Walker Wildmon: Religious freedom is about people being able to live out convictions
Walker Wildmon We inform religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith, live out their convictions no matter where they are. We quit.
Rick Green Sacred honor is the courage to speak truth, to live out your free speech.
Don Wildmon We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character. This is at the core on American Family Radio. Welcome, to the core here on American Family Radio. Walker Wildmon here with you on this edition of the program. Rick Green and myself, we're your host each week and on this edition you have me once again. It's good to be with you. As a reminder, we do live stream the video, whether we're on Facebook, on our at the core Facebook page, or if you want to create an account, a free account [email protected] that's our AFA Stream video platform, of which we have a mobile app for out there as well on Apple and Android. But both on Facebook and stream.aca.net you can live stream the video of today's program and you can of course catch past episodes as well. And then not only do we have the show there, but we've got a ton of other content, whether it's documentari, church curriculum or even some of our series. Some of our series such as cultural institute series, AFA at Home series, and our latest impact series which is, ah, very, very good. Speaking of series, we have a brand new episode, episode seven of AFA at Home that is out now over at stream.afa.net we're going to have this brand new episode where we're talking about education in Americ America. We're going to have it available for free for an entire week. So you can go over to stream afa.net either log in or create a free account and you can watch the brand new episode of AFA at Home, episode seven for free, for an entire week. And that's available right now [email protected] alright, let's turn our attention to the scripture.
Wildmon Group has some great tour opportunities coming up in the next few months
We're in Proverbs, chapter 10, verse 1. A wise Son makes a father glad, but a foolish son is a grief to his mother. That's Proverbs chapter 10, verse 1. That's our scripture for the week. Well, coming up over the next, let's say six to eight months, we've got some great, tour opportunities for you and I wanted to highlight those today. The first one I want to mention is our first ever trip to Boston. Now this is an exciting trip and we're going to spend about five full days in Boston touring America's spiritual heritage sites. And Steven, McDowell will be with us and Tim Barton, so Stephen McDowell of the Providence foundation and then Tim Barton, son of David Barton of Wall Builders will be with us as well. So two historians, two constitutional experts on America's founding will be with us. It's going to be a jam packed trip from a content standpoint that's going to be in Boston that's coming up in October. And listen to this important point. All right, we have like eight seats left and as of this recording, who knows, we may get a couple more registrations in, but we have right now eight seats left thereabouts. And so, I wanted to mention this because some of you probably been hearing me talk about the Boston trip and then you probably been thinking in the back of your mind, well, you know, I'll wait till June or July and register because after all, we're six months out, aren't we? Well, yes, we are, but we're almost full. So we have just, just about eight or ten seats left and then we're going to have to close registration. Those seats are probably going to fill up in the next week or so. And so I don't want you to procrastinate. I don't want you to miss the window of opportunity here to come on our Boston trip in October. my brother and I are leading that tour, to Boston in October of this year. And then in early 2026 we're going to be doing Israel, which we've been, doing Israel at least as a family. We've been leading tours to Israel for over 25 years, going on 30. And I, myself and my brother have been going for about a decade to Israel, leading tours with my, our parents. So we're going to do Israel again in 2026 in March. And then we're going to do Greece the week after we do Israel, we're going to do Greece because we know some folks will want to go on those tours back to back. All of this information is available over@wildman group.com wildman group.com Go there and check out all the information, dates, itinerary, etc. Over@wildman group.com.
Inflation has been cooling because President Trump's policies are deflationary
well, I wanted to get into a little bit of economics, although we'll talk to Chris Woodward in the last segment as we usually do about all things economy. But inflation has been cooling for multiple months in a row. Inflation has been cooling and much of this, if not all is because President Trump's policies are by definition deflationary. They are deregulatory, and they bring energy costs down. That's what we're seeing. We're seeing gas prices at a low, probably a, five to eight year low on fuel prices. Maybe going back to pre Covid is probably the last time we saw energy prices at the level that they are today. And every month, inflation down, inflation down, inflation down. And this is on top of the kind of apocalyptic talking points where, the tariffs cause people to, lose their coal, they cause people to predict the end of the world economically and it just hasn't come to pass. As a matter of fact, things just keep getting better from an economic vantage point. Well, this is the, White House national, economic adviser, or rather head of the National Economic Council. That is Kevin Hassett. He was there with Trump in the first four years. He's there now. this is going to be clip one. let's listen to Kevin Hassett from the White House talking about Trump's economic policies.
Kevin Hassett If you have a previous administration like Joe Biden that was asleep at the wheel and wasn't making any deals and wasn't putting America Workers first, then, you know, of course China's going to spread its influence while Biden's, asleep in the Oval. but what's happening now is we've got an activist president who's building massive coalitions of people who want to be part of the American golden age, because they know that that's what's coming. And frankly, if you saw today, there was Consumer Price Index data that show that inflation was way down egg prices were down 12, 12 and a half percent, and tariff revenue was up in April even though prices were down. And so all of the things that people were saying about Trump's policies that were harmful are not coming true. Because President Trump's right. He knows how to make a golden age, and we're seeing it right now. And that's why everybody wants to sign a deal with us right now.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, that's right. And you know, we're in a, in a limited window of opportunity here for the apocalyptic predictions to come true, because a lot of the tariffs are going down because President Trump is signing trade deals. I mean, even, even the China tariffs have now come down. They haven't gone away. They've come down, though, but over a little over 100% because, China and the White House got to the negotiating table over in Switzerland and reach a deal at least a 90 day deal while they work out the details. And, and so, you know, I asked this last week, I think, and I, I want to know, I want to. I wish I could get into the minds of the people that were apocalyptic about the tariff policies. And when I say, apocalyptic, I mean, I've never seen people get so worked up. I mean these economists were like, this is the end of the world. You're, you know, the price of goods is going to quadruple. Your iPhone is going to cost $5,000. you know, it's going to go up 5x. I think the iPhone's too expensive now anyway, so, you know, paying a thousand dollars for a, for a phone, are you kidding me? I think they're too pricey now. But, but, and that's without tariffs. But we could play the clips all day long. I mean, the CNBCs of the world, I mean, this was just, I mean, I can't believe this is happening. I mean this is the end of the Trump presidency. The economy's gonna crash, we're gonna have Great Depression, and here we are, you know, over a month removed from so called Liberation Day. And inflation's still going down, tariff revenue's going up. Yeah, we had cooling gdp, but much of that was because a lot of these companies front loaded a lot of product, to get in front of the tariffs. Why? Because they saw it coming. I mean this is, this was not surprising. Now, were people surprised at the rate that the tariffs were put in? Maybe like 145%, for example. Probably a little surprised by that. But let's be clear. These economists and these CEOs of major corporations, they know better than this. They know and they knew that President Trump was a big fan of tariffs. He talked about it in the campaign. He did it in the first term. And this was not a shock. It was the furthest thing from a shock. It was so predictable and, I just think it's very disingenuous, for them to have act so surprised and so, outraged at the tariff policy of the president when we all saw it coming. And no, it's not apocalyptic. It's not apocalyptic at all. And many of the tariffs will be phased out as the trade deals are structured. So this is a short term strategy, for long term benefit.
The Obama and Biden administrations smuggled millions of illegal immigrants through government processes
Well, speaking of, the administration, I want to cover a couple news stories while we have some time left in this segment. And I came across this story out of Breitbart, which, which affirms what I've been saying here. On the program, when I described the Biden administration as one of the largest, if not the largest human smuggling operations in world history. What I mean by that is the. The Democrats, through both Obama and Biden, smuggled in tens of millions of illegal immigrants, foreigners, non citizens, into our country under the guise of the processing of illegal immigrants. So the Customs and Border Patrol and Department of Homeland Security, they were making it easy to cross the border and then they were, they were handling the entire smuggling operation. Once they crossed the border, the US Government basically took over the smuggling process from the cartels and got the illegal immigrants to their final destination, that is bus rides or plane tickets all around the country. And it was nothing short of the largest human smuggling operation in America. Not just American history, but I would argue world history. Find me another example in world history. I could be wrong because I'm not a historian, but the where you had, let's say 15, 20, 25, 30 million, when you add both Biden and Obama administrations, you're getting probably to 20 and 25 million illegal immigrants that were smuggled into our country through the government processes. All right? That's what I mean by the largest. Because the government was 100% in on this. They were 100% in on this. And they finished the last leg of the journey and took care, took ah, it from the control of the cartels as soon as they crossed the border. The Department of Health and human services secretary, RFK Jr. Was at a hearing this week and I don't have the clip here, but I have the story and he called it, similar to what I've said, the biggest, talking about Joe Biden's border policy, RFK, Jr. Called it the biggest facilitator. This is a quote, biggest facilitator for child abuse in American history. Biggest facility for child abuse in American history. Listen to these shocking stats. During a hearing this week, RFK Jr. Told members of Congress that the Biden administration's policies regarding unaccompanied alien children are UACs, where migrant kids are turned over to HSS for care and resettlement with the relatives in the US resulted in potentially. Listen to this. 500,000 unaccompanied children going missing in the US this is a shocking stat. Quote, the estimate from the Office of Inspector General, it is considered a very low estimate is 291,000 children went missing. The actual numbers are actually much higher than that. They could go up to a half a million. Kennedy revealed. Breitbart previously chronicled former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, under President Biden reportedly carried out a policy that prioritized the release of unaccompanied children to adult sponsors over long held protocols to protect such children from labor, sex and child abuse trafficking. This is shocking. So at a minimum, 291,000 children, voom. Vanished. We don't know where they are. We can't track them down. We don't know the whereabouts. We can't check on their well being. RFK Jr says it very well could be up to 500,000 over the course of just four years under Joe Biden. Folks, if that's not a scandal, I don't know what is. We'll be back in a few at the Core podcasts are [email protected] now back to at the Core on American Family Radio.
Katy Talento is a former White House advisor on health care
Welcome back to the Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on the program. Well, I want to welcome back a guest that we had on in recent weeks to talk about, some of the things that the Trump administration is working on specifically to reduce the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. Katie Talento is with us now. Katie's former special advisor with the White House on health care and is also executive director of the health, care sharing, or the alliance, rather of healthcare sharing Ministries. And she's with us now. Hey, Katie, welcome back.
Katy Talento Thanks so much for having me.
President Trump signed an executive order to slash the cost of prescription drugs
Walker Wildmon Well, President Trump, this week, and he brought over RFK Jr and others, signed, an executive order to, slash the cost of prescription drugs. Now, people may be asking, how can the president do that? Well, there's a lot of different avenues for this, but I know that the government obviously, purchases a lot of drugs through Medicare and other programs as well. So that's one way as far as the negotiating the, price negotiations. That's one tool. But there's probably other avenues as well. But bring us up to speed on this executive order and then we'll talk about some of the impacts.
Katy Talento Yeah, so you're exactly right. There are a lot of ways that the federal government can, in fact, change the price that they pay for drugs. And traditionally, you know, I come out of traditional Republican politics, and traditionally Republican politics were our policy was that we don't want Medicare or Medicaid to negotiate the price of drugs because that sort of government interference, it's price setting, it's price fixing, it's not very, you know, Austrian free market economics. And it's all very bad. It'll lead to rationing, blah, blah, blah. These were pharmaceutical manufacturers talking points, and they made A lot of economic sense at the time, and we were trying to push back against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and all their government takeovers, but we got in this habit of sort of knee jerk defense of, this industry, even as the industry became increasingly indefensible. And, you know, I think that Republican Party politics have really changed now. And President Trump led the way. You know, when I was first there in the White House in 2017, and he was saying, hey, I want to negotiate the price of drugs and Medicare, we were like, you know, deer in headlights. We didn't know what to do. We. And so. But one of the things that he was really adamant about, and I love to see that he's still adamant about in this, executive order that we just saw on Monday, is how bad a deal Americans are getting on drug prices compared to the rest of the world. And so when we first dragged in the pharma companies to the White House and we said, guys, why are you, like, raping and pillaging Americans when you're giving sweet deals to, like, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel McCrell? And they said, oh, well, boohoo. Who? You know, it's hard to be us because what happens is these socialized health care systems in these other countries, they just tell us the price and it's take it or leave it if we want access to their markets. And so what are we supposed to do? Like, we will get. Okay. So we said, all right, fine, we're going to call your bluff and we're going to issue an order that would require America to get the best price in the world. And so we are going to help you with your leverage in those negotiations because they didn't have any leverage. They could either take the price and leave France. You, know, take the price and have France, or take reject the price and not have France. And so, you know, they didn't have much leverage and France knew it. And so we said, and the, you know, the President has reissued this order. We said, hey, drug companies, you can now say to Emmanuel Macron, are you asking me to choose between France and the United States markets? Because that's an easy choice later, you know, like, I'll see you later and all you French people can just do without my drugs. And so now they have that leverage to say that, so now France has come to the table with better prices for pharma so that we can get lower prices from them. And I think that it could turn out that pharma ends up getting, like, more money, right? Because now they're going to get better prices from France and a little bit lower here in America. So I don't know that they're necessarily going to lose money. I don't know that they're not. I wouldn't lose a minute of sleep if they do.
Walker Wildmon Right, Yeah, I completely agree. And the pricing is just patently absurd. When you look at what other countries are paying and look at what we're paying, and this is not. Katie, this is not something that is, just a lot of input cost here. If you're familiar with the business world, you look at what does it cost to make something, generally speaking, with the exception of maybe some specialized drugs or where the raw M materials, if you will, are the ingredients, rather, are hard to come by. A lot of this stuff is pretty low cost to make. the facilities are already there. They can use probably the same facilities to make multiple drugs as long as it's compartmentalized. And then you have the generics out there. And so this is not an industry that is just so capital intensive like the energy industry for example, that has to have all this infrastructure and all these regulations. I mean, this is a pretty sweet gig if you can ever get into it. And then, the era of the pharmaceutical reps, right, and then the kickbacks to the doctors. There's a ton of margin here is my point. And to your point about not losing sleep, there is a ton of margin in here to lower prices for the American consumer and make other, countries pay just a little bit more for these drugs.
President Trump signed an executive order to lower drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid
How expansive is this executive order? I mean, obviously Medicare is a m. Massive program. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent in it. But the, the most favored nation status was the most interesting aspect of this executive order. Can you explain that a little bit?
Katy Talento Yeah. So essentially the way it works today is, we, they, they, they tell us what the price is going to be and what Medicare is going to pay. And Medicaid, which is actually a bigger program than Medicare. About 1 in 4Americans are on Medicaid. and so they tell us, we write a blank check. That's how it works, for Medicare. And you know, these are ridiculous prices. But even Medicare prices are far lower than commercial insurance prices or cash pay prices for, for patients. So if, if your employer is buying these drugs, you could be paying three, five times the Medicare rate. And it's totally, it's so unfair. And these guys are paying kickbacks to insurers who are supposed to be, you know, exercising downward pressure on prices, not in league, in collusion with the price gouging. But they are in league in collusion with the price gouging. lots of times they're paying kickbacks to doctors and hospitals and infusion centers. So it's, it's disgusting. I work with, organizations that sometimes help patients import, personally import drugs from Canadian pharmacies and those drugs are a third of the price. So what the President has said here with this most favored nation policy is we are going to study the market for each drug and we're going to find out what is being sold out across the world. And whatever the lowest price is across the world, that's the price that we're going to pay in Medicare and maybe in Veterans and, Veterans administration, maybe in DoD. I don't know if they'll be able to do this in Medicaid as well. But regardless, any, any place that that happens is a good place. And so now does that mean we're actually going to pay, that price? No. Probably what's going to happen is pharmaceutical companies are going to go, starting right this minute, to France, to wherever, Burundi, and they're going to say, you know what, your price just went up. And so, and that's fine. Good. And you know, you're exactly right that the talking point we've heard from these pharma guys is that, oh, well, we have. Somebody has to pay for the R and D for these drugs. And you know, if Emmanuel Macron isn't paying for it, then the Americans have to pay for it. And if you don't, then we'll lose innovation, we'll lose cures, there won't be any new drugs.
Walker Wildmon Not true.
Katy Talento It's totally not true. And. Hm, you really hit on it in terms of how much capital is involved. It used to be that the big drug manufacturers did actually invest their own capital into the R and D. They had their big labs and they actually did research. Fine. Today, that's not what's happening. What's happening is private equity investors are, you know, investing in startups to try to. They're the ones investing the R and D, and the successful ones sell themselves to the pharma companies who have already. So they're taking no risk. They've already, you know, they've already found a successful product and they're just buying it. So now you might say that the R and D price for that success is baked into the sale price. but the idea that, that there's no margin is an absolute joke. Let me give you. There is Ah, there is a cancer drug called Keytruda, and it's getting approved for more and more types of cancers. And I have seen one health plan paid $100,000 over $100,000 for that drug. It has to be taken every six weeks for the rest of your life. And then another health plan in another state, in another setting was paying $9,000 for the same drug. Now, are you going to tell me that the drug actually cost us, you know, $70,000, but we're just losing 60 grand on it for that lower? No, it probably cost $200 and they're gouging us for whatever price they can get. And part of the problem is that all these prices are secret. You don't find them out until after the fact, after you've consumed the product. And so that's just not a market. It's not a free market that Republicans should support. It's neither free nor a market.
Would it be helpful if there were statutory reform here
Walker Wildmon Yeah, this is, long overdue. And do you expect, do you expect Congress to. Would you recommend. Rather not expect. Their expectations for Congress are pretty low. But would it be helpful if there were statutory reform here? Or do we, do we not need Congress to mess with this because they mess everything up? I just wonder long term how you get some of this stuff under control because the collusion that you mentioned between the health care industry, the health insurance industry and then you've got the drug companies. It's, it's a massive, I'm not going to call it a Ponzi scheme. That's probably an overstatement. It's a massive scheme that, yeah, it's cartel. Ish. And, and then you and me are left to pay the bill. Right? Because if, if the, if the health care, organization, the hospital, for example, hikes their prices for treatments, well, you think, well, okay, the insurance is gonna, gonna take that, that, that hit. Well, no, they're not. They're just going to increase your insurance price and then we're going to take the hit. there just seems like way too much collusion, going on at that level. So what, what's the fix here?
Katy Talento Yeah, you're exactly right. the premiums for a family of four on an employer sponsored plan have more than quadrupled in the past 20 years. So that's exactly what's happening. The hospitals and the doctors and the drug manufacturers, that is the suppliers of health care, they just jack up their prices because they can and there's no competition and you don't know the prices in advance. So you can't shop on, price, and neither can your employer or your union or the taxpayers. And so they jack it up and see as far as they just, can we get away with this? And until someone stops us, we're going to keep doing it. And so your question about Congress is a really important one. I do not think that Congress has it in them to do anything on this. when they had a Democrat majority during the COVID era, they did pass the first of its kind Medicare negotiation package in one of the COVID packages. And they said for the first time ever, Medicare would negotiate and set the price for something like eight to 10 drugs. And there was like, wailing and gnashing of teeth from Republicans and the pharmaceutical industry. We're going to, like, lose all these cures. We're going to lose eight drugs. we're going to have eight fewer drugs over ten years. Like, I don't care. Nobody cares. So. And I think it sort of opened the door, like, guess what? Nobody cares. Nobody's coming to save the pharma companies. And so I do think that the public is with us, and if Congress can't get it done, and I don't have much faith in them, the president does have the authority to administer the Medicare program and the Medicaid Program and VA and DoD. And so I know that there will be court challenges immediately, that I'm sure they're hiring up lawyers right now. And, and so we'll have to see what the courts say about this. There are statutory authorities that will need to be stretched and tested, and we'll see how it goes.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, I just like the fact that we're testing it because the left has been doing this, but they've been doing this. let's say we're looking at this kind of scale, and you're leaning either you're either leaning towards Marxism and unconstitutionality, or you're leaning towards the Constitution and rule of law and America's founding principles. The left always tilts towards lawlessness, towards unconstitutional, things. For example, Obama making a public statement, I think it was that it was either Obamacare or daca. But he basically said, yeah, my lawyers have told me I can't do this. And then three months later, he does it anyway. And then Nancy Pelosi's notorious, you know, we'll see what's in the bill after we pass it. And so, I like that President Trump is testing the waters here, because that's the only way you really begin to reclaim lost ground on areas like this on areas of what the President can do is, and what the Constitution says is by sending these cases, through the court system, and that's the level of boldness and offensive strategy that only President Trump has.
Katy Talento Yeah. And I do think that, you know, we're reaching sort of end stage capitalism here, where, you know, capitalism works well and best when you have a moral and religious people. Right. And moral and religious owners of companies who actually have a moral compass about the predations that they're willing to tolerate against their own customers. And we've lost that totally. We've just got like Wall street owned blobs who are answering to the bottom line and that's it. and so as long as that's the situation, I don't know how much we're going to be able to fix. We've seen the President testing his statutory authorities in a number of areas outside of health care, and he gets shut down by leftist judges. Now maybe he'll win at the end of the day. I hope so. but ultimately we have to test it. Now, I would say the solution to all of this, right, we're talking about, you know, the, the supply side is of the health care equation. The suppliers of health care. Great. You know, how much they charge, how much we consume. That's. Those are all interesting questions. Really, where Secretary Kennedy is coming from is the demand side. You know, the best way to lower cost for health care is to not need health care.
Walker Wildmon Yes.
Katy Talento So to the extent that we can make a difference on, you know, the 5, even a 5% reduction in chronic illness, which is the vast majority of our spending is for chronic and preventable disease, like, that would change our trajectory right away. So I do think that there's a lot to be done on that side, and I'm so glad someone's finally talking about that.
Walker Wildmon Yes, you're so right about that. This ultimately, with the exception of rare illnesses or certain things that are outside of our control, much of this, the vast majority of our outcomes is within our control, whether it's dieting or lifestyle changes. And that's what RFK Jr. Is focused on. And then not only, lifestyle decisions, dieting decisions, and consumer choices, but also competition. And that's what, your organization does, in coordination with these others, is help, provide alternatives to the traditional health insurance industry. And, that's needed as well, because where competition comes, consumer prices traditionally go down. Hey, Katie, thanks so much for coming on the program.
Katy Talento My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Robert.
Walker Wildmon All right. That's Katy Talento, former special advisor to the White House for Health Care Policy. She's also executive director of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries. Glad to have her on. All right, folks, we've got Chris Woodward coming up in the last segment. I'll be back in a few minutes. At the Core podcast are [email protected] now back to at the Core on American Family Radio.
The 10 Commandment Speech Challenge is coming up in June for young people
Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on the program. A couple items I want to mention before we jump over to Chris is the 10, commandment speech Challenge is coming up in June, and it's actually up now, as far as reading about it and learning more and go ahead and starting on it. Even though we're a couple weeks out From June, the 10 Commandment Speech Challenge is for those aged 7 or age 7 to 17. If I can get my speech together. And, we're asking for a three to five minute speech on the topic of the Ten Commandments. Specifically, this year we're focusing on the First Commandment. Each year we focus on one of the Ten Commandments. And of course, the First Commandment is that you shall have no other gods before me. Participants may receive assistance from a parent or sibling to write, record and submit the speech. Speeches must be submitted by June 30, and everyone who participates will receive a Ten Commandments t shirt bookmark and a coupon code to use on the AFA Resource Center. So that's basically the rundown on all the rules and the, checklist items you'll need to complete this. All of it is available [email protected] 10 commandments. And that 10 is spelled out 10 commandments afr.net 10 commandments to check out that challenge. And, we look forward to seeing all of those submissions from young people all around the country learning and reciting the Word of God. Well, Chris is with us. Chris, welcome back.
Chris Woodward: Jerome Powell warned about possible supply shocks related to tariffs
Chris Woodward Thank you very much
Walker Wildmon This has basically turned into the economics segment.
Chris Woodward Yes.
Walker Wildmon I mean, occasionally we'll go into other territory, but the economy is what we seem to talk about most, and that's because that's a passion for me. You cover it with American Family News. And the person who gets thrown under the bus, just about every week is Jerome Powell.
Chris Woodward Yes.
Walker Wildmon And maybe it's because he's an easy target, but, as you were walking in, you were telling me and Bobby, Bobby and I, about a headline where Jerome Powell on Thursday afternoon or Thursday morning, rather than, warned about what he called supply shocks.
Chris Woodward Yes.
Walker Wildmon In the economy. Tell us a little bit about this, about that story, and then I will throw Jerome Powell under the bus.
Chris Woodward Yes, well, you know, this is more reasons why people are fed up with Fed Chief Jerome Powell.
Walker Wildmon No pun. No pun intended.
Chris Woodward There you go. All right. But, he's well played. He's warning that, the US could face, quote, supply shocks, and it has to do with, tariffs, and countries, aren't going to send us all the things that you need to buy and, live with and stuff like that. And so many people have pounced on this and thought this is why Trump and tariffs, is a bad idea. But, I am not necessarily, concerned, due to a number of reasons. Number one, the US And China this week, after a quick meeting in Switzerland, actually last weekend, they said that they were going to be lowering their tariffs while they work out a deal for, you know, over the next 90 days. That obviously caused stocks to do very well this week. even stocks closed in positive territory yesterday. The Dow, for example, was, up 271. The S&P 24. So we still have a few hours before the end of trading today. We'll see what happens. But it's been a good week for the markets. And one of the reasons why the markets, have been positive, this week, beyond just the tariff stuff. Inflation cooled again as groceries and gas prices. Gas prices fell. I mean, I'm looking at, like, the AAA national, average for a gallon of regular today, $3.19. A year ago it was $3.60. diesel a year ago was four bucks a gallon on average. and then meanwhile, egg prices, I'm sure a lot of people. This is not new to a lot of people out there that have maybe bought groceries in the last couple of days, but the average price for a dozen grade A eggs, is now $5.12. And you might think, well, that's not a bargain. That was down 12.7% from the previous look. So egg prices are getting cheaper. The stock market is still doing well. It is not a time to freak out.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, this. I want to go through this timeline, Chris, and explain to the listeners why Jerome Powell is wrong. And I mean this seriously, because there's so much, there's so much negative language being used around the tariff strategy that it's. It's going to be. Over time, these folks are going to be proven wrong, but they always are. And whether we go back to the COVID predictions or some of the stuff Janet Yellen has said, they're always wrong. I mean they told us, they told us inflation wasn't a problem. There will be no long term inflation. Inflation isn't here. Inflation will never be here. Inflation will remain low. Transitory. Transitory. I mean, are you kidding me? Number one, who uses that term in economics? Transitory. What are we talking? That's like we're talking physics or something. But let me go through this, the timeline here. This is important. All right, first, let's explain how these tariffs work. Tariffs work the moment the product leaves the port. M. Okay. When the ship leaves the port from China. Let's just use China for an example. The tariffs kick in, okay? If the ship doesn't leave the port, there are no tariffs. Okay. The let's see, so the ships are already in transit and all of the billions of dollars in products that the companies imported previously because they saw the tariffs coming were exempt from tariffs. All right? So probably in some regards weeks, if not months worth of inventory is already in stock and is tariff free. Okay, that's, that's the my point is that we've got weeks, if not months of inventory either already on American soil or en route that is completely tariff free. Secondly, the big bad liberation day that everybody talks about, that everybody just loses sleepover, was where we had a 10% tariff on every country. Yes. Okay, with the, with the 10, percent baseline tariff. And then there were some other, there were certain countries that had higher tariffs based on their reciprocal tariff policy.
Jerome Powell predicts supply chain shocks over China tariffs, but they're overstated
All right, so that's that the 145% China tariff didn't come until later. All right, remember President Trump now, now I'm not saying the China one was 10% before, but it wasn't 145. It was much below that. President Trump come around, came around and said, you know what guys, we're just going to go down to 10% across the board and then we're going to put that, we're going to put the pressure on China here. And that's when he hiked it up to 145. That was a couple weeks after the Liberation Day announcement. And here we are May 15th. So this is all happening within a six week period. Right. And now the China tariffs, the doom and gloom, 145% China tariffs are now down. They're back down on both sides from China and the U.S. and so I say all that to say for Jerome Powell to predict supply chain shocks over the tariffs. That's very much overstating the effects of this.
Chris Woodward Yeah. And the reason I'm reluctant to believe a lot of what he and others say is a lot of people act as if this is Donald Trump's first time as president. This is not his first rodeo in the White House, if you will. The last time around, we were in the quote, trade war and that was gonna, destroy the economy. The economy did quite well. It's one of the reasons why people voted to put Donald Trump back in the office is because the economy was humming when he was president the first time with a trade war with China. And obviously, we're still here, we all live, so based on the fact that Trump has done similar things and it didn't destroy the economy, that leads me to believe that Mr. Powell and others quite possibly like to just talk so they can hear themselves speak.
Walker Wildmon That's right. Looking at this specific timeline, this is brought to you by CNN Business. This is probably the only time I'll quote CNN. Trump signed a 10% tariff on China on February 1st of this year, which is 10 days after getting sworn in thereabouts. And nine, eight, eight or nine days. President Trump announced a 30 day pause on the China Mexico tariffs on February 3rd. Two days later, 10% tariff on Chinese products came into effect on February 4th. that's 10% on all Chinese goods. And then, okay, so this went down to. President Trump ratcheted it up to 20% in March. But basically things didn't get hot and heavy until six weeks ago on Liberation Day. And the reason I say all of this is to let people know. The reason Jerome Powell's statement about supply chain shocks is dishonest is because the amount of goods that actually were levied with a 145% tariff is probably a very small number. Yes. Because the electronics were excluded, iPhones were excluded, other things were excluded. And so I'm not sure how much. It would be an interesting stat to see is how much stuff left the port that was actually levied on 145% tariff. but supply chain shocks is way overstated.
Chris Woodward Yeah. And also too, I think people need to realize, that the whole 90 day agreement between the US and China, let's say they reach agreements even on the 89th day. That's still in plenty of time to get things in stores for back to school shoppers, certainly for Christmas shoppers.
Walker Wildmon Well, and everything's leaving the port now. with the lower tariff.
Chris Woodward Yes.
Walker Wildmon So during the negotiating period, retailers can ship whatever they want with a low tariff and stock up on inventory.
Chris Woodward You know, this right here is why a lot of people are panicking. Because if you're driving along and you're listening to npr, you're only getting fed. Your home chairman, Jerome Powell says.
Walker Wildmon Today the things are apocalypse supply shocks.
Chris Woodward And you bring in the people that talk about how this is bad. Yeah, there, there never is the, it's really not cause for panic quite yet.
Walker Wildmon Right.
Chris Woodward that's why it's important for people, as painstaking as it may be, to read up on things, look at different opinions, and find out why this is not necessarily a cause of concern. I mean we have these kinds of stories on afn.net I'm not bringing that up because I'm trying to say we're better than anybody else. But you do need to look listener, take the time to actually figure out what's going on rather than go with the headline from a news outlet that wants to scare you and have you keep coming back for updates on this scary thing.
Walker Wildmon Yes. And they, and what I've noticed, Chris, is they don't want you. It seems this way. It seems that they, they induce this panic and this kind of, ah, apocalyptic fear cycle. And it almost makes you as a consumer just want to back off and be like, I don't want anything to do, do with this, whether it's the stock market or otherwise. But all the people that are writing the headlines about how doomsday everything is, they're the ones that are investing in the markets. The same markets like Jerome Powell. There's no telling how many investments he has, but he's, he's, you know, speaking this, this apocalyptic language that fears, that scares everybody off. But these same experts that scare everybody are also playing the game. They're in the market.
Chris Woodward Yeah.
Walker Wildmon Even when it drops 20%, they're in the market. They're actually probably buying when it drops 20%. But I wanted to bring up, a broader subject, Chris, and I didn't prepare you for this, so we'll just kind of go off the cuff.
Chris Woodward: Something's going to have to give on the debt cycle
But the debt problem that we have, it's big. Yeah, it's, it's a 30. What? 37. 36.
Chris Woodward Big is an understatement.
Walker Wildmon Yes, 36 trillion. I've been reading a lot and watching a lot on this and from a variety of sources. I've done some Tucker Carlson, some Ray Dalio and others. And I don't agree with everybody. And I'm also not doomsday, in the short term I might be doomsday in the long term. Something's going to have to give here. And if you study economic cycles and empires and nations, something always happens to either bring it to an end or fundamentally change how it operates. And I think something's going to have to give on the debt cycle that we're in. Because at some point, probably going back to the late 90s, our government leaders decided that we're just going to go all in on the modern monetary theory and the debt cycle, and we're just going to rack up the debt. And they would say if you talk to them about it, they talk about managing the debt and your GDP ratio and they talk about it as if it's this forever sustainable, feet. When in reality, what we're finding out through an era of bad decisions is that it's not sustainable. And some cynics would say it is sustainable because we're at 37 trillion. And who's batting an eye? Well, here's why. It's unsustainable. It's unsustainable because of the interest. All right, the interest payments are swallowing up our budget. We're looking at a trillion now, more than we spend on defense. So what do you do? I mean, I'm just trying to think forward about, like, when this train comes to an end and we're spending trillions on interest and we hit 50 trillion and 70 trillion, where do we go? I mean, obviously, don't you think inflation. Inflation starts to get out of control, the devaluing of the dollar?
Chris Woodward Yes. This is why people that are reluctant to get behind something like Doge need to get behind something like that. Because if we do not start going after the waste, fraud and abuse and then eventually start taking, a wise approach to actually how much money we do spend on all kinds of government programs. Yes, we're going to be in a much worse situation right now than you think we're in because we have something like dosh. To your point here, we're literally looking at a situation where literally we're just working to pay off the interest. And that's where, I mean, in the not too distant future, like before our kids are grown and in college, I mean, we have to go after the waste, fraud and abuse, but also we have to take a smart approach to how much money we're actually spending on things. We have to have the tough conversation on whether or not we really need to have the departments that the Constitution does not require the government to have. Because if we can take a smart approach to spending, the better off that we are. And I mean you're looking at a situation where you're working to pay taxes, to pay the debt and still not having a government.
Walker Wildmon Yes. Yeah. And Chris, the. And I think, I think the Doge approach is a slowing down the train that is heading towards the cliff. I just don't think we can outgrow this now. Could we drastically reduce government expenditures? Yes, but that would be painful. GDP would drop and we would have to suffer through it. M. And then you could probably get to a place where you're actually outgrowing the debt, paying off the debt. but yeah, we've got to slow down this train and figure out what we're going to do as a country because, what we're doing now long term is unsustainable. Elon Musk has said this. He said we were headed and we are headed towards de facto bankruptcy. But can we slow the trend down and figure out an alternative? That's the million dollar question.
Preborn is the greatest threat to the abortion industry. By rescuing on average 200 babies a day
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Walker Wildmon: Religious freedom is about people being able to live out convictions
Walker Wildmon We inform religious freedom is about people of faith being able to live out their faith, live out their convictions no matter where they are. We quit.
Rick Green Sacred honor is the courage to speak truth, to live out your free speech.
Don Wildmon We also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character. This is at the core on American Family Radio. Welcome, to the core here on American Family Radio. Walker Wildmon here with you on this edition of the program. Rick Green and myself, we're your host each week and on this edition you have me once again. It's good to be with you. As a reminder, we do live stream the video, whether we're on Facebook, on our at the core Facebook page, or if you want to create an account, a free account [email protected] that's our AFA Stream video platform, of which we have a mobile app for out there as well on Apple and Android. But both on Facebook and stream.aca.net you can live stream the video of today's program and you can of course catch past episodes as well. And then not only do we have the show there, but we've got a ton of other content, whether it's documentari, church curriculum or even some of our series. Some of our series such as cultural institute series, AFA at Home series, and our latest impact series which is, ah, very, very good. Speaking of series, we have a brand new episode, episode seven of AFA at Home that is out now over at stream.afa.net we're going to have this brand new episode where we're talking about education in Americ America. We're going to have it available for free for an entire week. So you can go over to stream afa.net either log in or create a free account and you can watch the brand new episode of AFA at Home, episode seven for free, for an entire week. And that's available right now [email protected] alright, let's turn our attention to the scripture.
Wildmon Group has some great tour opportunities coming up in the next few months
We're in Proverbs, chapter 10, verse 1. A wise Son makes a father glad, but a foolish son is a grief to his mother. That's Proverbs chapter 10, verse 1. That's our scripture for the week. Well, coming up over the next, let's say six to eight months, we've got some great, tour opportunities for you and I wanted to highlight those today. The first one I want to mention is our first ever trip to Boston. Now this is an exciting trip and we're going to spend about five full days in Boston touring America's spiritual heritage sites. And Steven, McDowell will be with us and Tim Barton, so Stephen McDowell of the Providence foundation and then Tim Barton, son of David Barton of Wall Builders will be with us as well. So two historians, two constitutional experts on America's founding will be with us. It's going to be a jam packed trip from a content standpoint that's going to be in Boston that's coming up in October. And listen to this important point. All right, we have like eight seats left and as of this recording, who knows, we may get a couple more registrations in, but we have right now eight seats left thereabouts. And so, I wanted to mention this because some of you probably been hearing me talk about the Boston trip and then you probably been thinking in the back of your mind, well, you know, I'll wait till June or July and register because after all, we're six months out, aren't we? Well, yes, we are, but we're almost full. So we have just, just about eight or ten seats left and then we're going to have to close registration. Those seats are probably going to fill up in the next week or so. And so I don't want you to procrastinate. I don't want you to miss the window of opportunity here to come on our Boston trip in October. my brother and I are leading that tour, to Boston in October of this year. And then in early 2026 we're going to be doing Israel, which we've been, doing Israel at least as a family. We've been leading tours to Israel for over 25 years, going on 30. And I, myself and my brother have been going for about a decade to Israel, leading tours with my, our parents. So we're going to do Israel again in 2026 in March. And then we're going to do Greece the week after we do Israel, we're going to do Greece because we know some folks will want to go on those tours back to back. All of this information is available over@wildman group.com wildman group.com Go there and check out all the information, dates, itinerary, etc. Over@wildman group.com.
Inflation has been cooling because President Trump's policies are deflationary
well, I wanted to get into a little bit of economics, although we'll talk to Chris Woodward in the last segment as we usually do about all things economy. But inflation has been cooling for multiple months in a row. Inflation has been cooling and much of this, if not all is because President Trump's policies are by definition deflationary. They are deregulatory, and they bring energy costs down. That's what we're seeing. We're seeing gas prices at a low, probably a, five to eight year low on fuel prices. Maybe going back to pre Covid is probably the last time we saw energy prices at the level that they are today. And every month, inflation down, inflation down, inflation down. And this is on top of the kind of apocalyptic talking points where, the tariffs cause people to, lose their coal, they cause people to predict the end of the world economically and it just hasn't come to pass. As a matter of fact, things just keep getting better from an economic vantage point. Well, this is the, White House national, economic adviser, or rather head of the National Economic Council. That is Kevin Hassett. He was there with Trump in the first four years. He's there now. this is going to be clip one. let's listen to Kevin Hassett from the White House talking about Trump's economic policies.
Kevin Hassett If you have a previous administration like Joe Biden that was asleep at the wheel and wasn't making any deals and wasn't putting America Workers first, then, you know, of course China's going to spread its influence while Biden's, asleep in the Oval. but what's happening now is we've got an activist president who's building massive coalitions of people who want to be part of the American golden age, because they know that that's what's coming. And frankly, if you saw today, there was Consumer Price Index data that show that inflation was way down egg prices were down 12, 12 and a half percent, and tariff revenue was up in April even though prices were down. And so all of the things that people were saying about Trump's policies that were harmful are not coming true. Because President Trump's right. He knows how to make a golden age, and we're seeing it right now. And that's why everybody wants to sign a deal with us right now.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, that's right. And you know, we're in a, in a limited window of opportunity here for the apocalyptic predictions to come true, because a lot of the tariffs are going down because President Trump is signing trade deals. I mean, even, even the China tariffs have now come down. They haven't gone away. They've come down, though, but over a little over 100% because, China and the White House got to the negotiating table over in Switzerland and reach a deal at least a 90 day deal while they work out the details. And, and so, you know, I asked this last week, I think, and I, I want to know, I want to. I wish I could get into the minds of the people that were apocalyptic about the tariff policies. And when I say, apocalyptic, I mean, I've never seen people get so worked up. I mean these economists were like, this is the end of the world. You're, you know, the price of goods is going to quadruple. Your iPhone is going to cost $5,000. you know, it's going to go up 5x. I think the iPhone's too expensive now anyway, so, you know, paying a thousand dollars for a, for a phone, are you kidding me? I think they're too pricey now. But, but, and that's without tariffs. But we could play the clips all day long. I mean, the CNBCs of the world, I mean, this was just, I mean, I can't believe this is happening. I mean this is the end of the Trump presidency. The economy's gonna crash, we're gonna have Great Depression, and here we are, you know, over a month removed from so called Liberation Day. And inflation's still going down, tariff revenue's going up. Yeah, we had cooling gdp, but much of that was because a lot of these companies front loaded a lot of product, to get in front of the tariffs. Why? Because they saw it coming. I mean this is, this was not surprising. Now, were people surprised at the rate that the tariffs were put in? Maybe like 145%, for example. Probably a little surprised by that. But let's be clear. These economists and these CEOs of major corporations, they know better than this. They know and they knew that President Trump was a big fan of tariffs. He talked about it in the campaign. He did it in the first term. And this was not a shock. It was the furthest thing from a shock. It was so predictable and, I just think it's very disingenuous, for them to have act so surprised and so, outraged at the tariff policy of the president when we all saw it coming. And no, it's not apocalyptic. It's not apocalyptic at all. And many of the tariffs will be phased out as the trade deals are structured. So this is a short term strategy, for long term benefit.
The Obama and Biden administrations smuggled millions of illegal immigrants through government processes
Well, speaking of, the administration, I want to cover a couple news stories while we have some time left in this segment. And I came across this story out of Breitbart, which, which affirms what I've been saying here. On the program, when I described the Biden administration as one of the largest, if not the largest human smuggling operations in world history. What I mean by that is the. The Democrats, through both Obama and Biden, smuggled in tens of millions of illegal immigrants, foreigners, non citizens, into our country under the guise of the processing of illegal immigrants. So the Customs and Border Patrol and Department of Homeland Security, they were making it easy to cross the border and then they were, they were handling the entire smuggling operation. Once they crossed the border, the US Government basically took over the smuggling process from the cartels and got the illegal immigrants to their final destination, that is bus rides or plane tickets all around the country. And it was nothing short of the largest human smuggling operation in America. Not just American history, but I would argue world history. Find me another example in world history. I could be wrong because I'm not a historian, but the where you had, let's say 15, 20, 25, 30 million, when you add both Biden and Obama administrations, you're getting probably to 20 and 25 million illegal immigrants that were smuggled into our country through the government processes. All right? That's what I mean by the largest. Because the government was 100% in on this. They were 100% in on this. And they finished the last leg of the journey and took care, took ah, it from the control of the cartels as soon as they crossed the border. The Department of Health and human services secretary, RFK Jr. Was at a hearing this week and I don't have the clip here, but I have the story and he called it, similar to what I've said, the biggest, talking about Joe Biden's border policy, RFK, Jr. Called it the biggest facilitator. This is a quote, biggest facilitator for child abuse in American history. Biggest facility for child abuse in American history. Listen to these shocking stats. During a hearing this week, RFK Jr. Told members of Congress that the Biden administration's policies regarding unaccompanied alien children are UACs, where migrant kids are turned over to HSS for care and resettlement with the relatives in the US resulted in potentially. Listen to this. 500,000 unaccompanied children going missing in the US this is a shocking stat. Quote, the estimate from the Office of Inspector General, it is considered a very low estimate is 291,000 children went missing. The actual numbers are actually much higher than that. They could go up to a half a million. Kennedy revealed. Breitbart previously chronicled former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, under President Biden reportedly carried out a policy that prioritized the release of unaccompanied children to adult sponsors over long held protocols to protect such children from labor, sex and child abuse trafficking. This is shocking. So at a minimum, 291,000 children, voom. Vanished. We don't know where they are. We can't track them down. We don't know the whereabouts. We can't check on their well being. RFK Jr says it very well could be up to 500,000 over the course of just four years under Joe Biden. Folks, if that's not a scandal, I don't know what is. We'll be back in a few at the Core podcasts are [email protected] now back to at the Core on American Family Radio.
Katy Talento is a former White House advisor on health care
Welcome back to the Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on the program. Well, I want to welcome back a guest that we had on in recent weeks to talk about, some of the things that the Trump administration is working on specifically to reduce the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. Katie Talento is with us now. Katie's former special advisor with the White House on health care and is also executive director of the health, care sharing, or the alliance, rather of healthcare sharing Ministries. And she's with us now. Hey, Katie, welcome back.
Katy Talento Thanks so much for having me.
President Trump signed an executive order to slash the cost of prescription drugs
Walker Wildmon Well, President Trump, this week, and he brought over RFK Jr and others, signed, an executive order to, slash the cost of prescription drugs. Now, people may be asking, how can the president do that? Well, there's a lot of different avenues for this, but I know that the government obviously, purchases a lot of drugs through Medicare and other programs as well. So that's one way as far as the negotiating the, price negotiations. That's one tool. But there's probably other avenues as well. But bring us up to speed on this executive order and then we'll talk about some of the impacts.
Katy Talento Yeah, so you're exactly right. There are a lot of ways that the federal government can, in fact, change the price that they pay for drugs. And traditionally, you know, I come out of traditional Republican politics, and traditionally Republican politics were our policy was that we don't want Medicare or Medicaid to negotiate the price of drugs because that sort of government interference, it's price setting, it's price fixing, it's not very, you know, Austrian free market economics. And it's all very bad. It'll lead to rationing, blah, blah, blah. These were pharmaceutical manufacturers talking points, and they made A lot of economic sense at the time, and we were trying to push back against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and all their government takeovers, but we got in this habit of sort of knee jerk defense of, this industry, even as the industry became increasingly indefensible. And, you know, I think that Republican Party politics have really changed now. And President Trump led the way. You know, when I was first there in the White House in 2017, and he was saying, hey, I want to negotiate the price of drugs and Medicare, we were like, you know, deer in headlights. We didn't know what to do. We. And so. But one of the things that he was really adamant about, and I love to see that he's still adamant about in this, executive order that we just saw on Monday, is how bad a deal Americans are getting on drug prices compared to the rest of the world. And so when we first dragged in the pharma companies to the White House and we said, guys, why are you, like, raping and pillaging Americans when you're giving sweet deals to, like, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel McCrell? And they said, oh, well, boohoo. Who? You know, it's hard to be us because what happens is these socialized health care systems in these other countries, they just tell us the price and it's take it or leave it if we want access to their markets. And so what are we supposed to do? Like, we will get. Okay. So we said, all right, fine, we're going to call your bluff and we're going to issue an order that would require America to get the best price in the world. And so we are going to help you with your leverage in those negotiations because they didn't have any leverage. They could either take the price and leave France. You, know, take the price and have France, or take reject the price and not have France. And so, you know, they didn't have much leverage and France knew it. And so we said, and the, you know, the President has reissued this order. We said, hey, drug companies, you can now say to Emmanuel Macron, are you asking me to choose between France and the United States markets? Because that's an easy choice later, you know, like, I'll see you later and all you French people can just do without my drugs. And so now they have that leverage to say that, so now France has come to the table with better prices for pharma so that we can get lower prices from them. And I think that it could turn out that pharma ends up getting, like, more money, right? Because now they're going to get better prices from France and a little bit lower here in America. So I don't know that they're necessarily going to lose money. I don't know that they're not. I wouldn't lose a minute of sleep if they do.
Walker Wildmon Right, Yeah, I completely agree. And the pricing is just patently absurd. When you look at what other countries are paying and look at what we're paying, and this is not. Katie, this is not something that is, just a lot of input cost here. If you're familiar with the business world, you look at what does it cost to make something, generally speaking, with the exception of maybe some specialized drugs or where the raw M materials, if you will, are the ingredients, rather, are hard to come by. A lot of this stuff is pretty low cost to make. the facilities are already there. They can use probably the same facilities to make multiple drugs as long as it's compartmentalized. And then you have the generics out there. And so this is not an industry that is just so capital intensive like the energy industry for example, that has to have all this infrastructure and all these regulations. I mean, this is a pretty sweet gig if you can ever get into it. And then, the era of the pharmaceutical reps, right, and then the kickbacks to the doctors. There's a ton of margin here is my point. And to your point about not losing sleep, there is a ton of margin in here to lower prices for the American consumer and make other, countries pay just a little bit more for these drugs.
President Trump signed an executive order to lower drug prices for Medicare and Medicaid
How expansive is this executive order? I mean, obviously Medicare is a m. Massive program. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent in it. But the, the most favored nation status was the most interesting aspect of this executive order. Can you explain that a little bit?
Katy Talento Yeah. So essentially the way it works today is, we, they, they, they tell us what the price is going to be and what Medicare is going to pay. And Medicaid, which is actually a bigger program than Medicare. About 1 in 4Americans are on Medicaid. and so they tell us, we write a blank check. That's how it works, for Medicare. And you know, these are ridiculous prices. But even Medicare prices are far lower than commercial insurance prices or cash pay prices for, for patients. So if, if your employer is buying these drugs, you could be paying three, five times the Medicare rate. And it's totally, it's so unfair. And these guys are paying kickbacks to insurers who are supposed to be, you know, exercising downward pressure on prices, not in league, in collusion with the price gouging. But they are in league in collusion with the price gouging. lots of times they're paying kickbacks to doctors and hospitals and infusion centers. So it's, it's disgusting. I work with, organizations that sometimes help patients import, personally import drugs from Canadian pharmacies and those drugs are a third of the price. So what the President has said here with this most favored nation policy is we are going to study the market for each drug and we're going to find out what is being sold out across the world. And whatever the lowest price is across the world, that's the price that we're going to pay in Medicare and maybe in Veterans and, Veterans administration, maybe in DoD. I don't know if they'll be able to do this in Medicaid as well. But regardless, any, any place that that happens is a good place. And so now does that mean we're actually going to pay, that price? No. Probably what's going to happen is pharmaceutical companies are going to go, starting right this minute, to France, to wherever, Burundi, and they're going to say, you know what, your price just went up. And so, and that's fine. Good. And you know, you're exactly right that the talking point we've heard from these pharma guys is that, oh, well, we have. Somebody has to pay for the R and D for these drugs. And you know, if Emmanuel Macron isn't paying for it, then the Americans have to pay for it. And if you don't, then we'll lose innovation, we'll lose cures, there won't be any new drugs.
Walker Wildmon Not true.
Katy Talento It's totally not true. And. Hm, you really hit on it in terms of how much capital is involved. It used to be that the big drug manufacturers did actually invest their own capital into the R and D. They had their big labs and they actually did research. Fine. Today, that's not what's happening. What's happening is private equity investors are, you know, investing in startups to try to. They're the ones investing the R and D, and the successful ones sell themselves to the pharma companies who have already. So they're taking no risk. They've already, you know, they've already found a successful product and they're just buying it. So now you might say that the R and D price for that success is baked into the sale price. but the idea that, that there's no margin is an absolute joke. Let me give you. There is Ah, there is a cancer drug called Keytruda, and it's getting approved for more and more types of cancers. And I have seen one health plan paid $100,000 over $100,000 for that drug. It has to be taken every six weeks for the rest of your life. And then another health plan in another state, in another setting was paying $9,000 for the same drug. Now, are you going to tell me that the drug actually cost us, you know, $70,000, but we're just losing 60 grand on it for that lower? No, it probably cost $200 and they're gouging us for whatever price they can get. And part of the problem is that all these prices are secret. You don't find them out until after the fact, after you've consumed the product. And so that's just not a market. It's not a free market that Republicans should support. It's neither free nor a market.
Would it be helpful if there were statutory reform here
Walker Wildmon Yeah, this is, long overdue. And do you expect, do you expect Congress to. Would you recommend. Rather not expect. Their expectations for Congress are pretty low. But would it be helpful if there were statutory reform here? Or do we, do we not need Congress to mess with this because they mess everything up? I just wonder long term how you get some of this stuff under control because the collusion that you mentioned between the health care industry, the health insurance industry and then you've got the drug companies. It's, it's a massive, I'm not going to call it a Ponzi scheme. That's probably an overstatement. It's a massive scheme that, yeah, it's cartel. Ish. And, and then you and me are left to pay the bill. Right? Because if, if the, if the health care, organization, the hospital, for example, hikes their prices for treatments, well, you think, well, okay, the insurance is gonna, gonna take that, that, that hit. Well, no, they're not. They're just going to increase your insurance price and then we're going to take the hit. there just seems like way too much collusion, going on at that level. So what, what's the fix here?
Katy Talento Yeah, you're exactly right. the premiums for a family of four on an employer sponsored plan have more than quadrupled in the past 20 years. So that's exactly what's happening. The hospitals and the doctors and the drug manufacturers, that is the suppliers of health care, they just jack up their prices because they can and there's no competition and you don't know the prices in advance. So you can't shop on, price, and neither can your employer or your union or the taxpayers. And so they jack it up and see as far as they just, can we get away with this? And until someone stops us, we're going to keep doing it. And so your question about Congress is a really important one. I do not think that Congress has it in them to do anything on this. when they had a Democrat majority during the COVID era, they did pass the first of its kind Medicare negotiation package in one of the COVID packages. And they said for the first time ever, Medicare would negotiate and set the price for something like eight to 10 drugs. And there was like, wailing and gnashing of teeth from Republicans and the pharmaceutical industry. We're going to, like, lose all these cures. We're going to lose eight drugs. we're going to have eight fewer drugs over ten years. Like, I don't care. Nobody cares. So. And I think it sort of opened the door, like, guess what? Nobody cares. Nobody's coming to save the pharma companies. And so I do think that the public is with us, and if Congress can't get it done, and I don't have much faith in them, the president does have the authority to administer the Medicare program and the Medicaid Program and VA and DoD. And so I know that there will be court challenges immediately, that I'm sure they're hiring up lawyers right now. And, and so we'll have to see what the courts say about this. There are statutory authorities that will need to be stretched and tested, and we'll see how it goes.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, I just like the fact that we're testing it because the left has been doing this, but they've been doing this. let's say we're looking at this kind of scale, and you're leaning either you're either leaning towards Marxism and unconstitutionality, or you're leaning towards the Constitution and rule of law and America's founding principles. The left always tilts towards lawlessness, towards unconstitutional, things. For example, Obama making a public statement, I think it was that it was either Obamacare or daca. But he basically said, yeah, my lawyers have told me I can't do this. And then three months later, he does it anyway. And then Nancy Pelosi's notorious, you know, we'll see what's in the bill after we pass it. And so, I like that President Trump is testing the waters here, because that's the only way you really begin to reclaim lost ground on areas like this on areas of what the President can do is, and what the Constitution says is by sending these cases, through the court system, and that's the level of boldness and offensive strategy that only President Trump has.
Katy Talento Yeah. And I do think that, you know, we're reaching sort of end stage capitalism here, where, you know, capitalism works well and best when you have a moral and religious people. Right. And moral and religious owners of companies who actually have a moral compass about the predations that they're willing to tolerate against their own customers. And we've lost that totally. We've just got like Wall street owned blobs who are answering to the bottom line and that's it. and so as long as that's the situation, I don't know how much we're going to be able to fix. We've seen the President testing his statutory authorities in a number of areas outside of health care, and he gets shut down by leftist judges. Now maybe he'll win at the end of the day. I hope so. but ultimately we have to test it. Now, I would say the solution to all of this, right, we're talking about, you know, the, the supply side is of the health care equation. The suppliers of health care. Great. You know, how much they charge, how much we consume. That's. Those are all interesting questions. Really, where Secretary Kennedy is coming from is the demand side. You know, the best way to lower cost for health care is to not need health care.
Walker Wildmon Yes.
Katy Talento So to the extent that we can make a difference on, you know, the 5, even a 5% reduction in chronic illness, which is the vast majority of our spending is for chronic and preventable disease, like, that would change our trajectory right away. So I do think that there's a lot to be done on that side, and I'm so glad someone's finally talking about that.
Walker Wildmon Yes, you're so right about that. This ultimately, with the exception of rare illnesses or certain things that are outside of our control, much of this, the vast majority of our outcomes is within our control, whether it's dieting or lifestyle changes. And that's what RFK Jr. Is focused on. And then not only, lifestyle decisions, dieting decisions, and consumer choices, but also competition. And that's what, your organization does, in coordination with these others, is help, provide alternatives to the traditional health insurance industry. And, that's needed as well, because where competition comes, consumer prices traditionally go down. Hey, Katie, thanks so much for coming on the program.
Katy Talento My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Robert.
Walker Wildmon All right. That's Katy Talento, former special advisor to the White House for Health Care Policy. She's also executive director of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries. Glad to have her on. All right, folks, we've got Chris Woodward coming up in the last segment. I'll be back in a few minutes. At the Core podcast are [email protected] now back to at the Core on American Family Radio.
The 10 Commandment Speech Challenge is coming up in June for young people
Welcome back to The Core here on American Family Radio. Glad to have you with us on the program. A couple items I want to mention before we jump over to Chris is the 10, commandment speech Challenge is coming up in June, and it's actually up now, as far as reading about it and learning more and go ahead and starting on it. Even though we're a couple weeks out From June, the 10 Commandment Speech Challenge is for those aged 7 or age 7 to 17. If I can get my speech together. And, we're asking for a three to five minute speech on the topic of the Ten Commandments. Specifically, this year we're focusing on the First Commandment. Each year we focus on one of the Ten Commandments. And of course, the First Commandment is that you shall have no other gods before me. Participants may receive assistance from a parent or sibling to write, record and submit the speech. Speeches must be submitted by June 30, and everyone who participates will receive a Ten Commandments t shirt bookmark and a coupon code to use on the AFA Resource Center. So that's basically the rundown on all the rules and the, checklist items you'll need to complete this. All of it is available [email protected] 10 commandments. And that 10 is spelled out 10 commandments afr.net 10 commandments to check out that challenge. And, we look forward to seeing all of those submissions from young people all around the country learning and reciting the Word of God. Well, Chris is with us. Chris, welcome back.
Chris Woodward: Jerome Powell warned about possible supply shocks related to tariffs
Chris Woodward Thank you very much
Walker Wildmon This has basically turned into the economics segment.
Chris Woodward Yes.
Walker Wildmon I mean, occasionally we'll go into other territory, but the economy is what we seem to talk about most, and that's because that's a passion for me. You cover it with American Family News. And the person who gets thrown under the bus, just about every week is Jerome Powell.
Chris Woodward Yes.
Walker Wildmon And maybe it's because he's an easy target, but, as you were walking in, you were telling me and Bobby, Bobby and I, about a headline where Jerome Powell on Thursday afternoon or Thursday morning, rather than, warned about what he called supply shocks.
Chris Woodward Yes.
Walker Wildmon In the economy. Tell us a little bit about this, about that story, and then I will throw Jerome Powell under the bus.
Chris Woodward Yes, well, you know, this is more reasons why people are fed up with Fed Chief Jerome Powell.
Walker Wildmon No pun. No pun intended.
Chris Woodward There you go. All right. But, he's well played. He's warning that, the US could face, quote, supply shocks, and it has to do with, tariffs, and countries, aren't going to send us all the things that you need to buy and, live with and stuff like that. And so many people have pounced on this and thought this is why Trump and tariffs, is a bad idea. But, I am not necessarily, concerned, due to a number of reasons. Number one, the US And China this week, after a quick meeting in Switzerland, actually last weekend, they said that they were going to be lowering their tariffs while they work out a deal for, you know, over the next 90 days. That obviously caused stocks to do very well this week. even stocks closed in positive territory yesterday. The Dow, for example, was, up 271. The S&P 24. So we still have a few hours before the end of trading today. We'll see what happens. But it's been a good week for the markets. And one of the reasons why the markets, have been positive, this week, beyond just the tariff stuff. Inflation cooled again as groceries and gas prices. Gas prices fell. I mean, I'm looking at, like, the AAA national, average for a gallon of regular today, $3.19. A year ago it was $3.60. diesel a year ago was four bucks a gallon on average. and then meanwhile, egg prices, I'm sure a lot of people. This is not new to a lot of people out there that have maybe bought groceries in the last couple of days, but the average price for a dozen grade A eggs, is now $5.12. And you might think, well, that's not a bargain. That was down 12.7% from the previous look. So egg prices are getting cheaper. The stock market is still doing well. It is not a time to freak out.
Walker Wildmon Yeah, this. I want to go through this timeline, Chris, and explain to the listeners why Jerome Powell is wrong. And I mean this seriously, because there's so much, there's so much negative language being used around the tariff strategy that it's. It's going to be. Over time, these folks are going to be proven wrong, but they always are. And whether we go back to the COVID predictions or some of the stuff Janet Yellen has said, they're always wrong. I mean they told us, they told us inflation wasn't a problem. There will be no long term inflation. Inflation isn't here. Inflation will never be here. Inflation will remain low. Transitory. Transitory. I mean, are you kidding me? Number one, who uses that term in economics? Transitory. What are we talking? That's like we're talking physics or something. But let me go through this, the timeline here. This is important. All right, first, let's explain how these tariffs work. Tariffs work the moment the product leaves the port. M. Okay. When the ship leaves the port from China. Let's just use China for an example. The tariffs kick in, okay? If the ship doesn't leave the port, there are no tariffs. Okay. The let's see, so the ships are already in transit and all of the billions of dollars in products that the companies imported previously because they saw the tariffs coming were exempt from tariffs. All right? So probably in some regards weeks, if not months worth of inventory is already in stock and is tariff free. Okay, that's, that's the my point is that we've got weeks, if not months of inventory either already on American soil or en route that is completely tariff free. Secondly, the big bad liberation day that everybody talks about, that everybody just loses sleepover, was where we had a 10% tariff on every country. Yes. Okay, with the, with the 10, percent baseline tariff. And then there were some other, there were certain countries that had higher tariffs based on their reciprocal tariff policy.
Jerome Powell predicts supply chain shocks over China tariffs, but they're overstated
All right, so that's that the 145% China tariff didn't come until later. All right, remember President Trump now, now I'm not saying the China one was 10% before, but it wasn't 145. It was much below that. President Trump come around, came around and said, you know what guys, we're just going to go down to 10% across the board and then we're going to put that, we're going to put the pressure on China here. And that's when he hiked it up to 145. That was a couple weeks after the Liberation Day announcement. And here we are May 15th. So this is all happening within a six week period. Right. And now the China tariffs, the doom and gloom, 145% China tariffs are now down. They're back down on both sides from China and the U.S. and so I say all that to say for Jerome Powell to predict supply chain shocks over the tariffs. That's very much overstating the effects of this.
Chris Woodward Yeah. And the reason I'm reluctant to believe a lot of what he and others say is a lot of people act as if this is Donald Trump's first time as president. This is not his first rodeo in the White House, if you will. The last time around, we were in the quote, trade war and that was gonna, destroy the economy. The economy did quite well. It's one of the reasons why people voted to put Donald Trump back in the office is because the economy was humming when he was president the first time with a trade war with China. And obviously, we're still here, we all live, so based on the fact that Trump has done similar things and it didn't destroy the economy, that leads me to believe that Mr. Powell and others quite possibly like to just talk so they can hear themselves speak.
Walker Wildmon That's right. Looking at this specific timeline, this is brought to you by CNN Business. This is probably the only time I'll quote CNN. Trump signed a 10% tariff on China on February 1st of this year, which is 10 days after getting sworn in thereabouts. And nine, eight, eight or nine days. President Trump announced a 30 day pause on the China Mexico tariffs on February 3rd. Two days later, 10% tariff on Chinese products came into effect on February 4th. that's 10% on all Chinese goods. And then, okay, so this went down to. President Trump ratcheted it up to 20% in March. But basically things didn't get hot and heavy until six weeks ago on Liberation Day. And the reason I say all of this is to let people know. The reason Jerome Powell's statement about supply chain shocks is dishonest is because the amount of goods that actually were levied with a 145% tariff is probably a very small number. Yes. Because the electronics were excluded, iPhones were excluded, other things were excluded. And so I'm not sure how much. It would be an interesting stat to see is how much stuff left the port that was actually levied on 145% tariff. but supply chain shocks is way overstated.
Chris Woodward Yeah. And also too, I think people need to realize, that the whole 90 day agreement between the US and China, let's say they reach agreements even on the 89th day. That's still in plenty of time to get things in stores for back to school shoppers, certainly for Christmas shoppers.
Walker Wildmon Well, and everything's leaving the port now. with the lower tariff.
Chris Woodward Yes.
Walker Wildmon So during the negotiating period, retailers can ship whatever they want with a low tariff and stock up on inventory.
Chris Woodward You know, this right here is why a lot of people are panicking. Because if you're driving along and you're listening to npr, you're only getting fed. Your home chairman, Jerome Powell says.
Walker Wildmon Today the things are apocalypse supply shocks.
Chris Woodward And you bring in the people that talk about how this is bad. Yeah, there, there never is the, it's really not cause for panic quite yet.
Walker Wildmon Right.
Chris Woodward that's why it's important for people, as painstaking as it may be, to read up on things, look at different opinions, and find out why this is not necessarily a cause of concern. I mean we have these kinds of stories on afn.net I'm not bringing that up because I'm trying to say we're better than anybody else. But you do need to look listener, take the time to actually figure out what's going on rather than go with the headline from a news outlet that wants to scare you and have you keep coming back for updates on this scary thing.
Walker Wildmon Yes. And they, and what I've noticed, Chris, is they don't want you. It seems this way. It seems that they, they induce this panic and this kind of, ah, apocalyptic fear cycle. And it almost makes you as a consumer just want to back off and be like, I don't want anything to do, do with this, whether it's the stock market or otherwise. But all the people that are writing the headlines about how doomsday everything is, they're the ones that are investing in the markets. The same markets like Jerome Powell. There's no telling how many investments he has, but he's, he's, you know, speaking this, this apocalyptic language that fears, that scares everybody off. But these same experts that scare everybody are also playing the game. They're in the market.
Chris Woodward Yeah.
Walker Wildmon Even when it drops 20%, they're in the market. They're actually probably buying when it drops 20%. But I wanted to bring up, a broader subject, Chris, and I didn't prepare you for this, so we'll just kind of go off the cuff.
Chris Woodward: Something's going to have to give on the debt cycle
But the debt problem that we have, it's big. Yeah, it's, it's a 30. What? 37. 36.
Chris Woodward Big is an understatement.
Walker Wildmon Yes, 36 trillion. I've been reading a lot and watching a lot on this and from a variety of sources. I've done some Tucker Carlson, some Ray Dalio and others. And I don't agree with everybody. And I'm also not doomsday, in the short term I might be doomsday in the long term. Something's going to have to give here. And if you study economic cycles and empires and nations, something always happens to either bring it to an end or fundamentally change how it operates. And I think something's going to have to give on the debt cycle that we're in. Because at some point, probably going back to the late 90s, our government leaders decided that we're just going to go all in on the modern monetary theory and the debt cycle, and we're just going to rack up the debt. And they would say if you talk to them about it, they talk about managing the debt and your GDP ratio and they talk about it as if it's this forever sustainable, feet. When in reality, what we're finding out through an era of bad decisions is that it's not sustainable. And some cynics would say it is sustainable because we're at 37 trillion. And who's batting an eye? Well, here's why. It's unsustainable. It's unsustainable because of the interest. All right, the interest payments are swallowing up our budget. We're looking at a trillion now, more than we spend on defense. So what do you do? I mean, I'm just trying to think forward about, like, when this train comes to an end and we're spending trillions on interest and we hit 50 trillion and 70 trillion, where do we go? I mean, obviously, don't you think inflation. Inflation starts to get out of control, the devaluing of the dollar?
Chris Woodward Yes. This is why people that are reluctant to get behind something like Doge need to get behind something like that. Because if we do not start going after the waste, fraud and abuse and then eventually start taking, a wise approach to actually how much money we do spend on all kinds of government programs. Yes, we're going to be in a much worse situation right now than you think we're in because we have something like dosh. To your point here, we're literally looking at a situation where literally we're just working to pay off the interest. And that's where, I mean, in the not too distant future, like before our kids are grown and in college, I mean, we have to go after the waste, fraud and abuse, but also we have to take a smart approach to how much money we're actually spending on things. We have to have the tough conversation on whether or not we really need to have the departments that the Constitution does not require the government to have. Because if we can take a smart approach to spending, the better off that we are. And I mean you're looking at a situation where you're working to pay taxes, to pay the debt and still not having a government.
Walker Wildmon Yes. Yeah. And Chris, the. And I think, I think the Doge approach is a slowing down the train that is heading towards the cliff. I just don't think we can outgrow this now. Could we drastically reduce government expenditures? Yes, but that would be painful. GDP would drop and we would have to suffer through it. M. And then you could probably get to a place where you're actually outgrowing the debt, paying off the debt. but yeah, we've got to slow down this train and figure out what we're going to do as a country because, what we're doing now long term is unsustainable. Elon Musk has said this. He said we were headed and we are headed towards de facto bankruptcy. But can we slow the trend down and figure out an alternative? That's the million dollar question.
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Inflation is on the descent; Katy Talento, Executive Director, Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, rejoins The Core to discuss the President’s EO on prescription drug costs and Big Pharma, in general, and Chris Woodward brings us the top stories this week
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