Friday Wrap-Up with Bob: May 22, 2026 (Transcript)

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO BOB BARNEY’S 7:11 BROADCAST: Friday Wrap-Up with Bob: May 22, 2026

Hi, Bob Barney with The Plain Truth today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com and a Friday wrap-up. I think it’s the first one I had in about two or three weeks, but I’m doing well today. And we’re going to go on what went on during the week.

I’m doing this actually Thursday. I’m not doing it Friday. In my luck, there’ll be some world-changing headline with Donald Trump on Friday.

And so this will be a day old. But I’m doing that because I, you know, I have to go back to my doctor on Friday, and I don’t have time to do the show. So anyway, it’s a Friday wrap-up based on Thursday’s information.

And so we’re going from there. But we’re going to go on to what went on this week. And we’re going to get the first thing we’re going to get into is the elections.

So far, Donald Trump has proven, and everybody that’s in the mega world is very happy about this, he’s proven that he is the absolute dictator of at least the Republican Party. He’s not of this country, although I think he wants to be, but he’s just not simply. But in the Republican Party, I have to go back.

I did a couple of shows about three years ago. And even up until the 2025 inauguration, it was called the Republican Diet, where Republicans used to eat each other for lunch instead of eating Democrats. And unlike the Democrats, they could never pull together and ever agree on anything.

And it was always a problem with the Republican Party. And I called it the Republican Diet. Well, they have changed their diet to now where they only eat manna, manna from Trump.

And I’ve never seen a bunch of lemmings, you know, those little rats that kind of jump over the side of a cliff, whereas in Iceland or whatever, and drown themselves once a year in the great lemon march to the sea where they drown themselves. Well, that’s what the Republican Party has become. And Donald Trump has taken his revenge tour into the primaries, and he controls the Republican Party so well that any incumbent, I don’t care how popular that incumbent could be, if he disagrees with Donald Trump and Donald Trump turns on him, the guy’s toast.

We saw that now with Massey in Kentucky, and we saw that with Cronin in Texas, and we saw thiswith Bill Cassidy. And these people are starting to bite back. And just because he controls theRepublican primaries when they’re closed primaries and they don’t allow independents to vote,that does not necessarily mean it’s a good strategy.

I’m going to get into a little bit of a talk show that I taped here, and whose opinions I basically agree most. So let’s listen to this little short take here, and I’ll comment at the end. Matthew, you’ve got a new opinion piece up on MSNOW titled, Trump’s primary winning streak continues, but his revenge tour still could backfire.

He’s had a good run in Louisiana and Kentucky and Indiana, kind of purging the party of people who dared cross him, even occasionally. So why do you think it’ll backfire down the road? Well, I mean, listen, we are months into a war with Iran where victory is elusive. For years now, Democrats have just been blowing up Republicans at race after race across the nation, from governor down to the local level.

So Trump and the White House crew get the band back together. And what do they do? They go out and they beat the bag out of their own party. And, you know, while Trump remains the biggest, maybe only force in Republican politics, he’s at historic lows with the American public.

Mika, you know, you just went through some of the new polling. It is absolutely horrific. What is gold in a primary can easily turn to kryptonite in a general election.

Being towards Trump is like running towards a fire, not with water, but with kerosene. And you can get yourself burned very quickly. So, you know, some of these seats will continue to be safe, but some of them are now arguably in play.

You’re looking at Texas and then even taking a step back. North Carolina, a lot of Republicans I’m talking to had they never, you know, helped show Senator Tillis the door. There’s a question that Governor Cooper would never have jumped in that race.

That could have been a safe seat. So right now, you know, the team is riding high, but it’s like they’re scoring baskets on their own goal. It’s like they threw a pick six and they’re dancing in the end zone like they scored a touchdown.

So how this ends up will be up to the voters. But again, just going out there and winning primary after primary for, you know, revenge over results is just not a winning strategy. I appreciate multiple sports analogies there.

Matthew, I’ve been thinking along these lines too. I mean, Trump scoring wins, but maybe hurting his party while doing so. You just highlighted a couple of races where that may be the case, that they’re going to end up with a perhaps less palatable general election candidate.

And that’s what I wanted you to weigh in on next. Just, it feels like, you know, look, we know Trump cares about himself far more than the party. That’s always been the case.

But I think his goals and the GOP’s goals have probably never been more misaligned than they are right now, where Trump’s priorities, what he cares about, seems to be almost actively hurting Republican chances this November. You know, boy, Jonathan, that is correct. I keep hearing these are costly decisions in terms of the amount of money we’ll have to spend and maybe even costly in terms of losing seats.

The American public is focused on, you know, war and the domestic economy. The president is focused on an arch and a ballroom. Americans and Republicans are looking at the 2026 electionin just a few months.

The president is more concerned about the 2020 election and settling scores from that. So again, you know, how bad is it? They’re talking about, you know, opening the shuttered government agency known as Congress to maybe do something about it. We’ll see what happens.

But the Republicans I’m talking to, including that slush fund, listen, I resigned on January 6th. What a disgraceful, disgusting approach that our acting attorney general is taking. And Republicans do not have good answers on any of this.

Yeah, I guess the yellow caucus, they did drop the funding on the ballroom from the bill. And they did drop the funding from the ballroom. So you’re seeing in the Senate, at least, Republicans now getting their cojones back and they’re saying, you know, enough is enough here.

This is not going to help not only the Republican Party, but this is not going to help our voters and the majority of Americans that we kind of got elected in order to save and to help. Too long, the Democratic Party has only helped minorities and the very, very rich. I’ve already gone over what I was told a long time ago, 1988 election, that true billionaires, true multimillionaires, never vote for a Republican president or the Republican Party, because they can only make money on investments.

And investments only make money when there is runaway inflation. And it is the Democrat Party that gives us runaway inflation. You saw that with Obama, you saw that with Biden.

You did not see that with Bill Clinton, I will admit. But you really saw that with Jimmy Carter, for example. And so the idea that billionaires support the Democrat Party and because of inflation, well, this Trump 2.0, he’s doing what? He’s acting like a Democrat and he’s given us inflation.

So people, his buddies that have surrounded him, your Elon Musk and your Bezos and your Bill Gates type people, all these billionaires who now think he’s the greatest president has ever been, it’s because this inflation is making them even richer. If you own, like for example, let’s say you owned a hundred, let’s say you owned a trillion dollars worth of oil before this war started. Well, now that trillion dollars is almost a trillion seven point seven dollars.

Do you see what I’m saying? That’s what inflation does for the rich. And that’s why until Trump 2.0, they’ve always been Democrats, supporters that were the rich class. And then, of course, the illegal class, the illegal voter or the illegal person on welfare and very low income people, especially that of different mixed races or different races, blacks or Chicanos and Latinos and stuff like that.

They’ve been Democrats because of the welfare programs, to be frank, that they get. It’s the middle class, mainly the middle class, white, but it’s all middle class people, white, brown, black, green or red. They all are the ones paying all the bills.

They’re the ones working, doing all the work that, you know, we only have a 62 percent participation rate in the workforce. That means that 38 percent of the American people of working age do not work. And that is the true inflation.

I’m sorry, the unemployment number. And it’s a scandal. And so the people that we wanted to come and clean up this swamp has all of a sudden laid down in the mud with the rest of the pigs and the creatures of the swamp and now are feeling at home.

And we have a situation, like you heard Mona Cherry say, where this is like feudalism, where you bring gifts to the king because he’s the only person you have to worry about pleasing. And that really helps the millionaire class or billionaire class. Hi, Bob Barney for ThePlainTruth.com, the place to go to to find out what’s happening on the message board, on Your Health Today or these podcasts.

That’s ThePlainTruth.com. Go there every day. You will not be disappointed. You will find out, for example, who is the identity of the United States of America in the Bible? Who is the nation of England in the Bible or the nation of Germany? You know, the German people are found in the Bible, but they had a different name.

Who is, for example, the people of the Netherlands? Well, they were in the Bible with a different name or the people of Denmark. And that’s how it’s spelled, not Denmark, like in America. If you go to Denmark, you will see everything spelled Danmark, the mark of Dan.

They are, yes, found in the Bible. So is the nation of France. And those places can be found in your Bible.

That is ThePlainTruth.com. We explain all that when we give you the news. That’s ThePlainTruth.com. Thank you. And we’re back for the next topic we want to get into.

And that is what I talked about a lot this week, a couple of days this week. And that is just thecorruption in D.C. and the corruption that really does surround the White House, the Trump familythat we did not have in Trump 1.0. We played some outtakes from different programs as well as my own thoughts. And honestly, if you don’t go to The Plain Truth, you don’t really see this inmost mainstream media.

You don’t see that what’s really happening. And I think if you did, maybe you’d have a different opinion if you don’t think that Donald Trump is pocketing money from this time around. So I’m going to continue with a little brief thing from an interview I played a part of the other day.

And I want you to hear this. But I mean, in a way, it almost feels as if we have gone back to a pre-modern era where, you know, you would approach the court, you would approach the emperor bearing gifts. And there was no one else whose favor you had to be concerned about.

It was there was one man rule. And and so you would devote all of your efforts and attention to placating him or, you know, whatever. And and we have the United States at the moment, you know, as you say, Congress, who cares about Congress? They don’t they don’t count at the moment.

And and so the lobbyists are and boy, as you say, lobbying is a huge industry in the United States that, yes, I mean, it used to used to be mostly focused on Congress. And now it is just all geared to one human being, one very changeable human being. But there are many different ways that the president is using his power and causing people to to try to influence him.

So one way is through tariffs and tariff exemptions. So I think you mentioned the Swiss who came. I’m going to break in here.

And I wanted to say this is the one topic that I think only the plaintruth.com has had right since the beginning. And that’s because I am very familiar with tariffs, because my business depends on imported raw materials. And I said, and I’ve been saying all along, and I don’t know how many people want to believe me, but the tariff was would not necessarily be as bad.

I’m against him. I’m a Ronald Reagan type conservative. I am not.

And I am a populist, but not a liberal populist that this president has turned out to be this time around. But I said my biggest problem, again, with the tariffs was that the Donald Trump administration would pick winners and losers. And the winners were the billionaires, the Amazons, for example, the Walmarts, who got trade tariff reductions, Apple, for example, or Nvidia, for example, some stock he owns, AMD, for example, another stock he owns, all got exemptions from the tariffs that yours truly did not get exemptions from.

I lost over $200,000 worth of bottom line profit. Think about that. I’m not that big of a company,but I lost $200,000 worth of bottom line profit for these illegal terrorists, terrorists, they’re terrorists too, but these tariffs.

And am I going to get that money back? Everybody tells me I’m going to, but we have tried and my importer has tried to refund this money. He doesn’t get an answer to an email. The telephone number they tell you to call is constantly busy.

And if you email them, like I said, you don’t get a response. I don’t believe they’re going to pay out this money, except to Amazons, Walmarts, FedEx, who already been paid. FedEx got paid money and they never paid a tariff in their life.

FedEx, you heard that right. FedEx did not pay whatever it was, $100 billion or no, it was $10 billion worth of tariffs that they got reimbursed for. Their customers paid it.

Their customers paid the tariff and they’re not going to give that money back to their customers. It’s a total scam. Well, I want to go on with this, the picking the winners and losers about tariffs, which really aggravates me of corruption.

See him in the Oval Office and they presented him with that gold bar and a Rolex watch. We’re talking about the Swiss knowing how to corrupt Trump. They came in with a gold bar worth 150,000 and a Swiss, I’m sorry, a Rolex watch worth about 75,000.

Maybe they threw in some chocolates. I don’t know. They had the good sense to leave the cuckoo clock behind.

There was that old joke about, you know, Germany has been a warlike nation, but it has given usGoethe and Beethoven and Freud and the Swiss have been peaceful for 400 years and have givenus the cuckoo clock, which is completely unfair. Any Swiss listeners, just discount that. Yes.

So they, the Swiss show up with bearing gifts and the next day the tariffs on Switzerland are reduced by half. So he is using this tariff authority, which as we speak, remains unclear as to whether the Supreme Court will uphold his. This program, as you can tell, was before theSupreme Court decision.

This program is actually, I believe, seven months old. Need to do this. But for now, he is imposing and withdrawing tariffs in a completely whimsical fashion, depending on who is the last person to whisper in his ear.

Yes. The tariffs policy is a mess. And as you say, he’s very changeable.

I think it’s a great policy for him. He enjoys it so much because he has, I think the president likes to create situations where he has leverage over people and where he can predict, where he can behave in unpredictable ways and tariffs give him that authority. So no, I wouldn’t be surprised ifthe Swiss annoy him next week and the tariffs go up again.

I mean, I’m like you waiting to see if the Supreme Court curtails his authority there to some extent. I mean, he is using very, you know, a very expensive definition of emergency powers. And the justification for having tariffs is that there’s a national security emergency.

And it’s quite to your point about, you know, the Swiss being neutral and making their clocks. It’s kind of hard to see how Switzerland could be a national security threat to America. But far less Canada, far less our friends to the north.

And I expect the Supreme Court will do something on that. But then the Trump administration will come back with various other authorities where it will cite in order to keep that tariff policy in place. I mean, it’d be really interesting to see what happens next year when this all settles down a bit.

I think the president’s ability to sort of shock everyone by suddenly wrapping tariffs up by 50%. I think that is a sort of diminishing returns strategy. And, you know, maybe the optimistic version here is that we settle on some level of tariffs, which are higher than they used to be, but not punitive.

And I’ll stop there. And I’m just going to wrap up this part of the Friday wrap up before the next commercial. I just want to say tariffs are going to go away eventually.

Free trade is where you have to get to. You only put tariffs up against the countries and match the tariff they have against you. That is the whole idea of tariffs.

And it is not to make money. It’s not to actually ingrandize yourself with gifts from the countries that want to be exempted from tariffs or from companies that want to be exempted from tariffs that we have seen happen. This is what happens when a government gets run like a Democrat is in office right now for political gain and economic gain and lining your pockets with corruption.

That is what the Democrats have done for 75 years. You don’t want to believe that, but it’s true. And now Donald Trump is running like a Democrat.

And the funny thing is the people who used to condemn when the Democrats did it find every excuse in the world to say it’s okay when Donald Trump does it. Well God, thank God, God never changes. I change not.

Therefore you are not consumed Israel. It’s what the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament said to thenation of Israel because if he was to change his mind they would be destroyed because God doesn’t change. But unfortunately this president does.

The playtruth.com is a place to go to to figure out what’s going on in the light of biblical prophecy. Over the years the former Plain Truth magazine, which is not affiliated with us at all, but I thought I would play an old commercial because it is basically what we’re trying to do, but as a news site. We’re not a church, we’re not a religion, but we’re trying to bring you what the news is in the light of biblical prophecy.

And there is a commercial from about 45 years ago. While people struggled through the depression, the Plain Truth magazine was warning about European nationalism. When everyone sighed relief at the end of World War II, the Plain Truth was predicting the Middle East crisis.

When Korea dominated the headlines, the Plain Truth was forecasting the formation of the common market. When the space race captured America’s fancy, the Plain Truth was covering trade war and the rise of Japan, future super giant. The Plain Truth magazine examines everything from world events to family life in the light of bible prophecy.

History written in advance. To keep ahead of today’s world trends, request the Plain Truth magazine. Well there’s no more Plain Truth magazine that I know of, but there is this broadcast of Plain Truth.

It is in the spirit of the entire old Plain Truth by the Armstrongs. I’m not, like I said, I’m not a minister and I’m not an evangelist. I believe I’m a newsman here.

When we do the plaintruth.com, we’re not a non-profit church. We are actually a no profit division by Barney Family Enterprises, which really pays for all the bills and does not deduct any of that it pays. It’s still out of personal income.

It’s our tithe to the Church of God and to the Lord Jesus and the Father. But anyway, I thought I’d play that because we have the same mission. We’re trying to show you today’s news and tomorrow’s headlines in the light of bible prophecy.

It’s the one thing that news agencies just don’t do in the mainstream media because they don’tbelieve in God. And if they believe in God, they believe in a Linus Blanket God that only does good by you, never judges you, never makes you do anything, never demands anything of you. Andthat’s just a false Christianity, a false God.

Anyway, I just thought I’d bring that out for the commercial this time and we’re going to end this weekly wrap-up with the last story we’re going to get to and then the weekend shows. And that last story is about the economy and the forecast for the economy because frankly, of the week’s news, that is what is most important for the average Joe and Mary out there. You guys listening is what I would assume is listening.

This is about the economy and about the 30-year bond rate going up and what it means for you and your family and your future. And if you’re planning on renting anything, I mean buying anything, house or car, it makes a difference. Take a listen.

The world’s biggest economy is flashing a warning sign and this time it’s not about stocks crashing or banks failing. It’s about something even more important, U.S. government bonds. In a major development, the yield on America’s 30-year treasury bond has surged to its highest level since 2007.

That’s right, levels not seen since just before the global financial crisis. And investors across the world are now asking one big question, is confidence in U.S. debt starting to crack? So what exactly happened? The yield on 30-year U.S. treasury bond crossed 5% while the 10-year yield also moved sharply higher. In simple words, investors are now demanding much higher returns to lend money to the U.S. government.

And when bond yields rise this aggressively, it usually means investors are getting nervous. The trigger behind this bond market selloff is America’s growing debt problem. The U.S. government already has more than $36 trillion in debt.

But now, concerns are rising that Washington could borrow even more in the coming years because of higher spending plans, tax cuts, and rising interest payments. When the U.S. borrows more, it has to issue more bonds. But if investors are not fully confident, the government must offer higher yields to attract buyers.

That’s exactly what we are seeing right now. This is becoming a global issue because U.S. treasury bonds are considered the safest asset in the world. They are the of global finance.

Everything from mortgage rates and corporate loans to emerging market investments is linked to U.S. bond yields. So when yields spike, borrowing costs rise everywhere. For countries like India, this matters a lot.

Higher U.S. yields can pull global money out of emerging markets and back into America because investors suddenly get better returns in U.S. bonds with lower risk. That can pressure stock markets, weaken currencies like the rupee, and increase borrowing costs globally. There’s another fear as well.

If bond yields keep rising, the U.S. government itself could face a debt servicing problem because it would have to pay much higher interest on future borrowing. And that creates a dangerous cycle. More debt, higher interest payments, and even more borrowing.

You know, I just want to say one thing before we wrap this up about how dangerous this debt is.Our budget this year is $6 trillion. The national budget is $6 trillion.

$1 trillion of that is just the interest on that $39 trillion deficit. $1 trillion is just the interest, just think about that, of the $6 trillion budget. If you got to a point where one sixth of your weekly take-home pay was to pay credit card interest only without paying down that credit card payment, you’re in trouble.

You’re near bankruptcy, and so is this country. Well, tomorrow is the Sabbath day, and the Sabbath day is something we want to always inform our listeners to pay attention to because it is the fourth commandment. Sunday is not a part of the fourth commandment, so don’t you kid yourself that you want to see the 10 commandments everywhere, but you don’t want to follow the fourth one that God ordained to be followed.

And always on the 7-11 a.m. show, we have a Sabbath morning show, and in the 7-11 p.m. show, we don’t have a noontime show. On the 7-11 p.m. show, we just have some kind of a book that’s being read, or a short story, or even a TV show, or something like that. But tomorrow, we’re going to have for the a.m. show, Psalm 119, the King James Version audio with text, and you can read along.

It’s the longest, absolutely the longest Psalm, and it’s the center of the Bible. You know, just literally, it’s the middle of the Bible. And it’s all about the law, and how the law is not a burden, and how the law has not been abolished, as so many of these false Christian religions, and ministers, and false preachers want to tell you they’ve been abolished by Christ on the cross.

No such thing. Christ said, do not think I come to abolish the law. I’ve come to magnify them, and that’s exactly the plain truth about following the law, the Sabbath day, and all the regulations that God enforced before Mount Sinai.

And tomorrow night, in the p.m. show, we have an actually, like an entertainment show, but it’s the book of Revelation. We’re going to keep all Sabbath type stuff tomorrow night, and it’s end times prophecy, seven seals released, or revealed, I’m saying, I’m sorry, and the beast, and it’s all being read, and with, you can follow along on the screen. It’ll be a different kind of p.m. show for the Saturday, Sabbath night, but it’s a, it’s an accurate one.

It’s one of, for we can just remember what it is to follow God’s rules, God’s way, and God’s Sabbath day, and keep it holy. And so, anyway, that is the weekly wrap-up for this week. This is the Memorial Day weekend, and Memorial Day, of course, is Monday.

This is the weekend of it. I was going to play, but I ran out of time, a little tribute by, I can’t remember the general’s name I heard on TV the other morning, and I taped it, but maybe I’ll put it up over the weekend, or on the Monday itself, I might have it just on the message board. A tribute to all the American soldiers that have fought, many have died, or been wounded in many wars, and how America needs to remember those people who went and sacrificed themselves for the liberty, not democracy, but the liberty that you and I enjoy.

So, I hope everyone has a very blessed and safe Sabbath, Sabbath day, and Memorial day, and stay safe, have great picnics, if that’s what you got planned, and we’ll be back here Monday with some programming, but I’ll be back probably Tuesday with a program, and I’m, like I said earlier, I’m feeling pretty good, so I think we can, we can continue what we’ve been doing, and we’ll see you here next week. This is Bob Barney saying bye-bye, see you Tuesday.