Point of View April 30, 2026 – Hour 2 : Communio

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View, Kerby Anderson. As I mentioned the first hour, these two interviews kind of come together because we've had, of course, Dr. Tim Geglein talking about his book, What Really Matters? Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom and Family.

[00:00:32] And we're now going to be talking about what the church can do to strengthen the family and frankly, what family can do to strengthen churches. And I think you're going to appreciate this conversation. I think we're going to get back to what is happening there in Iran. I want to focus some time and attention on one of the articles we posted on what is happening to the Iranian economy and we'll get into other issues. But we bring first of all to the microphone, J.P. DeGantz, who is the founder and president of Communio. And we have a link to the website, which we'll talk about in just a minute.

[00:01:01] Also the co-author of the book Endgame, The Church's Strategic Move to Save Faith and Family in America. He's been working in this area to equip pastors with a lot of data and all sorts of informed strategies to begin to broaden engagement.

[00:01:19] Before even launching Communio, he actually had a three-year experimental initiative in three states to really test whether or not we can even move the needle on marital health, family stability, church engagement. Saw, for example, things drawing down the local divorce rate.

[00:01:40] And as a result, I think you're going to want to find out more about the full circle relationship ministry, as well as, of course, the national research on some of the drivers for the decline of Christianity in America. So, J.P., thank you for joining us today here on Point of View. Kirby, fun to be with you and really fun to know that I'm coming right after Tim. What a great guy and a good one-two punch here.

[00:02:08] Well, I figured he'd be a good warm-up back for you. So there we go. There we go. And I suspect most of our listeners are not familiar with your work. So I might give a little bit of the history. I did try to give a little bit of your three-year experiment. Yeah, that was good. But I think just give us some background because I think people need to know how much work you've already done in this field. Yeah, we started a pilot initiative trying to improve and shift family dynamics on a citywide level.

[00:02:35] We did it in Jacksonville, Florida over three years with my good friend Richard Alverson at Live the Life. And we were able to lower the divorce rate across Jacksonville, Duval County, by 24% in three years. And we had some business guys skeptical that we really did that. We moved 58,912 people through a four-hour-longer skills ministry.

[00:02:59] We used a data-informed approach, as you noted, using data to target folks who might be at risk for divorce. And we moved that number of folks through 93 churches, ministry through 93 churches. And the net-net was the divorce rate dropped 24%. Some business guys didn't believe that we shifted that. They paid for an independent evaluation of our work.

[00:03:28] And Dr. Brad Wilcox found that there was no explanation for the decline in the divorce other than our intervention. Brad, out of the University of Virginia and the Institute for Family Studies. So that's our kind of origin story. And we decided we had to replicate, wanted to take those findings and scale them. It took us a few years to figure out how to scale it. But we realized it's through the local church. And so we support now, we've supported now more than 440 churches in 32 states.

[00:03:58] We work at the denominational level, regional church network level, and then right at the local church. And we're basically a campaign consultant to the local church, help you run and win campaigns on marriage and the family. The way we describe it is we equip the church to share the gospel through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriage, and the family. So let's get into that because, first of all, I wanted to use this as a way to introduce you to some of our listeners that may not be familiar.

[00:04:24] And that full circle relationship ministry has a number of parts, which involves outreach, discipleship, and the relational stability. So maybe you could take us through those steps because that's been so successful. And it's something that individuals that are looking at their church and saying, we're just really not growing either experientially, numerically. We're not even having an outreach in our community. So what can they learn? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:54] You know, the biggest thing is to first recognize that the relational brokenness that exists in our communities is probably the biggest explanation for the rise of religious non-affiliation and folks falling away from Christian faith. Eighty percent of everybody sitting in the pews on Sunday morning under the age of 60 grew up in an intact married family.

[00:05:14] If we want to know why there are so few millennial and Gen Z in church relative to older generations, that's the biggest explanation is that the average family of origin of young people is less likely to be in an intact married home. Okay. So then how to solve that is our full circle relationship ministry approach, which is a full church approach.

[00:05:38] The idea is for youth, young adult, the single, the dating, the engaged, the married, those thriving and those struggling. Just want to make it normal that everyone grows in health and holiness through their relationships. And it's animated by what we call the ministry engagement ladder. It's a four-step approach for this to be a front porch ministry. It's not just for people in the church. It's a front porch. So that four-step is invitation. Okay.

[00:06:08] We're a world-class marketing agency for the church as a nonprofit ministry. And then into an outreach event. That's 90% fund, 10% enrichment building into a community we call ongoing engagement. Say a parent's night out or a cornhole tournament for singles, something of that nature, that has 30% of enrichment and relationship skills and maybe even gospel proclamation.

[00:06:34] And then at the growth journey level, you really, that's the eight to 12-hour skills ministry. At that level, we're curating the very best stuff that exists in this space to help the church figure out what's good for them from different publishers and ministries. Okay.

[00:06:50] So in that sense, we're both a marketing arm to the church and a white-labeled ministry resource and then a coach to the ministry team to help them build just a world-class ministry that can lead to more people getting married, more people staying married. And Kirby, over the last year, last year we had 82,617 people come for relationship ministry through our church partners.

[00:07:18] And about a third of those were from outside of the church. So, again, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll get into a little bit more. Well, let me just mention as we go to the break, my commentary today is called Dismal Demographic in which we're talking about the declining fertility because women are waiting later to get married, to have children, if having children at all. And so you can begin to see the connection between that. And, of course, you mentioned just a minute ago Brad Wilcox.

[00:07:47] Of course, we have had some quotes from Tim Gagling's book about the fact that he's been doing research in that area on the National Marriage Relationship Project, as well as Mark Regnerus at University of Texas. Those are all individuals that you can find out more about by simply going to the website. So, as we go to our break, you might want to go to the website and check this out.

[00:08:11] Let me also open up the phones because as we get into some of this, perhaps some of you have a question that you would like to ask of JP in terms of what that might look like in your own church. What are the first steps? Maybe sharing some of the struggles that you've been having in trying to build up your church in terms of reaching out to people in your community. So, that's the topic on the table. If you'd like to join us, 1-800-351-1212. Let's take a break.

[00:08:41] We'll come back with more right after this. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Molly Engelhardt writes about the year America stopped replacing itself.

[00:09:10] We're told that sometime in the future, perhaps around 2040, something profound would happen. Deaths in the U.S. would outnumber births. Unfortunately, the date will be much closer than we expected. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the dismal demographic will arrive around 2030. I've been talking about the declining birth rate for decades. The future is merely coming closer than some expected. We've seen what a drop in fertility looks like in Europe, and we're now seeing the impact in our country.

[00:09:37] The reasons for a declining birth rate can be summarized with two factors. Women are having children later, if at all, and they're having fewer children. The first part is due to environmental factors and social choices. Our bodies are exposed to plastics, chemicals, and industrial compounds which affect both male and female infertility. Women are also given the cultural message that they need to pursue a career and only think about family later. They can do so because of contraception and abortion.

[00:10:04] Molly Engelhardt reminds us that if every abortion were counted back in as birth, the numbers shift in a meaningful way. The United States would move closer to replacement-level fertility, but still likely fall short of it. She therefore concludes that abortion is part of the conversation, but it is not the whole of it. A growing population signals energy and expansion. A declining population looks like decay and stagnation. We bring children into the world with the hope that their world will be even better than ours.

[00:10:33] Many Americans no longer believe that. This is where churches can provide hope. Pastors and Christian leaders need to speak about this dismal demographic. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my Point of View. Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net.

[00:11:01] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, J.P. DeCance with us as we talk about what you can find on the website. And I thought for just a minute we might talk about the different factors of your ministry because you have obviously what's called a full-circle relationship ministry. We're talking about singles, talking about people that are engaged or dating, talking about married couples.

[00:11:29] We're talking about couples in crisis, considering divorce. So in some respects, that is sort of a whole-orb strategy, isn't it? It is. It is, Kirby. You know, our vision is really for the local church to lead a Christ-centered relationship revolution. Right? We've – the sexual revolution hit retail in the 1960s. A lot of the bad ideas that led to it have its origins in the worst parts of the Enlightenment in the 18th century. But it really hits the 1960s.

[00:11:58] And we've been shaken by it. The church has been rattled by it, I think, in different ways. The family has become unglued. It's weakened faith practice. And so we're not going to get out of this with a plug-and-play solution, a six-week kit. This is a full – it's a full-circle approach because we've got to help our young people and everybody.

[00:12:23] The expression, the old expression, womb to tomb, have an appropriately healthy relationship everywhere in between. Right? And so we want the local church to be that place where folks see that they love differently. And because fundamentally, we believe, Kirby, that one generation of Christian marriage, well-lived, will transform the world. Well, it certainly will. And again, the legacy that it leaves is certainly very significant.

[00:12:48] One of the things that I did mention in passing, and we do have information about your book, Endgame, the church's strategic move to save faith and family in America. But a lot of it gets back to trying to figure out what are the root causes of decline in faith in America. And you've been able to identify many of those, haven't you? Yeah. You know, I think the best explanation, the single best explanation is the decoupling of sex from marriage,

[00:13:17] marriage from parenting, parenting from partnering, which gave rise to non-marital households. Okay. That all starts rapidly occurring in 1960. And then about 25 years after that, you start to see the proportionate growth in religious non-affiliation. Okay. And I go into this in our nationwide study on faith and relationships. If that hypothesis is true, you'd expect it to show up in numbers and survey data of those in the pews on Sunday.

[00:13:47] And we're sitting on over 200,000 completed surveys of Sunday churchgoers. In our study, the nationwide study on faith and relationships, we realized 80%, four out of five people sitting in church on Sunday, under the age of 60, grew up in an intact married home. The wild thing, Kirby, is that the youngest people, right, so single men in church on Sunday in the 18- to 29-year-old demographic, 81% of those in church grew up in an intact married family.

[00:14:16] And when you compare that to the boomers, okay, say a 59-year-old man in church on Sunday right now who's married, 81% of his peer group grew up in an intact married family. The big difference is somebody born, you know, back in 1965 has a very different likelihood of growing up in that family structure than someone who, say, grew up in the year, was born in the year 2000.

[00:14:42] So what shifted one before the other is family shifted before faith started to decline. And it's critical that pastors understand that if we're serious about fighting, you know, this apostasy that we see, the growth in religious non-affiliation, that we've got to get really serious about and understanding that Christian marriage is at the heart of it. Well, I think so. And a lot of it gets back to, like you said, relationships.

[00:15:11] Earlier when we were talking with Tim Gagling, we were talking about the next generation booklet that we have. We have a next generation roundtable, and a lot of that gets back to family, relationships, and the rest. And also a decline of orthodoxy. All of that is certainly very interconnected. We even have a booklet on sex and culture. So it does seem to me that if you're trying to find one answer, that is certainly one of those, but it's a collection of those that all come together and create the situation we find today.

[00:15:41] Because earlier this week I had a commentary that came out just about the number of people in church and arguing that maybe, in fact, some of the numbers that are used for church attendance are way inflated, grossly inflated, whatever you want to say. And so it seems to me that we need to come back to what we can do as a group. So for a few minutes, talk about how people can connect up with you. We have a link to the website.

[00:16:08] There's a place where it talks about churches, why partner. You've got certainly some stories of impact, all sorts of research. You have a pastor's guide, blogs. So if somebody says, okay, I'd like to know a little bit more about this. I think our church could benefit. What's the next step? Yeah. I would schedule a meeting with one of our church consulting team, church coaching team. You can do so right through, engage right through the website.

[00:16:37] Communio.org is the site. You can certainly also email us, email our team, questions at Communio.org. I would encourage any listener to just sign up for our free e-newsletter, and you start to get some resources right away that can be helpful to you and your church. I'd encourage you, if you're not a pastor, grab one of our free resources, like our pastor's guide or Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships,

[00:17:06] and share it with your pastor directly. And there's some good takeaways. And encourage your pastor to reach out to us and schedule a free consultation and conversation. We work with a lot of family policy councils. We have great close relationships with folks at, say, the Center for Christian Virtue in Ohio and Pennsylvania with the Pennsylvania family and Iowa with the family leader

[00:17:35] and at the denominational level, say, with the Texas Baptist or the Arizona Mission Network with the Southern Baptist Convention. So we work both at the individual church level and we work very frequently through the regional church to grow the number of churches that we're supporting. Let me just mention again that we have a link to Communio.org. Go to the section that he was just mentioning, Research and Insights.

[00:18:01] Click on the one that says, for example, Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships. And there you can actually get a full study if you would want to do so. Or scroll down to the second one which he mentioned. And that would be, again, the pastor's guide, supporting parents and sharing the gospel with their children. There is where you can kind of explore the guide. And so whether you're a pastor or just a member of a church and saying,

[00:18:26] we really need something to maybe get us moving in the right direction, there are some resources there. Of course, there's a button that says, why partner in the first place? And gives you some of those facts. And as you pointed out just a minute ago, if you simply go to the website itself and scroll down, you're going to see a place where you can actually schedule an opportunity to meet with individuals. You can get a download but also find out a little bit more about taking that first step.

[00:18:56] And so in some respects, those are resources for people to take advantage of. And, again, if people find themselves saying, well, yeah, but you're on one end of the country because of Zoom and all sorts of other things, even though you won't necessarily be in the local community, you can communicate with those pretty easily, can't you? Yeah, we work with churches and support them everywhere in every shape and size. You know, you have to be a Trinitarian church that holds to the biblical view of what marriage is.

[00:19:25] And so we've worked with churches in the Northern Plains tribes in rural parts of Montana, down to churches in grinding poverty outside of sugarcane in the sugarcane fields of Florida, to, you know, churches in suburban and affluent areas and tougher downtown and more urban areas. So when churches get started, there's a great way for churches now to work with us through a Zoom

[00:19:54] and software-only supported coaching interface. But then you can also get our full-service approach where we'll fly our team out to meet with your team to get started, and then we do video coaching and support of the church for the months and years after that. Well, JP, I appreciate what you're doing, and I wanted people to first know a little bit more about you. So, again, we have a link to the website. You can find out more what churches can do.

[00:20:22] You can hear some of the stories of impact. There's the Nationwide Survey, the Pastor's Guide. There is the blog. There's places you can sign up and find out a little bit more. And so all sorts of resources available at our website, pointofview.net. And, JP, thank you for being with us today here on Point of View. Hey, Kirby, thank you so much, and thanks for not cursing the darkness. We can get after it and light a torch. We will see what we can do to light some lamps. And so take advantage of what's happening there at Communio, and we're going to take a break.

[00:20:51] Come back, and we're going to spend a little bit of time just really in a sobering way looking at what has been happening in Iran, and then a few other comments just before we wind down the program today. If you find yourself saying, well, I'd like to know more about the book by Tim Geglein, well, that's available at our website. If you'd like to find some of the articles I'm going to be quoting from, that's there as well. If you'd like to know more about J.P. DeGantz and what they're doing right now in helping churches, that's available.

[00:21:18] So full service if you just simply go to the website, pointofview.net. Let's take a break. Half an hour left of some very important issues to talk about. We'll do that right after this. Have you ever met a child you knew would do great things? They displayed remarkable imagination, understanding, and a zest for learning.

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[00:22:06] to the barrage of misinformation from the mainstream media and the lack of moral grounding in our society. It's not that Americans aren't capable of understanding the truth. It's that they aren't exposed to it enough. You can expose more Americans to the truth when you give to Point of View, where listeners receive facts, perspective, and biblical truth they don't get from society. As long as we have truth, we have hope.

[00:22:33] Give today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151. Pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this.

[00:23:01] You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. Back once again, let's see if we can talk about Iran for just a few minutes. A lot of conversation about the military, but if you've been paying attention to the news,

[00:23:26] you know that the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessett, has talked about Operation Economic Fury. And that is a little bit different because as much as the military has devastated the country, and I'm fearful for what the recovery might look like if we ever can provide an opportunity for recovery to the people of Iran, many of whom do not intend as harm.

[00:23:52] Nevertheless, the economic devastation may be more significant, hence the reason that I have posted this particular article by Jim Garrity, because he's talking about the fact that the war has destroyed the Iranian economy. Operation Economic Fury, if you're not familiar, of taking various assets and seizing them. That's something that we've done when, of course, Russia invaded Ukraine. So it's not the first time, but about half a billion dollars,

[00:24:20] 500 million dollars of Iranian cryptocurrency, for example. There have been additional sanctions. Of course, there has been the naval and port blockade, and even the currency destabilization. And it's interesting, Jim Garrity said back in March that in another publication, the Iranian mullahs weren't exactly known as economic savants before the shooting started.

[00:24:47] Even if they retained power after the war, they're going to be broke. And that is rebuilding their military will be expensive, and the handouts for Hamas and Hezbollah, saw the building of a nuclear weapons program going to be possibly unaffordable luxuries, even if people say that we've failed. And I don't believe that we have, but you can hear those comments being made every single day. And so he, of course, had a headline for his column,

[00:25:15] When the Iran War Ends, the mullahs will be broke. So what's so interesting is he reminds us that he got all sorts of responses, like when the war ends, the United States is going to be broke. And things like, you haven't looked at our national debt or deficit. Of course, he has. He's written about this, and of course, so have I. But the point he was making is, if you think we have a problem, really, in Iran, a major problem,

[00:25:41] and really, I think, a source of concern and prayer for, especially the fact, as we've pointed out, there are so many Iranian Christians that we should be supporting as well. But the Wall Street Journal put it this way, because they did sort of a deep dive. They said government revenue has dried up just as the needs of the population are rising. The Wall Street Journal goes on to say, the war has thrown around one million people in Iran out of work directly,

[00:26:10] another million out of work indirectly, according to some estimates that come down there as well. The cost of living has soared. The annual inflation rate is 67% in the month, although if you look at it year to year, it's just off the charts, but we'll take that number, because just think about 67% inflation when we, back in June of 2022, had 9% inflation. You can see the problem that is there.

[00:26:38] And so, again, if we look at this, it has affected them in a number of different ways, not the least of which is just even in tourism. Not that this is the greatest tourist destination, but, nevertheless, a prolonged Internet shutdown, which has been part of Iran, has now entered its third month, and that has cut off income for anybody doing any kind of commerce on the Internet. Tourism has collapsed with airlines,

[00:27:08] hotels, and local accommodations basically inactive. And as a result, the naval blockade has restricted oil exports and really even restricted any kind of trade at all. And so, the question that really is looming large now is, when you keep pumping the oil from the ground and you aren't taking it out with oil tankers, what happens? Because right now,

[00:27:36] the estimates are that Iran has roughly about 12 days worth of storage left, and some of that has required them to even start using a derelict tanker as temporary storage. There is, of course, there is a possibility that they could shut down the oil pumps, and as much as some have said that they would never be able to restart them again, there is pretty good evidence, as I understand it. In this case,

[00:28:05] he is quoting from Columbia University's Center for Global Energy Policy, that say, well, you could restart those facilities, it would be just very time-consuming. And, of course, wells that have a high, what's called water cut, may not flow naturally after being shut down, but some can be restarted by pumping, injecting nitrogen and things of that nature. But this is a country that has been devastated

[00:28:33] by all the things that we've done, not just militarily, but what we've done economically. And I was reading the other day, let's see if I can find that, the relationship between the dollar and the Iranian rial is just sort of off the charts as well. So just imagine not having a currency that you can even begin to conduct any kind of, well, negotiations, any kind of purchases.

[00:29:03] And I think this is a concern on the part of this administration. We don't want to bomb Karg Island or even any of the infrastructure because the cost of rebuilding Iran is going to be huge. And you hope that there would be a possibility of doing so. So I did want to put that article out there for you to read if you would like in terms of recognizing that in addition to the military devastation,

[00:29:33] there is also the economic devastation and turmoil there as well. But of course, we had over the weekend another assassination attempt. So I wanted to post this piece by Byron York because Byron York says that some of the troubling parts of this assassination attempt came from an individual that was referring Trump as a pedophile, a rapist, a traitor, a charge, which is false, but nevertheless

[00:30:01] is just illustrative of the kinds of things you find on social media platforms and even here in broadcast media. He says, now it is important to remember that the mass majority of those who believe such things about Trump would never dream of getting a gun and going after the president. The problem is some would. And now many wonder what might be done to heal a troubled society so that attacks like Saturdays will no longer occur.

[00:30:31] And of course, he goes into some of the other stories. You can, of course, remember Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13th, 2024. You remember the attempt on his life September 15th of 2024, which was at a golf course in Florida. And of course, then you have the Correspondents Association dinner and you have to say, well, are there anything we can do? Well, it turns out that the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, has been convening

[00:31:01] a meeting of the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security to really assess what kind of security the president has. And one of the questions that certainly Byron York is raising is this. What would improve Trump's security? What might that involve? It likely would mean distancing the president from crowds, strengthening the security perimeter around him

[00:31:30] and basically making it more difficult for Americans to get anywhere near the president. Now, he says that's not a palatable prospect. People want to see the president, big events, and Trump likes to be seen there. But look at two possibilities. One is having Trump skip big events or if he attends, appears behind bulletproof glass or be protected in some other way. This would be a disappointment for many people who want a good look at the president,

[00:31:59] but it also would be a way to protect the president. And he ends by reminding us that we had a terrible time in the past in the space of 36 years. The killing of Abraham Lincoln 1865, the killing of James Garfield in 1881, and then the killing of McKinley in 1901. Three presidents assassinated basically in 36 years.

[00:32:29] It would be like having three presidents assassinated since 1990. So, back when we didn't have Secret Service providing the kind of protection they have today, we can see what happens. But in a country that is polarized, in rhetoric that is polarizing, and intentionally so, I recognize some say, no, I didn't mean it that way. Well, guard your words and watch what you say. But I think Byron York

[00:32:58] is starting to ask some questions that even if the president rejects them, are ideas that need to be put forward because too many assassination attempts ultimately end up in being an assassination. and in that dismal 36-year period of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, a reminder that it has happened before and there is a reason for us to want to protect the president and the institution

[00:33:27] of the presidency no matter what you think about the occupant in the old office. Let's take a break. That brings us to a very interesting piece by Holman Jenkins about the interesting collaboration between left-wing extremists and right-wing extremists. We'll talk about that right after this.

[00:33:49] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back for a few more minutes, let me just mention that as we covered last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, we found out, was actually shoveling money

[00:34:17] to various groups that they were supposedly speaking out against. Holman Jenkins talks about this as the way in which we can see that left-wing extremists have been subsidizing right-wing extremists and the reason is because the audience is the media and he talks about this in terms of now we know that the Southern Poverty Law Center was actually shoveling money to right-wing extremists, at least to inform it,

[00:34:47] to help organize the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia and in some respects now we can understand what was going on there. If you're not familiar, Charlottesville was where you had some of the neo-Nazi organizers and then you had the counter-protesters and I was unaware of some of the background although I know how that particular statement by the president

[00:35:15] about some fine people were completely misused by the media, intentionally so and then a number of people over the years actually thought it was true and found out sometimes on live radio, Bill Maher's show for example, where they said no that's not true, that is a media myth and I've watched people go really? I always thought that was true but as Holman Jenkins points out, Charlottesville has long since

[00:35:44] come to betray all the cynicism of a pseudo-event because it turns out that the neo-Nazi organizers knew that a similar legal demonstration weeks earlier had ended in a riot when a much larger group of left-wing counter-protesters descended on a very small city and so as a result, the city of Charlottesville knew what was coming when it issued a permit

[00:36:14] for these right-wing extremists to actually march because in some respects they knew what was going to happen because they had seen it happen in another city and so its police department he points out deliberately decided to stand back and allow a publicly sanctioned event to be attacked by counter-demonstrators inviting what then eventually would be kind of almost a state police reaction

[00:36:42] and an unlawful assembly and interesting enough, an article that appeared days before by Peter Bynett was pointing out the fact that he said that left-wing and right-wing violent activists in a sense had become the unlikeliest allies in manufacturing these episodes. Why? Because they would get more media attention. So they were quite willing to know that there would probably be a confrontation,

[00:37:13] would certainly see that that would then generate all sorts of media attention which both the left-wing and the right-wing craved. of course the sad reality is a woman was killed in that second Charlottesville riot. But in the midst of all of that you might remember President Trump saying that there were very fine people on both sides and then added I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis or the white nationalists

[00:37:43] because they should be condemned totally. But the point he was making is there were some nicely mannered individuals who were very upset about taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee and those were who he was talking about. But if you have followed this story at all you know that the media certainly took about the very fine people clip and eliminated the part about not talking about the neo-Nazis and white

[00:38:12] nationalists because they should be condemned totally and the press and he says you could say either they were stupid or gullible or whatever began to run with that and so then we have lived with that argument for years that Donald Trump was calling neo-Nazis fine people and it was something that was repeated ad nauseum by Joe Biden occasionally by Barack Obama it was repeated in all sorts of

[00:38:42] stories and as a result it just illustrates again how because the media was the group to whom they were playing the story ran with it and it was just really impossible to ever really deal with the facts there as well and one of the things that Holman Jenkins says if you ever wondered how the press could be so stupid so gullible as to fall for the unsourced implausible made up allegations of the

[00:39:12] Russia collusion hoax well the Charlottesville story of course is your answer and he then takes us back to of course the fact is that on Saturday night the assailant that wanted to assassinate him and many others offered as he said a sheaf of rationalizations of a predictable kind they were the characterizations traitor rapist pedophile that major outlets indulge to on air

[00:39:41] and in their pages and insisting their audiences that these are even if they're unsupported by evidence are good for ratings and good for clicks and so the point he's making is that sometimes when these groups get together even though they're on opposite sides of an issue they are sometimes work together anyway we're more than just the southern poverty law center paying money to write

[00:40:11] right wing extremists even though they're supposedly fighting right wing extremism but sometimes these groups even work together in a sense and I'm putting that in air quotes so that they can get media attention and the media quite willingly goes along with all of that simply to say that this is what we will cover even if we think that there is really no evidence of some of the things being said

[00:40:41] it increases the number of people that click on a website or in some cases increases the number of people that will tune in because it's good for the ratings and so he says you know next to the fine people hoax only one thing has struck me as more cynical to the point that I almost couldn't believe it was I was watching in real time and that was again what was he says Joe Biden is deliberate premeditated

[00:41:11] helping of Mr. Trump on the path back to the White House because he argues that the Biden campaign recognized that winning a re-election for Joe Biden would be difficult given the fact he was mentally compromised but they were convinced that people would so hate Donald Trump that somehow Joe Biden would win re-election it's just again showing how some of the cynical ideas that are part of politics

[00:41:40] and how some of the cynical ways in which the media covers these stories just illustrates why as we've said on this program so many times it is really helpful for you to exercise a very significant amount of discernment and hopefully will be a way in which we can give you some facts and figures and information that you might not have if you were to listen to any other program certainly we appreciate those who have over the years

[00:42:10] wanted to get truth out and we certainly stand with them to try to do the same a good example of that is Tim Geglein's book what really matters 460 end notes if you say as you read through it I'm not so sure about that check the end notes if you find yourself saying I have a little bit of question right wing extremism well here's

[00:42:40] an article on that and of course we've posted a couple of others that help you understand a little bit more about what's going on in Iran and maybe even behind the scenes what might happen to try to protect the president from some of the assassination attempts that might be certainly in Steve thank you for reducing the program tomorrow is our Friday weekend edition we're going to talk about a lot of very successful Supreme

[00:43:10] Court decisions that you will want to hear about and we'll see you then right here on Point of View I'm sure that you've noticed that social media is now filled with information generated by AI dramatic descriptions of politicians and music stars supposedly making statements about a current issue leaning into the microphone looking into the lens opponents silenced it's powerful it's riveting and it's all

[00:43:39] lies even several national television networks were recently found using enhanced pictures meaning manipulated falsified literally not giving a true picture so many liars so much deception where can we turn for truth right here from Kirby and the team at Point of View we need your support please join the Point of View Truth team today with a monthly gift of $30 or more

[00:44:09] together we can shine the light of truth and dispel the darkness and deception of this day give now at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151 pointofview.net and 800-347-5151 Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries