Truth Talk Live w/ Dale Folwell

This is Rodney from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explored manhood within Jesus Christ. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Sit back, enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Robbie Dilmore here, your host today for Truth Talk Live, powered by the Truth Network, and as always, our vision here is to have a call-in show where you, the listeners, are essentially, other than God, which is always the star of the show, we hope, are the stars of the show. So your stories, your testimonies, sometimes your wonderful prayer requests, plus your views on current events in pop culture, which is big time what we're going to talk about today. And you can call us, we hope, and we pray at 866-348-7884-86634. Truth, if you're digitally gifted, and you can do that, which I can't.

But of course, you know, since it's Robbie today, you're going to have your Dad Joke Digest coming up here shortly, and a few quotables. But Truth Talk Live today, what is it going to take to restore your faith in elected officials in government? That's a big question, right?

And I'll tell you why. I did a little research, as our guest kind of pointed this out to me today, and I was like, yesterday when I talked to him, I went, oh my goodness, look at this. The percentage of Americans who say they trust the government to do what's right, or just about always do what's right, under President Johnson, it was 77% of Americans. In other words, more than a vast majority, actually. And by the time President Carter took over after Watergate, it had dropped to an astonishing low 23%. Under George W. Bush after 9-1-1, it rose up, really kind of shocking to me, back to 60%. But then under President Obama, when he took office, it had dropped to 25%. And when he left, it dropped to 19%. And under President Trump, it began at 19% and dropped down to 17%. And then all that stimulus money came, and somehow or another, it miraculously jumped back up to 24%. But under President Biden, it has continued to droop, and today is an all-time low, less than 16% of Americans.

Did you hear that? Less than 16% of Americans say they trust a government to do what is right. Wow. I mean, and if you think about it, I thought about this, too. It speaks to how we look at government officials in general. I can never imagine, when I was a young person, ever referring to a sitting president as Obama, or Trump, or no, no, it was President Kennedy. It was President Johnson. It was, you know, it was, you know, those, these, these offices demanded great respect.

And it really almost shocks me the way that all of us, and unfortunately me, and I'm trying to break that habit, you know, no, that is President Biden. And he deserves our prayers, and he deserves our respect. And you know, it's our job as believers, you know, to lift these people up.

But here to help us today, and I'm very excited because I need some help here, we have actually the treasurer of the state of North Carolina, we're so honored to have with us, Dale R. Falwell, CPA. And wow, Dale, this is a big topic you brought up. Well, it is a big topic. And sometimes my remarks are a little bit like a country music song, where we try to build people up, and then we burn them down, and then build them back up again. But I think we already started by burning them down. But the facts that you just pointed out are exactly accurate. People have no confidence, especially at the federal level, that their government can protect their borders, protect their economy, protect their streets, protect them from runaway inflation. And it's sad because this is also reflecting, it's reflective, reflective in the recruitment that we see into our armed services.

And as far as people who are interested in defending our country, because they believe in our country. And you see how these all these go hat in hand. And I'm so pleased to be here today, and especially and to say to all of your listeners, that I'm 65 this year, was 65. And it doesn't matter how lucky you are in life, how handsome you are, pretty or smart you are, that you're standing on the shoulders of other people.

That's right. And as I was driving up into the studio today, and so in honor of Big Stu, it reminded me that we continue to stand on his shoulders. And I just remember the amazing service in celebration of his life, where it was discussed about, even in his last breath, he was in the business of showing and telling, show and tell, right. Even when he was getting out of the car to go get some type of procedure, he was witnessing and showing and telling, and standing on the shoulders of other people. And I think our society has just lost sight of the fact that we're all standing on the shoulders of someone else. And as far as being an elected official, the only vote that really matters is the man above.

Yeah. And I'll also add that all of our elected officials need to surrender every night to God, even if it's physical by wiggling your toes, thinking about the Spirit of God coming up through your body and wiggling your fingers before you go to sleep. You said that the other day to me, and it sounds like you've experienced that. So that's kind of, as you lay your head on the pillow, you ask the Spirit of God to move through your body like that?

You have to, especially when you're managing, in our case, one of the largest pools of public money in the world. And there's so much coming at us in the world and the ways that we did not expect. But most importantly, in the morning is to get God between your ears before you do, before this world gets between your ears. Getting God between your ears before you do means that doing right is rarely wrong. It also means that you don't mind being wrong for the right reasons, which is humility. But more importantly, Robby, to your listeners, it also means that ethics is what you do when no one's watching.

And when you're in the position of being the keeper of the public person, managing $240 billion, that's a billion dollars, you can imagine the type of things that come at you on a daily basis. And ethics is not only what you do when no one's watching. It's what you do when the powerful forces of this world try to get you to look the other way or do something that's not fair and just. That's really what ethics is. And as a Quaker, the blood that runs through me is, well, the blood that runs through me is Quaker. And one of the spices of the Quaker religion is to be fair and just. And the blood that runs through me.

And what that means is that we have a responsibility in God's eyes to look at these things seriously. Yeah, we do. But we need your calls coming back. Call us 866-34-TRUTH. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live.

Today, the question, and boy, it's a whopper, honestly, what will it take to restore your faith in elected officials in government? We want to hear from you. It's the callers that make this show again.

We're so blessed and honored to have with us a treasurer of the state of North Carolina, Dale R. Falwell. But the number to call in and share is 866-348-7884, 866-34-TRUTH. And we got a caller. We got Andy is in Boone, North Carolina. Andy, you're on Truth Talk Live. How you doing, Andy? Pretty good. How you doing, Robbie? I am good.

And I'm excited to hear your question for Dale Falwell. No, we've had this conversation. So I'm not sure I have a call. I thought we were going to get a little bit deeper into the thing before I called. Well, dive right into what you want to talk about. Well, I don't know. I mean, maybe not a question as much as a comment.

You know, Robbie and I know each other. We've had this conversation quite a bit about just where we are as a nation. 2020 really went on an election at that time. I really began to realize how bad our country was, what kind of shape it is, and went to D.C. with some prayer rallies and stuff. And that really changed my heart because I always felt like I was a patriot in my country. But you always felt like everything would come through a spiritual method, a spiritual renewal, and it would change politics or whatever. But I think sometimes they kind of have to work hand in hand when you look at the restoration. In the Old Testament, you would see a restoration a lot of times of both a spiritual restoration and it would impact our government. And I guess to Dale, I mean, he's been to our county and spoke.

Love to hear him speak. But what is, Dale, what do you feel like you're seeing? Do you feel, I feel some encouraged in some ways. As much as it seems our country is being polarized to good and evil, it's not much of an in the middle anymore. But I've seen some positive things because it actually kind of has woken up some Christians to the reality of the battle that we're in. Are you encouraged and are you seeing things that you feel like God is on the move in our country?

Well, God's always on the move in our country and sometimes it's in ways that we don't see as clearly as we need to see, Andy. And what I what I would say to your comment is simply this. Most of your life, Andy, you've heard this term, as has Robbie, called the state of the union.

Yeah. The union's in peril. And I don't say that emotionally and I don't say it politically. The reason I don't say it politically is that it's funny how God made our hand. That any time you point a finger at someone, Andy, there are three more pointing back at you.

That's right. And why I say our country is in peril is mathematically. We are now at a point of no return when our federal government has an addiction, an addiction for money and cannot balance its budget, cannot even acknowledge the fact that we are borrowing money that we could never pay back. And the result of this is incredible inflation. And this incredible inflation is a thief to every middle and low income and fixed income person in this state, in this country. It's a thief.

The same kind of thief that would carjack your car, except this thief is coming through higher gas prices, higher food prices, higher homeowners insurance, higher lumber prices, higher everything. So going forward, Andy, I would like for you to start thinking about states of the union. It is going to be, in my opinion, the individual states in our country, led by governors, who are the only hope that we have in saving America.

Really? And so how do you see that? So as states get their budgets balanced, and what does that work out? What I'm telling you is that in term, the federal government is incompetent of even of protecting our borders. We don't have a border.

If you don't have a border, you don't have a country. Our government is incapable of solving its own addiction for money, which is causing the price of everything to go up, which causes the interest rates to go up, which causes the interest on the debt to go up, which makes it even worse. Robbie may not have heard this, but we are going to spend more this year on interest on the national debt than the military budget.

Now I'm sure this is the single biggest national security crisis of your in my lifetime. And so the reason I say that is it's going to be states of the union, like North Carolina, that are going to be the most of the union, like North Carolina, who balances its budget, lives within its means, create surpluses. As a state treasurer, we're in the process of retiring.

You've never heard this before. 60% of the state debt, 60, getting rid of paying off 60% of the state debt. So it's going to be states that actually keep their physical houses in order.

And many, many states doing this at the same time is the only thing in my opinion, that's going to change the direction of Washington DC's incompetence. Wow. Wow. Andy, what do you think? I definitely see that as a major problem in there. There's so many problems.

It's like, you know, just trying to plug to the guy that's trying to stop the water coming through the dike or whatever, there's holes everywhere. And I do, I do totally agree with that. I think it all kind of runs in together.

The same politicians that are, or spending like crazy are not the ones that protecting the border or sending excess money to other countries when our border is not even protected. And I totally agree with that. There's things, I guess, where I was thinking that, that I see the hand of God. For example, I see how Roe v. Wade was overturned. And I see that whenever you look at Israel, I always take this back in the Bible.

When you look at Israel, their curse came whenever they were, you know, taken part in child sacrifice. And when I see our country as a nation, make that move, things aren't going to go establish, get fixed right away. But it's a move in the right direction that can allow God to come in and kind of help us as people fix these other areas.

I mean, absolutely, you're talking about Dale, those things have to be fixed. We have to change our habits of the way we do things. But I think sometimes we're under a curse and stuff like I was saying, child sacrifice, and what we're dealing with there that we actually enable God to come and heal our land like we hear in Proverbs, I mean, 2 Chronicles 7.14. Well, and one part of that, Andy and Robbie, is to, I may not get invited back after saying this, we have to get rid of the bigotry of low expectations among our youth. We have destroyed the joy of achievement and upward mobility, starting with keeping God out of their lives. We need to focus on educating and not indoctrinating.

And real upward mobility. And get the joy. We got to go to a break, Andy. Thank you for calling in. We got Jamal, all sorts of folks, but we need you to call 866-348-7884.

We'll be right back. This is the Truth Network. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live! Today's show, What Will It Take to Restore Your Faith and Elected Officials in Government?

We would love your views. 866-348-7884, 866-344-TRUTH. And here today we have the treasurer, the state treasurer, the state of North Carolina, Dale Falwell, and we got Jamal, is in North Carolina. Jamal, you're on Truth Talk Live. How are you, sir? I'm doing fine, Mr. Dilmore. Good to talk to you, Mr. Falwell. Pleasure, sir. I'm not sure if you remember, Mr. Falwell, but you came by our group a couple times for conservative lunch.

Absolutely. Jamal, how are you doing? Doing fine, sir. Glad to see you on Truth Network and glad to see you on Mr. Dilmore's show.

I'll get right through it. What's going to take from me is going to be somebody of faith. Too many times I hear people want to do it their own way and do it God's way, and it leads to ruin, to put it shortly.

If you don't have a moral compass, if you're not centered in God, then you're leaderless, you're rudderless. So I want to pose a question to you. As somebody who's dealt with the numbers, got a lot of debt off of our books in North Carolina, what would be your pushback to somebody that says Christianity has no place in government?

And also I have a two-parter. Real quick, your opponent has a pretty big following. So I believe in your campaign.

I believe you're a very good candidate. My second part would be, what would your plan be to counteract that big following, your opponent has? Well, number one is that in answer to your first question, there is a place for God in our government.

I mean, our country was founded on the basis of God. So let's get that out of the way, number one. Number two, I didn't get to where I am in life by pulling other people off their ladder.

Because when you're poor and you got evicted from your house two miles from where we're sitting in the studio as a young kid, when you pull someone else off their ladder, they fall on you. And the world, Jamal, never knows who you were or what you were about. So I'm gonna let Mark Robinson be who he is. What I am not is a shirker. What I am not is a person who will not show up and actually debate and apply for this job and explain my vision for North Carolina going forward. And what I'm not is someone who spews hate to gain power. Hate is on the rise. We've been dealing with this with Israel. And the fact is, is that whether it's anti-Semitic, anti-Jew or anti-Israel, I support Israel, I support Jews, and I support all of that. But the fact is, is that I'm running on hope, and I'm not running on hate. And we have got to get the joy of achievement, as I said earlier, back in our society.

And I think the biggest difference between my opponent and I, which we're not on the show to talk about, is simply this, Jamal. I know how precious your car is to you. Who would you hand your car keys to for four years and come back four years later and expect that car to be in better working condition, clean and fully gassed up?

That's the only question in this whole election. Who would you hand your car keys to and come back and find it to be in better shape? Well, being the Christian car guy, I really like that answer. And lastly, my reputation is that I don't listen to respond. I listen to understand.

And I think that's what God wants us to do. The vision to see, the humility to listen, and the courage to act. And it's funny that the word rage is inside the word courage. And it means, C-O-U-R means from the heart. C-O-U-R means from the heart, right?

Exactly. Jamal, that's awesome. Thank you, my brother. I am so grateful for you and your constant encouragement and your calling in today. Yes, sir.

I just want to add on one thing, if I could real quick, it's going to take a second. I know we were talking about election integrity, what's it going to take for us to get our faith back and politicians in the system. And that's pretty much what I was asking.

I know we weren't here to talk about the opponents. But for me, I don't really have faith in somebody who's not a person of faith. And I'm glad that I've met Mr. Falwell in person. He is a man of faith and a man of numbers.

You can't have a better combination than that. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you, Bill Moore. Thank you, Falwell.

God bless you both. Thank you, Jamal. Very good. Very wonderful. So I just happen to have a few quotables along the idea of religion and state.

And so to quote these real quick that might help Jamal out, I love these. Did you know Ronald Reagan said, if we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be one nation gone under. Ronald Reagan has his humor. Harry S. Truman said, the fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the mount. If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we'll finally end up with totalitarian government, which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state.

And you may know Ken Ham with answers in Genesis. He said, there's no such thing as a separation of church and state. Reporters continue to promote that fallacy and scare Christians out of standing up for their beliefs. Wow.

Strong, right? And Tody Campolo said, if marriage really is a sacred institution, then why is the government controlling it, especially in a nation that affirms separation of church and state? Fascinating quotes. We got John is in Virginia. John, you're on Truth Talk Live. Good afternoon, my friend. Good afternoon, gentlemen.

I think that you guys had just talked about a little bit ago was the incompetency of government. Now I'm a, I'm a, I'm a big words guy. I like words. I use words a lot. What I do.

And here's where I'm going to have a little bit of, if you will, recruits. I don't think in my opinion, I don't think that this current government of elected representatives all the way up to the chief is incompetent. I don't think it's, I don't think that's the case. I think the case is it's on purpose.

It's designed. They, uh, I personally see it because I see everything that's going on. I read a lot of news articles.

You know, I try to stay away from as much as possible, the rhetoric, uh, and the op-eds, that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, this looks more intentional than it looks incompetent to me. Um, and the reason that I say this is when, you know, the word, just the word is still helping competence just shows that quite frankly, somebody's stupid. They don't know what they're doing. They are incapable. A lot of these elected leaders are quite capable. They're, they're intelligent and they're intelligent enough to know that the only way to destroy our nation is from within, period. Um, quite frankly, I wish Abraham Lincoln would have kept his mouth shut when he said that, uh, he didn't think the entire world could cross the borders of the United States and win to take a, you know, base paraphrasing to take a drink from the Ohio river. And he was right.

He said, if we're going to be undone, it's going to be from within and it's going to be from within because, you know, think about it. Would you go to an incompetent person and have them do anything for you? No, you dismiss that person. You'd have them walk, you'd walk away from that person.

You wouldn't trust them to do anything. So John, just to back up a second here, cause I don't remember using the word incompetent. Um, myself just a little bit ago, right before this last guy, uh, somebody had talked about the incompetency of government.

Yeah, that would be Dale mentioned that and he's pointing his finger to himself. So I'm gonna let him answer your question. Cause I, I didn't, I, you know, again, John, I was talking about trust. John, when you, when you look at the basic role of our federal government, I was applying that word to the fact that the, their basic responsibilities, and I forget which president it was that said it. If you're looking to the federal government for your answers, you've already lost. So what I was saying was when, when you look at, uh, the thievery that's going on through inflation and its direct, uh, connection to a federal government who has an addiction like any other addiction you want to talk about on truth network and addiction for money that's causing interest rates to go up prices of everything to go up, which is stealing from, especially the middle, lower and fixed income people or the border, or we all, we all know what we're seeing. And we all know how we feel about what we're seeing and what we have. And both political parties are responsible for this. What we have, what we have is counterfeit counterfeit conservatives. The root word of conservative is to conserve the root word of liberals to liberate, to set economically free.

You cannot be liberated in your life if you don't save in the beginning. And so, and the root word of govern meant is to govern. It's a verb.

These are all, since you're a word person, I know that, you know, that the root word of all these bigger words is vitally important in our country has lost sight of them, both at the state and the federal level. All right, we'll be right back. Hang on, John. We're not done with you.

I'm sure you're not done with us. So we'll be right back with more Truth Talk Live. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. How fun today with Dale Falwell.

He's the treasurer of North Carolina and also running for governor. As we all know, this is a year of much of that kind of stuff, deep in prayer we all should be. But it's a deep question in my own heart that it really, it hadn't been for my discussion with Dale earlier yesterday. I never really would have considered my own answer to that question. What would it take for me to have faith in government officials?

And I have, I have a really, here's my real challenge. I'll be honest with you, Dale. And I'm going to get John's here in a minute, but I know for me, what happened in the election of 2020 that Andy talked about was everybody was lying. I couldn't, they couldn't find the truth. I was just looking for somebody to tell me what really is going on here because nothing you were saying makes sense and nothing you were saying makes sense. And I'm clearly not getting it out of the media.

So what is the truth in the actual situation? And I can come up with no way for myself personally to say, I don't know that I believe in the even election process currently based on the doubt that was put into that in 2020. And so therein lies, I've been waiting for a politician to come around and say, here's how I think we can put faith back into the process itself. Well, you're exactly right.

And I just, when you made that statement, it's just a reminder of everything that we constantly think about and that is trust and faith. We cannot have a country where people trust their government if they don't trust the way that people get elected. You know, elections should be simple and secure, right?

The last thing we need to be arguing about in this country right now with everything that's coming at us is whether our elections are actually safe and secure. The Eppersons are entrepreneurs, Salem Broadcasting entrepreneurs, Truth Network entrepreneurs. We now have conflict entrepreneurs in this country. Conflict entrepreneurs who are making hundreds of millions of dollars on keeping us divided.

So the reason why that you're having a hard time deciphering about all this data that's coming to you from both sides is that these conflict entrepreneurs are making hundreds of millions of dollars on keeping you confused. Really? This is a great conversation.

I did not know that. Which is the opposite of the truth, which is the name of this network. And it's important that before we close out this last segment to say to your listeners, if they're feeling exhausted, if the world is coming at them in ways they never expected, if they're dissatisfied and angry about counterfeit conservatives, people who have never conserved anything and when they get to Raleigh and Washington, they do something the exact opposite of what they put on their job application. If your listeners are feeling exhausted and angry about that, I want to tell them they're feeling normal. The last thing we need in our society right now is for people who are seeking the truth, who know what they see and know what they hear to make them feel like there's something wrong with them. There's nothing wrong with them. They're actually feeling normal because this exhaustion that I talked about, this anger that I'm talking about, these conflict entrepreneurs that are keeping our country divided, mathematically we cannot stand this.

And that's why we've got to come together. I'm old enough to remember when the Beatles went off tour in the early 60s. They went off tour because John Lennon could not hear Paul McCartney sing on stage. They could not hear each other because the audience was screaming so loudly. So the audience couldn't hear them. They couldn't hear each other.

So they went off tour and went back and cut the white album in England. That is what's going on in our society right now. People are just screaming past each other and we have to stop it. You know, everybody thinks the word repent means to be sorry.

It means to cease, to stop, to reverse. That is what's going to bring confidence back into our governments at all levels. Well said. Well said. Well, John, we didn't want to leave you hanging, but I know you may have another word for us. So I wanted to give you another chance.

John and Virginia. Sorry, quickly, to tack onto that, I've been teaching my son that you're either going to stand against or you're going to stand for something. When standing against something, it's a lot like that particular analogy where people are constantly screaming that odds.

That's a negative connotation where there's, where at some point you get overwhelmed, you get discouraged, you just don't want to fight back anymore because you're standing against an onslaught. However, if you turn, if you flip that coin, it's the same coin, it's just a different side. You flip that coin and you stand for something.

Well, then it gets a different, a little bit of a different viewpoint. You stand for freedom. You stand for faith. You're standing for your love of God and country.

So, you know, in teaching him, he's fairly young, but in teaching him these things, a lot of what was just said sort of brought that to mind. And I'd like the listeners to hear that you've got to stand for, not stand against. Well, John, as Aaron Tippin, as Aaron Tippin always says, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And I want to, I want to compliment you, John, because good government starts at home and you seem to be a shining example of that. And I'd also like to bring, I'm a motorcycle racer and I've probably pulled, I've probably pulled some things behind cars that I shouldn't have pulled. And, and John, I want to, I want to lay this on your heart this afternoon.

The Bible says that when faced with anxiety and uncertainty, our only choice is to give more. Now, John, this may not have happened to you or Robbie, but you may at some point in your life been in a high speed wobble where you're pulling a trailer and all of a sudden the trailer starts swapping ends. Do you know what you have to do to get out of that situation and not die? You have to speed up.

You have to give more. If you try to slow down when you're in a high speed wobble, when the trailer's behind your vehicle, you're going to crash. So you've got to do what the Bible tells us to do. When faced with anxiety and uncertainty, when we do get tired, when we do get bait beat down, we have to speed up and give more.

That's the only way that we're going to pull out of these wobbles that we're in. So you're exactly right, John, and I agree with you 100 percent. Yeah, I too. That's a really cool example you gave to your son, John. I'm so glad you shared that, and I appreciate you calling in very much.

We're going to get to somebody else, though. Thank you for calling in, John. I really appreciate it. God bless you, my friend, up there in Virginia. We've got Clay is in North Carolina. Clay, you're on Truth Talk Live, my friend.

What you got for us? My brother Robby and brother Dale, I just want to say a God-given thank you for coming on and sharing what you've shared. You know, I was listening to what other people have said and shared. It really caught my attention, and it was a record solve, and you know, brother Robby was talking about it. He was coming from visiting a school teacher in Deacon who was having a hard time breathing. So I went over and helped him, but I was listening to what you think. I heard a word received. I think it's more than referring, but you know, when y'all were talking, so what had happened, there was a deception that came along. I've heard pastors preach, you have the deceiving and the lying, that's the work. So many people were doing that, you know, it caught us in this confusion. And you know, it's interesting that you followed up, that you were talking to the Gospel of John.

I was going to call in and say, Aaron Tippin has a strong, you've got to stand for you for something or your fall for anything. And that's a very important song. You listen to those words, they have great meaning, but this pastor was preaching on this word called reconcile.

And in the Greek, it means change. Until each person who is, I'm not a political person, gentlemen, I'm not. And I have expressed that for years, because of all what the word and ticks stands for. I believe, you know, I believe in what I know, where you are, where you gentlemen are, it's burning that Christian foundation. Clay, I hate to jump in here, but you're breaking up horribly. Have you got a question or something? I don't have a question. I just would like to commend Brother Dale on what he's doing.

I just believe that when we, not only restoring, it's regenerating and renewing, but it's also reconcile, which means change and when you change things for what his will be done. That's awesome, Clay. Thank you, buddy. And Clay, I would just add, Clay, I would just add that I've made all the right enemies as the state treasurer of North Carolina. When I was first elected, I got 62 Christmas cards. The second year, I got five. And two of them were to, two of them were to deceased treasurers.

So I only got, really got three. Doing Right's Rarely Wrong. You're exactly right regarding the Aaron Tipping song. And thank you for believing in Jesus. Yeah, thank you, Clay. Well, Dale, we'll give you the last word because again, we only got about 30, 40 seconds. Well, just want to be optimistic about 2024.

No matter if you like the president or not, let's get back to the dignity and respecting all these elected officials. Another program powered by the Truth Network.