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It’s time for a new declaration: Pastor Todd Wagner

December 05, 2014
Radio Clips

The Glenn Beck Program

Last night on TV Glenn interviewed Pastor Todd Wagner, who recently did a sermon series called ‘Declaration’ at his church in Dallas, Texas. The founding fathers didn’t just choose to be free, they made a bold declaration and Wagner’s message really resonated with Glenn.

Pastor Wagner: And as any loving father wants, He just keeps saying hey, choose me, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest. So one of the things that I just shared, you know, with our body as we look back in history, if you go from Rome to Zimbabwe, it’s never, ever worked for a country to pay its debts by running the printing press. It’s always led to disaster.

Glenn: Right.

Pastor Wagner: I introduced them to a book written by a Harvard economist and a Virginia economist called This Time It’s Different, and what they did is they studied civilization after civilization, and every single one of them fell into the this-time-it’s-different fallacy.

Glenn: We’re hearing it now.

Pastor Wagner: Yeah, we’re hearing it now.

Glenn: The world needs us. China needs us. They’ll never abandon us. This time it’s different.

Pastor Wagner: Right. We’re not an isolated nation. There’s a world economy. And what I’m going to tell you is there are certain laws that are fixed and immutable, and this time is not different. Our own government accountability, okay, the GAO, has said this is unsustainable, and our Congress, our executive branch, didn’t respond to this.

Glenn: Made it worse.

Pastor Wagner: They made it worse, and so they came back, and they defined unsustainable. They said this can’t continue, as if they needed to know what unsustainable meant. And so here’s what I would say, what is a pastor doing talking about the economy, right? Because some guys go I want to be about the gospel. I do too, but the gospel has legs. The love of Christ, what God cares about…economy just means house administration. That’s what it means, this is the way you should run your house, okay? And it’s not going to go well for you.

The borrower is the lender’s slave, and God is a person that rescues us from slavery and bondage to the way that seems right to us but in the end leads to death. And so in the economy one, I just said look, gang, this is what’s going on, and by the way, we can’t get mad at Washington. We are responsible for Washington.

This is a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and I really meant, I want you guys to know, Glenn, I want you to know, I made the case and I make the case all the time that I think the greatest evil in America is not the radical left. It’s not the ultraconservative right. It’s not the abortion industry. It’s not the, you know, people that are trying to redefine marriage.

I really believe the greatest evil in America are the people that have been given the truth that say they know the truth that are supposed to be keepers of the truth that are not faithfully declaring that truth to others, okay?

Glenn: See why I like this guy?

Pastor Wagner: And so we’ve got to quit throwing stones at everybody else and just gotta go, so I’ve told my body this again and again. You want change? Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change themself, and so we have just continually said what we’ve got to do is draw a circle around ourself and change everything in it, and then as we experience the blessing and the prosperity of living ourselves wisely—

Glenn: The best missionary is one that lives it.

Pastor Wagner: Amen.

Glenn: There’s a great letter we have in the library to George Washington from Aaron Burr. He had just won a battle, got shot in the head, and he writes two lines. He says the fort and the garrison is ours, General. Your men behaved like men determined to be free. That’s why we’re missing it, because we’re not living it. We’re not determined to be free. If we were determined to be free, we would be looking for those things that free us. What frees us? Not having debt frees you. Once you have debt, you’re a slave to the bank or to the lender or to whoever. You’re a slave.

Pastor Wagner: And so one of the things that I would just say to folks because they might go Todd…Glenn, why do you have a pastor on there, right? Why do you have a guy who calls himself an evangelical Christian? You come from a Mormon expression. And there’s so much that we have in common about our desire for truth.

Glenn: And a lot I disagree with you on.

Pastor Wagner: Yeah, and a lot we disagree with each other on, but we love each other, right? Because, you know, love without truth is not love, and truth that isn’t loving is not going to be heard, and that’s one of the things I really appreciate about you. I think you’ve even said hey, I’m learning to be a little bit maybe even kinder about the way that I go about it. That’s my deal my wife would tell me, Todd, you need to learn. That tone helps you with me, right?

Glenn: Right.

Pastor Wagner: And there’s a great quote by a guy named Frederick Faber that was an Anglican gentleman, actually converted to Catholicism in England. He said this, there was a quote when I read it, it just stopped me in my track, and he said kindness has converted more sinners then eloquence, learning, and I even scribbled it down because sometimes I quote…than zeal, eloquence, or learning. And you know what—

Glenn: It’s true.

Pastor Wagner: We try to be zealous for what we believe. We try and learn a lot and be eloquent, but you know what, man, kindness, the Lord leads us to—.

Glenn: The protesters that were on the streets last night, I agree with them last night in New York on what happened. That cop acted wrong. I think that was manslaughter. Now, I wasn’t in with the grand jury, so I don’t know, but it looked manslaughter to me. But they were marching in the streets with signs that said “F” this tree, and they were talking about the lighting of the Rockefeller tree. That’s not going to get anybody on your side. What are you doing?

Pastor Wagner: No.

Glenn: If instead you would have been kind and humble, and you would’ve locked arms, and you would’ve sang Christmas carols, and you would’ve done it, yes, in the middle of the street, the people who were there for the tree would’ve said what’s going on here? What’s going on? And you would listen to them. But we are so full of rage and anger right now, everything that is antichrist, everything.

Pastor Wagner: I’ll tell you why. How much time do we have in this segment?

Glenn: How much time do we have left? Two minutes?

Pastor Wagner: All right, let me in two minutes tell you why I think that we’re filled with rage. I think it’s because of the leaders that we’re choosing, and we’re not choosing leaders that are helping us focus on the thing that ultimately sets us free. And so specifically what used to really affect our country was this thing called Social Darwinism, this idea that individuals are not as good as other individuals because they’re not as fit as us, and so we can hold them down and oppress them.

But what has really started to happen in our society today is more defined by the philosophy, the world view, and not Judeo-Christian ethic, okay, which would say let’s pursue righteousness, peace, love and forgiveness and reconciliation together, but I would tell you it’s more culturally Marxist.

Now, what’s that mean? Marxists always want to push you into classes. It’s going to say let’s separate these people by class, by gender, by race, by sexual preference, and then let’s take you, the persecuted minority, and I will be your advocate. I’m going to get my power by appealing to your plight, and I frankly am going to maintain my power by keeping your plight the issue. And what it does is it pits us all against one another, and it makes us concerned about our own little small area, and it keeps us from working together toward the one thing we all need, which is righteousness, truth, peace, love.

Glenn: How did your church…did you have anybody walk out when you say these things?

Pastor Wagner: No. No. Here’s the thing, I’ve never done it in a series before, but I’m teaching this all the time because I’m teaching God’s word, okay?

Glenn: How’s the health of your church?

Pastor Wagner: Well, I hope it’s really healthy. You know, every year, one of the ways that we keep our church healthy is every year our membership goes to zero. So every December or January, we just say who’s still in for this? Who wants to be about believing in Christ, belonging to his body, being trained in truth, and being strong in life with ministry and worship? And if you don’t, we’re not going to love you more, okay? We’re not going to say you’re going to hell. We’re going to say you’re just saying I’m not going to pursue heaven with you anymore, okay? And so then what do we do? We do what the Scripture says we should do when a person is like that. We love them and call them to repentance.

Glenn: Most people will not say these things because they’re afraid that they’re going to lose their membership or whatever, and I think this is critical for people to say.

Pastor Wagner: Here’s what I would say to my pastor friends, here’s what I would say to leaders in general, here’s what I would say to politicians, we don’t need politicians. We need statesmen, people that are concerned for the state, not keeping himself in office. That’s their job. Here’s what I would say to a pastor, you’re not going to lose your people if you teach truth; you’re going to set them free. That’s not my idea. That’s God’s. Truth sets people free.

And when political correctness replaces theological soundness, what you’re going to have is the greatest problem in America, that the place that people should go to have a revolution from darkness to life is the one place they go to get put to sleep and where the rest of the world looks at them and goes I don’t know what the solution is, but it must not be God, because that church over there, I don’t see anything in there that’s attractive to me.

Glenn: Okay, we’ll come back. I want to talk to you a little bit about immigration and if we have time maybe a little bit of Ferguson and what your thoughts are on Ferguson.

Pastor Wagner: Yeah, I’d be happy to.

Glenn: I will tell you, America, that I did call him America’s pastor earlier. And Billy Graham gave me a book, and it was Billy Graham, America’s pastor. I saw that cover, and I thought who has the guts to put that on a title of their book?

Pastor Wagner: I don’t.

Glenn: Yeah, except for Billy Graham, and Billy Graham was right for doing it. There is a time for a new calling, and I don’t know who the Lord is going to call, but I think you should hear this man’s words. We’ll be back in just a minute.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.