How's it going, America,
Check out our latest episode of The Pod Millennial! I talk to award-winning director Matthew Thayer about his latest documentary, Can You Hear Me Now. We dive into the intriguing intersection of faith, politics, and prophecy, particularly in the context of the 2020 election and the role of figures like Charlie Kirk. Matthew shares his personal experiences with prophetic culture, the challenges of filmmaking, and the importance of faith in public life. New episodes drop every Tuesday! Listen, rate (5 stars, of course!), and subscribe!
Let's get into it:
President Trump delivered the keynote at the Republican National Convention Midterms Edition (as I've taken to calling it) on Wednesday night, and he promised to give every American adult a check for $5,000 if the GOP retains control of the House and Senate. Back when the Biden administration made these kinds of promises and delivered checks of $2,000 to every American adult, I said it was a stupid idea. And it's no less stupid now. I'm just not a fan of handing out cash on credit with an undisclosed interest rate so we can keep ballooning the national debt.
So far, no one seems to be into it. Not the national debt hawks, not the Democrats who have so quickly forgotten when they backed Biden doing the exact same thing, and not a GOP that looks at this and realizes that this would cost both $1 trillion and break federal law against, y'know, buying votes.
"Here is my promise," he said, "if the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them... because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000." It's unclear what that's a dividend of. We're already paying heaps more at the gas pump, where I pulled in to fill up this morning for $4.19 a gallon (don't worry, I had my supermarket discount card and got $0.70 off per gallon).
Speaking of which, Trump spoke to reporters from the tarmac before heading off to Dallas on Wednesday and made a couple more promises. He promised that the war with Iran would come to an end after the election and that we would see gas prices under $2 per gallon, also after the election.
He said the war "will end immediately after the election," then went on to say: "they can't hold out any longer. They're desperate to try and affect the election so that we could get a nice, weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon. All they want is a nuclear weapon, and if they had a nuclear weapon, the whole world is in deep trouble." When Trump started the war in February, he promised it would last just 2 to 4 weeks, yet here we are in September.
Then he was asked about gas prices and how he'd like to explain that to Americans as barrels reached over $100 this week. "I think it's very easy to explain to America," he said, "All you have to do is say 'will you let Iran have a nuclear weapon' and the answer is 'no.' And they're doing very poorly. Their country is in shambles right now. They are, as you probably have seen, 300% inflation. Their money is valueless, they're not paying their soldiers. We control the Strait. And lots of other things."
"For a little while I would say this, shortly, but right after the election, because they'd like to have it that way, but right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward, they're going to be tumbling down. And we'll get 'em down and I think for gasoline we'll get it below $2 a gallon."
So by my count, that means if we all vote GOP: the war ends, gas prices go down, and we each have an extra five grand to play with heading into Christmas. Will all these promises sway the average voter?
Libby