Presidential candidate Ryan Binkley paid a visit to the Council Bluffs area on Tuesday evening, speaking at Crossroads Church in Council Bluffs at an event hosted by Free Speech America.
Binkley is President and CEO of Generational Equity, a business consulting firm that he co-founded with his father around 20 years ago, which has about 16 offices and 400 employees across the country. Binkley is also the pastor of Create Church in Dallas, Texas, a congregation with around 700 attendees. Now, he’s running for President, which he says he believes in a calling from God.
“I really believe God spoke to me,” Binkley said. “There’s something that he wants to say to our nation, and the message has been really clear to me.”
While theme of the event was “faith in the public square,” most of Binkley’s talk was on domestic policies. Even so, every topic had a biblical element to it. “The borrow as a slave to the lender,” Binkley said, citing Proverbs 22:7. “And when we borrow $32 trillion, we’ve given up freedom … we’ve had more blessings
financially in our generation than the previous two combined, but we’re about to pass off to the next generation $50 trillion in debt.”
Binkley’s plan for health insurance had similar divine inspiration. “I’d woken up from a dream,” Binkley said. “I got the answer — healthcare … it’s a monopoly. God gave me a word about insurance, and I began to look it up. Every major state has two or three major providers of insurance companies and that’s it.”
Much of Binkley’s talk involved reaching out to others, particularly those who don’t vote Republican. He talked about sitting down for lunch with members of the LGBT community earlier to hear their stories. Overall, Binkley said that the Republicans have a messaging problem. “Our messaging problem is that we don’t care about the poor,” Binkley said. “If you don’t believe me, go to downtown Dallas where I live or downtown Omaha. Go to the poorest area and say, ‘hey what party is at the table with you?’ I think we’ll lose that poll, because right now they’re voting 80% Democrat.”
Around 30 people attended the event, including the church pastor Joseph Hall.
