Read the full transcript of American singer-songwriter John Rich’s interview on The Tucker Carlson Show, premiered December 1, 2025.
Country star John Rich joins Tucker Carlson to explain why he’s shifted from chasing chart success to pursuing “significance” by openly preaching his faith and confronting evil in American culture. He talks about hearing from God, the moral cowardice he sees in many churches, and why he believes Christians must stop running from darkness and go on offense instead. Rich also details his work with DHS and anti-trafficking groups to hunt child predators, and premieres his new song “The Righteous Hunter,” a warning to abusers and a rallying cry for parents to fiercely defend their kids. For viewers wrestling with questions about demons, the Antichrist, and the future of Christianity in America, this is an intense, unapologetically spiritual conversation.
From Chart Success to Spiritual Mission
TUCKER CARLSON: So John, you seem to be evolving as a man, and this is my outside observation, but as a man and an artist. You grew up, and you said in our last interview you wanted to be a country music star, you wanted to write a lot of songs, you wanted to chart, sell a lot of records, did all that. But you seem to be, I don’t know, on some kind of new mission. Am I imagining that? And if I’m not, what is it?
JOHN RICH: No, you’re not imagining it. A few years ago I started to contemplate the difference between success and significance. And they are different. Sometimes they intersect where something significant or something successful, they interact.
But I spent three decades of my adult life in self service, competing in the music industry to be successful. And so to me, success in the music industry, I had really high bars I’d set. Like I want to be songwriter of the year, for instance, in Nashville. That’s something I, that’s like the coveted award because there’s thousands of songwriters in Nashville and I was songwriter of the year for three years in a row.
Wanted to sell millions of records. Well, all told, you know, we sell close to 15 million records. Wanted to write hit songs for other people too. And I’ve had, I don’t know how many, I don’t even know the number of how many top 10 songs I’ve written. It’s a lot.
TUCKER CARLSON: So can I say how are those victories? Were they as great as you thought they’d be?
The Price of the American Dream
JOHN RICH: At the time? Yeah, because you know, it was my, that’s my American dream. That’s what I wanted to do. You know, I didn’t go to college. I had a four year ride to a school called Belmont University in Nashville on a vocal scholarship.
And my plan was to go there and go to college and I’m in Nashville and I’ll try to get a record deal, you know, and go to college if I don’t get a record deal. Well, I got, went to college, I got a degree, maybe I go do something, I don’t know.
But instead of going to college, I went out on the road with some guys that literally barely knew from Texas who were older than me. I was 18 going on 19. And instead of going to college I went out and played about 200 nights a year in a van pulling a trailer all over the U.S. playing Holiday Inn lounges and county rodeos and off brand casinos and basically anybody that would hire us because I wanted to be on the radio, I wanted to play the Grand Ole Opry and I wanted to write number one songs. And I couldn’t understand how college was going to make that happen.
TUCKER CARLSON: Fair.
JOHN RICH: It can’t. Yeah, I mean, just can’t. So I said, I’m going to just go do it. And so that band became a band called Lonestar, which we got a record deal a couple years after we started. Sold 4 or 5 million records with them, wrote my first number ones with them.
So in those moments where you, you, you gambled to that level and then you win and then everybody loves is just a constant high five. I mean, it’s just a constant celebration, because that is so hard to do.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
JOHN RICH: It’s like an Olympian winning a gold medal. That’s what it’s like to write a number one song or to step out on a stage and there’s 30,000 people that know the words through your music, and you’ve never met any of them. And it’s that way all over the U.S. You can imagine that feeling, especially in your 20s.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: I mean, there’s no better physical feeling I don’t think you can have than just, it’s just massive adrenaline. And so throughout the course of the next year, here comes Big and Rich, which is, you know, my singing partner, Big Kenny. And we sold millions of records, and we have 20, 30,000 people a night, and here’s a whole other rack of hit songs coming.
And now I’m finding people, you know, bartenders who I hear sing one night. And I talked to this girl and I go, “You’re one of the best singers I’ve ever heard. We got to get you in the studio. We got to write some songs.” She goes, “All right.” And so we do. She gets a record deal. Her name is Gretchen Wilson, and Gretchen Wilson sold about 13 million records.
TUCKER CARLSON: Damn.
JOHN RICH: You following this? Yeah. So, I mean, just home run after home run, Grand Slam, Grand Slam, which puts a lot of plaques on your wall. You make a lot of money doing that, get a lot of praise, a lot of applause. And that success, that is success in that world.
But is it significant? Meaning, what did it do other than make me feel great and accomplish things that were on my personal list? Nothing. And then I thought about, well, when I die and I go stand in front of the boss, is he going to pat me on the back and say, “Good job on all those hit songs, man, you were great. Good job. You played 4,000 concerts, man. We’re all so happy for you.” You think he really cares about that?
TUCKER CARLSON: Probably not.
JOHN RICH: He doesn’t. The answer is, he does not.
TUCKER CARLSON: How’d that come to you?
The Awakening to Significance
JOHN RICH: Seeing the things that go on in our country. Seeing things that go on in our culture. Seeing things that happen to people who cannot defend themselves, whether it be kids, whether it be, you know, poor people, whoever. That just gets steamrolled every single day, taken advantage of, targeted, used, abused.
And I thought, I’m wasting my heartbeats right now because I am capable of taking a simple idea, simple line, and turning it into a piece of music that can penetrate tens of millions of people. And I can make them, I can make them cry. I can make them jump up and down and scream and holler and party. I can make them think. I can make them not think. I can do all kinds of, I mean, music is the ultimate X factor.
Like, you can’t touch it. Music seeps in between the cracks and crevices of a person’s body, mind, and soul. Like, everybody’s got defenses up. Everybody. Yes. Do I do. Music goes right through it. It just gets through it.
TUCKER CARLSON: How?
The Power of Music
JOHN RICH: I don’t know. Music is, it’s like magic. I mean, Psalms, the entire book of Psalms means songs, basically, that David wrote, and David was King David was a musician and a songwriter, so there were melodies to all those Psalms.
Someday I can’t wait to hear him sing. I wonder what melody he put to that. Like, I’ve had that thought before. But he probably put it to music because he knew what I know, which is you can give a speech or you can make a statement to somebody and you can say the exact same thing with a melody wrapped around it and have two completely different outcomes.
One thing music does is once it goes into you, it stays there. Yes. You’ll forget a speech. You’ll forget this podcast down the road, you’ll forget about it.
TUCKER CARLSON: Like an Eddie Rabbit tune from 1978. Never goes away.
JOHN RICH: That’s exactly right. Exactly right. The earworm factor, you know, it goes deep down into your subconscious. I don’t know where it goes. I have thousands of them in my head, but it goes deep down in there.
And I just decided that I was disappointing the man, disappointing the Lord that he gave me this ability and then gave me a massive platform of people. I mean, tens of millions of people know my music. So I already have their attention. So what am I going to, what am I going to feed them next? What, how am I going to, what am I going to give them? Am I going to give them another party song? Might give them another love song? To what end? Like what does that accomplish? Nothing.
It might give me another plaque on the wall and I need another plaque on the wall like I need a hole in the head. I walk past those plaques and go, “Eh,” like today I do. Or I’ll see pictures of me back in the day winning an award or whatever and I’ll remember how I felt back then. It seems so insignificant to me now. Like shallow, insignificant. Like, what does that even mean? It doesn’t mean anything to me now.
The Impact of “Revelation”
So success versus significance. How do I be significant with my music and with my talent? It’s writing songs. “Revelation” was a great example. You were the first guy to put a spotlight on that song. I flew up and saw you. We did a podcast on that song. It resulted in millions and tens of millions actually of views and consumption on that song.
And when I go to a Big and Rich concert now, they don’t generally walk up and say, “Man, I’m a big fan of your music.” If they have enough guts to walk up to me and say something, which I’m always glad when they do, they say that song “Revelation,” he said, “Pulled the Bible off the shelf for the first time in 20 years after I heard that song, made the hair on my arm stand up.”
I had three sorority girls down in Fort Worth, Texas. We had a concert down there. Like 19, 20 year old girls come walking up to me and I’m like, first of all, I’m glad to still have people 19 and 20 that like my music. Yay, good for me.
But they came up and they said, “Mr. Rich, we heard your song ‘Revelation’ and our sorority started a Bible study on Second Thessalonians, Mark, Matthew 24, Revelation and Daniel, all the things that you mentioned in your Tucker interview. And we’ve done a month long deep dive on that.”
And they said, “Everything you said in that interview is correct. Like that’s what it says. But we didn’t hear that in church. But you were right. That’s what it said.” I said, “That’s unbelievable.” I said, “Well, congratulations, keep going.” You know, so it makes me think, I wonder how many times that has happened and I’ll never know about it because that song was significant.
It wasn’t about success. I don’t even have a record deal. I really can’t make money on my songs anymore. There’s no money to really be made on music. Everybody streams everything. There’s, it’s not about any money. And because I’m not a part of the industry, nobody’s going to call me up and say, “Congratulations, there’s a big number one.”
TUCKER CARLSON: What do you mean you’re not part of the industry?
Breaking Free from the Industry
JOHN RICH: I mean I don’t have a contract with anybody in the industry. I regularly attack the industry. I call them out for how they treat artists. And we’re not friends.
TUCKER CARLSON: Does it matter?
JOHN RICH: Not to me, it doesn’t. I don’t want them to think well of me.
TUCKER CARLSON: What does your agent say?
JOHN RICH: What can they say? Yeah, what does your agent say, Tucker?
TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t have one. I’m sure you’d be appalled.
JOHN RICH: Exactly. Exactly.
TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s…
JOHN RICH: No, they look at it and go, at this point, they just go, “Keep swinging the bat.” I mean, because it turns up opportunities that I never thought possible. Like I’ll get a call and they’ll say, “Hey, we want you to come speak for an hour and yeah, bring your guitar. And we want you to play ‘Revelation’ and ‘Earth to God.’ Those are the two songs we want to hear you play.”
Okay, not the big country hits. And I’ll walk into these massive places and be able to say things to these crowds that they’re not going to hear in church, they’re not going to read it on social media. And then there’s the music factor also, that comes in, which is what I love to do. And that did not exist before I started focusing more on being significant instead of successful.
TUCKER CARLSON: Did you play gospel in public before this turn? No. You grew up with it.
Hearing from God Through Prayer
JOHN RICH: I grew up with it. My dad’s a preacher, sang and played in church. But no, I mean, gospel music’s never been a part of my set because when Big and Rich hit the stage, it’s “come into your city” and “save a horse, ride a cowboy” and it’s all these crazy songs, you know, and that’s what they come to hear and that’s what we give them.
But on my own, outside of Big and Rich, I have my own trajectory, my own homework assignment from him. And when he lays something on me to say in my music, I’m going to say it. I’m going to write it at the top of my ability, I’m going to sing it at the top of my ability, produce a video as well as I can possibly do. And I’m just going to stick it out there. And if it’s significant, it will grow its legs and it will run faster than anything I could ever do in the music industry. Revelation is the perfect example.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I mean, that was not the kind of song your manager would tell you to write.
JOHN RICH: Now, how do you communicate with God? We’re told in the Bible to pray without ceasing. Mean continually pray. It doesn’t mean continually be down on your knees praying, but it means that your headspace. And we’re human, so we’re not very good at this. But you’re supposed to attempt to stay in a headspace where it’s an open channel.
So you’re an old school guy like me. You know the old CB radios very well in your truck.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yep.
JOHN RICH: And if you just put it on channel 19 and turn the volume all the way up and just start driving and you’re not talking to anybody, you’re just driving. Every now and then you’ll hear a trucker or a conversation start happening coming through that CB and you’re listening to it. It’s like entertainment, you know? I wonder where they are. I wonder what they’re talking about.
I view praying without ceasing like your mind is like a CB radio that you just turn it all the way on and just leave it there. That way, if he wants to tell you something, the channel is open and the volume’s all the way up and you can’t miss it. Like he’ll tell you something, make you feel something, put a thought in your head and you don’t miss it. Because that’s tough to do in life because we’re running a million miles an hour and everybody’s coming at us from every direction all the time.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. There’s a lot of distractions.
JOHN RICH: It’s just like wasps. It’s like hornets in your face.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: And that’s not going to change because that’s the way things are. But if you can manage to discipline yourself, to keep that channel open, you will hear things, you will learn things. He’ll direct you to do things. He’ll put it in your mind to call a particular person or you’ll meet somebody that you would not have met had you not gone to that place, that for some weird reason just felt compelled to go to this event or this little meeting or whatever.
And you wind up meeting somebody that can really, really change your life in a dramatic way. And you can’t believe you didn’t know him your whole life. I’m sure that’s happened to you.
TUCKER CARLSON: It has.
JOHN RICH: So leaving that channel open, praying without ceasing is a huge thing.
TUCKER CARLSON: So listen, obey. But it begins with prayer.
How to Pray and Receive God’s Promises
JOHN RICH: How do you pray? So most Christians think that because they are a Christian, that all of God’s guarantees and blessings and promises are delivered to them by default. Now it is their inheritance by default. Because they are a child of God. They have claim to the inheritance of what he’s promised us.
However, there’s only one way you actually get what it is you want. Number one, you have to belong to him for real. You can’t be a cultural Christian. You can’t say, “well, I go to church every Sunday, I’m a Christian.” That does not count. It doesn’t mean it’s bad to go to church. It means you have to be, you have to look at yourself as a piece of property.
It tells us in the New Testament and Paul wrote, which I know you love Paul. We’re supposed to be bond servants to Christ, bond slaves, like a mule or a cow or a tractor or whatever. Like, we don’t have our own will. We don’t have our own ambition. We don’t have anything. We are worthless. But we devote it. We turn ourselves over to him and he makes you valuable. And then now he can do things with you because your entire ego and everything has been sacrificed, put to the side and he can do something with you at that point. So that’s number one, you got to be an actual real Christian.
Number two, you have to pray for what you want, specifically for that. So let’s say you want discernment. You can’t make sense of what’s going on? You don’t know if that’s a good guy or a bad guy. Can’t make up your mind. You don’t know what I’m looking at. You want discernment? God is not just going to look down and go, “John needs discernment right now. He can’t figure out what’s going on. Boom. John’s got discernment.” That’s not how it works.
I have to ask him to give me discernment. I have to say, “you promised me that you will give me discernment. I’m asking you to now give it to me.” That’s step two. And then step three is he will give you what you’re asking for if it serves his will. That’s totally up to him.
So for instance, let’s say I’m in a really bad state of mind and I need peace. Like I don’t have peace. I’m unsettled and I belong to Jesus. I ask him to give me peace. Now he’s got to give me peace if it serves his will. Well, if he doesn’t give me peace, which has happened, I go, “why are you not giving me that?” Because I don’t feel peaceful sometimes.
He wants you to be in this mode. He wants you to be in that mode because he’s got something that’s going to require that element of you to accomplish whatever it is he’s trying to get. That mode. That’s fight mode. That’s offense. That’s offense mode. That is, there’s the target. Hit the target. That’s what that is. It could be a subject, it could be a situation that’s going on. Whatever it is, it’s offense.
Christians Must Go on Offense
Christians in large part remain on defense, defense, defense, defense all the time. They don’t want to engage. And I guess they forget about the story of Jesus walking into the temple that was completely overrun by hypocrites and people doing business and changing money and I mean, just turn it into a bank. Basically.
Jesus walked in there and sees this going on. And if Jesus was a modern day cultural Christian, you know what he would have done? Turned around and walked out. Because he just said, “well, that place has gone straight to hell. Right, okay, I don’t want to deal with that.” That’s what he would have done.
But that’s not what he did. He walked on in there, it says he took, he fashioned a whip with rope, he braided a whip together, called them sons of vipers, which I would guess in Hebrew was probably cuss words back in the day. Sounds like Jesus probably ripped a few cuss words on these guys and then flipped the tables over and started whipping them and ran them out of the temple. That’s pretty serious offense, don’t you think?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I’d say.
JOHN RICH: And he’s the son of God and he’s the example that we are supposed to live up to. That doesn’t mean you stay in that mode all the time. But there are situations that arise where Christians have got to put their dukes up and you don’t hunt us. We’re coming for you now. No, you run. We’re not running. You run. That’s what’s missing in America.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why, though? I mean, why is it missing?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, like how did we get that? That wasn’t always true.
Why American Christians Lack Fight
JOHN RICH: Probably because Christians in America especially have not experienced actual persecution ever. Not actual persecution. Not like what they go through in North Korea, Syria, China, Uganda, all these other places where they literally get cut into bits in the streets and they kill their families and burn their houses down.
TUCKER CARLSON: And you.
JOHN RICH: We all know what happens. They’re Christians too, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: Right. Well, we haven’t gone through anything like that in America. And I think Christians have been, I think the Joel Osteens of the world have created in their ministries this lukewarm pablum baby food that they serve up to their congregations week in and week out. They grow up eating baby food. They have no muscle. They have no backbone. They have no constitution. They have no fight in them whatsoever. None.
Because they don’t understand the Bible well enough and have digested it and given themselves over to it. Because their preacher never talks about it. He won’t bring it up. And why not? Because it’s uncomfortable to hear those things.
Christians don’t want to hear that they will be persecuted at some point if they do it correctly. Jesus said, basically, if they hate you, just remember they hated me first. I mean, they crucified me. What are they going to do to you? Get ready. If you’re the real McCoy, get ready.
And Christians don’t want to hear that. That doesn’t keep the church full. That doesn’t keep the offering plates full. That doesn’t keep the donations and the estate plans that go to these churches. That doesn’t keep that going. They want the easy message because it allows them in their mind, a way to not have to engage the devil and his people and his armies.
And so what you have is a whole rack of weak Christians that are constantly being attacked by a totally dedicated force of wickedness. Totally dedicated.
TUCKER CARLSON: What you mean dedicated?
JOHN RICH: I mean, they pray. They pray to their daddy for real. I mean, they are dedicated. They dedicate their lives to him and they do what he says and they look at him.
TUCKER CARLSON: What signs do you see of that?
Recognizing Agents of Evil
JOHN RICH: Well, watch what’s going on in the world. Does it seem like sane people would do a lot of the stuff that we see going on these days? No. Right. So they are being controlled and carrying out the will of their Father, the Father of lies.
And we’re supposed to carry out the will of our Father, who created their Father, and that’s not even a fair fight. So the Christians are standing on the side of an insurmountable, undefeatable God, the Lord, who could wipe out the universe with a blink. That’s who we serve.
Yet we stand out here and run and hide and go, “Please don’t come to my house. Please don’t attack me. Mr. Bad Guy. Mr. Wicked Man. Mr. you belong to the devil. Oh, no, no, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to see it.” And because of that attitude, our country is completely compromised at this point because of weak Christians.
TUCKER CARLSON: What are the signs that someone is dedicated to dark forces that just miss, not just mistaken, misguided, like who is actually an agent of evil? How do you know that?
JOHN RICH: That their every thought and action is completely counter to what God created them to be. Completely counter that they are.
TUCKER CARLSON: So they’re at war with God’s creation, with nature.
The Protection of Children and God’s Hatred of Evil
JOHN RICH: That’s correct. Why do you think they come after kids? I mean, in the New Testament it says that children have angels that report back to God on behalf of the kids. Like they have their own protection. And probably the most hardcore thing Jesus ever said was, you’d be better off to have a millstone tied around your neck and cast into the sea than to ever cause one of these little ones to stumble.
Not to rape them, not to murder them, not to traffic them, not to slap them around, to cause them to stumble, meaning to mess with them at all, to mess with their innocence in any way, shape or form. You’d be better off dead than for that to happen. The Son of God said that. The guy who we follow.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: We’re supposed to emulate and try to live up to his example. Yeah, that was part of what he said. A lot of Christians are also under this total fabrication. “God loves everybody.” I’ve heard that so many times. “Well, God loves everybody.” It does not say that anywhere in the Bible that God loves everybody.
Matter of fact, when you go to Proverbs 6, it says these things doth the Lord, all caps, hate. Use the word hate. And the first thing it lists is those whose feet are swift to shed innocent blood. He hates them.
And then you’ve got the issue of, “Well, but the Bible says we’re supposed to pray for our enemies.” And it does say that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Oh yeah, it says pray for your enemies.
JOHN RICH: Enemies, not pray for God’s enemies. Two different enemies. You don’t pray for pedophiles, for instance. Those are God’s enemies. Their feet are swift to shed innocent blood. He’s who they were talking, who we talked about in the New Testament.
You don’t pray for those people, you go to war against those people, you come straight at them. You do what Jesus would do to him. You see the difference? This is not preached in churches. Maybe there’s a few that preachers actually talk like this, but Americans want a Jesus made in their image, not actually who he actually was.
Because who he actually was and is and what he told us to do are very difficult things that put you in compromised positions. And every single day, if you do what he actually told you to do, and most people are not willing to do that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Because it’s just counter to what the world demands.
JOHN RICH: Yeah, I mean, they’re going to get attacked, they’re going to get persecuted, they’re going to all kinds of things. It’s going to happen.
Why Evil Targets Innocence
TUCKER CARLSON: Why the, you said people who destroy innocence, people whose feet…
JOHN RICH: People whose feet are swift to shed innocent blood, doth the Lord hate.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why the impulse to shed innocent blood? Like, what is that?
JOHN RICH: I think that the wicked people of this earth believe that they can inflict the most pain on the Father and the Son by hurting the thing that they love the most, which is the innocent child. Yes. And so in their minds, that’s how we hurt him the most. That’s how we get the most tears out of his face. That’s how we get him to weep.
That’s how we torture him and bring anguish to God is by hurting the kids. Because we know that’s who he loves the most. Because we know what he said about it. He said we’d be better off dead than to do that. That’s how we felt about it. So that’s who we’re going to go after.
How, I mean, how demented is that? How purposefully wicked is that tactic? Think about that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I mean, the explanation that we get is that it’s like some kind of clinical disorder. Most people are not, you know, have no desire to do that. The average person has no desire to hurt a child, be sexual in any way.
JOHN RICH: Demons do.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s it. But then we’re told, well, the psychological explanation, well, it really isn’t one, but they’re like disordered. But you’re saying it’s a kind of ritual.
Spiritual Possession and the Armor of God
JOHN RICH: I’m saying that they’re possessed by, they’re possessed by spirits that want that or have waged war against God since day one. And that the way that they can cause him the most pain is by inhabiting human beings and turning and twisting them into such a knot that they are that much of a degenerate now, that much of a reprobate now, that they will carry out that mission. That’s what I’m saying.
Just like on the other side, when you see a real Christian come straight at you with something like Charlie Kirk for instance, okay, that’s not normal either. That’s outside the capacity of a human being to do what he was doing. That nobody’s built for that. That requires being possessed. Christians are possessed by the Holy Spirit. We are possessed by that.
And so if you’re possessed by that, it’s no longer Tucker making a move or John Rich making a move or whatever. When you really walk in on something and you claim the Holy Spirit and you claim what you’re promised, the armor of God, for instance, which, there’s only one offensive weapon in the armor of God. Everything is defensive. Everything.
Oh, by the way, nothing guards your back. There’s nothing, there’s nothing in the armor of God that goes on the back. It’s all in the front. It’s the helmet, it’s the shield, it’s the girding of the legs, it’s the shoes, it’s all that. But the offensive weapon is the sword. And it says that the sword is the word of God. That’s the word, that’s the scripture.
And that it’s sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing even between the spirit and the soul and the joints and the bones, and that it divides. And that’s another misconception that a lot of Christians have, is that Jesus wants everybody to get along. He did not say that.
Jesus said, “I came to, not to bring peace, but to bring a sword to divide mother against father, father against son, brother against brother.” Because when the truth really drops, there is no middle anymore. It’s a clean cut. And it’s this and that and that is it. That is it.
This is all in there. But Christians just can’t seem to get their head wrapped around it to a large degree. And I believe that stems from the churches in general. Just refuse to go there. And so if you’re a Christian watching this interview and you’re starting to get keyed up about what I’m saying, good, I’m glad you’re getting keyed up.
Why don’t you pick up the Bible and read exactly what it says without your preacher, without your Bible group, without anybody, and just read what it says.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s good advice right there. Read it. It’s good advice. Yes, have it speak to you directly and just see what it says.
Reading Scripture and Moving Forward
JOHN RICH: Read what it says and go, wow. Okay. Read the examples that are laid out by the people God thought the most of. Go read about Stephen who was stoned to death in the New Testament as Paul who was then Saul is holding the coats of the men who were stoning Stephen to death.
And not long after that Paul had his Road to Damascus event and then he went on his, all these churches popped up and he wrote half the New Testament. Nobody wants to get stoned to death. Nobody wants to get shot in the throat with a 30 odd six, do they? No, we do not want that. As human beings. We do not want that.
But it tells us to go forward, not backward, forward. We don’t retreat from the devil. He is so weak and his people are so weak in the face of who God really is and who God’s real people are. He has no chance at all to succeed. The only way he succeeds is that those people won’t engage. It’s a one-way fight and I’m just not going to be a part of that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Christmas season is here. Although it’s a bit of a cliche, it really is important to keep Christ in Christmas. Should we focus on cookies and presents or on the reason we’re doing this, which is Jesus? Obviously the point is Jesus. That’s the whole point. That’s the only point. And all the decency and good cheer of this holiday comes from Jesus.
The Hallow App’s Pray 25 challenge reminds us of that. It features Chris Pratt, Gwen Stefani, our friend Jonathan Roumie and many others. This 25-day challenge guides you through Advent and helps you keep your focus on the true reason for the season. Jesus. Experience the Nativity story where Jesus brought peace and calm to world in chaos. That’s exactly what we need right now is peace and calm and still. And Jesus is the only one who brings it. Period.
JOHN RICH: Hello.
TUCKER CARLSON: Hallow has thousands of prayers and meditations and music to help you connect with God all through Christmas and after, including several Christmas original songs and albums. There’s a whole world on Hallow. It’s like unbelievable. It’s changed our family’s life. Check it out. You will not regret it. Get three months for free at hallow.com/tucker. Experience greater peace and stillness this Christmas.
In the New Testament, I think all the disciples are certainly the majority or the ones whose fates we know, none of them wound up on Corfu in retirement.
What Victory Means to God
JOHN RICH: No, they all got killed. They all got killed or exiled or imprisoned for life or, yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: So what does that tell us? I mean, you just said that God always wins, but it sounds like his, you know, arms and legs, the people who are representing him…
JOHN RICH: Well, what God considers a win and what we consider a win might be two different things, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: What God considers a win is that people convert and repent and give their lives to him. That’s a win. That’s the real win. That’s the win. That’s the biggest win. It says the Lord wishes that no one go to hell. No one. He doesn’t want anybody to be separated from him. It’s his creation.
He wishes that no one has that fate, but he gives you free will. You’re not a robot. You can pick whichever side you want to go. You can follow the route you’re going to follow, and you’re going to wind up in eternity with whoever it is you followed. It’s as simple as that. You’re going to live in your daddy’s house, whoever that is.
The Next Generation and America’s Future
TUCKER CARLSON: Where do you think the country’s going?
JOHN RICH: Well, there are some positive signs. For instance, my two sons, they’re 14 and almost 16, and there is a resurgence of interest and true passion about learning who God is. What does God want me to do with my life? Reading their Bibles, having their own Bible studies. I mean, teenagers having their own Bible studies. That’s happening all over the US right now. I mean, that’s a big deal. That’s a big deal.
And they are very wise for their age because they have been through so many lies and seen the lies debunked.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: And realized, oh, they’re not telling me the truth on television.
TUCKER CARLSON: No, they’re not.
JOHN RICH: Oh, that politician, that was not true. Oh, they took two years away from us in school and made us all wear masks and told us, told our parents if they didn’t get vaccines, that they would lose their… And so my parents took the vaccine, and now one of them’s got myocarditis and the other one can’t breathe. Or my parents didn’t take the vaccine and they both lost their jobs.
Like, they watched the US Government brutalize their families and them. They watched it, they lived through it, and it imprinted on them in a major way. And so now they’re coming out of that and they’re starting to get older and they’re going to be moving out of the house. This generation I’m talking about, and they want to know what the real truth is.
They know they’ve been lied to for pretty much their whole lives and they’re sick of it. And they want to know what the truth is. And thank goodness they’re realizing the only infallible truth is in the pages of the Bible. That’s it. Not what the preacher says, not what I say or you say or the President says. What’s in this book? That is my life plan. This is my blueprint.
They really do feel that way about it. And that’s a very encouraging thing to me.
TUCKER CARLSON: I think a lot of people have a gut level sense that trouble’s coming.
JOHN RICH: 100%. It’s going to have to. Trouble has to come.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why?
The Scale of Child Predation in America
Because if you look back over the history of the written word of God, let’s call it what’s the Lord’s MO, what’s his modus operandi? How has he done it in the past? That’s really important to know because he says, “I am the same yesterday, today and forever. My word does not change.” He does not change. We change. Culture changes. He does not.
So if you look at, for instance, this stat: I started working with DHS with their cyber predator sting units. Because I saw a little presentation was done with my wife and my older son with like 30 boys and a DHS agent came in and he’s telling these boys how these predators can get them on their phones, like how they can track them, how they talk to them, how they present themselves as, “I’m a 15-year-old girl, I’m a cheerleader, I go to school right down the road from you. And here’s a picture of this pretty girl here. I’ll send you a picture of me in a bikini. You send me a picture,” blah, blah, blah.
And they start this whole thing and then once they’ve got them, then they say, “Yeah, I’m not a 14-year-old girl, I’m a 55-year-old man in Cleveland, Ohio. And here’s your dad’s name, your mom’s name, here’s all your siblings’ names, here’s your home address, here’s where you go to school and if you don’t do XYZ, I’m going to show up there tomorrow and kill everybody in your family.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Or show them the pictures. Yeah.
JOHN RICH: Yes. And then the kid is in this position of what do I do? What do I do? And then sometimes they’ll go and they’re told to meet this guy at a park or meet him at a store or a gas station or whatever and you never see him again.
So my wife and son saw this one hour little seminar from this guy and came home and my son pulls his phone out and starts changing the settings on his phone, deleting apps, certain apps that he had. Gone, that one’s gone, that one’s gone. Because this guy’s telling him, get this stuff off your phones.
So I’m like, what in the world did this guy say? And so my wife starts telling me what all he said. And I said, my God, that needs to be heard by every parent in America. I said, what was the agent’s name? And she actually had a business card on this guy.
And so I emailed him and I said, “Hey, agent so-and-so, this is John Rich. You just had this seminar with my wife and son and that message needs to be heard by every parent in America. How can we make that happen?” And he goes, “Hey John, nice to meet you. That’s above my pay grade.” I said, “Well, send me up to somebody that it ain’t above their pay grade.” So he goes, “Okay.”
So he sends me to their regional director, a guy named Dennis Fetting, Agent Fetting. And I told him, I said, “You guys are doing a horrible job marketing this message. I’m glad that you go to the school, I’m glad that you’ll go to the church, I’m glad that you’ll go to the youth group. That is admirable and great, but you’re throwing a snowball at a brick wall. I said, why don’t you work with me and let’s put you on live stream live on X and promote it for two or three weeks and do the exact same thing you just did there. But let’s do it in front of millions of people.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Great idea.
JOHN RICH: That’s what he said. He goes, “We never thought of that.” Well, of course not. They’re not marketers, that’s what I do. So we shook hands. Civilian and federal government shook hands. Got all the way up to Secretary Noem and she said, “Do it.” Great green light.
So we did that sit down. And to date it’s somewhere around 9 million views has been seen now for parents. And I get it all the time, parents hitting me up going, “We changed everything on our kids’ phones after we saw that, we made their accounts private. We got rid of these apps, we got rid of blah, blah, blah.” Because you would literally do anything as a parent to keep a bad guy, a predator from coming into your house at night and stealing your kid.
TUCKER CARLSON: Oh God.
JOHN RICH: Out of their bedroom. Wouldn’t you, Tucker?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, I would. Rip their throat out.
JOHN RICH: With your bare teeth if that’s all—
TUCKER CARLSON: You had sleep for eight hours.
JOHN RICH: They would die. Yep, they would die. They just would. But they’re getting to your kids as you’re sitting there watching the news or football, and your kid’s back there on their iPhone, on some app, talking to somebody they think is one person, but it’s somebody else. And they’re getting them right there inside your house, and you don’t even know it.
You’re derelict on your duty as the parent because you’re just ignorant of the fact that this is what’s going on. So that started me down a road of significance in that sector of educating parents and blowing the whistle on what the bad guys do.
The DHS told me that last year there were 36 million reports that came into them on kids that had been targeted online. 36 million in one year. So averaging 3 million a month.
TUCKER CARLSON: In the United States.
JOHN RICH: In the United States. That’s like every child. 3 million a month. And I said, “We don’t—”
TUCKER CARLSON: There’s—
JOHN RICH: There’s no way we can combat that. We go get as many of them as we can. But, I mean, it’s literally, that’s how big the problem is.
Why Trouble Must Come to America
So back to your question. Why? Why does trouble have to come to this country? Because God is not going to put up with that. And he doesn’t bring trouble on a country because the devil’s people are being devilish. He brings trouble on a country because his people refuse to engage.
Second Chronicles says, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and turn from their wicked ways, I will come and heal their land.” He didn’t say if the devil’s people. Right. He said, “If my people.”
TUCKER CARLSON: There’s not a lot of emphasis on that. There’s a lot of emphasis on what other people are doing wrong. Emphasis on the bad people, on the existence of evil. I’ve certainly spent a lot of time thinking and talking about that, but very little conversation about how we’re part of the problem.
JOHN RICH: Christians don’t want to hear that. You think they’d come back to church next Sunday if you impugned the entire congregation, including yourself? Do you think they’d come back?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I mean, that was—
JOHN RICH: I would come back.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the biblical message. Right? Isn’t that what John the Baptist said as he wandered around the desert, repent? And Jesus too, repent?
JOHN RICH: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: And it worked.
JOHN RICH: Maybe the churches will turn back to that. But if they don’t, he is, he is going to—if we won’t humble ourselves, then he is going to humble us. He will do it for our own good.
TUCKER CARLSON: How does that work?
Biblical Examples of God’s Humbling
JOHN RICH: Ask Moses how it worked out for him when he got humbled. I mean, ask David how it worked out when he got humbled. King David went out there and, yeah, he killed Goliath. Man, that was awesome. He was doing good. And then he becomes king, and he sees this gorgeous woman taking a bath on her rooftop. And he goes, “Wow, who’s that?” They go, “Oh, that’s Bathsheba.” He goes, “Who’s she married to?” “She’s married to one of your main generals in the army, Uriah.” He goes, “She’s married to Uriah?” “Yeah.”
He goes, “Tell you what, when we take the Philistines on here in the next couple of weeks”—they had a battle coming up—”put Uriah on the front line so he’ll die and then—”
TUCKER CARLSON: Withdraw support from him. So he’s alone.
JOHN RICH: He got killed.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: And then David took his wife. David took his wife after he had him basically murdered. And Bathsheba got pregnant. Then a prophet came to David and he said, “God knows what you’ve done. He knows what you’ve done. And he sent me to tell you that that child will not be born alive. He’s taking your child from you. That’s your punishment.”
And David just went into an absolute tailspin. I mean, it said covered himself in sackcloth and ashes, ripped his beard out. I mean, he was just writhing around in the street as the king of Israel at that point because he realized the immense nature of sin that he had committed, his sin. Yes, yes.
And God loved him. David is the only man in the Bible that God says is “a man after my own heart.” I mean, the greatest compliment you could get from God. Yes, but David still did that. And God brought him low. He humbled him in a major way.
And so if we look at the history of God and what his MO has always been, when his people refuse to do what he’s telling them to do and they stand back and let the devil just run right over them over and over, and by doing so allow tens of millions of kids to be harmed or worse because Christians, God’s people, refuse to engage the situation—you damn right he’s going to humble us. And I can’t wait.
TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t wait for the country to be humbled?
JOHN RICH: Bring it. Because I don’t want to live in a country that allows that kind of thing to happen. I don’t want to live in a place like that. That is the most abhorrent thing you can possibly imagine.
TUCKER CARLSON: But there’s a lot of suffering on—
JOHN RICH: The way from here to humility, 100%. Pain. Pain is the greatest teacher. Pain is—I mean, he made the Israelites wander around out in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses didn’t even get to go into the Promised Land because he sinned, and that was his punishment.
You can go down the list. All of them did something. I mean, they’re just humans. But he gives you—I’ve said this before. If God really loves you, he’ll only slap your teeth out instead of your brains. If he really cares about you, you’re a dad. I’m a dad. If our kids, when they’re little, they’re playing out in the road, throwing a baseball around or whatever, and you go out there and they’re boys, “You can’t be playing in the street. Come on back in the yard.” “Okay, dad.”
And the very next day, they’re back out in the street throwing the baseball again. Are you going to have the same demeanor this time?
TUCKER CARLSON: No.
JOHN RICH: No. You’re going to intensify, and you’re going to go, “Boys, I told you.” And you’re going to grab one of them by the shirt and you’re going to march them back into the yard. And then the next week, they’re out in the street throwing the baseball around again. And cars are zipping by now. What are you going to do? Now we’re going to enter the phase—
TUCKER CARLSON: Of pain, the spanking zone.
JOHN RICH: Something’s going to happen that they’re not going to want it to happen again. And why are you doing that? You’re doing that so they don’t get hit by a car and die. You’re doing it to protect them from themselves because they’re not listening and they’re not doing what it is you’re telling them to do. And it’s not an ego trip that you’re punishing them. It’s for their own good.
You can tell the kid his whole life, “Don’t put your hand on that stove, son, or it will burn your hand.” He will not believe you until one day he lays his hand on that stove and takes the skin off his—
TUCKER CARLSON: Correct.
JOHN RICH: And he’ll never touch it again, will he? Or like a go-kart. You know, the exhaust on a go-kart sitting out there.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, yeah.
JOHN RICH: And you tell your kids, “Don’t touch, don’t touch that. That thing is blazing. You could fry an egg on that.” My son, he’s about 9, laid his hand down on that and I had to go to the hospital and scrape all his skin. It was horrible. He never did that again. Right. So that’s what Christians, I believe, can expect in the future.
Personal Humility and Daily Struggle
TUCKER CARLSON: Have you experienced, have you been humbled?
JOHN RICH: Oh, good grief, yes, tremendously, many times. Because I’m a very stiff-necked—I would say it’s a battle for me to sacrifice my self-confidence and arrogance and my alpha male attitude. That is my biggest thing is I’ve got to kill it every single day. Every day I’ve got to just tie that up in a knot, throw it over my shoulder.
TUCKER CARLSON: How do you do that?
The Relationship Between God and His Children
By realizing who’s watching you, knowing he’s looking at you, going, “You’re going, sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Shouldn’t have had that thought. Shouldn’t have got that mad. Shouldn’t have done whatever.” You go, “I’m sorry,” and then stop doing that. He’ll go, “Thank you.”
He’s your dad. He treats us like kids because we are the same way you would discipline your kids and care about your kids and I do is the same way he feels about us, except he’s just perfect at it, whereas we’re totally imperfect with it. But the same emotion and the same point of it is there, whether it’s Tucker Carlson talking to your kids or God’s talking to Tucker Carlson, it’s the same relationship. Isn’t that an interesting thing to think about?
TUCKER CARLSON: It is interesting. And one of the things I, I mean, aside from the fact the unhappiest people in the world I’ve ever met hate their dads, there’s something about that dynamic that doesn’t work at all for people. But I noticed that most people in positions of leadership, temporal leadership, will never admit fault, ever. That’s the one thing that sets them apart. Whether they’re competent or incompetent, they all fail at some point. And leaders tend to deny it.
Success Versus Significance in Leadership
JOHN RICH: Yep, they fail to yield to him, number one. But they even fail to yield to their fellow citizens to say, “I am sorry, that was a huge mistake.” And why do they fail to do that? Because they feel like if I admit that I really made that horrible mistake, they won’t reelect me or I’ll lose my job at the big company or whatever it is.
So that is more important to them than owning up to whatever they did that was wrong. It’s more important to keep myself intact. Well, what is that? That’s back to success and significance. They’re only concerned about success, their success. That’s it.
And I’m telling you right now, man, he does not care about your personal success. He may give you a lot of success, but that’s not the point. And I really think that he gives guys like me success and you success and other people success so that at some point back to your original question, “It seems like, John, you’ve changed gears here.” Yes, I have changed gears here because the fuse is burning down on whatever this situation is going to wind up being.
And I want to be on record that I said true things that are backed up by the word. I want to write music that backs it up. I want to do podcasts that people can watch and think about it and go pick it up and read it for themselves. That is significant to me. That is significant, but it’s also unpredictable.
TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t know where that goes. Are you worried?
JOHN RICH: I have concern about it. I’ve had death threats in the past two weeks. That’s not fun.
TUCKER CARLSON: What’s your attitude toward that?
Praying for Protection
JOHN RICH: Pray for protection. So we talked about earlier, when you pray for things, you have to be specific about what it is you’re asking for. And then he has to give it to you if it serves his will. Well, I would hope protecting me serves his will. I hope he wants me around a long time.
There’s one verse in Zechariah in the Old Testament, and this prophet, he was being hunted, basically, and like all of them were, and he asked God for protection, and God responded to him. The Lord responded to him and said, “I will be a wall of fire around you. I personally will not, I’m going to send down the angels. I, the Creator, will be a wall of fire around you, and they will not be able to get to you.”
Granted, Job is another example. Job had a hedge built around him and his family that God built around him because God loved him and protected him. And the devil went to God and said, “Take that hedge off from around Job and I bet I can get him to curse you.” Like, this is the devil up there, this Lucifer up there talking to God.
God goes, “No, he won’t.” He goes, “Well, you’ll never know because I can’t get to him because you built this hedge around him. I can’t get to him. But if you take it down, he’ll curse you. He will. He’ll turn his back on you.” And he goes, “No, he won’t.” He goes, “All right, fine.”
And so God took the hedge away from Job, and it says a storm blew through, killed his entire family, took all of his crops, all of his land, his animals, everything. And then Job got struck with a disease. And he went from being a wealthy, successful guy with a nice family and all that, to sitting outside the walls of the city covered in sores, scraping himself with pieces of broken pottery, begging for people to give him food.
And his family and friends are walking past him, going, “Job, just curse God and die. Just curse God and die. Job, this is horrible.”
TUCKER CARLSON: And his friends show up and blame it all on him.
JOHN RICH: “We can’t stand seeing what’s happening to you. God has abandoned you. Just curse him and die and get this over with.” And Job’s response is this: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him? Though he slay me, yet will I still trust him?”
And when he made that statement, God replenished him with everything he had lost times seven, and put the hedge back around him and told the devil, said, “I told you so. I told you he wouldn’t curse me. Get the hell out of my face.” Go read that story.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right, yes.
Using Authority to Protect the Defenseless
TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re changing your orientation away from just amusing people in bars and stadiums. You’re trying to use the authority that you have, you’ve been given, you’ve earned to teach and to shine light on evil and to help the weak, the defenseless. The defenseless. I think I’m summarizing broadly what you just said. You’ve written a new song, which I think is fair to say is not a top 40 hit. Is this fair?
JOHN RICH: It just came out, and it will not be on the radio.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why won’t it be on the radio?
JOHN RICH: If a radio station plays this song, I will go there personally and buy a steak dinner. It would take a lot for them to put this on the air. About a year ago, I saw a clip of Sean Combs, and he was standing on a stage at an award show.
TUCKER CARLSON: Diddy.
JOHN RICH: Yeah, that’s right. I won’t call him that, but whatever that guy. And Sean Combs standing up there, and he’s looking into the cameras, and he says, “I own your kids. I own their souls. I determine what they wear. I determine what they listen to.”
He’s looking right in the camera saying this, meaning he’s looking at me, and I’m thinking, “Oh, is that right, Sean Combs? You own my sons. You own the souls of my sons. Really?”
And I thought, this guy has no fear whatsoever of a mom or a dad and what they would do to him if he came and tried to take one of their kids. No understanding whatsoever. And basically what you’re seeing there is a demon possessed man.
And don’t forget this, Tucker. The devil and his minions are the most arrogant creatures in the universe. They are so arrogant. I’ve noticed with their wickedness, they don’t care what you think about it. I mean, they’re just going to say it right to your face.
And so I saw him say that and I went, “This guy, music for Sean Combs is like a weapon. He uses his music to indoctrinate.” We talked about music earlier, how it can go in between all the defenses you have. It can get through your soul and your spirit and all the way down into you and get stuck in your head for the rest of your life. And he knows that too. He uses it for wicked purposes. So it’s a weapon for him. It’s something that’s his main go to.
And I was thinking about that and I said, “Yeah, me too. Music is my weapon of choice.” And is anybody going to rebut this devil and what he just said about our kids? Nobody did. Nobody said boo about it. Well, there’s Sean Combs up there just declaring that he owns the souls of our children in America.
I said, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” And I got really intense with that thought process. And I thought, there needs to be a song that talks about what a mom or a dad would be willing to do to keep a Sean Combs style person, and there’s millions of them in our country. As we discussed earlier, there’s literally nothing they wouldn’t do to protect their kids.
The Righteous Hunter
And I really don’t think that the people on the other side of the table, the predator class out there, don’t really have an understanding of that. It’s almost as if they have no fear of the American parent, of the dad, the regular guy, the guy that keeps to himself, works hard every day, “just leave me alone” guy.
I think they don’t really understand what that person would turn into if you put your hands on one of their kids because they would rip you limb from limb. They would become the most primal beast you’ve ever met in your life. They would lose all inhibition. You lose. They win. All they would care about is that they live long enough to kill you. That would be the dad’s only concern. Just let me live long enough to take him out. He hurt my kid. That’s how a parent really feels, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: Without question.
JOHN RICH: Okay. A lot of parents watching this podcast right now are going, “Yep.” So I wrote this song called “The Righteous Hunter,” because predators hunt. They hunt. They hunt our kids. So they’re the wicked hunters, right?
Well, as everything is in nature, if you’ve got darkness, you’ve also got light. There’s a flip side to everything. And I thought, who are the righteous hunters? How about we hunt them? How about we put them on the run? How about the predators out there who are so arrogant that they’ll stand on television and tell us what they’re going to do to our kids? How about we put a little fear of God into them for a minute? How about we remind them who it is that they’re really dealing with?
And so I wrote this song “The Righteous Hunter.” It just came out. The video to this song, which I would urge people to go watch, is disturbing. It is a recreation. And we actually used adults who had been trafficked and who now go out and sting traffickers. One lady in particular named Brooke, who you’ll see in the video, she made sure that we shot this accurately.
So basically, you see these two bad guys making a deal on buying some kids and where they’re going to meet, and then you see them meeting there, and then you see the kids walk out that are for sale. And meanwhile, I’m singing in this little girl’s bedroom, and she’s not there because she’s been taken.
And her dad is played by Sean Ryan. What a good man in the video. And you talk about a righteous hunter. That’s him. Because I promise you, he’s a hunter on many levels. But as a dad, that is the last human being you would want to see coming for you. The last human being.
And so I asked Sean, I said, “I know this is way outside man of what you normally do or have ever done, but would you play the dad in this video, ‘The Righteous Hunter’?” And I sang “The Righteous Hunter” on his podcast about two months ago, and he looked at me and he said, “That’s going to be the biggest song you have ever put out. I’m going to make a prediction. That is going to be the biggest song you’ve ever put out.” Tears in his eyes, the whole thing.
So I brought my guitar up here because we’re not going to show the video on the podcast, but you can get the song. You can go watch it. Just look up John Rich, “The Righteous Hunter,” and you’ll find it.
But I brought the old Martin there. That’s actually my son’s name, Colt. My younger son and his birthday, September 29, 2011. And I memorialize my kids on my guitars. I love my kids more than life, more than anything. And there’s literally nothing I would not do to protect one of my kids. Literally nothing. Literally.
I don’t care if 20 of them are coming, we’ll pile them up out by the fence if you come for my kids as a windbreak. If you come for my kids, all bets are off. You lose, I win. We don’t run. We do not run.
And we’re going to have to stop running in this country. We should not have the posture of, “Oh, I just hope they don’t come get my kid.” That’s not the posture, man. The posture is you come on and try it one time, big boy. Come on into my yard and try it one time and see how you wind up, you freak.
Sitting behind your computer, acting like you’re a kid and trapping these kids, stealing these kids, pimping them, prostituting them, harvesting their organs. All the horrible demonic stuff you’re doing to our kids. Why don’t you step in my yard one time and try it and see what happens to you, you degenerate demoniac. Call them what they are. So that’s what this song does.
TUCKER CARLSON: I want to hear it.
JOHN RICH: Absolutely. I know. I always bring songs to you that you go, “I can’t believe you could write a song about that.”
The Righteous Hunter
TUCKER CARLSON: No, I love it.
JOHN RICH: Evil runs around this town undercover, looking for a soul to take. But they better stay away from the righteous hunter, or hell is all they’ll pay. Because I can see around the corner and I know you’re coming. If you had any sense, you’d run. But you ain’t got a clue what a daddy will do. Better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun. You better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun.
He tried to steal away our sons and daughters shrouded in the shadow of night. But we fight with protection of the heavenly Father. We ain’t scared to die. And I can see around the corner and I know you’re coming. If you had any sense you’d run. But you ain’t got a clue what a daddy will do. Better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun. Yeah, you better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun.
Recall the words that Jesus said, better off with millstones around their necks and we pray. Not our will but thine be done. Bringing in to the reign of the wicked oneness we claim in your name and I can see you around the corner and I know you’re coming if you had any sense you’d run.
But you ain’t got a clue what a daddy will do. Better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun. Yeah, you better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun. Evil runs around this town under cover, looking for a soul to take but they better stay away from the righteous honor for hell is all they’ll pay.
TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing. I love it.
JOHN RICH: Thanks for letting me play it.
TUCKER CARLSON: You say in there, “I’m not afraid to die.” Are you not afraid to die?
JOHN RICH: Not for my kids. Yeah. It’d be an honor to die for my kids.
Why This Message Matters Now
TUCKER CARLSON: I agree with that. Why are you the first person to articulate this in the way that you did?
JOHN RICH: Because it is the most grotesque, uncomfortable, wicked thing that exists in my mind. And it is so bad that really good people, with really good intentions, strong people, just want to go like that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yep, that’s where I am. That’s exactly where.
JOHN RICH: I cannot look at that. I cannot bring myself to come to grips with what is going on.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s too evil. You can’t. I can’t deal with it.
JOHN RICH: So evil. It is so against the DNA of an unpossessed person that they can’t even fathom it. And that’s very wise. Don’t want it in your mind.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right. In fact, I’ve always wondered, I’m so grateful that there are people in trapping job monsters on the Internet. I’m grateful for that. But I always wonder, what does it do to them to marinate it? It’s like watching ISIS videos all day. You don’t want to. I don’t want to see that they.
JOHN RICH: Have PTSD like you can on a map.
TUCKER CARLSON: Is that true?
JOHN RICH: Oh Lord, have mercy. I mean, the jobs these people do, the stuff they have to see, it never leaves them. And they have all kinds of problems that they have to deal with. And a lot of them can only do those jobs for a period of time and they got to get out. They just cannot deal with it.
And that goes to the point of how unbelievably horrible it really is. And the fact that 36 million reports got called in last year to DHS about kids being targeted. 36 million unique reports. That’s how big it is in our country. America is the number one consumer of child exploitation. Number one is America, you know, the country that’s founded on God, that country, the country that says founded by our creator.
The Scale of the Problem
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s just a little weird, because if you go online, even in your private conversations, which are not private at all, they’re all monitored, as I know you know it’s a fact. And start talking about overthrowing the government or killing your leaders or whatever, boy, they come to your house. That happens a lot. A lot.
So how are people consuming child exploitation pornography? Like, how are they engaging this digitally? And the government just kind of isn’t picking up on it or something? What is that?
JOHN RICH: It could be. That could be part of it. But the sheer volume, Tucker, how you deal with 36 million reports, how do you do that?
TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know.
JOHN RICH: So the only way I have thought of, of how to start knocking these numbers back, which, by the way, less than 1% of kids that are trafficked and taken are ever returned to their parents. Less than 1%. The only way I have determined. And at the end of the video, and I really hope people go look this video up, “The Righteous Hunter.”
At the end of the video, my friend Tim Tebow saw the video. Tim’s organization, they hire former police detectives, former military intelligence people, and they go out and they find these guys and they rescue kids. That’s what they do. We need, I asked the lady that was at the video shoot, she’s overseen 14,000 kids rescued in 21 years.
TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.
JOHN RICH: And she was trafficked as a kid. So she dedicated her whole life to it. And I asked Brooke, I said, so how many people would we need in America working full time, doing the job that you do or that Tim Tebow does and others to get this number from 1% are returned to 50% are returned? She said, probably 20,000 somewhere in that range. And I said, what would that cost? She said, about a billion dollars a year.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And I said, less than we give to Harvard.
JOHN RICH: That’s all. What would happen if you had $2 billion? She goes, we would, there, they would be running. They would be, would burn their computers. They would get off the dark web. They would be hiding under the rocks and in the caves. They would be hiding because there would be an army of people tracking them, hunting them. The predator becomes hunted.
She said it would take that. So I wonder why I can’t go to Congress and lay these, lay these facts and figures out while we have this current administration and say, I want $2 billion peeled off of some project you guys are working on, and I want 20,000, 40,000 soldiers on the ground, American citizens with expertise to go drain this situation and incarcerate as many of them as you can. And save the American child. That is what I want to see.
TUCKER CARLSON: Take it out of the foreign aid budget. I’m for that.
JOHN RICH: Let’s go.
TUCKER CARLSON: Let’s go.
JOHN RICH: Now, if we pull something like that off, God may decide to hold off on turning the table upside down on this country. He might. If you do that.
America’s Treatment of Children
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, we don’t treat children well at all.
JOHN RICH: No, at all. We don’t let a lot of them even be born to begin with.
TUCKER CARLSON: 63 million since 1973.
JOHN RICH: That’s right. And I often think if some.
TUCKER CARLSON: If you were buying a new house and the realtor said it was a great house and you wanted the house, a beautiful house, and you got to the master bedroom and the realtor says to you, by the way, you should just know that a child was dismembered in this bedroom. Would you buy the house? Maybe. Probably not. Because there’s something spooky about that.
There’s something, I’m not a theologian. I don’t know much about theology, but there’s something so dark about that act taking place in a place you don’t want anything to do with it. I’m not used to call them haunted houses. So if you have 63 million dismemberments of children in your country, it changes the nature of the country.
It’s leaving aside, you know, the effects on the women, obviously the children were killed, the effects on the abortionists who did it. It’s bad for everybody, but it’s also bad for your nation itself. Like that’s happened inside our borders.
JOHN RICH: Yes. How long do you think God’s going to let us get away with that?
TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know.
JOHN RICH: But I’m surprised he has for this long.
TUCKER CARLSON: He.
JOHN RICH: He, he brought low many other empires for way less.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, I.
JOHN RICH: That’s why I say I refuse to.
TUCKER CARLSON: Believe that doesn’t have consequences. That has consequences.
JOHN RICH: I hope for it.
TUCKER CARLSON: If soul is real, and I think that it is. I think most people understand that it is because they feel that it is. You can’t eliminate 63,000 people, can’t kill them for whatever reason. Everyone always has a good reason to kill somebody. They always justify it to themselves. But the fact is that many number of children were killed. And like that has got to have a consequence. How could it not?
Success Versus Significance
JOHN RICH: Right? Right. So this little song I just played you is, it’s out there. And the point of it is, is to, is to grab parents by the shoulders and shake them hard enough.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
JOHN RICH: Because these images in this video, my man will rattle you when you see them. It was hard to shoot, uncomfortable to shoot, but we shot it accurately. We had, we had real people that really do this for a living and made it look like what it looks like. I mean that the people in the room were bawling their eyes out and these are some tough people because the situation looked like what they go into a lot of the times.
And you see those kids come walking in that room for sale. Yeah, it’s, it’s you, you will. But you will become extremely sad and violently angry all at the same time. You will go, if I could find those people right now, I’d go get them. That’s how it’ll make you feel.
But they’re everywhere. They’re in every zip code in the U.S. There are people that you might shake hands with every day. There are people that work in your schools. There are people that work in government. There are people that coach teams. There are all kinds of people you would never expect that are involved in this stuff. That’s why it’s so big. It’s like a $220 billion a year industry and America’s the number one customer.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s horrifying.
JOHN RICH: So not, not to drag us all the way down. No, no, no, no.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, I think it’s, if, you know, you have to care.
JOHN RICH: About that, you got to write. Writing a song like that and putting it out is, I believe, a significant thing to do. That’s not something you do for success. That’s something you do for significance. Back to the beginning of our conversation. Because once I put it out there, it’s out there forever. Music is permanent and it sticks. They don’t forget about it.
And I’m hoping that it yields results on many levels. I hope that it wakes parents up. I hope that parents go on and look at that video we did with DHS and they go to their kids phones and go, we’re changing all that. They can’t even get to you now. That needs to happen.
And then I hope extreme funding starts rolling in that this song will start a dialogue that big. That’s why I made it so jarring and that’s why I made that lyric the way it is. The lyric is accurate. “Give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun.” Because I know you’re coming for my kid and you’re not going to survive this. But I still hope you don’t go to hell. Like that’s what the good guy says. Give your soul to Jesus on your way over. Because this is the last stop for you. You know what I mean?
I do, and I think that’s how most Americans, especially Christian Americans, they don’t want to ever have to be in a position like that. No, but it’s in them. It’s just, God made us that way.
TUCKER CARLSON: You threaten your children. Yeah, that’s a different thing. God built this, so I think this will reverberate. And the reason I think that is, I mean, you’re the only singer I’ve ever interviewed twice about something other than singing is because the last interview that we did really had a lasting effect on me.
You, when we did the interview, it was about your song “Revelation,” which I thought was great, but I didn’t understand. I still don’t fully understand a lot of the theology around it. It’s not the world that I come from, to put it mildly. But you made a point about something called dispensational.
JOHN RICH: Dispensationalism.
The Aftermath of Challenging Dispensationalism
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, the theology of dispensation. And you criticize it. You said you don’t think it’s biblical. And I wasn’t exactly sure what you’re talking about when we had the conversation, but it set off a chain reaction in me. I learned a lot, much, much more about it, and it really did change my views.
But in that conversation, you said, there are a lot of preachers who will hate this. And I’ve never met any preacher, you know, who even knows what that is. So it’s like it’s, again, not my world.
JOHN RICH: Right.
TUCKER CARLSON: My question is, what was the effect, the aftermath of that interview?
JOHN RICH: A lot of preachers hated what I had to say. They did, yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Did you hear about it?
JOHN RICH: Oh, I went on YouTube and I couldn’t watch them all. There were so many of them. I mean, some of them were 10 minutes long, some of them were two hours long.
TUCKER CARLSON: Some of them responding to your views.
JOHN RICH: Oh, yeah. Some of them were sermons where they would bring it up. “I know you’ve probably seen this song Revelation, and let’s, I just want to go into that. Anybody that says that what John Rich is saying is a heretic…” Actually, that’s a bad word. That’s a really bad word. A heretic. Yeah. And it’s false teaching and it’s false doctrine, and it’s blah, blah. But he’s a false, false, false, false, false.
Also a terrible word. I’m anything but false. I have my faults. False is not one of them.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve noticed. Yeah.
JOHN RICH: And so I went, well, we hit the mark with that because their congregations are now going, “I’m going to go read Matthew 24. John said, go read it. I don’t really know what it says, so I’m going to go read it,” right?
And I’m telling you, man, I have had thousands of people online, on social media hit me up and say, “I just read Matthew 24 twice like you said. And it absolutely says that. That is just what it says. I can’t believe I ever thought it was different than that.”
Understanding Dispensationalism and the Rapture
Like the whole point of it for people that don’t know what that is, dispensationalism is basically saying that before the tribulation hits, before things get really, really bad for Christians on the earth, that they will be raptured out of here, they’ll be pulled out before the really bad stuff happens. And it doesn’t say that.
And actually Jesus lists off all these things that are going to happen prior to his return. And the wrath that Christians will be living under during the tribulation is the devil’s wrath. We’re not spared from the devil’s wrath, we’re spared from God’s wrath. And God’s wrath is final. That’s when whoever’s left at that point gets pulled out. And then God pours his wrath out and the whole thing gets wiped out and then he rebuilds it. And there’s, that’s a whole other story.
But American Christians and American preachers don’t want to have to think about the fact that they’re going to have to go through something difficult. Well, I’m sorry, why don’t you take a little trip around the globe and go meet with some Christians who are literally meeting in caves and under and in basements of houses. And if they’re caught, they’re murdered or imprisoned for the rest of their life or chopped up into pieces like what’s going on in Syria right now. But they just hack them up or go down to Africa where there’s Christians in mainly Muslim dominated countries and they’re actually practicing Christians.
You know what happens to them? They steal all their kids, they hack up all the men and women and they move on. And that village is just gone. And you’re telling me that fat, lazy American Christians have more of a right to be spared pain than those people?
Those people are worshiping Jesus Christ knowing it could absolutely cost them their life and they’re doing it anyway. That’s a, they are elite to us. They are giants of Christians in these other places.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, I agree with that.
JOHN RICH: Yes, they are elite. They are God’s elite Christians, we are not. We’re in America. We have a constitution that protects us from things like that happening to us. Right. You can’t do that to Christians in the United States. Now, they can come after you and call you bad names, blah, blah. That’s not real persecution.
And so I take real issue with Christians that say God would never make us go through that. I’m like, what Bible are you reading? The 12 disciples were pretty tight with Jesus. Were they spared? No. I would say the 12 disciples were probably tighter with Jesus than any 12 men that ever lived. More than likely. Right. He was tight with some other ones, too, Paul and Daniel and King David and all that. But the twelve disciples all wound up either being hung, beheaded in prison for the rest of their lives, whatever.
TUCKER CARLSON: Impaled.
JOHN RICH: Impaled. Really bad things. Crucified.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JOHN RICH: I mean, they crucified the Son of God. I mean, if anybody was going to be spared from pain, don’t you think it would be the actual Son of God? Don’t you think he would have been spared?
TUCKER CARLSON: You’d think you’d get a pass on that.
JOHN RICH: Do American Christians outrank Jesus Christ? What an arrogant attitude that is.
Confronting False Teaching
TUCKER CARLSON: There’s also a kind of fragile response to all that, like to, you know, so you make these points and then they call you a heretic for saying that.
JOHN RICH: That’s fine. Call me that. The Pharisees and Sadducees called Jesus all kinds of names. They can’t stand it when you call them out. It really hits them the wrong way, which is great. It should hit them the wrong way because they are wrong and they know that they are.
And they bought into centuries of that spin on that particular subject. And it’s just most Christians don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it because they’ve always been taught that. They don’t know that that’s not right. So it’s just ignorance on their part. They just don’t know.
But the real simple trick is, my man, pick up the Bible and read what it says. Just read it. Just read it down and then read it slower and then read it a third time and sit there and think about it. It says all these things are going to happen before he shows back up. And if I’m alive when those things are happening, I’m going to live through that.
And the real problem is telling people that they’re going to be raptured out of here before any, before, for instance, the Antichrist shows up or before the mark of the beast is implemented. They think they’ll be gone before those things happen. Well, that’s not true. They won’t be gone before it happens.
So what danger does that put them in? That means if they’re alive on the earth when the mark of the beast is implemented and when the Antichrist shows up and makes himself known and they’re still here, they’re not going to think that’s the Antichrist and they’re not going to think that’s the mark of the beast. And I believe that’s part of the great deception that is talked about in the New Testament.
He says, “Be as wise as serpents.” Jesus said that. Like the deception is going to be so convincing that even some of the elect, meaning the elite Christians, the one that really know, even they, it could be possible to even deceive them. That’s how close the counterfeit move will be made. It is going to be something else.
And if you have been believing wrong information and believing a spin narrative that’s put on the end times, you were in harm’s way at that point.
The Purpose Behind the Deception
TUCKER CARLSON: Ah, that’s interesting. Why do you think, what was the purpose of this deception? Like this fault, what you call false theology?
JOHN RICH: Well, what it did was they figured out that if they would preach in a way that didn’t make people uncomfortable and told, it actually was twofold. Make them not feel uncomfortable about it, they would come back to church following week.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yep. And the church would get bigger marketing scheme.
JOHN RICH: Yeah. And the other side of it, which actually I think had a positive effect, was they would say the Rapture could happen before this church service is over. So you better give your life to Jesus right now because this time tomorrow it could happen.
Well, that created a sense of immediacy for people like, “Well, I don’t want to get left behind. I don’t want to get left behind.” And they would go down and they would get saved. They’d give their life to Jesus. That’s great. Right. So that was a positive result of it.
But you’re talking about hundreds of years. Now we’re in 2025, we’ve got AI about to show up. You know, you wonder how my dad, who’s been preaching since he was 19 years old, said we never could understand how in the book of Revelation how they could monitor every human being on the earth, because that’s what they would have to do to implement the mark of the beast. You can’t buy or sell unless you have the mark, right.
When he goes, “We couldn’t understand how that even be. How would you implement that?” And then he goes, “Well, of course now, I mean, everybody’s monitored all the time and that’s not even a question.”
So all the technology and the technology that is yet to come and that yet to be deployed, anyway, it’s already here, but yet to be deployed, that’s all going to be used in the tribulation. That will be used.
Signs of the Times
TUCKER CARLSON: So it sounds like from your perspective, we’re getting pretty close.
JOHN RICH: Everything that needs to exist for it to happen exists now. But it’s up to God. He could hold it off for a thousand years, but it sure don’t look like it.
TUCKER CARLSON: There are American Christians, including in Texas, where you’re from, working very hard, raising a lot of money to build a third temple in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. What do you think of that?
JOHN RICH: When, when it’s very important in the Bible to go back and look up the original language of what was said, because it may say something a little different than what the English version of it says. I think that human beings that try to instigate on their own accord, instigate bringing on what Revelation talks about and what Daniel talked about, they go out purposely to instigate it. Really hits me in a wrong way.
TUCKER CARLSON: Because they’re not God.
JOHN RICH: They don’t get to decide. They’re not God. They don’t get to decide what happens. They just don’t. We don’t. That’s up to him, how he wants to see that roll out. And so I find it strange that human beings think that they can usurp God’s planning and his authority and his timeline. That’s how it appears to me anyway.
TUCKER CARLSON: So when people say we’re going to bring about the end of history, the end of time by doing this, we’re…
JOHN RICH: Going to force Jesus to come back when we want him to come back.
TUCKER CARLSON: You’re not on board with that?
JOHN RICH: No, I’m not. No. You don’t force Jesus Christ to do anything.
TUCKER CARLSON: If you had to guess, my last question, if you had to guess where your life goes in the next five or 10 years, what would your guess be? Because I’ve rarely met a more intense, self driven person.
Following God’s Call
JOHN RICH: I would hope that I continue to do what I am told, no matter how difficult it is. If he wants me to do it and shows me “I want you to go do that,” that I will have the fortitude, which he also has to give you. You have to ask for that, too. You don’t have your own fortitude. You don’t have anything, Tucker. You have literally nothing. You have nothing. You have to ask him for all of it.
That he would grant me the fortitude to follow through on what it is he wants me to do. And my real, just what I feel like my role is right now, is to have conversations like this in front of millions of people because they’re not going to hear it generally in their church. They’re not going to hear it anywhere. They’re just not going to hear it.
And I have no agenda with this. You know what I mean? I don’t have a church. I’m not a preacher. I’m not running for politics. I’m not doing any of those things. I’m a guy with no record deal, no publishing deal. I’m a dad. I have a guitar. I know how to write songs. I can perform them.
A Mission Through Music
I can take things that need to be said and put it into the form of music and put it out there and hopefully have serious, serious impact in two directions.
One, for the good people, the righteous people out there, to make them think, to flick light bulbs on in their head. Go, “Wait, what did he just say? What did that song do?” And open them up to receive the real truth of what’s going on.
And second fold on that is to put the most fear humanly and spiritually possible into the hearts of the devil’s people, of his army. I want them to be able to not sleep at night. I want them to run and cower in fear because they know who they’re up against.
Calling Out Evil
And we have to announce ourselves. We have to tell them who we are and we have to call them what they are. They’re not somebody with a mental problem. They are a servant of their father. They are carrying out their father’s business and that’s what they are.
And guess what? They all have a chance to repent. As long as they got one breath left, they can repent and they can turn. And I pray that they do. But if they’re not going to, and they’re going to stay on the route that they’re on and they’re going to come for our kids, then they’re going to have to deal with us.
It’s just who is us. Us have to make ourselves clear. The song is meant to clarify to them, to the Sean Combs’s of the world, who you’re talking to, because I don’t think you really understand it fully. And I like that thought.
TUCKER CARLSON: John Rich, thank you.
JOHN RICH: Thanks for having me man. Always a good time.
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