're not just playing the game. They're on the take. It's all this new blood and all these new people come in. From outside the swamp, it's allowing us to even ask a lot of these questions.

David Batron [00:20:53] Yeah, they're asking the right questions and asking the right questions is the really important thing that goes with this. And by the way, in this whole aspect of whether it's there or not, I mean, as you look at Elon Musk, the way it came out, this is the stuff we need to do for every single agency is ask the questions. What's there? And by the way, just another thing, if the gold is not there, where would it be? And part of this, we've had a debt for so long. And we've been borrowing from private banks in the United States that the federal reserve is really the private banking thing, running the public, credit to the United states. It would be because those private banks said, hey, look, you owe us trillions. We're going to go get some of that trillions it's time for you to repay. So there is a plausibility that in these private banks, loaning money to the government, they're saying, Hey we want some stuff back. And so that's a possibility that could have happened. But nonetheless, this, these really are important questions to ask. 

Tim Barton [00:21:46] Well, as he pointed out, too, it's also interesting that we haven't heard a lot of this in the last several weeks. You know, it was a big deal at first, and there's so much going on in the White House, so much is going on at DC, so much that President Trump is navigating and dealing I don't think this is a forgotten topic, but maybe it's gone down a little bit in priority. However, this is also where, because there's been such a lack of transparency before, there could be a little bit of conspiracy coming out of, wait a second, right? Maybe that they find out something wasn't there and now they don't want to look. They don't wanna see what's there. And so I think even surrounding questions now are reflection of the distrust we've had of government to this point as Trump has declassified some things in some areas. And we're finding out more and more, essentially, I think it's it's, it's confirming potentially the bias that we've had that even though Trump has released some of these classified records to some extent, right, what we have not known before, we don't fully know everything on some of these details, but it's confirming, again, what some of that bias has been that the federal government hasn't been honest in some of this. Uh, and so, Rick, as you pointed out, it's really great that there are disruptors there, but as we're up in DC, um, I was talking with a guy yesterday who's been part of, the belly of the beast for quite a while. And one of the challenges is there's so many layers of bureaucracy. And when you get a guy like a Pete Hegseth or a Kash Patel or Dan Bongino, those are absolutely disruptors, but there's only so many levels and layers of disruption you can do before you hit a place where you have to have additional help to reach further down layers. And so it will be interesting where some of this goes. Obviously, the Constitution even speaks to some of the way our currency is supposed to happen, some of the way that operation goes, and we have not necessarily followed that constitutional standard for a while. This will be an interesting query to see about getting us back closer to the Constitutional standard. 

David Batron [00:23:53] You know, the other thing that's with this is when there is not transparency, it leads to conspiracy theories. When you can't get the answers you need to get and when they're not forthcoming with the answers and they're slow giving you answers, it starts feeding conspiracy theories. And so one of the things I think is interesting is really the last time somebody went to look at Fort Knox from the government, from a position like an Elon Musk, you have to go back into George W. Bush administration where the treasury secretary said, I thinkI'm going to see, I'm going to go see if the money's there. And so he made the visit and they never released the results of what he found. They never said, oh yeah, it's there, they just mentioned that he was there and he went to Fort Knox and never came back with the results. And the only time I've seen before that, that they went to Fort Knox to check was all the way back to LBJ. So when you go from LBJ to George W. Bush and you're not getting much information coming out about what's there and all we saw it and it's all great, everything is good. That's the kind of stuff that leads to conspiracy theories. So hopefully they will be forthcoming with this despite the levels of bureaucracy. But then again, they may find out something that none of us want to want to really have to deal with. And so, you know, we just don't know. And I'm not trying to speculate or be conspiracy minded at all. I'm just saying these are some of the consequences that happen with it. 

Tim Barton [00:25:09] Well, in the midst of all this, you know, we're seeing, the Dow Jones, the stocks, they, they've taken a hit, whether it be because of, you know, President Trump's tariffs, some of these things that have, have started to roll into effect. I, I think there's some external things as well. Nonetheless, one of the things that all of us who've been paying attention for a while have known is there's going to come a time we've tightened up the belt, that it's not going to be easy, but you want to have a proper assessment so you can make the right decisions to restore and recover where you need to. And so whatever the reality is of this, you didn't want to know the truth because once you know what you're dealing with, then you can navigate the path back to where you need to be. And when president Trump is trying to help America be prioritized and not ship all of our industries overseas and not having other nations do crazy amounts of tariffs on us when we're already sending them so much money and so much funding and he's looking going, we're not the balance of saying out, but to do it! There could be some economic consequences for the first year or two, but ultimately in the long term, this could be very, very beneficial. It could be similar with Fort Knox. We need to know the truth of what's there and whatever it is that will give us the starting place of where we are to know how we navigate going forward. 

Rick Green [00:26:22] Yeah, you know guys, this really goes all the way back to Exodus and what we've said all along. We should look for in our leaders, able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, even if it's bad news, we want them to tell us the truth and having people in public office and in leadership positions that are willing to be honest with us is so critical to rebuilding liberty in our country. Appreciate everybody listening today. Thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders Show.