Trump announced his tariff plan for every nation in the world. The media, of course, is going nuts, unnecessarily scaring everyone. This is a great time to be reminded of God's promises in times of uncertainty.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. I want to talk about uncertainty, economic uncertainty. Donald Trump and his tariff announcement would have been last night and the news immediately was just all out panic. There was this whole thing, the Dow futures are dropping.

The Dow futures. Saw an interview Bloomberg did with the treasury secretary and they're like, what do you think about the Dow futures dropping? And Besson's like, I've learned not to pay attention to the Dow futures.

And if you look up anything about the stock market today, every article has the word rout in it. Rout.

To describe a 4% loss. Now we'll just see what it is tomorrow, right? I wouldn't be surprised if it's a 5% gain. Will these tariffs work? That's a big question. Depends what work means.

What do you mean by work? Will the stock market go up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up forever and always? Yeah, probably. But a lot of the stock market now is because of the government printing trillions of dollars, massively inflated. So maybe we're due for a proper correction here.

But the whole point that I want to make on the radio and here is that we need to look at the economy as more than just a GDP. There are other metrics that we need to be looking at when it comes to economic prosperity more than GDP or per capita GDP. Think about the per capita GDP. This is an interesting statistic that people use. It's something, it's something, but it's not everything. If you take two people and they each make $50,000, it's a per capita, or they produce $50,000,

it's a per capita GDP of $50,000. If one person then makes $100,000, or let's say 110,000 and the other earns zero, well, per capita GDP went up. Per capita GDP is now over $50,000, it's increased. But are we better?

Is the group better? How are we doing? Well, this one person's great, other person not so much. So is per capita GDP a proper metric to describe what's happening? It went up, but that can't be everything. I don't blame people for looking at the stock market as the only metric to gauge the economy

because it's bright and shiny and it's either red or green and it's easy to look at every second but how do you measure the thrivingness of a town? There's no metric for that, that you can monitor every day. How do you measure the health of a family's? There's no like index on that one. So of course people are gonna look at the stock market,

but we need to look beyond just the stock market. Anyway, will the tariffs work? Well, what is work? Well, I want prosperity for as many people as possible and to strengthen America. We can work on defining the word work here,

but it doesn't matter how we define it. I don't know. The answer is I don't know. I don't know if it'll work. I hope, I think it will. I hope it will, but I don't know. No crystal ball.

Yesterday I made the point on the radio that tariffs are not new. The very first bill that Congress passed when we became a country, the very first thing that Congress passed was a tariff bill. We've had them for all of our history until World War II. World War II, we had a new priority in the name of stopping the spread of communism. We prioritize lifting up the rest of the world so that they would choose our way of life and not the communist system.

And that may have been great at the, at the time. Great idea. But doing that for a long time now, 80 years, 80 some years, and maybe we've gone too far. Maybe we've lost sight of the point. We've lost the plot. And we've let the rest of the world now dictate our industrial policy.

And now it's time to take it back. And put tariffs on the rest of the world so that ultimately we can get back to free trade with all these other countries. Will that work? I don't know. I think so.

But here's what I do know. That the media is trying to scare you.

One giant variable with all these tariffs is Trump. No econ 101 class can ever account for Donald J. Trump. You could give an all econ 101 lesson and then at the end be like, well, here's another variable, Donald Trump, and just throw it all out the window. Another variable is the media.

And you know the media, well, at least they used to have incredible power of setting narratives and changing people's perceptions of reality. I think they still have some power left. So one question is, can the media convince people to be scared, to lose heart, and lose their nerve

and give up on this plan and to give up on Trump? Or will the media root for America? Right, like, hey, let's try to make this work, everyone. You know the answer, of course. But will they, you know what they'll try to make this work everyone? You know the answer of course. But will they, you know what they'll try to do, but will they be successful in tearing down Trump and changing the narrative and possibly the results of this effort which Trump

just wants to do to help our country. So those are two variables that we'll be watching. Now here's where the Bible comes in. Economic uncertainty. Thinking of Elijah and the widow. So Elijah tells Ahab, the king, that it's not going to rain. Three years, six months, long time.

God tells Elijah, rate where to go. And he says, there's going to be a river there, a brook for you to drink from, and a raven is going to bring you food. An unclean animal is gonna bring you food every day. Not a feast, but provision, enough. God told Elijah where to go, and it was always one step at a time.

God never said, hey, Elijah, here's the deal. Here's what we're gonna do. Here's the 10-step plan. It was just one thing, do this. Elijah obeyed without knowing what the next part of the story was. So he goes to this river. God says I've commanded the ravens to feed you there. I love the there. There. Feed you there. Nowhere else. Just there. Three and a half years go by

and the brook dries up. It's first Kings 17. Then the word of the Lord came to him saying arise go to Zarephath where it belongs to which belongs to Sidon and dwell there see I've commanded a widow there to provide for you the city is where Jezebel was from they worshiped Baal there not a place you think Elijah would want to go but God told him to see I've commanded a widow there to provide for you. A widow, the widow at the time, it was the poorest person in town. So he arose and he went to the city.

And when he came to the gate of the city, indeed, a widow was there gathering sticks. I love this line because every single word in the Bible matters. Every word she was gathering sticks. Whenever you see a detail like that, it's there for a reason. She was gathering sticks for fire, not firewood. Little sticks, that's all she could do. That's how poor she was. And Elijah asked for water and bread to a stranger, to a poor widow, to a stranger. Maybe there's someone else in the town you could have asked for that had more to give, right? There's some rich guy in town. Nope. Go to the poorest person in town. And the woman says, ah, what? This is all I have. And if I don't feed my son, he's going to die. The Bible says, and Elijah said

to her, do not fear, go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first and bring it to me. And afterward, make some for yourself and for your son. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, the bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry until the Lord sends rain on the earth." How about that? Do not fear. First thing Elijah said to her concern, do not fear. She went away and did according to the word of Elijah. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The bin of flour was not used up, nor did the jar of oil run dry,

according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by Elijah." Amazing, I love how God didn't just give her a full pantry. Right, God just didn't provide her with a giant barrel of oil. It was always the last morsel, every day,

it was the last morsel. Sort of like when the Israelites were out in the desert, right, and just gave them manna. Just enough for the day, no more. Don't go stashing it now. Just trust me, I'll give you more tomorrow. Love that story, and I'm not prosperity gospeling here, but I wanna be more like Elijah,

following God boldly with faith, total trust every step of the way, and patient. One theme that's come up on the show lately too is people expect, we live in a microwave culture, we expect everything to be fixed immediately. People in Wisconsin, someone called in and said that her coworkers in Wisconsin are ticked off for Republicans because everything's not fixed immediately.

It's like, geez, it's been four months. That's it? It's all the time you're giving anyone? We want everything done immediately. God just told Elijah to go there. He went three and a half years. Three and a half years. Could you

imagine? I want to be more like Elijah and also like this woman who's so generous and trusting of God's provision every day. I wonder if every day she did this she was nervous or did she get less and less nervous, or was she the same nervous every time? There will be times in life when we are, or feel, as ravenous as Elijah, and desperate as this widow. But God, time and time again in the Bible tells us to trust him

and he will provide. I share all this as a friendly reminder to not get in a state of despair that the media wants you to be in when it comes to these tariffs. Let's pray they work. Let's pray we have incredible economic prosperity for everyone in America and around the world. God will provide. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com transcript and no commercials on the website Mike Slater Locals dot com transcript and no commercials on the website Mike Slater dot Locals dot com.

660,000 Trump voters from 2024 did not vote for the Trump endorsed candidate in the WI Supreme Court race. Why not? What is their excuse? How do we reach these people and convince them that they must vote and this battle is not over just because Trump is in the White House?

We don't usually record a podcast on Wednesdays because I record the TV show on Wednesday and my wife has some stuff on Wednesdays. I don't have time, but I just want to do a quick one here on the post-election analysis. We spent three hours on the radio today on Sirius XM. I thought it was really good, really helpful. The top line numbers are we lost Wisconsin, the Supreme Court race.

The conservative candidate got a million votes. Trump just a couple of months ago got 1.6 million. 600,000 people in Wisconsin who voted for Trump did not vote for this guy. They had plenty of time. There's not just yesterday, it's early voting, 600,000, 660,000 to be specific. If only a third of those people voted, then this guy would have won.

Now there's a lot of ramifications to the Supreme court nationally. The big deal is that the now progressive court is going to redraw the lines for congressional races and draw out of existence or not out of existence, but draw two Republican seats in such a way that they now have more of Madison and Milwaukee to try to make them Democrat seats as opposed to Republican seats, which is what they are right now.

And of course, that means that the House is going to have a harder time staying a Republican majority House. And now Republicans are going to have to fight really hard in those seats to maybe keep them or pick up two other seats that they otherwise wouldn't have had. So that's the national ramifications of this. So why would 600,000 people who voted for Trump

not vote in this election? What's up with that? We spent three hours talking about it. And came to some conclusions that I think are really important and good. And we're gonna talk more about it on the radio tomorrow.

Maybe I can come back and do another recap here. But this is what I wanna share today on this politics by faith. I wanna explore more tomorrow this idea of patriotism or a lack of patriotism or not complete definition of patriotism.

It's something I've been exploring here recently. If you asked me a couple months ago what patriotism was, the first thing that pops in my mind would be war. Something with our service members. And that's because I grew up during 9-11, Iraq war, right? So that was patriotism to me.

It's military. That's part of it. Military is certainly part of it. I'm not saying it's not. But that was all of it. And then recently I got thinking, well, hold on.

Patriotism also, it's got to be more than that. And I added this element of invention. Like SpaceX and what they're doing, that's patriotic. That's a love of country. That's amazing patriotic thing. And innovation should be an element of patriotism. Art should be an element of

patriotism. Art and beautiful music and architecture, these are all elements of patriotism as well. Another aspect of it needs to be voting and it's a Christian duty as well. This is what our founders believed. Noah Webster, brilliant man, Webster's Dictionary. He said, When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, which we do, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men

who will rule in the fear of God. That's in quotes. That's 2 Samuel 23. Remember, back in the day, our founding fathers did not need to cite Scripture. They just needed to quote Scripture, and everyone knew what they were talking about. He went on, "...the preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty. If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government

will soon be corrupted." How many people didn't vote in Wisconsin, if you asked them why, they'd be like, ah, they're all corrupt. Why do you think? Because you and people like you have not discharged, have not exercised your duty properly. Because as Noah Webster said, if you neglect your duty, then unprincipled men will become in office. They're all

crooks. The government will soon be corrupted. Laws will be made, not for the public good, so much as for selfish or local purposes. Corruption or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws. The public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men, and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a Republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be

because the citizens neglect the divine commands and elect bad men to make and administer the laws. Let me give you two more quotes. John Adams says, The power of electing at stated periods each branch, it becomes necessary to every citizen then,

to be in some degree a statesman, and to examine and judge for himself of the tendency of political principles and measures. Let us examine then with a sober, a manly and a Christian spirit. Leave it one more.

Charles Finney, he was a pastor in the 1800s, part of the Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening. He said, The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics. Consistent ground. Once every four years? Consistent ground in politics,

or the Lord will curse them. Go back to the last few episodes if you missed them. The theme of the last few episodes has been, If you obey God, good things happen. If you disobey God bad things happen here's Charles Finney you better get involved in this or God will curse you Christians

have become exceedingly guilty in this matter still are today it's 1800 but the time has come when they must act differently Christians seem to act as if they thought God did not see what they do in politics but I tell you he does see it and he will bless or curse this nation according to the course they, Christians, take in politics. I will end here that apathy is a choice. Not voting is a choice.

Because you may not want to be involved in politics, but the enemy does. Apathy is not going to cut it. Much more on this tomorrow on SiriusXM and we'll come back to the podcast here as well. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com. This is a website, transcript, commercial free on the website. This is a website, transcript, commercial free on the website. Mike Slater dot Locals dot com.

Three big races in FL and WI on April 1 that have major national implications. Is MAGA just a once every 4-year movement? Or can we get out the vote on a random Tuesday in April, too? 

Welcome to Politics Lifesaved, thank you for being here. We are on the eve, as I record this, of two big elections, well three actually. Two in Florida, one is to replace the congressional seat left by Matt Gaetz, the other is to replace the congressional seat left by Mike Waltz, who is now the National Security Advisor. Mike Waltz one is getting most of the attention because this is the seat that Trump won by 33 points. No, Trump won by 30, Mike Waltz won by 33.

And who knows what's going to happen tomorrow, but the media has characterized this as a close race. And every headline is about how the Republicans are worried. Well, the Democrats did outspend 10 to 1 for this race. I thought of it because we're talking to Randy Fiend and I told him this. It's like the Democrats have, they're playing risk and they're losing. They haven't been on

their front foot for since November. So this is like all they got left. So it's like they're playing a game of risk and all their armies are in one country and they're just going for broke in one place. I think we're going to put everything we can in the 6th congressional district of Florida. Now what's really interesting about this race, well I'll tell you one thing about Randy, there's been media reports that he hasn't taken this race seriously enough because it's such a safe seat,

has always been such a safe seat. And I don't listen to anything the lamestream ever says, but this one probably is right. I guess some Republicans met with him and said, hey get your act together here because you couldn't actually lose this thing.

Because, and I think that's probably right because a couple weeks ago we talked to him about something totally different, just something about they were doing in Florida, and he was just the guy to talk to, like he wrote the bill in Florida

that we were talking about. And it was near the end of the conversation. It just happened to come up and he's like, oh yeah, I'm actually running for that seat. I was like, oh, geez, son of a gun, wow. When is it?

He's like, oh, a couple weeks from now. He's like, oh, but don't worry, it's just a, yeah, Trump won it by 33 points or something. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, well, good luck with that. And that was the end of the conversation. We talked to him last week and he was voterandyfine.com,

voterandyfine.com, voterandyfine.com the whole time. So there's definitely some urgency now in his step, no question about that. The other big race, we got the Matt Gaetz one, I don't really know the scene in that one, that one's getting no attention.

We're actually talking to the Republican on that one tomorrow, but I haven't heard a peep about that. I don't know if the Democrats are trying to get that one too or maybe they're doing it more quietly. Don't know. The other big race tomorrow though is the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Now there's a ballot amendment in Wisconsin which require an ID to vote and there are a bunch of school board

races but the big one is the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The reason this is a big deal is not only all the criminal justice stuff of course but if the Democrat wins they have said that they will redraw the district lines, the congressional district lines, and draw out two of the Republicans that currently have two seats. One of them, they would redraw the lines to add more of Madison, and the other, they would redraw the lines, I think, to add more of Milwaukee, so that they're now Democrat seats instead of

Republican seats, the way they're written right now. Apparently, they did this the last time a progressive won, or when they originally took over control of the courts a couple years ago. I think it was 2021. And they did this, they redrew the state lines for the state house and the state senate to favor the Democrats. And they've said, they've said out loud, they're going to do this for the congressional seats

as well. So that alone right there could change the entire makeup of the house, just this one Supreme Court race, which is why Trump and Elon have spent so much time and money there. So tomorrow we'll see if people show up. My big point I've been making is that we cannot just be a once every four year people. And maybe it's even worse than that.

Maybe it's just a vote for Trump movement. That would be so lame. That'd be so pathetic. We can't just do that. It's going to be more than just, because Trump's not going to be on the ballot anymore. Or maybe one more time. But not right. Probably not. So if we're just a vote for Trump party, then that's it. That's the end of the party.

There's no more party, no more chances to vote for Trump. But MAGA has got to be something bigger than Trump. I think Trump wants MAGA to be bigger than he wants his legacy to move on beyond him. So it has to be bigger than Trump. And we have to be more than once every four year people. We have to be midterm voters.

We have to be primary voters. You wonder why there's such terrible candidates. Well, no one voted in the primary. And we have to be April 1st, 2025 voters as well. And if we're not, then we don't deserve to win. But we have big things happening, exciting things

happening. And people who are in the more desperate situation, which is what the Democrats are right now, they have a little more zeal to vote. And we think we could just sit back. We're still in a victory parade from from back November. Like, oh, it's unbelievable.

Every day there's something great happening. We just sit back and then it's gone. The opportunity to keep doing all these things is gone. And from a political standpoint, if Republicans lose the midterms, then it's just, that's it.

Like, there's just impeachments for the last two years of Trump's term. That's the end of it. So we need huge wins and we need Randy Fine to win by 30 points. He needs to win by 30 points. Here's the last point and then we'll move to the Bible.

There's, I keep getting this number, there's 30, I don't know if this is exactly right, but there's something around 30 Republican congressmen who are in districts that Kamala won. Don't quote me on the number. There's a bunch of moderate Republicans who are in blue districts or very close districts. And they're scared to vote for MAGA stuff because they think they're going to lose the next election if they do.

And I've been trying to make the argument, no, Trump is running on 80-20 issues. Everything he's doing is 80-20. Like voter ID to vote, that's an 80-20 issue. So don't be scared because the media or the Democrats are telling you that that's so controversial. It's not. 80-20, it's like men and women's sports, like a 90-10 issue. Trump only does 80-20 issues.

He was asked back in daylight savings time, whenever that was, a couple weeks ago, what he thinks we should do. And he said, listen, some people like it earlier, some people like it later. It's 50-50. I'm not going to get involved. He doesn't want 50-50 issues. He wants 80-20 issues. And that's all he's doing. And then moderate Republicans need to know that. These are 80-20 issues that he's fighting for. And you need to stand on the side of the 80 and don't be scared. But if Randy Fine only wins by six points in a plus 30

Republican district, that's gonna send a message to a lot of the moderates, moderate Republicans, uh-oh I can't go all in as mag as I want or as I thought or as we want. So this has to be a huge win. So if you know anyone in Florida and these two districts, make sure they go vote and certainly anyone in Wisconsin as well. Now, that being said, I've got a couple of scriptures to share here.

This is such an unsatisfying answer when we talk about how to win elections.

It's a big question.

How do we win elections? It takes money, a ton of money, so much money, ridiculous insane amounts of money. Takes knowing the right people, connections, good timing, got to hit it right. It oftentimes takes a strong person on the top of the ticket to get you over the finish line. There's a lot of reasons why you can lose an election.

So you know, what does it take? It takes a lot. But the thing that's said the least is it takes God. I know we talked about this a week or two ago, but more and more scriptures keep popping up about the consequences of disobeying God. For a nation.

First Chronicles nine. So all Israel was recorded by genealogies and indeed they were inscribed in the book of the kings of Israel. But Judah was carried away captive to Babylon because of their unfaithfulness." It's right there. It's clear. Well, why were they taken away by captive to Babylon?

Because the Babylonians had stronger military apparatuses? No. No. It's not what it says. Wow, it's because of the geopolitical tensions of the moment. No.

Why were they carried away captive? Because of their unfaithfulness. But what about the weather conditions during the battle?

No.

God could overcome anything if God if they remained faithful to God God would have protected them against anything doesn't matter how many empires would have come their way but because they remained unfaithful anyone would have taken them over we get so caught up in the intrigues of the country this country that country who's gonna win this battle that war, this election, that election. God's in control of all of it. We do our best, but God's in control of it all. Now the very next chapter is the

death of Saul. The first king of Israel started off with so much potential, but this is how it ended. The battle became fierce against Saul. It's 1 Chronicles 10. The archers hit him and he was wounded by the archers. Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, draw your sword and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised men come and abuse me. But his armor-bearer would not, for he was greatly afraid.

Therefore Saul took a sword and fell on it. And when his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died. So Saul and his three sons died, and all his house died together. Why? Why did that happen? Well, you see, Saul was... No.

There's no, you see. Read verse 13. So Saul died for his lack of political acumen at the given moment. He didn't have enough money. He didn't have enough... No, no. Saul died for his unfaithfulness.

Why was Judah taken over by Babylon? Unfaithfulness. Very next chapter. Why is Saul dead? His unfaithfulness, for which he committed against the Lord, because he did not keep the word of the Lord, and also because he consulted a medium

for guidance. But he did not inquire the Lord. Therefore he, God, killed him and turned the kingdom over to David, the son of Jesse.

Who killed Saul? Is Israel? Therefore he, capital H, therefore he killed him. Real quick on the consulting a medium. I saw a political commentator.

I don't know this person enough.

I don't want to call him out by name right now. But they were on some other show and she was talking about consulting a medium. I'm not that I think she's the word. I got that.

That's not it.

Stay away from that stuff. Leviticus 1931. I say I say that's not it meaning. This the conservative movement can't move in that direction. We can't be moving in that way. As conservatives as a conservative movement.

Leviticus 19.31 says, Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. That's what Saul did. He consulted a medium for God. So what do we consult?

Instead, seek first the kingdom. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." That's Matthew 6, right before that. Therefore do not worry, saying, what shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? Who will win the next election? For after all these things the Gentiles seek, I added that election one, for your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But first, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and

all these things shall be added to you. This of course doesn't mean do nothing. No one ever says such a thing. I don't know of anywhere in the Bible, correct me if I'm wrong, if it ever says to sit back and do nothing. But also know in the end, God will do whatever he wants. Look at the kingdoms he raised and the kingdoms he fell in just a single sentence.

We need to do what we can to win our elections. Whether they're on November 5th every four years, midterm elections, or a random Tuesday in April of an odd-numbered year. We've got to do everything we can to win every election we can. Every day. Every day.

Seek first, but we can do it. The website is MikeSlater.Locals.com. We put the transcript and this episode commercial free up on the website MikeSlater.Locals.com. We put the transcript and this episode commercial free up on the website MikeSlater.Locals.com. This episode commercial free up on the website Mike Slater dot locals dot com.