Why Conservatives Must Vet Candidates Before They Rise - With Heidi St John

A decorated past, a tragic story, a viral interview, and suddenly millions of people are treating a politician’s new talking points as truth. That’s a recipe for getting played, and we’ve seen it happen before. Heidi St. John joins us to unpack the Joe Kent controversy, what she witnessed firsthand on the campaign trail, and why the real issue is bigger than one candidate.

We talk about how media narratives get built, how endorsements can suck the oxygen out of a race, and why conservatives can’t afford lazy discernment. Heidi explains why she flagged warning signs early, what “vetting” should actually look like, and why a résumé, charisma, or military service can never replace a clear record and consistent values. We also wrestle with a hard but necessary idea: multiple things can be true at once, including gratitude for service and serious concerns about a person’s leadership.

Then we widen the lens to the long-term fight. Heidi shares what she’s learning through building a thriving homeschool resource center and why education is shaping the next generation of voters. We address burnout, the lure of conspiracy culture, and the danger of outsourcing your worldview to influencers instead of grounding yourself in Scripture and solid sources. If you care about faith and culture, civic responsibility, and how to recruit better leaders locally, you’ll walk away with practical steps and a renewed sense of duty.

If this conversation helps you, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s tired of the noise, and leave a review so more people can find it. What’s one question you always ask before you trust a public voice?

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. It's a, let's see, what is this? This is Tuesday. We've got all kinds of things going on in the world from Iran to of course, the Joe Kent thing out of the counter-terrorism resignation. And I mentioned that one briefly last week guys, as we were signing off, but I bet a lot of our listeners may not even know who he is. It may not have even seen this. It's been a big deal if you're in kind of the certain circles and your Twitter feed or your X feed happens to be caught up with it, but thought we'd get Heidi St. John on to talk about it. She ran against him several years ago but that we should cover it a little bit more today. 

David Barton [00:00:45] This is something that is a media heyday. They look for any opportunity to make Trump look negative. He is doing well in polling and other things right now, gaining support. And so, they look for anything to kind of drag him down. And if you can find someone out of the 2.3 million federal employees that don't like Trump, that when he leaves, makes a big deal out of it, that's exactly what they're looking for. And essentially that's what's happening now. 

Tim Barton [00:01:11] Well, and you know, some of those guys too, there's some validity to some of the concerns, if the accusations are all correct and looking at some of what's going on and so for those that don't know, Joe Kent came out was, did several different interviews, but Tucker Carlson was one of the biggest ones where he said that Israel is controlling America and America is going in to do Iran and war and blah, blah, and so a lot of people. That are maybe more in the isolationist camp, frankly, but think, man, we're tired of America.....and maybe that's not totally fair for some of them. They're just tired of America funding other nations more than maybe doing some basic things in America. And some of that's just Democrats in general, perhaps. So, a little nuance in the midst of that, but they're tired of seeing our dollars go international and Joe Kent just a couple of months ago was talking about how bad Iran was and we had to oppose Iran and they're the worst threat and et cetera, et cetera. And now he's suddenly changed his tune in a couple months, but he's not really saying why he changed his tuned. He's not saying why. He believes something different. And of course, Tucker Carlson and in good Tucker Carlson fashion didn't ask those kinds of questions. He really just kind of let Joe go with where he lands now and why president Trump's a problem and why Israel's a problem, et cetera, et cetera. And so really guys, it would be worth maybe finding out a little more details about Joe, his background, and someone that definitely had some firsthand experience with Joe and can maybe shed more light on the situation as our friend, Heidi St. John. 

Rick Green [00:02:42] Heidi St. John with us when we return, you're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:03:52] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. Heidi St. John back with us, Heidi St John Podcast, Firmly Planted, all the different things she's doing in the great state of Washington, which we have not given up on because Rob McCoy lambasted me right in front of Heidi in front of a whole crowd when we were campaigning for her. When I just even answered a question about if someone might want to move out of a blue state and he's like, you coward. Anyway, Heidi, I'm sure you remember that that was fun. Thanks for coming back on. 

Heidi St.John [00:04:18] It's great to see, of course I remember that, it's a burnt, seared into my memory, yes. 

Rick Green [00:04:23] We were just having a nice little campaign rally for you, and I had to say something stupid, I guess. 

Heidi St.John [00:04:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. Well, you know, Rob didn't hold back when I called him and told him, hey, people are threatening my life. He was like, are you done whining? I'm like, what? 

Rick Green [00:04:37] And I'm sure you think of it every time you think about whining just like.... 

Heidi St.John [00:04:41] I do. 

Rick Green [00:04:42] every time I think about telling someone to leave a blue state I think, oh! Rob might be watching. Because he was right, he was absolutely right and I think you took his side that night, I'm pretty sure, which you should have 

Heidi St.John [00:04:52] Because I'm still here in the blue state. 

Rick Green [00:04:54] And still doing great work. How many families y'all have now at Firmly Planted? 

Heidi St.John [00:04:57] About 800. 

Rick Green [00:04:59] Wow. 

Heidi St.John [00:05:00] So roughly 2,000 students. 

Rick Green [00:05:02] And for our listeners that have been under rock and are unaware, this is a homeschool resource center, which we want to duplicate in Texas at some point in building Constitution City, if we ever get Heidi and Jay to come down and hang out with us and show us how to do it. No, it's so cool. I have, what's it been, five years since the first time I walked through that with you? And I was so impressed with all the things that y'all do. I mean, this is not, this not your grandmother's homeschool co-op. This is, you guys have dance, you have theater, you have bees, you've have coffee shops. You have, you, have it all. And so the kids actually get to learn entrepreneurship and the arts. And while also learning reading, writing and arithmetic and civics and all those good things. So anyway, praise God for you. I just think y'all, y'all created a model we need to be replicating all over the country. 

Heidi St.John [00:05:46] Well, we'd love to see that happen. I really believe and I continue to believe that it won't matter if we have a good election in 2028. And maybe we've got a good election two years in the midterms after that, because it's a math game in the United States right now. And we're going to be overrun by the kids that are coming out of our public school system, our public high schools and our public universities, who've been trained in socialism and leftism. These are kids who don't know what a woman is and think we live on stolen land. And they're the voters of the next generation. And it simply is a math problem at this point. If we don't get a handle on education in this country, it's game over. I really believe that. 

Rick Green [00:06:21] Well, you help equip families all over the country. Encourage them to listen to you. The best way to find you, hideystjohn.net. I'm guessing, is that where you want me to send them? 

Heidi St. John [00:06:28] Sure. Yeah. 

Rick Green [00:06:30] Okay. And the cool thing is you make it fun. You're kind of like us here at WallBuilders. You don't like boring history or boring civics or boring culture stuff. You make it entertaining. So anyway, we love you. Kara says, howdy. And we can't wait for you to come down and visit. I got to get to the ugly. I usually do the good, the bad and the ugly, we did a little bit of good there. This Joe Kent guy, you know him as well having run against him and, and been on the campaign trail with him. And the only reason I knew he was bad news, you could feel it when he walked in the room, even back then, but you had to deal with that on the campaigns trail for what, six months or so that y'all were maybe longer than that. 

Heidi St.John [00:07:07] It was a year and a half, dude. 

Rick Green [00:07:09] Oh, look at me short-changing your tour of duty, and I say that on purpose, tour of duty, because all these simple-minded folks out there that think just because you serve in the military, you deserve a pass on everything, I say you can be an absolute patriot even if you haven't served in the military, and you can be someone who served in the military and be a Benedict Arnold with a microphone. And I think that's what we've got on our hands now, don't you? 

Heidi St.John [00:07:34] Oh yeah, there's no question about it. And we knew this early on because I was out on the campaign trail with Joe listening to him to give his stump speeches and they're not Republican. And I started wondering, where did he get that idea? Why is he talking about taxing the rich? Why are the rich in his crosshairs? You know, why is he talk about $10,000 per child tax credits? These are not Republican, conservative ideas. And it started off with some, some sort of fiscal things he was saying. And then it was shown to me that he was not, he didn't have a conservative history. And I asked Joe when I first met him in 2021, I said, Joe, like I think it was January of 2021, where we were all kind of considering a race that was gonna be happening in August of 2022. So I announced in February of 2021 around the same time that he did. And when I met with him, he was trying to get me to drop out of the race before I even got into it. And I asked him, so I was like, tell me about you. And his story is compelling. Right? And that's what got him to where he is. You know, his story is compelling. His wife was killed by a suicide bomber in ISIS, by an ISIS suicide bomber when she was serving with the US Navy in Syria. And he, it made me sad. He's kind of, he was sort of, you know, he's got the rizz. You know he walked in, he bought me coffee. Who didn't want that? You know? And so I was like, okay, well, you know, tell me about your history with the Republicans. And he's like, I'm a lifelong Republican. I'm, you know, died in the world, diehard Republican. I asked him, what's your view on the public schools? Tell me about your view on abortion, what your view on taxes and most of it checked out. And so the only..... 

Rick Green [00:09:00] Well now, didn't we find... I remember discovering that he was a Democrat, because we went back and did some homework on him, and he had voted in like what the previous two... I mean like not 40 years ago, I'm talking about like the previous elections right before he ran for Congress. 

Heidi St.John [00:09:13] Yeah. Well, my point is that's exactly my point. When I met him in 2021, early in 2021 he lied to me. 

Rick Green [00:09:19] Oh, okay. 

Heidi St.John [00:09:20] He misrepresented himself. 

Rick Green [00:09:21] Yeah. 

Heidi St.John [00:09:22] And so I was thinking out on the trail, okay, you told me you're a diehard conservative and yet your positions are not diehard conservative. And I certainly don't, I'm trying to figure out where it will, you know, fast forward six or eight or nine months. And we learned that he is a, he's a Bernie Sanders Democrat from Portland. We learned that he was a Bernie Sanders supporter. And so, I outed him as a Bernie Sanders supporter and said, guys, we got to do a better job. This guy voted, you know, if somebody becomes a Christian, Rick, we don't elevate them to the head of the elder board the next Sunday. We don't say, you know what, you should be the youth pastor, we don't do that. We go, you what, there's a Christianity 101 right here, we're going to teach you what it means to be a Christian. If somebody says, if someone's a brand-new baby conservative and we find out about it, you don't get to run for Congress, sorry. Like if your history is, that's why I'm concerned about people like Tulsi Gabbard and other of these guys who come, they come from the Democrat party, they say, Hey, now, now I'm a Republican. Okay, so you're a baby Republican. Let's start from the very beginning, like the sound of music and we'll just build our way up, right? We're not doing that. 

Rick Green [00:10:26] It's the same thing. And I know I don't want to…. I do this with you. When we get on a show, we go off on so many tangents together, but we got to talk about these young, quote unquote, influencers, podcasters, because it's the same problem. They're talented, they're articulate, they're good looking, they got the rizz, like you said, they just, they are good on camera or on podcasts. And so we want them to be out front talking about conservatism, but they're not ready. And then they get the grift, they get, you know, they get what did Dan Bongino say today, the grift virus, which is, he was saying, that's what happened to Joe. He said, Joe was a friend of mine. He got the grift virus, like he named a lot of other people that I won't repeat right here, but I think he's right. Anyway, so yeah, we got to talk about that at some point, maybe not today, But you watched it happen in real time and you saw people just ignore all of that just because of the military record or just because, like you said, he was charismatic as he walked in the room, and then Trump endorsed him, and that too was just, you know. 

Heidi St.John [00:11:17] Well, even in that, it's really important that people understand the history because President Trump called me and said, hey, or actually Susie Wiles called me and said hey, would you come out and meet with the President at his golf club in New Jersey? He wants to talk to you about the race. So, this would have been June of 2021. And so, I flew out there, had an hour long sit down with the President, extraordinary opportunity. And he spent the first 30 minutes grilling me. Do you remember this, Rick? He was like, I sit down and he's just like, so Heidi offers me a Diet Coke. He's a very, like, he's just beguiling President Trump is. And he offers me Diet Coke and I'm too nervous to take it because I'm afraid I'm gonna drop it. I'm standing there in my cocktail dress and six-inch heels in front of the most powerful man in the world. And he's like, like a Diet Coke? And I was like no, thank you. And sits down and he opens up, I'll never forget it. He opens up the manila envelope or manila file folder, just opens it on his desk and takes out a piece of paper and reads it and says, why don't you pay your taxes? Why don't you pay your federal taxes? And I was like, what? He said, why not you pay federal taxes. I see here that you haven't paid your federal taxes that you're in arrears. And I'm like, no, that's not me. And he goes, okay. Goes to the next thing. He goes, I see you got a lot of marriage trouble. I see that you and your husband, you're in marriage counseling. What you've been divorced several times. I'm, like, no. On and on and on it went. Finally, he takes out a piece of paper, which really was me, from a post I wrote about him in 2016 when I was friends with Ben Carson and there was no way I was gonna be a Trump supporter. In 2015, there was no way I was gonna be Trump supporter, he reads it back to me. I eviscerated Trump in this Facebook post. I mean, I eviscerated him and he read it back to me, do you think, Rick, in a million years, when I typing that in my bedroom in my pajamas with my fluffy bunny slippers on that I ever thought he would see it, let alone read it to me? 

Rick Green [00:12:59] In person. 

Heidi St.John [00:13:00] In person, I was so embarrassed. I mean, I could just feel my face is getting hot, my ears are getting hot. I'm like, oh my gosh, the ground could open up and swallow me, I just wanna die. Somebody shoot me right now. And finally, I stood to my feet and I said, sir, Mr. President, with all due respect, everything you're reading about me in that dossier is a lie, except for that. I did write that. 

Rick Green [00:13:18] Ha ha! 

Heidi St.John [00:13:18] And by this time, Susie Wiles has come in the room and she was just like, you know, sir, you know Heidi's only one. And you can tell I kind of cracked him at that point because president Trump was like, I don't suppose my access Hollywood piece helped your opinion of me very much. And I was like, no. 

Rick Green [00:13:30] Oh, did he really? 

Heidi St.John [00:13:31] Yeah, he really did. He actually, he can take it. I mean, he also can dish it out, but he can take it. So anyway, I just told him, I said, I didn't like you. You came down the escalator, the golden escalator and all I saw was a reality TV star, billionaire, he wanted 15 more minutes in the sun and so I went in for Ben Carson and I was wrong about you. 

Rick Green [00:13:48] Yeah, me too, me, too. I was all in for Cruz and thought Trump would be the worst thing that... He's turned out to be, he may be my favorite president before this is over. 

Heidi St.John [00:13:56] Me too, me too. So, President Trump said, President Trump, at that point, he was just like, Heidi, why do you want to run for Congress? And so, I told him why he said, listen, I met Joe Kent on the tarmac in Dover Airport Base when his wife's body was brought home and it really impacted President Trump. He has so much respect and love for our military. 

Rick Green [00:14:15] Yeah. Yeah.

Heidi St.John [00:14:16] And to him, to his way of thinking, here's Joe Kent's wife just made the ultimate sacrifice by this time. I already told him, I said, I don't think, I didn't know about Joe Kent voting record at this point. So I just said, listen, what I'm hearing, sir, on the, on the trail tells me at the very least he's a baby conservative. I don't trust his conservatism. I just don't trust it. Trump said, well, what other job could I give him? Now you got to keep in mind, you got to keep it in mind that president Trump, that Joe Kent was former CIA. Joe Kent gave president Trump all this stuff off the internet. He found another Heidi St. John in Washington state who has almost my exact birthday. 

Rick Green [00:14:49] Wow. 

Heidi St.John [00:14:50] And shares my middle name, found a Heidi St. John, and he lifted that information off the internet and gave it to Trump and told him it was me. 

Rick Green [00:14:55] And had to know. It wasn't really you. Had to know. 

Heidi St.John [00:14:59] He knew it wasn't me. He's a liar. And so, when Dan Bongino says, well, he got the grift. No, he has always had the grift. He was born with the grift. It's just that now we're paying a terrible price for our lack of discernment and our unwillingness to vet him because of his service to the U S military, that's how we got here. 

Rick Green [00:15:13] Yeah, you know, and Heidi, I think that's what I want to ask you about the where to go from here, not just obviously with Kent, but how do we do a better job of that? Like, how do, even in terms of our diet of information, as our mutual friend Nicole Tice out in Delaware would say, how to we, especially, you know, we both work with young people, so how do you train them to have an ear for that and to recognize when the depth and the truth is not solid with someone? Does that question make sense? 

Heidi St.John [00:15:41] Well, yeah, I think we have to be willing, if, if new information surfaces, we have be willing to say, oh, hey, maybe we were wrong. We have to do a better job. It's, it's really interesting. You know, you, you lived this with me because you came up here and campaigned with me and, and, which I'm so grateful for forever. But you live this with, me in real time. And I got trapped very early on in the campaign, uh by a question that I actually think Joe already knew the answer to. And Joe said, hey, listen, if president Trump, whoever president Trump endorses in this thing. The rest of you, will you all agree to bow out? Yeah, I remember that. And at that point, yeah, and I'm like a brand-new, brand-new candidate. I've never run for anything in my life. And all of a sudden, I'm running for Congress and I was like, well, I said, I remember saying, and it's on tape. I said well, I guess whoever Trump endorses, the oxygen is gonna get sucked out of the room for everybody else. And so yeah, I probably would bow out. And man, they hung me with that. They hung me with it because shortly after that, I found out that, that he was a Bernie Sanders supporter and then he lied about his support for Bernie Sanders and then came up with an idea or this, this, you know, talking point about how he was doing a Rush Limbaugh trick to try to help president Trump, it's such a lie. So much garbage, just like him saying that he was in the West wing and Charlie Kirk like Joe Kent, I love you, man. Don't let us go to war with Iran. A million dollars says that Trump, that Charlie never said that. The guy just lies. Well, so I changed my mind. When Trump endorsed Kent, I refused to bow out. I just like, no, he's not. He's not a conservative. I won't get out. 

Rick Green [00:17:07] I remember how much you struggled with that. I remember it was like, it was, Rick, I've got you, I remember you saying, I know this guy's bad news. I cannot get out and with a good conscience endorse him when there's a chance we could beat him and keep him from getting to this position. When we know he's bad news, Trump obviously doesn't and has been convinced to endorse him. And I can't go, I can remember you prayed about it. It was a serious, serious decision to make, but it's like, man, five years later, now all of a sudden, everybody else is finally seen. What you knew and we knew on the campaign trail five years ago. 

Heidi St.John [00:17:39] Yep, it was an absolute unwillingness to vet the guy. 

Rick Green [00:17:43] Yeah. 

Heidi St.John [00:17:43] We were blinded by his military service and blinded, by the death of his wife and wanted to have compassion for him. And actually, Trump said that on the tarmac today when they were interviewing him. You know, they're like, what happened? He goes, listen, he goes, I was trying to help the guy, which is absolutely true. So when Trump asked me, Heidi, what other job could I give Joe? I literally said, Mr. President, Joe couldn't run for dog catcher with his record and get elected in Clark County, Washington as a Republican. He's not a Republican. Trump, this is a hard lesson. The Republican party needs to learn it. Just because somebody says, I served in the military does not make them a candidate for Congress or school board or any, we need to know, what is your voting history? 

Rick Green [00:18:20] That's right, that's right. That's right. 

Heidi St.John [00:18:21] Do you have a history of conservatism? What are your values? If we don't vet these people, there are wolves in the hen house, man. 

Rick Green [00:18:27] Yeah, amen. 

Heidi St.John [00:18:28] There are wolves and hen house and they dropped an atomic bomb onto the Republican party the other day. And I frankly think this has been the plan all along. I heard Joe Kent say, standing right next to him, I heard him say that he'd been trained to be a chaos agent. He was trained to go overseas, infiltrate communities and find out how they ticked and turn them on each other. And he was talking about that in terms of war and how they have to operate in war. I'll never forget Jay leaning over to me and saying, dude, that's what he's doing to the Republican party here in Washington state. And he right. That's exactly what he was doing. And that's when he's going now going on Tucker and Candace and Megan and all these wackadoos. That's what is doing now. He's a chaos agent. 

Rick Green [00:19:03] For our listeners at home, Jay is Heidi's amazing husband. Jay saw it, he could tell. No one is talking about the fact that he was CIA. All you hear is Green Beret, Green Berets, Green Berets. So, it's like they don't wanna, I guess, it's part of the try to protect, I guess maybe protect the machine itself. I don't know, but it bugs me. It's like, I mean, like you said, this is part of this guy's MO from day one. Okay, let's talk about going forward. What is... huge midterms coming up, I know you've been talking about this as well. 

Heidi St.John [00:19:33] Mm-hmm. 

Rick Green [00:19:34] What are your thoughts on how to convince those people in the middle that might be just tired of the chaos? And actually, let me ask you this way. First, let's talk about our people because you talk to them every day. We've got people that are just burnt out. They're just tired of the the chaos and the Minneapolis stuff.  

Heidi St.John [00:19:54] Yeah, two of them are sitting right here. Two of them, are sitting, right here! 

Rick Green [00:19:55] But we stay in the fight and we keep going and we keep doing our duty. What are you saying to people when they call in and they tell you they're just done? Like, how do you keep them in the fight? 

Heidi St.John [00:20:04] Well, I remind them of what our country would have been like, had we bowed out a few years ago and Kamala Harris was the president. I remind him, if you think this is bad, you give this to the Democrats, it'll be 10 times worse. We have to learn from this. We don't win battles by running away. That was what Mike Farris said to me when I was running for Congress and I wanted to quit. And he was like, Heidi, the surest way to win a fight or to lose a battle is just not to show up. And so we basically hand it to the enemy. We hand it the Democrats, we hand it, the leftists, they'd burn this country to the ground if they had the opportunity. I mean, we'd have more open borders, more chaos, more men in women sports, more taxes, more of all the things that we all hate as conservatives, we would have, if we bow out. We simply can't afford to bow out. It's the same reason, Rick, that I don't leave Washington state. I happen to love the beauty of this place. My family is here. My history is here, my job is here I love like you do, the United States of America. And we're either going to fight for it or we're going to give it up. And I choose to fight forward. And I think we don't have, we're missing a sense of duty. Our forefathers had a sense of duty and they instilled that into the next generation, into rising generations, as Thomas Jefferson often referred to them. And we've failed to do that. And so now we have generations with no sense of real duty and their following. You know what I think is an even bigger problem than that is all the conspiracy theories that are out there now. You know, it's like- It's like, it's the spirit of the age, dude. And the Bible says that God is not the author of confusion. And so, when we see all this confusion and all this chaos, we need to go, okay, that's not God. So, what's the opposite of what that is and then go that direction. All this chaos all this conclusion, the only way I think we pull out of it is if voices of reason and I'm just gonna say it, godly people. We need to start elevating godly voices in this country. This is a spiritual battle of epic proportions and spiritual battles require spiritual weapons and yet what are we doing? We continue to send people to the highest positions of authority in this county and all over into positions of authority who don't know God's Word and can't wield a spiritual weapon. And so, we send them to the high positions of spiritual battles who can't wheel spiritual weapons and look where we are. This is exactly how we got to where we now. And so, I think it's very basic when it comes to God's people, at least. How about we start getting back in there and stop being lazy disciples and start opening God's Word for ourselves? How about if we stop getting our theology from Tucker Carlson? How about that? How about just opening our Bibles again? I can't believe, Rick, that we're living in a time in our country where we're being divided as Christians right now over Israel. We're being divided over whether or not the earth is flat, my goodness. I mean, the world's on fire and I think truth is the only remedy to it. And how do you get truth into the culture? You elevate voices that you know to be credible who will speak the truth. And that's how we got in trouble with Joe Kent. He wasn't credible in the first place. We were unwilling to vet him, unwilling to do our homework. We're just lazy. We're just lazy. I mean, we are, we're lazy and that's why you're just saying people are like, I just wanna give up. What are you gonna do? Give up and go back and just watch Netflix for the rest of your life? Don't we have other things to do? Do we care about the future for our grandkids or not? We got grandkids and I'm doing this now and I know you are too for our grandkids. 

Rick Green [00:23:11] Yeah, yeah, I like to tell the Patriots, there's a damsel in distress. There's a city to be saved. Let's go. Let's get, let's get the fight. 

Heidi St.John [00:23:17] Let's go! Yes! 

Rick Green [00:23:17] Well, talking about finding good voices, Heidistjohn.net, go check out her books as well. All of her Mom Strong books and then Born on a Battlefield, Spiritual Strategies from Moms in the Trenches. I loved it when I came up there to campaign for you the first time and we were in Battleground, Washington. I was like, okay, this was meant to be, absolutely meant to be. 

Heidi St.John [00:23:38] It was. I'm still right over here just battle-grounding it up, I'll tell you what. 

Rick Green [00:23:41] Heidi, y'all keep it up, give Jay our best. Thank you for giving us a little bit of the inside scoop and thank y'all for standing strong even back then when everybody from President Trump on down was trying to get you all to get out of the fight and not be involved. So thanks for taking a stand and continuing, advancing truth, as we like to say, that's victory. And you did a lot of that and continue to do that. So, we appreciate you, thanks for coming on. 

Heidi St.John [00:24:00] Rick, you're a national treasure. Thanks for having me on. 

Rick Green [00:24:03] That was Heidi St. John back with David and Tim now. And of course, a lot of good news in there too. Just talking about the homeschooling movement and how many more, you know, families are part of their Homeschool Resource Center there, that that's growing across the country. So, some good stuff but definitely some concerns about where we get our diet of information and who we vet and who, who we platform. 

David Barton [00:24:22] Yeah, and it's really important. And I think there's a real big political lesson here, quite frankly, when you look at what this represents, you have a guy here who is flawed in so many ways. This is not a guy you would have wanted for a Republican congressman, not any congressman but Republicans who tend to have different standards. I mean, he didn't even come up to their standards. 

Tim Barton [00:24:43] Well, and one of the things too, guys, multiple things can be true at once. And we are grateful for someone who faithfully serves the military or does heroic things in combat, even though we might have some significant political philosophical disagreements and certainly that's where I would want to point out. This is not an anti-military, it's not an anti-veteran, et cetera, et cetera, where some people might be triggered and want to accuse us of something we're not saying. But Dad, to your point, we need to be more careful, strategic, wise, selective in some of that process. Instead of just going, hey, if somebody was in the military or whatever the accolades might be, well, that's all that really matters, when clearly there's way more to the story. And one of the things that we often have to navigate when we hear accusations, and this is the way we do research for the Founding Fathers, we hear something and go, okay, is it true? How do we know? What's the source? Is there more to this story? Is there a different context? Is that all they said about the issue? You have to start asking more questions and some pretty basic questions and do better investigation to find better answers. 

David Barton [00:25:44] Yeah, this is a really important thing. And there's some real key verses on this. And back in Exodus 18:21, we're told, go select the right people, go find the right people, and a lot of times we just wait to see who shows up on the ballot. This is a real good lesson for why you recruit people and go get good people on the ballot, because when they get in office, they may not be everything you thought they would be or hoped