Friday Wrap-Up with Bob: December 12, 2025 (Transcript)

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO BOB BARNEY’S 7:11 BROADCAST: Friday Wrap-Up with Bob: December 12, 2025

Hi, Bob Barney with The Plain Truth Today’s Friday Wrap-Up, brought to you by theplaintruth.com, the one place to go to every day to find out what’s happening and if God has anything to do with it. We are a news source that considers God’s prophecies in today’s news. Some, if not most of today’s news, has nothing to do with God, but some of it does, and that’s what we do in this program.

There’s a lot of stuff going on this week. There’s stuff from the economy, from the Fed lowering interest rates again, from Trump’s people taking over a Venezuelan tanker full of oil that I guess we’re going to keep, and we’ll see how that happens, and just on and on and on and on. There’s all kinds of things, and the first thing I think I’m going to talk to you about today is the deep freeze that went across the country, and we’re in Florida for several weeks for business and pleasure, our anniversary. We were married in Florida. We actually got a justice of the peace, to be frank, to sign all the marriage certificates, and we married ourselves on Hollywood Beach in December of 1981. It’s on our anniversary.

We’ll put something up on the Plain Truth usually when that happens, but even down here in the Tampa area where we are right now, we’re doing business down here as well. We have a location in Florida. It’s cold.It’s very, very cold. It’s always cold this time of year up this area of Florida, but it’s cold all the way down to Fort Myers, across to the Miami, considering most years what the temperature would be in December, but we left Virginia last week, and the day after we left, they were socked by a three-inch snowstorm. Very cold weather, and they’ve gotten, I think, one or two snowstorms since.We’ve missed it all. I kind of miss looking at my yard with my new addition to the house with the snow all over it. It would be a nice picture, but maybe it’ll continue when we get back in a couple more weeks, but the deep freeze has been a real problem.

We had an article on the Plain Truth about it called Snowmageddon is I in America, and many experts, they claim in this article, and I’ve said this for a while, and I’ll tell you why, many experts predicting the harshest winter in 12 years for many of the United States’ estates, and I believe that’s the case, and I’ll tell you why I think it’s the case. There’s a lot of old wives tales that most people poo-poo, but over the years, and I’ve gained some years now in my life, over the years, I find some of these wives tales tend to be true, and one of them is the pine cones on trees. Most years, and we’ve had very mild winters here in Virginia, or there in Virginia, since I’m in Florida right now, but there in Virginia, we’ve had pretty mild winters for the last five years, and when you look at the, going out of my driveway, there’s a row of big, tall, old pine trees, and they usually drop maybe 100, 150 pine cones, and that’s normal, but the old wives tale is when you’re going to have a really, really cold winter, you’re going to have 10 times the pine cones on each tree than you normally have, and I said to my wife back in September, when the pine cones were really being visible, that each tree is covered with pine cones.

You can’t go three inches apart, and there’s another pine cone. I’ve never seen that. I think we’re going to have a really tough winter, and the same thing’s happened, I’ve been told, up in Connecticut, in New York, and in a lot of other states.Another thing people always said, my mother always said, was caterpillars. If they’re very hairy, they’re going to be a harder winter. Now, a lot of people disagree with that, but I’m listening to a woman who lived to be 92 years old, and she saw many a season of caterpillars, and a lot of times, I find out that these old wives tales that people don’t believe in, turn out to be true.So, I think we may have a very, very harsh winter coming, and we’ll see. The other story that I personally covered, and my editor put up, but I was personally very interested in, because I thought it was funny, is America’s most, the title is America’s Most Powerful Banker, and that’s Jamie Dimon with Chase Manhattan, JPMorgan Chase. Jamie Dimon says to Trump, stop making things up.

And it’s something I have, my wife and I joke about. We listen to Donald Trump in his speeches, and he’s always been, you know, boisterous, and he’s always exaggerated, and he’s always told little fibs, but for the most part, the things that Donald Trump said had some basis of fact, and did a good job, like I said in Trump 1.0, but this time around, you listen to Donald Trump, and he makes stuff that is just absolutely bonkers, and one of that is the economy is sound, and it’s all a Democrat thing that people are being told that the economy isn’t sound. Well, I got news for 85 percent of Americans, and 66, by the way, 66 percent of Republicans who voted for Donald Trump says the economy is worse now than it was under Joe Biden.Now, I’m not saying that Donald Trump has caused that. We are still living under what Joe Biden and company did to us with his auto pen, and what else they did, because their policies is what led to this inflation. It is also what led to the debt going sky high, and the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars that went to pay for BLM, and all of these other pro-liberal programs that absolutely raped the American treasury out of its money.We’re covering right now on The Plain Truth, and I think everybody’s heard it all over the place, on the Somali refugees that took billions of dollars of COVID aid relief money, and fraudulently stole it from our government in Michigan. Now, it’s turning out in Maine, and I got news, it’s going to turn out in every Democrat-run state. It’s not going to probably happen as much in Republican states, but it’s going to happen in Democrat states.But Donald Trump’s getting on TV and saying, oh, we have the best economy we’ve had in 50 years. That’s what he said. Gas is under $2 a gallon.I’d like to know what gas station he went to. Food is coming down. The price of eggs is down.

Well, the price of eggs is what, you know, people don’t only buy eggs, you know, they buy other things. The price of beef is up 38%. And we put an article up on the main page of The Plain Truth about inflation and the price of beef.And the real reason, and this is not being told to you, all you got to do is go to chat GPT, or AI Google, and you put in the words, Mexican tariffs and the price of beef. And they’re going to tell you right now that last year, in 2023, we imported 800,000, what they call feeder calves, because a lot of ranchers do not raise their own cattle. They grow them into full maturity, and then they send them to slaughter, because it’s cheaper to buy calves out of Mexico, where places down there do nothing but raise, the better weather to do so, they can get a lot better, healthier calves to ranchers out in like Wyoming, where they have terrible winters, many calves die, so they buy them.Well, the tariffs of 25% on Mexico calves made it where ranchers decided not to buy them. This year, in 2024, up until right before Thanksgiving, only 200,000 plus calves came across the border from Mexico. Last year, 2023, 800,000.I’m sorry, 2024, last year, 2024, not 2023. We’re in 2025. So in 2025, there’s been a little over 200,000 calves exported into America from Mexico.

The year before, in 2024, it was 800,000. I believe if you go back to 2018 or 2017, it used to be in the millions, and that’s when we had cheap beef. The problem is now ranchers are stuck not having a lot of beef, and what are they going to do, sell them cheap, and then have no feeder stock? See, again, all of these tariffs are harming the small guy.They’re not harming Arthur Daniel Middlin and big butchers in Chicago or St. Louis, Kansas City. No, they’re not bothering those people at all because they’re going to make the same profit, but the ranchers is who’s really being driven out of business, and that’s probably going to happen more than we can imagine, just like with the vegetables, just like with products in California. I told you the horror stories how crops are rotting in the fields because they don’t even have the pickers to get them.Well, we have a commercial break here about The Plain Truth. I’ll be right back to talk about Bill O’Reilly on NewsNation, who is an avid Trump apologist, what he had to say last night, which really I thought was funny. Hi, Bob Barney for The Plain Truth today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com, the place to go to to find out about your health today, the message board, and leave your own comments about any subject you want to talk about, or the main page of The Plain Truth where we put up really late-breaking stories, or these podcasts where you can listen to me, you can listen to other people’s ideas, we put up other points of view, and find out what’s going on today and if God has anything to do with it.That’s theplaintruth.com where you can listen to these broadcasts, The Plain Truth Today broadcast, and understand really what’s going on for you, your family, your future, and everything else. Thank you for listening. So I was listening to Bill O’Reilly on NewsNation and he was being grilled by a stand-in for Chris Cuomo, I can’t think of the guy’s name, and they were just grilling him about why did Miami for the first time elect a Democrat mayor who is a white woman, not even a Cuban, why did the Cubans turn against Donald Trump in that election? And like I said, Cuban Americans do not vote Democrat.

Of all Hispanics of all time, the one Hispanic group that all Republicans could always count on for their vote was Cuban Americans in Dade County especially, and they lost to a liberal white woman who’s not even of Cuban descent. And they asked Bill O’Reilly, why do you think that was? And Bill O’Reilly frankly said, it’s because of the over-aggressive immigration stand taken by Homeland Security. They are deporting everyone, they have the entire Latin community, including the Cuban community, worried and upset, and that is the reason.

Now I don’t understand how Bill O’Reilly came to that, and he’s going to still remain friendly with Donald Trump, but he did admit, he said something the day before about the economy not being as good as Donald Trump wanted it to be, and he told that to Donald Trump, who yelled at him over the phone and said he didn’t want to hear that nonsense because it’s all BS. So maybe Bill O’Reilly is trying to save his reputation here more than his friendship with Donald Trump, because the writing is on the wall. Look at his approval rating, down 31% on the economy approval, 41%, he went from 38 to 41% on general approval, and again, I agree with Bill O’Reilly’s take on that.The reason that his approval ratings went up is the majority of Americans, I saw a poll that was 65 or 66% of Americans polled favor destroying the fishing drug boats, whatever they are, off of Venezuela, and he is getting actually support for that, because people are seeing, at least he’s trying to stop the drugs. I don’t agree with the policy, I don’t even think the policy should be allowed by Congress unless they are informed, at which they are not being, I don’t like an imperial presidency, I’ve never liked an imperial presidency, and I have been honest, unlike most Republicans that follow Donald Trump, I have been honest over the years, I didn’t like it when Barack Obama became an imperial president, and he was, or Joe Biden did imperial presidency acts with his auto pen, including lawfare against all his opponents, Senate, Congress, or in civilian life. I don’t like when Richard Nixon tried to have an imperial presidency, because that is not what our founders had in mind.

Our founders had in mind three co-equal branches of government, but the truth of the matter is, I should say the plain truth of the matter is, that it is our Congress, not the president, it is our Congress giving up all of these constitutional authorities that they have to the president, because they basically only want to spend their time running for office again. I was told a long time ago, and this is before this latest, you know, last 25 years, but I’m not, about 50 years ago, when I was in college, I was told by politicians then, that the average house member works less than six months out of his two-year terms as doing business for the people. 18 months out of that two years, they are doing nothing but speeches and tours amongst people who are their donors to raise enough money to win the next term around.So they win, they go to the new Congress in January, and February, March, April, May, and maybe June, they pass good legislation, they take stands on things that could hurt them, they do what’s right for their people that voted for them, they do right for their district and their state, and for the American people in general, and then by July, they pivot, and then they only spend their time and they only care about their donor class, the companies, the corporations, the people, other special interest groups that give them all of their money, and they spend the next 18 months raising as much money as they possibly can for their campaigns from these people, and whatever they do in Congress is to enrich those donors so the money keeps flowing in, and therefore we go from five trillion, to eight trillion, to 16 trillion, to 21 trillion, to 30, and now 38 trillion in debt, because Congress is doing this, not the presidency, though presidents have been, what I should say, unindicted co-conspirators in this whole process, because presidents could veto a lot of this legislation, but they want to spend money too, and Donald Trump’s biggest Achilles heel is all the money he keeps wanting to spend, and the idea he wants the Fed to continue cutting rates basically back to zero, so he can have a runaway Wall Street, where maybe a lot of in his family’s money is placed, but he does not realize, I don’t know if he even has the brains to realize that low interest rates, that’s why gold keeps going up, low interest rates is going to add to our inflation, which is going to add to our public debt, it’s going to go from 38, probably 45 trillion in his term alone, and then the interest on our debt is going to double, triple, to where we no longer can pay the interest even on our debt, and that is the end of America as you know it, when we no longer can pay off the people who have loaned us money, because they’re not going to take it very kindly, and going on to that, the Fed did meet this week, and they gave Trump what he wanted, well, they didn’t really give him what he wanted, because he thought they should have done a one percent, believe it or not, they should do three one percents this year, and they should have brought the interest rate down to one or two percent, and next year they should go to near zero, this is what he wants, free easy money, people don’t realize, or I guess people don’t remember what free easy money has done to this country over the last 20 years, it has given us rampant inflation, where you just cannot afford, if you’re a middle class, lower class American today, you are basically in a third world status in this country, it’s pretty bad when one percent of the billionaires in this country, one percent of the billionaires in this country, control 57 trillion dollars, did you hear that? We’re 38 trillion in debt as a country, and 57 trillion dollars is owned by one percent of the billionaires of this country, and that’s probably about 10 or 15 billionaires, is all they’re counting, when you add them all together, they’re worth 57 trillion dollars, and that’s more money than the debt, it’s the first time in my lifetime, where the statement from Democrats is they need to tax the rich, when everybody always came back, you could take all the money away from all the millionaires and billionaires, and you couldn’t pay off the debt, well you could now, and that is because America is rivaling what we were in the 1890s, and that is when five people, I believe it’s five, five people controlled the entire destiny of America, and that those five people collectively had more money than the United States government had, in fact there was a panic I believe in 1902 or three when Teddy Roosevelt was president, and he didn’t like this idea, but he needed to do it because he tried to break up these people, but the United States government actually had to borrow money from J.P. Morgan, yes, to pay off its debts, or it would have to shut down, and J.P. Morgan had more money than the United States of America, and we’re getting there today, and what did Teddy Roosevelt did, he did not do what Donald Trump does, he didn’t surround himself with these billionaires of his day, the robber barons they were called, no he broke them up, he broke them up into little companies, and he made the playing fair, I’m sorry, he made the playing field fair for all Americans, that’s what Teddy Roosevelt did, Teddy Roosevelt was a great president, and he deserves to be on Mount Rushmore, but we’re going to take another break for the Plain Truth, and when I come back I’m going to talk about money and coins, Bob Barney for the Plain Truth today, Friday wrap-up day, and we appreciate everyone who tunes in every Friday, listen to us, and then sends us what they think about the show, please come to theplaintruth.com and these podcasts every day, there’s three new ones a day, Monday through Friday, two on Saturday and one on Sunday, plaintruth.com, go there, thank you, Bob Barney. Well we’re back for the last part of Friday wrap-up, and I want to get into a subject here, dear to my heart, if you’ve listened to this program you know I’m a coin collector, and I collect rare coins if I can afford them, or coins in general, and I have a pretty decent collection, but here is the latest news in that front concerning Donald Trump, and the arrogance again of Donald Trump, who really wants to be a Caesar and not a president. Donald Trump really is a guy, anybody who follows him is a guy who likes to put his name and face on anything, from steaks, to wine, to airlines, hotels, and now he wants to put himself on the dollar bill, or the dollar coin, it depends on what story you read, but many democrat senators are trying to prevent this from happening, and they have introduced a bill that would prevent the government from minting coins featuring President Trump’s image.

The bill called the Change Corruption Act was introduced by Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley, and before my listeners out there think this is just a another democrat ploy that this wasn’t in the plans, well that’s not true. The U.S. treasurer Brandon Beach confirmed that a coin was in the plans with the president’s likeness, whatever that means, and he wanted to have it minted on the 250 year anniversary of American’s government. So all 20, 26 coins that were of dollar value, I think it’s coins, it never really tells you that, would have Donald Trump’s face on it.Well there is something that needs to be said right now about no president has ever been put on a coin while they are living, and that’s because the United States has a long tradition of placing only the portraits of dead people on its money, never a living person, turning them into a Julius Caesar type living god, because that’s really, when you put an image on a coin, it is almost making them godlike. Many Americans right from the beginning wanted to see Lady Liberty on coins, and they did not want to put a president or any person on any coin at all, because they saw that only dictators and people who think they’re Julius Caesar did that, and so for many, many years you didn’t see any portrait on a bill, or a dollar, I’m sorry, or a coin. The idea at first was a tradition of never putting a living person on a coin, but it has become law by the way, and I think people, when this treasury secretary was being interviewed for his nomination, he kept being asked over and over again, would you respect the law of not putting Donald Trump on a coin, and he refused to answer it.

He walked all around it because they had every intention of putting Donald Trump’s mug on a coin. The main reason the U.S. features only dead presidents on the new dollars, for example, or dead people on any other coin, is a tradition, and this tradition now has been legislated into law. From the very beginning, however, of our nation’s founding, patriotic men felt that it was improper to honor any living person putting their image on legal tender currency, coins or dollars, especially circulating coins.George Washington declined when our young nation wanted his portrait on the first U.S. silver dollar. Haha, a real patriot, right? I think so. Which was the start of this long and still unbroken tradition.However, several patterns or test coins were minted with his effigy on the front. These are very rare and very valuable coins. I didn’t even know that until I read that just now, by the way, and I would like to have a coin like that, but I’m imagining they’re in millions of dollars.But here’s some more history about this. The early American patriots were anti-royalist, by definition, and royalty has always, since the ancient Greeks and Romans, took pride in putting their images on their coins. The monarch’s portrait guaranteed the coin’s value in ancient societies.It was like an assay mark. Additionally, it was also an advertisement to the general population who was in charge, and that’s why Donald Trump wants to do this, by the way. After Brutus killed Caesar, he created his own coin to let people know about his power.However, the ancient Republicans, the pro-democracy philosophy of the Senate in ancient Greece and pre-imperial Rome, felt very strongly that a living man’s portrait did not belong on any coin. So even the ancient Romans and ancient Greeks didn’t want to do it. When the newly formed United States of America minted its early coinage, it was Miss Liberty, often called the Goddess of Liberty, that the portrait appeared on our coins, and on the reverse side was usually an eagle.

Until 1909, the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, a dead president was first featured on the U.S. coin. The Lincoln cent was intended to be a special commemorative coin, but it proved so popular that it endures to this day. Other dead presidents soon found their way on familiar coinage or bills, Jefferson’s nickel, Roosevelt’s dime, Washington’s quarter, etc.Nowadays, it’s a federal law that no living man or woman can appear on U.S. coinage. Presidents must be dead for at least two years before they are eligible for the inclusion in the presidential dollar series. Now the one dead president that had a coin within a year of his death was President Kennedy.And if anybody is a coin collector like I am, you know that a 1964 Kennedy half dollar that’s in a proof state condition is very valuable because the year started out printing 1964 Franklin half dollars, which are also very valuable, but quickly was morphed into making Kennedy half dollars. And all 1964 Kennedy half dollars, first of all, they’re 40 percent silver, so they’re always worth at least, what, ten dollars or so, but most of them are worth much more than that. And a proof 70, for example, that is the perfect coin that has never been touched by a human hand.A PR70 minted Kennedy half dollar from 1964, graded either by NGC or by PCGS, is worth about four to five thousand dollars. And that is because PCGS has never graded one. They’ve never had one submitted to them that turned out to be a PR70.And NGC has only been able to grade 31 of them. And that’s why they’re so valuable. And that’s what every collector’s dream that’s not a rich man has.

I want one of those 1964 proof Kennedys. And it’s also because it wasn’t even a year that he was assassinated and killed that his image ended up on a coin. Well that wraps up most of the important stories on this Friday wrap-up series.I want to get into this weekend’s program. What a little time I got left. Tomorrow in the Sabbath show at 7 11 a.m. we have a video on the true site of Mount Sinai.And I have for many years on theplaintruth.com talked about the Mount Sinai that everyone thinks is Mount Sinai is a fraud. The real Mount Sinai is in Saudi Arabia, as Paul in the New Testament says, Sinai in Arabia. And you will see in this video tomorrow.I think it’s about 40 minutes long. It’s called Exodus, Discovering the True Mount Sinai. And it’s the full episode.And it’s also going to show you the rock that split in half when water came out of it. It’s going to show you where the altar of the golden calf is. It’s still there.It’s going to show you all the plain where three million Israelites camped under Mount Sinai. And it’s also going to show you a mountain that the entire top of it is black from God descending on that mountain some 3,500 plus years ago and burnt that mountain to a crisp. And it still shows to this day.

It is a very fascinating, fascinating video that I really highly recommend everyone taking the time this weekend to watch that video if you think the Bible does not prove itself when you actually go to the places that you’re not used to seeing because it’s been hitting from you all these years that you actually see these places by your own eyeballs and realize this is true. This fairy tale I’ve been taught is true. And it is true.The Bible is true. The Bible is the word of God. And it’s the one source you have to go to to understand your destiny and the destiny of this entire creation of God.Then at 7-11 p.m. we have a short story again, a audio short story. It’s a very good one by Hemingway called The Big Two-Hearted River. It’s going to be 7-11 p.m. tomorrow night.It’s I think about 40 minutes as well. Very great story by Hemingway. And people who studied Hemingway as I did in college, that whole course on Hemingway, knows that The Big Two-Hearted River is a young man’s version of when he became old, the old man in the sea.This is Bob Barney thanking you for listening and coming to the Plain Truth every day. We do appreciate you. Until Monday when we’re back with another live show, this is Bob Barney saying thank you for listening again.Have a safe and great weekend. Please honor the Sabbath. Bye-bye.