The World and Everything in It: February 29, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. Hi. My name is Andrea Heikkinen. I live in White Bear Lake, Minnesota with my husband and three beautiful daughters. We listen as we get ready for the day. We hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Some Arab Americans turn against President Biden in Michigan.

AUDIO: I was proud today to walk in and pull a Democratic ballot and vote uncommitted.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, what the Palestinian Authority says to the world versus what it says to its own people. And, a family in Israel tries to figure out how to live at peace in the middle of a war.

SHIRA: There's no book out there that says how to parent during a war. I looked.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on Trump’s promise to crack down on attacks against Christians.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, February 29th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Texas wildfire » Radio chatter inside a fire truck in the Texas Panhandle as it drove through an orange cloud of smoke.

Firefighters are struggling to get a handle on the so-called Smokehouse Creek Fire.

It has now devoured more than a half-million acres, making it the second-largest fire in state history.

The fast-moving flames have consumed hundreds of homes since the fire broke out Monday.

SOUND: [Warning sirens]

2. Great Lakes tornadoes » In central Ohio …

SOUND: [Warning sirens]

Warning sirens blared on Wednesday as an EF-2 tornado struck near Columbus.

Thunderstorms spawned a rare February tornado outbreak in the Great Lakes region with touchdowns also reported in the Chicago suburbs.

No injuries were reported.

NYC Adams pushing to change sanctuary city status » New York City is now rethinking its sanctuary city policies amid a migrant crisis and a surge in crime. Mayor Eric Adams:

ADAMS: We need to modify the sanctuary city law that if you commit a felony, a violent act, we should be able to turn you over to ICE and have you deported.

Law enforcement leaders have reported a string of robberies and assaults tied to migrant suspects in Times Square and elsewhere including an attack that injured two police officers.

Biden, Trump to visit border today » And President Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump are making dueling appearances today at the Texas border. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Trump and Biden are choosing sharply different backdrops for their visits.

President Biden will be in Brownsville today near the Gulf coast where illegal crossings have dropped.

Donald Trump is visiting Eagle Pass in the Del Rio sector … which tallied more than 70,000 arrests in December alone. That was more than the entire 2019 budget year.

More than 7 million migrants are known to have illegally crossed the border since Biden took office.

Trump will continue to hammer those record-breaking numbers as some polls show border security is now the top concern of voters.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Supreme Court to hear Trump immunity case » The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a landmark case to decide whether former president Donald Trump can be prosecuted on charges alleging that he interfered with the 2020 election.

Trump’s lawyers argue that he had presidential immunity, but the DC Circuit court disagreed.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case in April.

McConnell to step down after 2024 election » The longest serving Senate leader in history will step aside after the election in November.

MCCONNELL: I always imagined a moment when I had total clarity and peace about the sunset of my work. That day arrived today.

McConnell heard there on the Senate floorWednesday, a week after turning 82.

The Kentucky lawmaker joined the Senate in 1984 and Republicans elected him as majority leader in 2007.

He said that while he is passing the torch to the next generation of leaders.

MCCONNELL: I still have enough gas in my tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics, and I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they’ve become accustomed. 

While he’ll step down as leader, McConnell said he does plan to serve out the remaining three years of his Senate term.

Hunter Biden testimony » House Republicans will soon call Hunter Biden to testify publicly.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said so shortly after the president’s son testified privately at the Capitol on Wednesday.

GOP Congressman Pat Fallon said Republicans asked tough questions about Hunter’s business dealing and his father’s knowledge of them, but did not get helpful answers.

FALLON: He didn’t say anything new. If we presented him with something that was very troubling, he would just say he was wacked out of his mind and probably high at the time, and he’s not sure if it’s even accurate.

Other GOP members described Hunter as defiant and said his testimony contradicted that of other witnesses.

But the Democrats say Republicans are merely fishing and coming up empty.

Yulia address » The widow of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny addressed members of the European Union’s parliament on Wednesday, becoming overwhelmed with emotion as she spoke.

NAVALNAYA: Putin is the leader of an organized criminal gang. Uh … Sorry. 

Yulia Navalnaya said her husband was thrown into a small cell and cut off from the world, adding that he wasn’t allowed to receive phone calls or even letters.

He died earlier this month in an Arctic penal colony.

She announced a funeral service planned for tomorrow in Moscow.

NAVALNAYA: I'm not sure yet whether it will be peaceful or whether the police will arrest those who have come to say goodbye to my husband.

Navalnaya also vowed to carry on her husband’s work.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Uncommitted voters in Michigan. Plus, Finding peace in wartime.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 29th of February, 2024. Thanks for listening to WORLD Radio. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up on The World and Everything in It: The White House has a Michigan problem.

On Tuesday, President Biden won the Democratic primary with over 80% of the vote, but a slice of the votes he didn’t get raises questions about whether Biden can win the state in November.

World’s Washington Bureau Intern Clara York has the story.

CLARA YORK: Rashida Tlaib is the only Palestinian American member of Congress, and on Tuesday she urged Michigan Democrats to do something unconventional.

TLAIB: I was proud today to walk in and pull a Democratic ballot and vote uncommitted … this is the way we can use our democracy to say “ Listen. Listen to Michigan.’’

Just over 13 percent of Michiganders who voted on Tuesday followed Tlaib’s example. While President Biden won the primary with 8 out of 10 votes cast, more than 100,000 people checked the “Uncommitted” box on their ballot. That’s more than any previous challenge to an incumbent who isn’t facing a serious opponent for the nomination. When former President Barack Obama faced a similar protest vote in 2012’s Michigan primary, only 10 percent checked the uncommitted box on the ballot.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, Democrats have been divided over Biden’s continued military and moral support for Israel. Some Democrats like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman stand with the President.

FETTERMAN: Nothing changes what I just said. That I’m always going to stand on the side of Israel. Always.

But self-titled progressive lawmakers like Tlaib oppose Biden’s support for Israel’s ground war in Gaza.

Their constituents, largely Arab-American communities and younger voters in New England and the Midwest, are also turning on the president. That includes Palestinian American Organizer, Adam Abusalah.

ABUSALAH: You know, when we look at it, we helped this guy get over the finish line. We supported him. We donated to him. We knocked on doors for him. And right now, as our family is being bombed, he can't even say that they deserve to live in peace and dignity…

Arab Americans claim Biden is complicit in a Genocide of Palestinians by supporting Israel.

And in recent weeks, a campaign called Abandon Biden, spread mostly through social media, has encouraged dissatisfied voters to send a protest message to Washington. Here’s campaign chair, Samraa Luqman addressing Biden at a news conference in Dearborn, Michigan on February 1st.

SAMRAA LUQMAN: We would ask that you return to the White House or to Israel, where you belong. And don't show your face in Michigan until a ceasefire is called, at minimum.

The day before Tuesday’s primary, President Biden told reporters in New York that a ceasefire deal could be settled by early next week…but leaders in Israel and Gaza have since said that’s not true.

Meanwhile, the “Abandon Biden” campaign garnered significant support with Arab communities in Michigan.

For example, in the heavily-Muslim community of East Dearborn, Biden won only 13% of the vote…while 84% went to the “uncommitted” option. Overall, 56% of Dearborn voters chose “uncommitted.”

Another region with a high concentration of uncommitted votes was Washtenaw county…home to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan.

WIELHOUWER: Not that students have massive voter turnout, but in an environment where there are more students ... that's a place where uncommitted is doing better.

Peter Wielhouwer is professor of Political Science at Western Michigan University. He says social media played a role in spreading pro-Palestinian messages among young people.

WIELHOUWER: I mean, even just talking to my students, I know a large chunk of them get their news through the social media platforms like TikTok or X or something like that….I mean, TikTok’s the new Walter Cronkite.

A Pew Research poll last year found that nearly a third of adults ages 18-29 say they regularly get news on TikTok…including from videos like this one posted by user Sofia from Texas on Tuesday.

SOFIA-TIKTOK: So, I went over to the Michigan Voter Information Center, and for them, they have an option to pick “uncommitted.” And this is a super, super important option that people should pick.

Wielhouwer says algorithms tend to feed people content they already agree with. And TikTok may not convert many voters to another party, but it can garner a lot of movement behind #AbandonBiden.

In a swing state like Michigan, that could be a problem for the President. While the state consistently leans Democrat, Republican Donald Trump flipped the state in 2016…going after blue collar workers in particular.

TRUMP: We are going to bring back the automobile industry to Michigan, bigger and better and stronger than ever before…

Wielhouwer says Trump didn’t mobilize a massive group of new voters. Instead, many democratic voters just didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. That scared the party.

WIELHOUWER: As we look at 2024, if the Democrats can't mobilize an uninterested or alienated base, that's a problem for them. And that's the kind of thing that Donald Trump could leverage. The relative excitement of Republican voters versus the relative apathy of the Democratic voters.

Less than 750,000 Democrats voted on Tuesday, well below 2020’s record 2.3 million.

One of those voters was Detroit resident Hira Khan.

KHAN: People felt like there were not any candidates that really represented what we were asking for. And I think given the 'uncommitted' option on the ballot has really empowered people. It's really activated people. I think people are very motivated to come out and have an outlet to really raise their voice on this issue.

Voters like Khan aren’t likely to cast a ballot for Trump come November. But if similar movements build momentum in other swing states, Biden may be pressured to pull back from his long-standing support for Israel in order to shore up this part of his base.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Clara York.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misidentified the university where Peter Wielhouwer works.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: A change of command within the Palestinian Authority.

On Monday, a top leader within the body that governs the Palestinian people in the West Bank announced that he’s resigning.

SHTAYYEH: [Speaking in Arabic] 

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh says he’s stepping aside so that a new government can lead the effort to unify Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

This comes after months of diplomatic pressure from the United States to reform the Palestinian Authority. Here’s National Security Advisor John Kirby on Friday.

KIRBY: We believe that whatever post-conflict Gaza looks like the Palestinian people have should have a voice and a vote in what that looks like through a revitalized Palestinian Authority.

REICHARD: What does the shakeup mean for the war in Gaza? Joining us now to talk about it is Itamar Marcus. He’s the founder and director of the Israel-based organization, Palestinian Media Watch.

Itamar, thanks for joining us!

ITAMAR MARCUS: Thank you very much for inviting me.

REICHARD: Tell us a little bit about Palestinian Media Watch and how it operates.

MARCUS: Media Watch was founded in 1996. It was three years after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. And we wanted to know what they were saying in their internal world. We knew what they were telling the media and what they were telling negotiators and what they were telling people in Washington. We wanted to know what they were telling their own people. And in particular, we wanted to know what they were telling the children, because we believe that the messages to Palestinian children are the authentic and honest messages. And what we’ve learned during these years is there are two different messages. There’s the messages for the international community and their messages to their people. And if you want to know what the Palestinians want and care about don’t listen to what they tell you, listen to what they say to their people and their children.

REICHARD: And what are Palestinian leaders saying to their people and their children?

MARCUS: There’s a great myth in the international community that the Palestinian Authority wants to have a state beside Israel. They tell their own people that the process that they’re involved in right now is a temporary process. It’s a stages process. One of the top Palestinian leaders—his name is Abbas Saki—once said, on TV, “We tell the world that we want Israel to go back to the 1967 borders, because everyone knows Israel cannot survive those borders.” to the worldhe PA says they are against terror to their own people, they absolutely glorify terror. I’ll just give you one example. You’re talking about the Prime Minister Mohammad Shteyyeh who’s resigning. Last year, an Israeli woman and her two daughters were murdered in the drive-by shooting. A month later, Israel tracked down the terrorists and killed them. That very day Prime Minister Shteyyeh put a picture of the terrorists on his Facebook page. And he wrote the words, “Glory and honor to a righteous martyrs.” So he was saying that this act of murdering a mother of two daughters in a drive by shooting was something to be glorified and honor. That’s the Palestinian Authority. So that’s a message they’ll never give in Washington or in Brussels, but to their own people that’s a consistent message. When Israel has no right to exist, and even essentially Jews have no right to exist, if you kill them you’re a Palestinian hero.

REICHARD: Well, now we’ve had this leadership shake-up in the Palestinian Authority with the Prime Minister, resigning. Why is that significant?

MARCUS: Israel has been saying we will not accept Palestinian Authority rule in Gaza, and for very good reason. The Palestinian Authority, as I said, teaches and educates, denies Israel’s right to exist, glorifies killers, pays rewards to killers. So Israel has said we won’t have the PA. The United States come back and said, “Okay, how about a revitalized or changed or reformed the PA.” What the PA is trying to do here is pretend that they have changed, pretend that they are revitalized. And then come to the United States and say, “Look, we’ve changed all of the bureaucrats and all the ministers who run our government.” In fact, as long as the PA and Hamas continue to pull the strings of those administrators, it doesn’t matter who’s paying the checks to the teachers. It matters who’s putting the content in the school books, and the Palestinian Authority has not yet given any indication that they’re willing to really reformed themselves in terms of their essence. So I hope the United States isn’t fooled by this masquerade of the PA and they tell them, “Listen, that is secondary, what we want to have is a fundamental change. Stop rewarding terrorists, glorifying terrorists, telling your people and your children that Israel has a right to exist, and then we’ll have someone we can talk to.”

REICHARD: Itamar, how does the PA reward terrorists?

MARCUS: In 2004, the Palestinian Authority passed a law which they called the Prisoners Law, under which every terrorist who ends up in Israeli prison from the days arrested starts receiving a Palestinian Authority salary. The longer he’s in prison, or she, the higher the salary goes, eventually reaching 12,000 shekels a month, which is about $3,500 a month, which is approximately three times the average Palestinian Authority salary. So the best paid people in the Palestinian Authority are those people who’ve murdered Israelis and spent a long time in jail. And they get these incredibly high monthly salaries. In addition, every terrorist who’s killed in the act of fighting Israelis, their family receives a 6,000 shekel, or I would say close to $2,000 stipend, and then they receive 1,400 shekels or about $600 a month for the rest of their lives. So a PA is spending $350 million a year to reward terror directly. Any country that’s funding the Palestinian Authority is paying for this. The Americans for years and the Europeans are going through some kind of denial and claiming, “Oh, it’s not our money.” But it’s clear that when you’re dealing with electronic money, and we are dealing with budgets like today, when the PA is spending 350 million and the United States is giving them 350 million, the United States is facilitating those payments to terrorists in prison.

REICHARD: Itamar, what can we expect if the PA takes over Gaza after the war?

MARCUS: If the PA takes over Gaza after the war, within a few years, assuming they also have security control, we’ll have hundreds of kilometers of tunnels again, we’ll have armed groups, we’ll have people planning to do exactly what was done on October 7. The reason why October 7 has happened in the Gaza Strip, and not in the West Bank, is because Israel has been going into the Palestinian cities. And every time terrorists from Hamas or from the Palestinian Authority or Fatah organize themselves, Israel has been capturing them or killing them. Because we have the proximity, we’ve not let them organize to create this kind of terror. The motivation for the terrorists in the West Bank was just as great as the motivation in Gaza. And had they had the opportunity to build up an infrastructure they would have done the same thing. If we go and give the PA back Gaza again and the United States insists, and Israel complies and takes its forces out, within a couple of years, we will be back exactly where we were on October 6.

REICHARD: Itamar Marcus is the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch based in Israel. Itamar, thank you for your time.

MARCUS: Thank you.

REANELL DAWN: Welcome to Leap Central…

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: That’s Raenell Dawn, and today is her 16th birthday.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Wait, she doesn’t sound like a teenager.

BROWN: That’s because she’s a leap day baby! Dawn’s lived 64 years, but goes four years between birthdays.

Back when she was seven-leap-years-old, Dawn started a birthday club for people born on leap day, but it’s not all party hats and cake.

She spoke with The Today Show around Leap Day 2020:

DAWN: For some reason programming computers, the programmers forgot about leap day and so oftentimes, February 29 isn’t even an option.

Leap day babies face tricky problems with birth certificates, birthday coupons, and so forth, but Dawn says she’s happy to be part of it.

DAWN: I believe it’s the most important date on the calendar because it keeps the calendar in line with the seasons.

Without leap day, we’d be about 25 days off every 100 years… and eventually, Christmas would end up in the summer.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 29th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

This week on Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast, Kelsey Reed and Jonathan Boes are joined by WORLDkids editor Chelsea Boes to talk about digital relationships. How do online interactions affect our kids and teens? And what does it mean to be embodied? Here’s a preview:

CHELSEA BOES: There was another article about rats in the New York Times last week. They had rats take selfies, and the rats loved it. And they just kept coming back and taking more selfies, and our oldest daughter loves to call people with the filters on, do you know what I'm talking about? Like when you FaceTime or Facebook Messenger, but you can do all the filters. And she loves to do that with her grandma. And it's like, okay, I love that you want to talk to your grandma. But I often tell her no filters, because when you're using a filter, you're just looking back at yourself. You aren't looking at Grandma, you aren't listening to grandma. She was kind of walking around the house, and she was really bored. And I was like, why don't you read this article in The New York Times? And she did. And I said, so did the rats like taking selfies? And she said, Yeah, they did. And then I said, Congratulations, you're the only eight year old in the world who read an article in The New York Times. But anyway, I felt like that was important for her to read, just so that she could understand like, there's something underneath all the screen stuff that's happening. The fun is not neutral, all the time.

KELSEY REED: So, what it means to be persons, what it means to be truly who we are to flourish as who we are, means moving into relationships that are challenging, that are risky, that come with pain. We do that also with one another, not by retreating, not by finding some substitute for those relationships.

You can hear the entire episode of Concurrently today wherever you get your podcasts. And find out more at concurrentlypodcast.com.

BROWN: Coming next: seeking stability in a war zone.

Life in Israel has been slowly taking on a new normal since the October 7th terror attack by Hamas. Many people are back to the jobs they had before the war and most children are back in school, but underneath the routine, many kids are fearful.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Mary Muncy brings us the story of an Israeli family trying to find their new normal. WORLD is not using their last name as a safety precaution.

SOUND: [Family in kitchen]

REPORTER, MARY MUNCY: Shira, her husband, and three kids are sitting around the breakfast table before they head to work and school.

JORDAN: [gasp] What happened? Tell us. What happened?

SCHYLER: So, there was this station…

They live in Jerusalem. It’s more secure than many other parts of Israel.

Schuyler is Shira’s middle daughter. She’s 12 and she’s telling the family about drama at the bat mitzvah she went to last night. Nate—Shira’s 10-year-old—is explaining what he needs to eat in Minecraft to survive. Jordan, the oldest, is quietly eating her cornflakes with milk and honey. She’s still waking up.

They finish eating, grab the lunches Shira packed, and head out the door.

When Hamas struck on October 7, everything stopped for Shira and her family.

The kids stayed home from school and the Israeli government called her husband to serve in the military. Shira started driving her kids to school so they didn’t need to ride the bus and she started thinking about how to keep her kids mentally and physically healthy.

SHIRA: There's no book out there that says how to parent during a war. I looked. I did go to Amazon. Did someone write a book for me? There's no book.

So Shira and her husband have been figuring it out one day at a time.

Routine went out the window and every day presented a new, overwhelming hurdle. So, on October 9th, while her husband was at the base, Shira gathered her kids around the kitchen table. She grabbed the whiteboard that had their calendar for October on it, erased it, and asked her kids what they wanted to do after the war.

SHIRA: Then they all shouted, you know, whatever they wanted and I would write it down and then I left it hanging in the kitchen.

They made columns for every family member—including the dog. They wrote down things like going to a water park, getting coffee at their favorite coffee cart, and visiting their grandparents.

SHIRA: So this whiteboard has been getting us through. Like when things are really hard. We're like okay, you know, what do you want to do after the war? Where do you want to go?

And things did get hard.

Her kids were scared. They couldn’t sleep because they were worried Hamas would kidnap them from their beds. They asked her what was happening to the children the terrorists kidnapped. She had to explain to her daughters what Hamas did to the women they took.

Over the coming weeks, they almost filled their whiteboard.

Shira is grateful her husband got to come home at night. But he was barely home. He usually left the house at 5:30 in the morning and sometimes wasn’t back until 9:00 at night.

SHIRA: So during that time period while he was on the base, I was single mommying suddenly, and in order to do that I actually had to walk away from some of my project work. So I lost a huge chunk of income that goes to pay our bills and pay the rent and keep the lights on in our house, and I spent the majority of my day literally driving carpool.

At first, Shira was just driving because it had to get done, but after a while she realized the forced one-on-one time gave her kids a chance to process with her.

SHIRA: It's hard enough to be like 12 in a new school, but to be 12 in a new school and have rocket attacks and a war and like your dad not being home.

In the beginning, they listened to the news in the car, but that got too heavy. So they started adding music to a YouTube playlist and playing that every morning. Shira calls it her war mix. They would pray in the car together and life started to settle.

Then one Saturday, over Shabbat, the Israeli Defense Forces lost 11 soldiers. At that point, it was the most soldiers they’d lost at one time since Hamas’ initial attack. Shira and her family talked about it together, but that only softened a very hard blow.

SHIRA: I had a hard time getting out of bed the next morning, but I had to take my kids to school.

So they got in the car, prayed, and started the war mix like normal. On that day, Nate was the last one she dropped off.

SHIRA: We were in the car. And my son said to me, “You know, I'm going to be a soldier one day.” I said, “Yeah, I know.” And he's like, “But I don't want to die.” And it was like, you know, that punch in the gut? What do you say? What do I mean? I say, “Well, I don't want you to die either, you know, please God, you won't.”

So Shira told him what she calls the lie every mother in Israel tells themselves.

SHIRA: I say to him, “Please, God. By the time you're 18, and you have to draft, it you won't- it won't be a war,” and then we drop him off at school.

Over the past few months, there were also small victories. Shira’s husband aged out of the military. He started his old job again and is helping with carpool. Eventually, 12-year-old Schuyler rode the bus by herself for the first time since before the attack.

SHIRA: She cried. She cried walking to school. She was really upset and she cried. But then she got to school and I told her I'm proud of her and then she adjusted. Yeah, it wasn't, I didn't feel good for me. It felt horrible. You know, I almost jumped in the car and picked her up.

But she wanted Schuyler to start feeling safe enough to be independent again.

Now, about five months into the war, they can do a lot of the things on the whiteboard.

NATE: First one is go to the movie.

SHIRA: Which we can do now.

NATE: We can do now. Next is go to a water park. And have a sleepover with my friends. And visit my family in America.

Life isn’t back to normal yet, but they’re getting there, one day at a time.

SHIRA: We said as a family that we want to live in peace. That's all we want.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 29th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next: politics and faith. There’s nothing wrong with working to create good laws and elect good leaders. But WORLD commentator Cal Thomas warns some Christians are trusting politicians to do things only Christ can do.

CAL THOMAS: Last Thursday, former President Donald Trump spoke to an audience of devoted fans at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville. Among other things, he said if re-elected president he would create a federal task force for “fighting anti-Christian bias. … Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America.”

From the beginning of the nation, presidents and candidates have used religious language and quoted Scripture to influence Christians to vote for them and back their policies. Not all have meant what they said, or reflected in their personal and political lives the faith they claim to hold.

Trump also repeated his assertion that the radical left wants “to tear down crosses where they can, and cover them up with social justice flags,” adding, “But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.”

I always thought crosses were a good defense against vampires until someone told me there are no vampires in America. I replied, “See, the crosses are working!”

But seriously, folks.

Evangelical Christians are just as misguided if they believe government is necessary to defend their faith. And they’re getting their marching orders from somewhere other than the Scriptures they claim to revere.

Paul, an Apostle of Jesus, suffered numerous persecutions because of his faith. These included beatings, shipwrecks, hunger, jail and eventually death. He responded in his second letter to Timothy: “My persecutions and sufferings that happened to me … I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Jesus Christ will be persecuted….”

In John chapter 15, Jesus Himself told his disciples to expect persecution: “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you, also….”

Matthew records Jesus saying: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven….” The key words here are “for righteousness’ sake” and “falsely.” If one is persecuted for saying and doing stupid things, the persecution is on them.

Christians all over the world have suffered harsh persecution. American Christians think they are being persecuted for things that would be considered trivial by those who have experienced imprisonment, even death, for their faith.

It’s not wrong to seek good government, but ultimately, people of strong faith don’t need secular government to defend them. Like Christians of the past (and some in the present like Russian patriot Alexei Navalny), we’re called to stand strong for the faith, living it out in obedience to the one we call “Lord.” If we do that, the world just might stand back and marvel.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet on Womens’ History Month in a time in which some can’t define what a woman is. And, after months of delay, Dune part 2 hits theaters. Is it worth the wait?

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Psalmist writes: “I must perform my vows to you, O God; I will render thank offerings to you. For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.” —Psalm 56, verses 12 and 13

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.