Unmasking Charity Scams, Border Chaos, And Venezuela’s Power Shift

Headlines moved fast this week, but the through-line is simple: when truth meets sunlight, systems change. We open with the Minnesota scandal where a young investigator’s iPhone clips sparked serious questions about charity and daycare programs funded with federal dollars. As audits spread to other states, we dig into what real accountability looks like, why some outlets fixate on edge cases, and how a love of truth—not team loyalty—should guide the conversation. From there, we step into voter roll transparency, lawsuits against states refusing disclosure, and the practical steps that make elections cleaner long before ballots are cast.

The second half shifts to Venezuela and the global stakes you might not see at first glance. We unpack years of nationalization, collapsing oil output, and alleged narco-terror networks tied to Nicolás Maduro, alongside successive U.S. bounties and sealed indictments. Then we analyze the reported operation that bypassed Russian air defenses and Chinese drones, the deterrent message it sent, and why energy markets could feel the impact if American firms rebuild shuttered capacity. Safer borders, cheaper fuel, and fewer dollars flowing to adversaries aren’t abstract talking points—they’re the measurable outcomes that follow strategic clarity.

Throughout, we connect policy to principle: decentralize programs that Washington can’t police well, publish audits and recipient lists, standardize voter roll maintenance, and insist on transparency that survives partisan spin. Courage is contagious, whether it starts with a citizen journalist or a community demanding records. If you’re ready to trade noise for facts and narrative for receipts, press play, share with a friend, and tell us where accountability should go next. Subscribe for Foundations of Freedom Thursday and don’t miss our Friday good news roundup.

Chapters

• 0:07 Opening And Show Setup
• 0:29 Fast-Moving Headlines: Vaccines To Venezuela
• 1:43 Minnesota Fraud Exposed And Spreads Nationally
• 3:25 Media Pushback, Accountability, And Love Of Truth
• 7:36 Voter Rolls, Lawsuits, And Election Integrity
• 9:57 Why Washington Funds Daycare And Jurisdiction Questions
• 13:32 Venezuela Shock: Strategy, Legality, And Stakes
• 18:02 Maduro, Narco-Terror Claims, And Bounties
• 22:42 Oil Seizures, Communism, And Economic Collapse
• 26:44 Military Operation, Global Signals, And Deterrence

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilder's show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical historical and constitutional perspective. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And so much has happened in the last few days. Of course, we want to thank Bob McEwen for speaking at the Pro-Family Legislators Conference and shared that with you over the last couple of days to kind of kick off the year, diving into those principles that make the nation great. And in the meantime, wow, what a start to 2026 from the vaccine schedule being corrected in some very good ways to Iran to Venezuela. To you just go down the list guys. There's a lot that has happened in the last few days. 

Tim Barton [00:00:46] Right and we've been texting and talking. We had scheduled to have Bob's talk, because it's so good, and I really, it's almost a disservice not to spend time highlighting some of Bob's talks, but we've texting and taking about, man, we're ready to get on and talk about some of these events that are happening from this, I mean, we kind of talked about Nick Shirley in these videos, but who would have thought that a 23-year-old kid with an iPhone, would cause a governor to drop out of a re-election campaign bid, you know, with President Trump in Venezuela and now calling out whether it be Cuba or the president of Mexico or, Columbia. I'm trying to think of who always called out. I mean, Marco Rubio on all of these shows, there's been so much stuff going on. So I'm glad we finally are, are back in studio together that we get to have a longer conversation about some of the current headlines. 

David Barton [00:01:43] Yeah, this Minnesota story is the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, it's just amazing. Uh, the more they look for the fraud, the more they find to the fraud. And as soon as they think they found it, they find another batch of it at a different level in a different arena. And it is now spread across the U S. I've seen that there's now nearly a dozen states that have some type of Somalia operations going on in them charitable stuff, and now those states are starting to look at them, including here in Texas. They hadn't ever done anything to really draw a red flag of notice before and now you got all these states that are getting looked at. And they're finding stuff that’s not good in some of those states. So, we'll see where it all ends up, but it is it really is amazing to see how deep the fraud, is how easy it was to find once they started looking for it which tells you there's not been much accountability with these gifts that go out from the federal government. Because when, Tim, as you said, a guy with an iPhone can walk in and uncover the thing. I mean, that tells you they have not done a good job of holding their money accountable. 

Tim Barton [00:02:49] Well, it tells you also the mainstream media has been largely working for a propaganda campaign, promoting a narrative for their side, not doing actual journalism, which used to be things that people did. One of the things that I think is also interesting, I think it was yesterday. I saw Fox News have a highlight article that somebody from the White House was announcing the largest immigration operation to date was going on in Minnesota yesterday. Which you know part of it uncovering so much of this fraud that's been going on and also, Rick, I'm sure you've seen some of the stuff on social media on X as well where there's been a lot of pushback on Nick Shirley. Of course, Nick Shirley came out and said it's crazy that after I just went and showed some videos people instead of finding unity and saying we all should agree that fraud is wrong they're attacking the person exposing the fraud. But one other thing maybe CNN that did this that pointed out a couple of the places that Nick surely went, they were actually already closed. So, it's a little dishonest to go to a place that's already closed and then say that kids aren't there. But then I was going, hang on a second. He literally was showing those people had received millions of dollars the year before. And so, my question is, how do you receive that much money? And then you have to close up shop when the government is giving you again, that much money? And it's not to say that the other locations he went weren't still operating and fraud was still happening. So, it has been interesting as well to see CNN, some of the different outlets that have been trying to protect some of Democrat leaders. And I even saw somebody speculate that the reason Tim Walz was stepping out of his reelection campaign, wasn't what was exposed right now. They speculate it's because there's gonna be much greater fraud that is on the horizon that will be exposed that he will have a much deeper connection to. So, it's going to be interesting to watch. But certainly, even right now with this immigration operation happening in Minnesota, there is so much going on. And it does, in my mind, raise some optimism that the leadership we have right now might actually help. If not, I don't know if we can root out all the corruption at this point, but at least slow the corruption down enough. That when we look at things like the midterm election, and there's questions of what's going to happen in the mid-term election. All right, is there going to be honesty in some of these Democrat states? Well, if you start cracking down on the fraud and taking away the financial resources that are largely flowing in the Democrat party, and then ICE is working to round up so many of these people that are illegal immigrants doing illegal things, and in many cases voting. It actually gives me more encouragement for the midterms than I've had before the last couple of days. 

David Barton [00:05:39] Well, you know, it's interesting, Tim, with you going back and saying the CNN came out and said, oh, he's mis-portrayed it. One of the things that really strikes me in this whole culture right now, and this goes to every single person, I don't care what side you're on, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, none of the above, you ought to have a love for the truth. And CNN ought to look and say, hey, what this guy reported, was it true? And if it's so, you, know what, this is bad. There is fraud in Minnesota. I think they could say now there's not as much as he claimed there was because we, whatever. But they didn't even acknowledge that there was genuine fraud there, they went to make the exception of the rule. And it's the kind of a thing that has a lot of serious consequences for anybody and I don't care if you're completely Trump if you see him do something wrong and won't acknowledge it, that's a problem. And the scripture says if you don't have a love of the truth that a delusion will come on you. And I think that if there's a political party that has a lot of delusion right now, it's the Democrats. And I'm thinking because as much as anything, they reject the love of the truth. And truth does not care whether it's Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, anything else. And so, the fact that they will not even acknowledge that. And I was talking to a guy just today who's from Minnesota. He's a professor, very good guy, military guy, ROTC director. And he was talking about what happens next in Minnesota. And he said, he just, he predicts that Klobuchar is going to resign from the Senate. Amy, how do you pronounce her last name? Klobuchar. Thank you. See, I can't pronounce that name. So, Amy is gonna resign from the Senate and she won't resign from the Senate, she'll run for the position because if she runs while she's still in the Senate she can appoint a Senator to take her place and it won't have to be an election. And so, they will have that opportunity to pick up the governorship and the Senate. And so, I said, well, you know, but he says, you know she's always been pretty, been able to keep herself fairly clean. And she hasn't been contaminated with what's going on at least to this point. They might can criticize her for not having done better oversight in the Senate or something else, but she's just not contaminated with that. Now I was talking in hopes of maybe this will lead to a political reform in Minnesota. Maybe it'll change some things and maybe it will. But his prediction is she'll probably win by two or three points, just given the rabid nature of blueness in Minnesota. But I would love to see something change there, or love for it to be so close that it actually brings competition back to the political arena in Minnesota, and it really is the couple of big cities there. And outside that, when you got in the country, it's as conservative as Oklahoma or Texas is out in the country. So, it's gonna be interesting to see what things go with the political change there. And Tim, you mentioned too, with the elections coming up and possible fraud, I was intrigued. I saw a story where that, I guess I had not realized that by federal law, the federal government gets access to all the state voter lists. So even though the states in charge of election, voter registration, voter turnout, et cetera, those are all things that are available to the federal Government. And so right now, the Trump administration, I think, assumes seven states who refuse to give over the voter rolls and to show whether those voter rolls have been cleaned and whether they're legal and complying with the law. And we thought, no, that's, that significant. When you have laws that mandate that your voter rolls have to be public and you have to prove that you complied with the law and seven states are refusing to do what the law requires state law, as well as federal law. It's kind of thing where there's smoke, there's fire. I mean, that suggests you that there's some absolute corruption going on when they won't come to the sunlight, they're like cockroaches and run for the dark, when that's what they're doing, and Tim, I'm with you, as a result of those lawsuits, we might actually get some forced change in these states that have refused to change on their own, and you might actually see that the feds get involved in suing some of these officials, prosecuting some these officials and it might produce a genuine change in the midterms that nobody sees coming, which would be terrific. 

Rick Green [00:09:46] Yeah, and as you said earlier, David, it's coast to coast. I mean, you literally got some of this being uncovered in Boston all the way out to California, Washington State. I mean it's everywhere. And it also raises the even deeper question of why is the federal government involved in daycare in the first place? Why are we funneling all this money into Washington and then out to all these different programs around the country? So hopefully it'll open up some of those discussions we have in our classes together when we talk about jurisdictions and what government should be doing in the first place. And, and of course our friend, Mike Lindell running up there in, in Minnesota and, and just an, you know, potential opportunity. Remember that's kind of a crazy state. Anyway, they, they aren't, they're the ones that elected Jesse Ventura. You just never know what's going to happen in, in Minnesota. But just glad to see that to Tim's point at the beginning of the program, this 23-year-old kid, you obviously people don't love truth when they're just attacking this kid for literally bringing truth to the table, for exposing this stuff. Remember Bill Bennett's old line about, you know, sunlight being the best disinfectant. Well, there's a lot of sunlight being shown on a lot of things because that kid had the courage to do what he did. Now you have all these force multipliers, these, these other sleuths out there, right? All over the country that are going and investigating these things. So super exciting thing to watch. 

David Barton [00:11:00] Yeah, I really do think that this, I'm not sure that we could have seen this come, seen this happen two years ago. I'm just not sure that in that climate there would have been the reaction and I've got to say Trump has partly set the tone for that because he's given a lot more courage back into people that, man, if he can do this with all the odds and the indictments and 278 lawsuits or how many it is, that he's been able to fight through that stuff. Certainly, I can do in my community. And I think there's just something spiritual going on in the nation now. We talked about that kind of a revival that's going on spiritually. I think there's some courage coming back into people, particularly after COVID and just having to rethink government and what the role is. And, and then seeing Trump go through what he went through and now be such an absolute patriot for America, America first, literally. And by the way, I love his, his response on why invade Venezuela and said, because America's first. And it's like, wait a minute, you have to explain that to me. But nonetheless, he made a good argument to the fact that what he did in Venezuela really was for America's benefit and put America first. And I never really connected the way he did. 

Rick Green [00:12:11] Yeah, I totally agree, David. And man, I mean, I've learned so much about Venezuela the last few days that I didn't see any of this coming. I didn't realize how pivotal it was to the United States' interest to our enemy's interest and all of that. So anyway, we'll talk more about that when we come back. Stay with us, folks. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:13:32] Welcome back to the WallBuilders show. Thanks for staying with us catching up on some of the headlines over the last few days. So much has happened guys. And so much of it is good. I mean, it's you look at Iran, Venezuela, let me just go down the list. These are things that are, that are bad for our enemies and good for our country. So, it's like we said earlier, an exciting time to be alive. But man, this whole Venezuela thing, what do you guys think? 

Tim Barton [00:13:52] Well, it's so interesting, Rick. I love, as you were going to break, you said, this is something you did not see coming. And I chuckled thinking, well, you know what? Who else didn't see it coming? The China delegation was there that morning. 

Rick Green [00:14:04] That's right. 

Tim Barton [00:14:05] Right? Meeting with Maduro, just, oh man, incredible. So many thoughts on this, obviously guys we have seen over the last, now multiple days, people dissecting and breaking this down. Was this legal? Is this America first? You know, so much commentary. I thought it was interesting that Marjorie Taylor Green, who is leaving Congress now, had made herself known as a MAGA person, America first, then, you know, Trump lost his way. Well, it's interesting, the mainstream media, the outlets on the left, they would call Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the dumbest members of Congress, but because she opposed what president Trump did in Venezuela, they met her on over the weekend, breaking down why this was so wrong and so bad for America and blah, blah, blah, blah. It just, it's interesting seeing all this play out, but as far as Constitutionally. Dad, one of the things that you and I had talked about, I did not know initially I didn't remember the idea of getting Nicholas Maduro, and I'll, let me back up from constitutional to political first. Let's do political and then constitutional. If you look at what the, the political landscape has been Democrats and Republicans both had agreed Nicholas Madura was a bad guy. Dad, one of the things that you had showed me, again, I did not remember this at all, which just made it crazy when so many Democrats, Chuck Schumer included, came out saying how bad Trump was for doing this. Trump had a $50 million reward out on Nicolas Madura. But Dad, as you showed me. Trump wasn't the first guy to do this. Who started this reward campaign for... Dictator Madura? 

David Barton [00:16:01] Well, interesting question, Tim. We can kind of back up and say, all right, where did, where did the, the, if you want to, the reward come from, by the way, let's just put it in perspective. Venezuela used to be a really close friend to America. And in the seventies, she was the biggest oil producing country out there bigger than Saudi Arabia, if can imagine that. And so at that point in time, about seven to 9% of all oil in the, in the world was coming out of Venezuela. And today because it's been shut down and a socialist kind of communist guy has taken over 80% of the oil they produce now goes to China. So this is the number one supporter of our biggest threat to America is China. But at that point in time, back in the 70s, it was America that went in and built these oil fields, oil refineries, oil companies, which took the technology in. It was the big companies that went there. And then, in the late 1990s... Hugo Chávez gets elected and here come the communists and socialists. And they kicked the Americans out and they took over the oil companies, didn't pay for anything. So, we have these billions of dollars of American money sitting over there in their oil companies being used to supply fuel for our enemies. Majuro got into other stuff because once you get into a lot of money, another good way to make money is drug trafficking. And so, he got into to being one of the chief narco-terrorist across the world. Producing all the lethal kind of drugs that really come to fight us. So, when it comes to looking at the reward that's out there, Trump and his first administration put a $15 million reward on the capture of Maduro. So that's global. Anybody in the world that can bring me Maduro is going to get 15 million from the United States government. And at that time is because really, Maduro had stolen so much from the United States, had kept so much, was not fulfilling obligations they had made before. It's now a socialist communist type of government; he's the friend of all the socialist communists. And so, within that framework of turning against America, literally at that point in time, the federal courts in New York had come out with sealed indictments against Maduro for narco-terrorism. So, he is one of the biggest narco-terrorists distributing drugs across the world and disrupting many, many cultures and how much did it affect the United States? So, and by the way, let me go ahead and finish the point. So, Trump starts out by a $15 million reward. Then he's out of office at the end of his first term. Biden comes in and Biden ups a reward to $25 million. So, this is Democrats that have upped it to 25 million at that point. And then Trump now is back in for a second term, and shortly after he got in office, he upped it to $50 million. So, the reward is currently 50 million. And I was looking at a tweet that came out from Kamala Harris after this, because she's the vice president to the president that did 25 million. And she said, Donald Trump's actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable. And those three things I wanna just hit real quick. Do not make America safer. We're losing 107,000 lives a year to drugs. And the number one supplier of those drugs is Venezuela. We just made America safer by taking out the number drug supplier of drugs to America. 

Tim Barton [00:19:34] And guys, I've heard this stat a lot that we are losing more people to drugs every year than we lost for the entire length of the Vietnam War. Just for some perspective, right? With how many soldiers, how many troops, how many American lives were lost in the Vietnam war, every single year we're losing more to drugs that, Dad, to your point, are largely coming over with cartels, and Venezuela is largely the chief among those bringing drugs into America.

David Barton [00:19:59] So Kamala Harris said it doesn't make America safer. She's wrong. Doesn't make American stronger. It is absolutely amazing to me how many countries have now put in a call to Trump and wanna be his best friend. All these countries that were criticizing him and criticizing what he was doing, they've suddenly decided they need to talk to him. By the way, just the irony, I don't know how much this would come out, but it was amazing to be that Trump had talked to Maduro personally, just days before they went in and took him out. I mean, he said, I gave him so many off-ramps, I gave them so many chances to do what was right. I told him what he would face, I told them what America wanted him to do, and he wouldn't take the off- ramps. And so, it's interesting that the countries that have come out the loudest against what America has done have been Cuba and Russia and China, which yeah, they don't like America anyway. 

Tim Barton [00:20:54] And, Dad, to be clear, I would largely assume that when Trump is saying that we were offering him off-ramps... It was like, hey, stop sending drugs into America. It wasn't some kind of puppet regime where Trump wants to control Venezuela and all they're doing, because right now, one of the things people are saying is this was only like AOC. So, this is only a play for oil that President Trump wants all the oil there. And that's a different conversation. It's a lot longer. That's probably worth having at some point, because America was the one that opened the oil operation there. They didn't have the infrastructure. And so, it was American companies that went down started the oil operation. When Venezuela starts moving toward a control economy, which is like socialism light leading into communism. And they began to seize and confiscate property, they took all of the American businesses, all equipment, seized all the property, seized all the oil, kicked them out, said, we're going to take over now. And when it goes to what communism does, when it goes to the government controlling and running it all, the production decreased by 75%. I think it was in the first year or two, production went down. And so, where Venezuela has more oil reserves, oils applied than basically anywhere else in the world. And their people have gone through unbelievable poverty over the last many decades, with I think estimates are 25% of their population has left in the last couple of decades because of the poverty, because of communism. And so, this idea that President Trump's just trying to take the oil back, well, first of all, they stole a lot of oil. This is what communist dictator leaders do. They steal and confiscate other people's private property. So, they did steal oil from America, number one. But back up to this idea, that President Trump is giving him off-ramps, the off- ramps, again, largely, probably were, hey, stop doing all of this drug stuff. Stop supplying oil to these enemies of America that are trying to kill America. It probably was some pretty basic things and then you could just stay in control and power and he rejected all of them. And that was why the operation happened like it did. 

David Barton [00:23:01] Yeah, and it was an amazing operation. And sometime we may go into some of the background of some of those things that happened behind the scenes. It was phenomenal what the CIA did in the way of intelligence. The fact that they had our guys already infiltrated into the palace on the ground before the military hit the ground. It was just amazing. We had eyes on the corner saying, hey, he's done this, he is going here. It's just, I mean, it's amazing. I don't think any other nation in the world could have done what we've done. So, having said that, tell me it doesn't make America safer. Tell me that there's any country in the world that hates America that feels really strong and cocky right now. I don't think so. So, it is amazing. 

Tim Barton [00:23:42] Hey, let me add one more thought to that too because Nicolas Maduro was inside of a military compound inside of a concrete guarded structure and that compound and his area were protected by Russian missiles by Chinese drones. Like literally the nations that Venezuela has partnered with that are the nations thought to be our biggest threats and concern and they were giving some of their military equipment to keep him safe. And the US military just showed hey your Russian missiles your Chinese drones... Not really that much of a threat when it comes to us doing our operations. So again, to your larger point of why it makes us safer, is it just put the rest of the bad guys in the world on notice that you really don't want to mess with the number one military in the world.

David Barton [00:24:28] And the third thing about it doesn't make America more affordable. What has happened is Trump said, okay, we're going to run Venezuela for a while till they get their government together and they'll have elections. The, the person that was elected in 2024, that the election was stolen by Maduro, they really think that might be the next leader because that was the one most recently elected, won the election until he stole the votes. So, we'll see where it goes. But in the meantime, we'll run it for a little bit. But what's happened is he's already asked and Trump has already got American oil companies to go back in to what they originally built and refurbish it, rebuild it, get production back up. Tim, as you said, production has dropped nearly 70% since these guys took it over. That will go back up, they've been exporting about 1% of the world's oil, that will go up to about 7% and is expected to make oil prices plummet as a result. So suddenly your gasoline may get down to a price you haven't seen in 30 years. As a result of what happened. So, Kamala, tell me how it doesn't make America safer, stronger, or more affordable. It does, and that's why Trump did put America first in what he did here. 

Tim Barton [00:25:33] And by the way, if it didn't do those things, Kamala Harris, the light of your administration, put a $25 million reward on this guy if you didn't think it was going to accomplish those purposes. So, guys, we've seen a lot of gas lighting coming from the left on this, but bottom line, America and Venezuela are now better off for having Nicolas Madura off the board. 

Rick Green [00:25:53] Our enemies are worse off. I love that part of this. 

David Barton [00:25:56] And by the way one other thing I have to point out is now that Maduro is out of office Trump has said for the six hundred thousand Venezuelans that are living in America and you can now go home. It's safe for you to go home and that's another immigration thing that totally changes as a result of this. 

Rick Green [00:26:11] Yeah. And hopefully all of these deportations, all of these movements like this also helps with the elections in Minnesota and some of these other places. The more we get the, those illegal immigrants out and frankly, a lot of the legal immigrants of the last decade or so. Yeah. I think to Tim's point, not only is America better off, Venezuelans better off our enemies are worse off. So that's good. So, this is a win-win all the way around a lot of more, a lot more good news we didn't even get to today, folks, which means number one, you got to tune in for Foundations of Freedom Thursday tomorrow, but don't miss this Friday because we'll catch up on some more of the good news. This Friday. Thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilders Show.