Point of View July 18, 2024 – Hour 1 : Word on the Hill, Crimes in Our Communities

[00:00:00] Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will also turn to Cody Wilde, he's with Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, and finally we'll end up with Bunny Pounds with Christian Engage. We've talked to her before. It is a time for Christians to get more active

[00:00:55] in politics, and of course during the Republican Convention that's certainly happening right now. And we'll be talking to her about how Christians can get engaged and how she has been helping people do that. But we're going to start out with our first guest, Steve Amerson.

[00:01:08] Now if you're familiar with the name, he is a world-class vocalist, just been in music for years. He's got 250 musical compositions to his name. He's amassed 20 genre-spanning solo recordings. His voice can be heard in over 175 feature films, television shows, and commercials,

[00:01:31] and he is a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society's prestigious Bob Hope Award for Excellence in Entertainment. But today we're going to be talking about a ministry that he's involved with on Capitol Hill called Word on the Hill. Steve, thank you for joining us.

[00:01:49] Merrill, it's great to be with you today. Well tell us about your background. I mean, you've been heavily involved in music, but you've at least made a partial transition over to this ministry. How did you decide to do that? Well Merrill, you know sometimes you

[00:02:05] just can't argue with God. I don't know if he's aware of that. It's never a good idea. It's not a good idea. And you're right, my background is in music. I grew up in the church.

[00:02:16] My dad was a pastor. My mom led the children's choirs in the churches, and so there really wasn't much of an option about participating in music in the church. But I sensed God leading me

[00:02:29] in that direction, and after an undergraduate degree and a master's degree, I joined the staff of a church in California. I grew up in the Midwest and wound up in California. My wife and

[00:02:41] I had been married a year, and we thought we'd go to California for two or three years and then return back to the Midwest, and somehow we never escaped. And from working on that church staff,

[00:02:53] opportunities to sing in the studios in Los Angeles opened. That door opened, and I stepped into that. Then I began to travel and sing all across the country with churches, orchestras, nonprofits, corporate events, and doing that. But Merrill, it was 10 years ago an invitation came

[00:03:19] to help sing and give leadership to the first worship service back in the Capitol in 144 years. There were worship services in the Capitol from 1800 to 1869. Oftentimes they would be in Statuary Hall there in the Capitol with as many as 2,000 people in that room with the marine band

[00:03:44] in the balcony playing for the hymns. But those services ended in, like I said, in 1869, and a gentleman contacted me and said, Steve, we're going to re-up these worship services, these services for members of Congress. They're going to be weekly services. Would you come and

[00:04:03] sing and lead in the first one? He said, I don't have any money to pay you, nothing for your flights, your hotel, anything. And Merrill, it sounded like a great deal to me. My wife and I

[00:04:14] went to D.C., and the first service back in the Capitol was on July 30, 2014. And I sang and gave leadership, and following that first service, the organizer said, would you come back twice a month? And so Merrill, since 2014, next week when I'm in D.C.,

[00:04:38] will be my 10th anniversary of giving leadership to this service. But it's grown from more than just giving leadership to a worship service in the Capitol, and I'm glad to tell you more about

[00:04:51] that if you like. Well, you know, I, having been in the think tank world and running a trade association out of Washington, D.C., for about eight and a half years, I've spent a lot of time

[00:05:01] in the Capitol and on the House and Senate side, and sort of the Christian spirit is not something you notice a lot of up there on the Hill. People are there, you've got egos, you've got just people

[00:05:16] who are moving power, all kinds of things happening. So this has got to be a rich field for you trying to minister up there. Well, wait a second, Merrill, did you say egos in politics? Are you kidding me? Egos, money, power, everything. Oh, Merrill, I tell you what,

[00:05:37] when I first started going to the Hill 10 years ago, I could smell the dysfunction. And after 10 years, I don't smell it so much. It's still there. It's just, I've grown a little bit accustomed to the smell, but it's still there, and it doesn't mean that

[00:05:53] I accept it. But you know, you're right, it's a challenging place to work. If you've spent some time in the Capitol, our very first service, and for several years, our services were held

[00:06:04] down in the basement in a room called HC5, which is a large caucus room where the majority party normally controls that room for their meetings and their gatherings. Been there many times.

[00:06:19] Okay, yeah, we started down there. And Merrill, now our services are held up on the first floor. They're in room 122, which is the Speaker's private dining room. And we moved there into that room, we were given permission to use that room on Wednesday nights when we meet

[00:06:42] by Speaker Pelosi. And because they control, obviously, the House side, and they control all the rooms on the House side. But Ms. Pelosi gave us permission to use that room for several years. And then Speaker McCarthy continued to allow us to do so, and so has Speaker Johnson.

[00:07:03] So on Wednesday nights, at 7pm, we're in room 122 on the first floor of the Capitol, really just below the House chamber. And on Wednesday nights at 7pm, we sing, we have, you know, sermons given by pastors who might be visiting. Last week in our service,

[00:07:25] Representative G.T. Thompson from Pennsylvania preached for us. He's a recent cancer survivor. And I asked G.T. if he would just share what God has, he was diagnosed with stage four prostate

[00:07:42] cancer back in November. And I asked him if he would just tell us the lessons that he's learned over these past few months. And so G.T. shared and following each of our services, Merrill,

[00:07:54] normally, we will go to the second floor, to the rotunda. We will stand in the center of the rotunda. We will sing and pray and take the Lord's Supper standing there at the Golden Circle.

[00:08:08] My, my, that is an amazing story. We're going to take a break here, Steve. And when we come back, I want to find out a little bit more about how people, the politicians, the staffers actually

[00:08:19] blend their Christianity with the struggles that they have in politics. Our guest for this, this segment, Steve Amerson. He is with Word on the Hill. He is a world-class, world-famous singer, especially in gospel music and so forth. And he, 10 years ago, he took on a mission

[00:08:36] on Capitol Hill, very challenging place. Stay with us. We'll be back with Steve in just a minute. If you spend any time viewing social media, you've probably seen a few clips from notable

[00:09:06] experts on the dangers of alcohol. We know so much more about its dangers than we did just a few decades ago. Professor Jordan Peterson warns that alcohol is an extraordinarily pernicious drug. He understands why people would use it because of its anxiety-reducing properties, but he argues

[00:09:23] that alcohol is really a bad drug. He says 50% of murders take place in an alcohol-fueled environment. Either the victim or the perpetrator or both is drunk. It's almost the sole cause of domestic

[00:09:36] abuse. It's almost the sole cause of so-called date rape. He also adds that it's the only drug we know that actually makes people more aggressive. Alcohol can turn perfectly good people into impulsive and dim-witted monsters. Dr. Daniel Amon explains that he first started looking at the brain

[00:09:54] in 1991. He found that people who drink every day have a smaller brain, and when it comes to the brain, size matters. He reports that people who drink every day have more disrupted white matter

[00:10:04] in their brain. The white matter brain cells are the communication network. It's the highway. People who drink even a little bit have more disrupted communication networks. He also points to the fact that the American Cancer Society came out last year and said that you shouldn't drink because

[00:10:20] any alcohol is associated with an increased risk of seven different kinds of cancer. Six years ago, I did a commentary on alcohol consumption based upon a study in the journal Lancet that concluded

[00:10:33] that there was no safe level of alcohol consumption. Each year, we seem to be learning about even more dangers of alcohol. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. For a free copy of Kirby's booklet

[00:10:49] A Biblical View on Loneliness, go to viewpoints.info slash loneliness. That's viewpoints.info slash loneliness. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. And we're back with our guest musician and singer Steve Amerson. And he is a musician, but we're talking about his

[00:11:13] ministry Word on the Hill where they minister to elected officials, to Hill staff and others there on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. And Steve, you know, those of us in the evangelical slash conservative slash traditional Christian movement, we see people who come to church on Sunday

[00:11:35] and they are Christians on Sunday. Once they leave the church, they're back in the business world the next week or so forth. And they seem to lose a lot of those values that they had just

[00:11:46] on Sunday. They just don't live that Christian life. Do you see that? I mean, in Washington, I saw a lot of people who would claim to be Christian, but I couldn't recognize that

[00:11:56] from a lot of things that they, from what they did. What are your thoughts on that? Oh, Merrill, that's a great question. Hey, and by the way, as we're chatting, people can learn and learn more about what I do and see some videos of members of Congress.

[00:12:12] They can go to the word on the hill dot org, the word on the hill dot org, and they can learn more and they can see some of the stories and actually kind of address the question you just asked.

[00:12:26] It's interesting. One day, Merrill, I was in the office of a representative. We chatted for a bit and I had a prayer with her. And I said, you know what, ma'am? I'd love to

[00:12:39] speak with you sometime about how your faith intersects your vote. And she looks at her watch and says, yes, we'll have to do that sometime. And, you know, we see that from our president, Joe Biden, who claims to be a very committed

[00:13:00] Catholic yet on several social issues. He is far away from the Catholic Church. Merrill, I think there are look, whether you're on Capitol Hill, whether you're in the workplace, wherever you are at, I think many of us are going to have to answer to God for some

[00:13:21] positions we've taken, for some things we've said, or some things we haven't said. And you're absolutely right. D.C. is such a seductive place. The power, the prestige, the, if it's not the, you know, members of Congress make roughly around $180,000 a year.

[00:13:54] And now that's a lot of money, but it's not necessarily a lot of money when you're having to have two homes, have a place to live in D.C. and have a place to live, you know, back in the

[00:14:05] district. But the potential, what I've seen, Merrill, is the potential of once they have left the Hill, the potential to make some money is pretty significant. And quite honestly, I think there are probably some folks who have made some money that's probably inappropriate while they

[00:14:24] are on this. But my purpose there, Merrill, is my purpose is one of encouragement. And what I do every trip, Merrill, before I go, I write 200 notes, handwritten notes of encouragement to

[00:14:42] members of Congress. And I deliver those to those 200 offices. Each trip, and I do this twice a month, each trip, I will deliver those notes. I walk between Tuesday night and Wednesday before we

[00:14:58] do the service, I will walk about 15 miles in the House Office buildings, the Senate Office buildings and the Capitol. And members have learned, they know that I'm not a reporter, I'm not a constituent, I'm not a lobbyist, I don't want anything. And one day I'm walking down the

[00:15:18] hall and in the Longworth building, Longworth House Office building, and a member of Congress from Florida sees me and he says, ah, the great encourager. Merrill, what that meant to me. And my attitude is that I want to love people until they ask why.

[00:15:46] Just loving people and eventually, also my attitude is I don't have to, in terms of sharing my faith, I do it in as natural way as possible. My job is not to close the deal. Sometimes my job is to open the door.

[00:16:06] And typically what I will say to a member of Congress, to a staff member, and by the way, Merrill, folks may not know this, there are 18,000 people work on Capitol Hill.

[00:16:18] That's my congregation. And typically I'll just say to folks, what do you need God to do for you today? And most of the time they say, what? And I'll repeat the question. What do you need God to

[00:16:36] do for you today? Merrill, the responses I've gotten have just been staggering. One evening I was in the Capitol, it was when our services were down in HC5, and I was taking the elevator down. And I was going to the basement. And just before the doors

[00:16:57] closed at the elevator, a member of Congress stepped on and she was going to the sub-basement down to take the tram over to the Rayburn building. And the doors closed and I said,

[00:17:08] ma'am, it was just the two of us. And I'm very careful on the Hill, Merrill, not to, it's not, I don't want to embarrass people or whatever, but I just said, ma'am,

[00:17:17] what do you need God to do for you today? And without hesitation, she said, I need prayer for my adult son. And I began to pray for her there on the elevator. I missed my floor on the

[00:17:29] basement. We kept talking, the doors opened and closed. We kept on going to the sub-basement. And that when I finished my prayer, she said, God puts you here for me today. And I said, ma'am, I'll be back in two weeks. She goes, please come see me. Good.

[00:17:46] I walked into the office of one member one time. He sees me, you know, motions for me to come in his office. He shut the door and he said, I am so lonely. Mm hmm.

[00:17:56] He said, I'm lonely here and I'm lonely when I go back to the district. So Merrill, my purpose there while I want to speak, look, I'm not void of my own political ideas and thoughts, but my purpose is to be an encourager. And then when they say, Steve,

[00:18:20] what do I need to, you know, I've got this vote coming up on Israel or I've got this vote about abortion or what about debt? And when then they ask me because they trust me

[00:18:34] because I've not come after them pointing my finger. And so, you know, I've got a great open door there. The thing about Capitol Hill is you've got high pressure. A lot of the staffers have to work long

[00:18:48] hours. You get broken lives up there from members of Congress who have to be away from their families for long periods of time and also from Hill staff and working long hours and not being

[00:19:00] able to sort of stick with a marriage and other things. You just have some broken people. It's Merrill, it's a tough place. Remember one time I was getting on a flight

[00:19:12] and a member of Congress was on the flight with me. In fact, I see them all the time on my flight and a member was getting on. I just greeted him and said, tell me about your family. And he told

[00:19:23] me about his family. He said, yeah, I've got a four-year-old daughter. And she said to me today, she said, Daddy, if I promise to be good, can you stay home? And Merrill, I just don't think the average citizen. No, look, this is not true of every

[00:19:42] member of Congress, but there are men and women on the Hill that feel like being there is their mission. It's their calling. And the sacrifice that their families are making, the toll that

[00:19:55] it takes on them, the physical toll, especially for members that fly from the West Coast like I do. I live in Los Angeles. That's a brutal flight there and back. And so my purpose is to be an

[00:20:10] encourager to these people. Merrill was about probably, that was about a year ago. I'm leaving the Capitol one night. It was about 830. Here comes some of the young bucks that I know that

[00:20:21] worked in the Speaker's office. And there was a young girl with her with them and they introduced me. And she goes, oh, I know who you are. You leave notes for my boss. And I said, yeah, I do.

[00:20:33] And she goes, there's one note that you left that after I gave it to her, I kept it because it meant so much to me. And I said to this young gal, I said, oh, God loves you so much. And she looked at

[00:20:47] me, Merrill, and she said, I hope so. Yeah. Well, Steve, thank you so much for this ministry. It is an amazing ministry that you have there in a very challenging area. And we will have a link to

[00:21:01] the Word on the Hill on our website, PointofView.net. So if people want to go there, they can see, they can find out how to reach out to you. They'll also see those videos if they go to yours.

[00:21:11] And Speaker Johnson has one up there where he mentions those notes and you can even see a copy of the note. Steve, thank you so much for joining us. Merrill, thanks so much for your time. God

[00:21:21] bless you. God bless your listeners. And God bless America. That's Steve Emerson with Word on the Hill. When we come back, we'll be going to Dr. Alveda King and talking about her ministry. At Point of View,

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[00:22:45] Point of View will continue after this. 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, Dr. Merrill Matthews. And welcome back. We were

[00:23:15] talking with Steve Amerson. He is with Word on the Hill, and that's an organization, a ministry where they reach out to members of Congress, elected officials, Hill staff, and others. So it's an amazing ministry, and it's a very, very challenging one. He's been doing that for 10 years.

[00:23:34] But if you get a chance, go look at PointofView.net. You'll see his website address there. And you can see both Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator Marsha Blackburn. They both have short

[00:23:48] clips there talking about how beneficial it is and how useful that ministry is. It has been a tough ministry, though, for them just because of all the power and the things that go on there on Capitol

[00:24:00] Hill. So I'd encourage you to do that. And joining me now, Dr. Alveda King. And she is the chair of the America First Policy Institute Center for the American Dream. She's also the guardian of

[00:24:13] the King family legacy, and she is the founder of Alveda King Ministries. She was a twice elected to the Georgia State House and has been involved in just several aspects. Doctor, thank you for joining

[00:24:26] us. Well, I'm so glad to join you today. I hope you can hear me. I apologize for the background noise. I certainly can hear you. Tell us a little bit about the Center for the American Dream.

[00:24:40] The Center for the American Dream with America First Policy Institute is joined by many other centers, and we all work together at America First Policy Institute to advance a better quality of life. America First, putting America First, not America only, but America First. For some,

[00:25:03] restoring America, and then for me, bringing America to become her very best under God. You know, you also are the creator of the Alveda King Ministries. What is that about? In the 1990s, I launched a non-profit organization called King for America.

[00:25:26] Over the next several years, it would become more and more evangelistic in outreach. And so today, Alveda King Ministries is part of King for America. And so we work to enhance the lives of people spiritually, socially, physically, economically, relationally.

[00:25:45] And we use all of the gifts and talents that God collectively brings to us. For instance, I've been a singer-songwriter since the 1970s. Many people don't know that. An actress, a producer. I've been elected to a political office and appointed to political office.

[00:26:05] And there are so many life experiences. I have an earned PhD from Aiden University. I have an honorary degree. So all of those are life, all of those life experiences, and me with my affiliates and associates, we work together collaboratively to advance the kingdom of God.

[00:26:25] Now you are the daughter of A.D. King and the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Do you feel like one of the big issues that has happened over the past few years is we've made a

[00:26:38] lot of racial progress, still got ways to go. Do you think Dr. King would be pleased with the kind of progress that we have made, albeit recognizing we've still got a long ways to go?

[00:26:52] We are one blood and one human race. And based on Acts 17, 26 of one blood, God made all people to live together on the face of the earth. And so that led my grandfather,

[00:27:06] Martin Luther King Sr., Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Sr., my daddy, Reverend Dr. A.D. King, my uncle, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous quote, we must learn to live together as brothers and not as sisters and not perish together as fools,

[00:27:23] comes out of the truth. It's biblically true and it's scientifically true that there's one blood, one human race. Now we have different ethnicities. And so for us to be fighting over skin color and

[00:27:36] fighting what's called race wars, and one of the best examples I can give you, if you look at Abraham, he had several sons. He had first Ishmael, then Isaac, and then he had several sons with

[00:27:48] Keturah. Now they're still fighting today over land and heritage and property. However, they're not cousins. They're not neighbors. They're really brothers with one dad. So we can stop fighting over racial issues and unite as the human race and begin to know that we should all repent,

[00:28:11] that we should all forgive, we should all love each other. And that is going to be the solution to the race issues that we have faced, in my opinion, for far too long.

[00:28:21] You know, in the Republican convention on Tuesday night, they had an African American woman from New York, if I remember correctly. I don't remember her name, but she just gave a powerful speech

[00:28:33] about, I think, her son had been killed, the crime that was in the neighborhood. And it was just a very powerful speech about the problems with liberal district attorneys who might let them

[00:28:48] let criminals off without really punishing them and so forth. What are your thoughts in that area? I believe certainly with the issue of prisoners and people in jail and people who have committed crime, some people can become repentant and return to society and live productive lives.

[00:29:08] Some cannot. But we are taught by God in the Bible to visit those who are in prison and those who are sick, to take care of the widows and the orphans. And so we cannot possibly lock up a whole

[00:29:23] continent of people, a whole society of people. So we're going to have to make society better. I believe that that is done by the grace of God, with God our Father, God the Holy Spirit,

[00:29:37] God Jesus Christ coming into our lives and transforming us. So I do know that sometimes there is a need for prison. And I don't even argue over whether or not we should have the death

[00:29:49] penalty. My thing is this, if somebody is in prison and they're going to be executed by the death penalty, please give them a chance to be evangelized and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord

[00:30:02] and Savior because that eternal life is even more important than this human life we live on the earth. You know, one of the things I noticed is that you're a co-producer of the Vision TV. And when

[00:30:14] I looked at that the other day, I saw that I think it's five women there and it looks like this is sort of an evangelical response to the view. Tell us about the Vision TV.

[00:30:27] Vision TV, we have a male host too, Brian Casagias. And so there are other ladies and Brian joins us as a guest host sometimes. And so several years ago, early in this century,

[00:30:40] Dave Gardner, one of our co-hosts and I, we were watching the Vision TV and we both said, that's enough. That's just too much. Let's come up with the Vision. We're watching the view.

[00:30:50] We're watching the view. And we said, we need the Vision. You know, humans have the view. God has the vision. We did a pilot and it sat on the shelf for a while. And then Destiny Yarbrough,

[00:31:05] my co-executive producer of the series, Destiny says, you want to do a TV show? I said, yeah, what about the Vision? And so we're about to start filming our second season. We're getting

[00:31:17] towards the end of the first season and we're about to film that second season. And it's being aired on Christian TV everywhere. It's on YouTube as well. I think Facebook and Instagram,

[00:31:28] and we have a website, thevisiontvshow.com. Yeah. Well, you said you remain so busy and engaged in so many things. What's on the agenda for you? What are you looking to doing in the next year or two?

[00:31:43] I'm always amazed and excited by God. As soon as I do a song and I say, okay, this is it, I think then another song keeps coming. I may be working on another book, a devotional,

[00:31:55] because I've always wanted to do a devotional. So these things are in place. I'm not doing as much politics. You'll notice if you see me on social media and on Fox News and places like that

[00:32:07] now, I'm praying for America, for humanity, for President Trump. I thought that that was astounding, that attempt on his life. And yet I heard him say recently, I think he tweeted it. He says,

[00:32:22] hey, God is with me. And I've seen, I have prayed with the president myself and I've seen him pray with others. So the answer is going to be to pray, to love, to forgive, to repent,

[00:32:34] no matter who we are and no matter what we are facing. You know, it's interesting because former President Trump has not been an especially religious person, but he has attracted evangelicals and Christians of strong faith. And it may be when with this attempted assassination that God

[00:32:56] got ahold of him and maybe shaking him up and having him face his mortality a little bit, and that may change him in some ways. It may, but let me say something very shocking. Yes,

[00:33:06] he's attracted to Christians and the evangelicals. In an earlier meeting, right before he was elected the first time, he would say, you Christians have the answer. Why don't you speak up?

[00:33:18] He says, elect me and I'll take that muzzle off for you. And he did. But guess what else he's attracting? It's the strangest thing. He's attracting the drug addicts and the lesbians and homosexuals and everybody. So they're waking up and say, wait a minute, something's different.

[00:33:35] My life needs to be better. Maybe I should vote for him. They need to accept Jesus too. Thank you, Dr. Alveda King for joining us. We're on a break. You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth.

[00:34:01] And we're back on Point of View. I'm Merrill Matthews sitting in for Kirby Anderson today, and we just finished our discussion. We just had a short discussion with Dr. Alveda King. She is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And she mentioned,

[00:34:14] talked a little bit about crime and people who are in prison. And when we come back at the top of the hour, we will have on Cody Wilde. He is with Chuck Colson's Prisons Fellowship to get an

[00:34:26] update of what they're doing there at the Prison Fellowship Ministries. And I thought I would take, since the Republican convention is going on, it's been going very well. The general assessment when I'm watching on CNN, Fox and others, they're just, the commentators there are very impressed

[00:34:44] with how well this particular convention has come off. It has conveyed a system of unity. You have people who were not Trump supporters, Nikki Haley being one, former governor Nikki Haley was on last night. People who have not been strong Trump supporters speaking as well. So it's gone

[00:35:03] just very well and orchestrated very well and presented a very, I think, in a sense, positive view of what Republicans want to do if they are, if Donald Trump is reelected. And incidentally, they've been very critical of the Democrats and the Democrats have had struggled now because of

[00:35:22] some of the things that are happening there within the party and President Joe Biden. So I thought I'd just update you a little bit because this is just out from Politico. And the reason is it's been

[00:35:35] kind of up and down for Joe Biden. A week or so ago, it looked like he might be forced out as there is a growing Democratic momentum to try to get him to step down and not run for president.

[00:35:46] He seemed to overcome that. Then it seemed to come back a bit. Then he seemed to overcome it again. And the sense over just the last couple of days was with the attempted assassination of President

[00:35:57] Trump, that took his, Biden's challenges off the front page. And they thought maybe they had bought a little bit of time and they were just going to kind of wait this out to see if they

[00:36:07] couldn't get past the headlines and maybe just get on to the Democratic convention. And that maybe he had just dodged a bullet there, so to speak. But in fact, that's back today and it's

[00:36:20] several things are happening. A number of major Democrats have come out and are now calling for him to step down. And I'm just looking at Politico here. It says John Carl, ABC's John Carl, scooped the world news tonight that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority

[00:36:37] Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Biden in person that he should end his reelection campaign for the good of the country. That's a big step. Speaker Nancy, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the president that he can't win and is dragging down the party, jeopardizing potential majorities

[00:36:54] in Congress. Adam Schiff, Adam Schiff played a big role in the attempt to impeach President Trump. He is running for Senate in California. It's Pelosi's longtime protege became the latest hill Democrat to publicly call on Biden to step down, arguing that he has serious concerns about

[00:37:15] whether the president can defeat Donald Trump. And then entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, he's part with Steven Spielberg as a producer of films and so forth. He confronted the president about new financial woes, telling him that big donors skeptical that he can win have all but

[00:37:34] stopped writing checks for the Biden reelection campaign. So senior Democrats are coming out. They just released something from Blue Rose Research, which found that, quote, just 18 percent of voters and 36 percent of people who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 believe he is mentally fit

[00:37:56] and able to become president, fulfill that job. This is a major shift that's going on here. And we'll see if he can sort of wait this out now. President Biden announced yesterday he had

[00:38:08] contracted covid. He is stepping aside and recovering for a couple of days. So he had to cancel his various events that he was going to be doing. So he's isolating for a couple of days

[00:38:20] with covid. We understand it's a mild case of it, not not serious for him. He has apparently mentioned recently that if his doctors came up and say to tell him that he really he's got a

[00:38:34] medical issue or something and he shouldn't continue, then he might step down from that. My guess is something like that will probably happen. That's just a guess. No idea if that's going to happen or not. But there's also been new evidence out there about Kamala Harris,

[00:38:51] where more and more Democrats are saying they would run with they would prefer running with Kamala Harris on at the head of the ticket than Joe Biden. So this thing is still in flux.

[00:39:02] They were going to have a virtual of a virtual nomination by July in July. They have apparently tried to push that back. I heard yesterday that Kamala Harris will be debating J.D. Vance as the

[00:39:18] vice president on, I think it said August 11, about a week before the Democratic convention. But it may be that by that time, Kamala Harris is going to be the Democratic nominee as opposed to

[00:39:32] being the vice presidential nominee. And she may end up having to name somebody. So it's in complete flux and we don't know where this is going to go right now. And it's making it both interesting

[00:39:45] and unsettling because we've never been in this area before. We thought for a while that president I wrote a piece for The Hill. Oh, in February, the most important vice presidential nomination ever.

[00:39:58] And the part of that was that you had Joe Biden's health was a major concern and that essentially a vote for Joe Biden was a vote for Kamala Harris. She would likely become the next president if

[00:40:11] Joe Biden were to win fairly soon because he just the president has some medical issues. Donald Trump is not a young man. I think he is 77 or 78 now, three or so years younger than Biden.

[00:40:26] So even him, even though he seems to be the picture of health, seems to be vibrant. The assassination attempt points out that something can always happen that you don't expect. But even so, being at his age, he could have a medical condition and that would end up meaning

[00:40:45] the vice president would become the acting president for a while if the president was just out or would become president if the president could not return. And so we've got J.D. Vance

[00:40:55] as a possibility now. So we know who that is. And he is, of course, essentially he was very critical of the president initially several years ago. He is now very much in the mold of Donald

[00:41:08] Trump. So if we were to lose Donald Trump for a health reason or something, J.D. would probably step in and continue with that agenda. But we don't know what we're going to have in November

[00:41:21] right now just because of all the questions that are swirling around Joe Biden. Will he be able to be nominated if he's nominated? Does he have a medical condition between being nominated and

[00:41:34] the election? If he isn't nominated, he wants to step down. There are issues. He's got several million, several hundred million dollars in funds. My understanding is that only after he is nominated

[00:41:47] and if he steps down, then those funds could be handed over to Kamala Harris to finish the race. But if he is not formally nominated, he can't hand those funds over. And that means they would

[00:42:00] have to go and raise funds for her if she will become the Democratic nominee. And my sense is, given how short a time frame we have here, there are people in the wings of the Democratic Party

[00:42:13] who would like to step in. But given the short time frame and given the fact that I pointed this out a few days ago in The Hill, that by the time the Democratic convention comes up, you're just

[00:42:26] one month away from the early election. The first day starting early election is not much time to try to get out there if you're an unknown face and get the attention. So a lot of things going on

[00:42:38] there. The convention concludes tonight and President Trump will give his acceptance speech. So we'll be watching that. And of course, Point of View will be back tomorrow with weekend edition

[00:42:48] to cover all of these things. When we come back, we're going to turn to Cody Wilde. He is with Prison Fellowship and that's the Chuck Colson group. And we'll be talking about what their work

[00:42:58] is there reaching out to prisoners around the country. So stay with us. We'll be back on Point of View. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle not with guns and

[00:43:17] bombs but words and ideas. London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily, and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything

[00:43:38] the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth. It is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most

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