Will Christians show up this time? Glenn interviews David Barton

David Barton is perhaps in tune with the Christian community as much if not more than any faith leader out there, so Glenn asked him about the expected turnout for tomorrow. Will it be similar to 2008? Will there be fewer? Will there be more? Glenn talks with David on radio today and explains how the Christian vote could sway the election.

Full transcript of interview is below:

GLENN: Let's go right to David Barton who, we know David as a historian, but David also is instrumental in helping people get out the vote and really you've been in politics for how long, David?

DAVID BARTON: Oh, gracious. Goes back to actively being on the, I don't mean the inside but actually being more than a voter back to '88.

GLENN: I mean, I don't think you needed to swear, you know, a swear word for David. Gracious.

PAT: Gracious.

GLENN: Golly goodness, gracious me, let me think.

DAVID BARTON: That's hardcore stuff, man.

PAT: It is.

GLENN: It is.

PAT: That was awful.

GLENN: Okay. So David, I met a lot of people over the weekend, and the people who I felt were spiritually attuned may not know why or anything else, but they are the ones who came up to me this weekend, because I was in three different cities. We probably met, or were around 20,000 people and people would come up to me and they would say, "Really what do you think? I mean, just, are we going to be okay?" And the ones who would come up and they would have some spiritual aspect of their life, they would all come up and say, "I can't tell you why because, man, the press is saying this or that but, boy, I sure feel good about this. I just feel like it's fine." Are you finding that with your friends?

DAVID BARTON: Yeah, we are. And some of that is not only from those who just are spiritually attuned but those who are also spiritually attuned and on the ground. A lot of those folks are very intimately involved and have been for a number of years in running organizations that really get grassroots out and so they're spiritually attuned but they are also very politically astute. And the people that are right in the middle of the trenches on this thing, not the pollsters, not the people making the calls or answering the calls but the people who are actually doing the groundwork, same thing. I mean, they feel really good. I was just checking this morning with several more of what are called the battleground states, and the folks on the ground in those places that are also good friends, that are also very spiritually attuned, same report from every single one of them.

GLENN: So David, what are you seeing? You told me something, I think it was in Missouri about the value voter guides?

DAVID BARTON: Right.

GLENN: Can you tell me that?

DAVID BARTON: Yeah. In Missouri at the height of back in the decade ago when Christian Coalition was really strong and I guess they are really the first ones to start using voters guides for conservatives, particularly social conservatives, and at the height of that movement, the most they ever distributed was 100,000 in Missouri.

GLENN: 100,000?

DAVID BARTON: And there was about 1.5 million distributed in the last couple of weeks in Missouri. I was in Ohio and just talking to their guys. They personally hand‑delivered to 9,000 churches 2.2 million voter guides, hand‑delivered to 9,000 churches who put those guides out. In 2004, the election in 2004, 28% of churches either put out a voters guide or told parishioners to go vote, whatever. In 2008, last election that was down to 14%. I don't know what it will be this election, but it's already blown the top off. And so those are the folks that are hardest to measure. Those are the folks who were the key of the 2010, they and the TEA Party. And they tend to be a lot the same. Like Brody said, they're TEAvangelicals. So that group in 2010 instead of being the normal 24% of the vote that it is, it rose to 30% of the vote because they were so energized. And we're seeing even greater energy in this election than we saw in 2010. So, you know, we won't know until after tomorrow night to see how the numbers turn out. But at this point it's blown through the roof. I talked to Pennsylvania this morning. They've put out more than a million social conservative voters guides in that state. I mean, all these numbers are just, they blow all other previous records apart.

GLENN: Okay. So let's talk about a couple of states in particular. Do you think that it really is in play in Pennsylvania?

DAVID BARTON: I think it is in play in Pennsylvania. Just talking even to Catholics, some key Catholics last night and then some key evangelicals this morning, they think it's down to the wire, but they are really feeling good of what they are seeing and they think it's definitely in play. Could be a couple of points either way but they don't think it's a blowout for Obama by a long shot.

GLENN: I am ‑‑ I talked to you I think on Saturday. The New York Times did a piece on Sunday about me and my evil influence with evangelicals, which I think is laughable, especially since all the New York Times did was say that and then they talked to all of these so‑called evangelicals who proved the story wrong.

DAVID BARTON: Well, exactly.

GLENN: It was amazing.

DAVID BARTON: Don't try to get logical with the New York Times.

GLENN: I mean, it was unbelievable.

DAVID BARTON: You can't do it.

GLENN: I know. They were like, "Glenn Beck and his secret cabal has been working voodoo magic on the evangelicals." And then they quoted evangelicals who were like, "Mormons are dogs and we should have them licensed and tagged." What is ‑‑ I mean, who are these people in the first place.

But there is something that is ‑‑ I mean, David, when we first met and you went with me to that meeting with the evangelicals, that was, what, four or five years ago. It had nothing to do with politics, had everything to do with the march on Washington. And we talked about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I talked about Martin Luther King, and the spirit of all of us standing together and not trying to baptize each other or anything else, just standing where God is telling us to stand, there was a change that night just in that room. And I think that change has continued, not ‑‑ I'm not saying, I'm not claiming anything. It just is, I think is God's will. It's changed. People are standing together. And the media now is confused because they're like, "Well, evangelicals, I thought you thought they were all dogs, the Mormons, and we should have them tagged, put down to sleep."

DAVID BARTON: Yeah, this is a lot like the Whitefield stuff that was going on before the American Revolution.

GLENN: Yes.

DAVID BARTON: Where the groups that were not supposed to be working together were working together. And they had common visions, common goals, they were out to save the country and suddenly all the barriers for which they had killed each other in previous he ‑‑ and I mean literally killed each other ‑‑

GLENN: Killed each other.

DAVID BARTON: ‑‑ previous years, suddenly they are now side by side, shoulder to shoulder in the trenches and they finally recognize the enemy's a whole lot bigger than shooting at each other. And I think that's where we are right now.

GLENN: Right. The king didn't understand it then and I don't think the king understands it today.

DAVID BARTON: I agree. I agree. And he underestimated it as well.

GLENN: Big time.

DAVID BARTON: He's used to dealing with all these separate constituencies who don't like each other and always fighting and bickering and suddenly when they all get pulled together, it doesn't take ‑‑ it doesn't take a majority to do that. It takes a dedicated minority working together. And I don't know where the majority in this election I think will probably have the majority influence and folks will come our direction, but as far as folks working together, you have the similar folks working together in ways that again remind me of the first great awakening and literally the Second Great Awakening where the issue then was saving the country from the slavery culture and what was going with racism. So both revivals we've had in America were very dissimilar groups working toward common goals for the country and I think that's where we are.

GLENN: I have to tell you, David, over the summer we've witnessed the Third Great Awakening.

DAVID BARTON: Yeah.

GLENN: ‑‑ at Cowboys Stadium. And I agree with you. I think it is absolutely happening and nobody in the media or in Washington will even understand what that even means, but it is gigantic. But I was standing on the stage with Freedom Works on Friday in a show that we're going to air tonight at 8:00 on TheBlaze and I was giving a speech and it struck me about halfway through, the similarities of what is being done right now to the beginning of our country. We are repeating, and we're at the very beginning of it, but we are repeating all of the steps that it took for us to be free in ‑‑ around the time of the Declaration of Independence, don't you think?

DAVID BARTON: I agree. And I look ‑‑

GLENN: It's starting to happen.

DAVID BARTON: And I look at the TEA Parties, I look at other even churches and it's like the Committees of Correspondence. These guys talk to each other, and every one of them's a local independent committee, nobody's over them, but they all communicate, they all cooperate. And that's unusual. I mean, I haven't seen that in my lifetime where we have so many small groups. And the networking that's occurring, I mean, that's the same thing. I haven't seen networking like this. We've always had, even on the social conservative side with evangelical side, there has to be some spokesman somewhere. There's not a spokesman. There's about 5,000 of them. And so the networking that's out there, the Committees of Correspondence concept, what we're doing with transmitting information through social media, et cetera, I was just talking to some of the guys on the ground this morning, six of the battleground states and they say hands down that on our side, social conservatives and TEA Party folks, our technology's so much better than what Obama has. The media keeps saying how great all you this technology is. What we've been able to do with microtargeting, what we've been able to do with voter registration and turnout, it is so much more sophisticated than what they are doing on their side. And that's exactly what was going on in the First and Second Great Awakenings. Everybody underestimated how organized and how dedicated small groups could be.

GLENN: Mmm‑hmmm.

DAVID BARTON: And that's exactly where we are now.

GLENN: Mmm‑hmmm. So what is your prediction?

DAVID BARTON: I predict that tomorrow night it not going to go nearly as long as everybody thinks it will. I don't think it's going to be nearly as tight. We'll certainly know within the first couple of hours when we ‑‑

GLENN: Just give me an electoral college number for Romney. You know, ballpark it.

DAVID BARTON: You know, 270 to win, and I think it's easy over that. I think it could be 320, 330. I just you ‑‑

GLENN: I agree.

DAVID BARTON: I think it could be ‑‑ I think Barone could be right on this thing. And I'm in that category.

GLENN: Barone, I said what Barone said, I mean, two weeks ago and you're not quoting me. Why are you quoting Barone?

DAVID BARTON: (Laughing.)

GLENN: Now if he's wrong, quote him.

STU: Yeah, it was Michael Barone then. It was his fault.

GLENN: Yeah, if he's right, it's me. I'm just sayin'.

DAVID BARTON: That's right.

GLENN: All right, David, we'll see you ‑‑ are you going to be on tonight?

DAVID BARTON: Yes, sir.

GLENN: Are you in town? Where are you?

DAVID BARTON: Yes, sir, I'm with you tonight and you're stuck with me tomorrow night.

GLENN: Okay. Good. I'm glad to have ya. And bring some of the information on the organizing technology for tomorrow night's show, will you?

DAVID BARTON: I will have it.

GLENN: Thanks a lot.

DAVID BARTON: Absolutely. See you, bro.

GLENN: David has quite a network that we'll be getting information that the other networks won't have tomorrow.

Patriotic uprising—Why 90% say Old Glory isn’t just another flag

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day began as a political payoff to Socialist agitators

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During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

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The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.