Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildman

Ed Vitagliano Today's Issues continues on AFR with your.

Steve Jordahl Host, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.

Tim Wildmon Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on this Monday, April 14th. Thanks for listening to AFR, American Family Radio. Tim, Ed. And now Steve Paisley. Jordan, joins us.

Steve Jordahl Good morning, everybody.

Tim Wildmon Rocking the Paisley on this Monday morning.

Steve Jordahl Yep.

Tim Wildmon Just like the green jacket for the master, Steve's gonna have paisley.

Steve Jordahl I won this paisley shirt for my wife in a playoff.

Ed Vitagliano In a playoff.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon That's funny. For Christmas money. Right? Playoff for Christmas.

Ed Vitagliano For Christmas. Christmas money.

The Activate Summit is Biblical bedrock, building on the authority of scripture

All right. Commercial.

Tim Wildmon Yes, please do commercial.

Ed Vitagliano So I just want to, remind. We probably have heard it, listeners. Activate Summit 2025. That is going to be this June, June 12th through the 14th at the Cadence Bank Conference center here in Tupelo, Mississippi. There is also an Activate Kids program for ages 6 to 12. This has been very popular where the speakers. Actually, we have a children's or kids track now. What is Activate Summit? Well, most of you know that we have an Activate curriculum, which is worldview training. But once a year, we're going to have, an Activate Summit in June to kind of highlight one of the topics covered by the curriculum. And this year, the Activate Summit is Biblical bedrock, building on the authority of scripture.

Tim Wildmon Say that fast, Ed.

Ed Vitagliano Biblical bedrock, building on the authority of scripture.

Tim Wildmon Good, good, good job.

Ed Vitagliano so that is going to be the subject. I, will be speaking, but I'm probably last on the list. Abraham will be speaking.

Tim Wildmon Alex McFarland, you're on down the list.

Steve Jordahl I mean, you're not list like you're the keynote.

Ed Vitagliano Sorry, you're saying Frank Turek. who else? One more. anyway, so it's. It'll be for the most part, folks, a stellar cast of speakers. So if you want to find out more, go to activate.afa.net activate.afa.net forward/summit. You can register there. There is special pricing that ends this Friday. So get your tickets now before prices go up. So for more information, go to activate.afa.netsummit all right.

The Space Force is going to be based in Huntsville, Alabama

Tim Wildmon Have you guys. Steve, you've traveled around?

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon You and your wife travel around some, don't you? Well, we do now.

Steve Jordahl Yeah, we go. Yeah. Within the United States. And I've done a bunch of international travel.

Tim Wildmon We were in, Huntsville, Alabama over the weekend.

Steve Jordahl Yeah, Speaking of international, they're getting the space center there. They're getting the new space, aren't they?

Tim Wildmon Are they getting more.

Steve Jordahl They're getting the whatever. The military Space force, I think it is called.

Tim Wildmon Oh, okay. That's gonna be. That's gonna be based out of Huntsville. Anyway, we were. They have the US Space and Rocket Center.

Steve Jordahl Such a cool place.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, I've never been there.

Steve Jordahl Oh, my gosh. They have an actual Titan, like the Apollo 11 or, like the Boost. And it's. And it's laid out long ways, and you walk from one end of the hall to the other, and it's like 300 yards. It's, like, massively big.

Ed Vitagliano This is the rocket booster. This is.

Steve Jordahl It's the whole rocket.

Ed Vitagliano This is before boosters could kill you, right?

Steve Jordahl Yes, yes, it was.

Ed Vitagliano Bad joke, folks.

Tim Wildmon Anyway, we were there, just for a night, but, Want to go back? That's a. We did drive through the historic district, see all the. They got houses, like, 200 years. Wow, 100 to 200 years old.

Ed Vitagliano I probably. I'm gonna blame my wife on this one. I probably would have been to. To Huntsville to look at this stuff long ago, but my wife does not like museums, so what am I supposed to.

Tim Wildmon This wasn't museums. This was, like, neighborhoods. You could walk down the street and see it. But anyway, I just want to say that they have a beautiful city there, and, Yeah, a lot of great stuff going on in. Uh-huh. Huntsville, Alabama. So you said, they got. The Space Force is going to be based out of there.

Steve Jordahl They've made the decision that that's where Colorado Springs has been, like, the epicenter of all military things for some reason. and the Air Force Academy. Yeah, well, the Air Force Academy, they got Carson, they've got Peterson, they've got the Mountain place, in there. They've got five bases surrounding Colorado. And one of them, I. I remember I went out, during Christmas. They asked a group that I was with, kind of, madrigal singers, like, the one of the guys in the costumes that sing Christmas carols.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Steve Jordahl We went out to the Space Force, headquarters and stood in the hallway and sang to people as they went by. So I didn't get to whether they want.

Ed Vitagliano Whether they wanted to or not.

Steve Jordahl No choice.

Stephen Miller: President Trump meeting with El Salvador president today

Tim Wildmon So, by the way, Steve, one of the top stories in the news right now, we were talking about before the break is El Salvador president. What's the gentleman's name?

Steve Jordahl His name is, Bukele. Naib Bukele.

Tim Wildmon Okay. This is a stroke of genius, okay, by President Trump and his team, this relationship we have with El Salvador. Now, of course, El Salvador is a country in Central America, so not too far in terms of a jet flight right from the U.S. i, think there's 6 million people or so is what I was reading now. But here's why I say this is, this is the policy. That is a stroke of genius. the, these gang members are these cartel, members from Central America, Mexico and South America, all right, that are selling drugs, Fentanyl and other drugs and involved in illicit activities across America as gangs are prone to do. Right. Well, what he's doing, he, President Trump and his team, they are rounding up these people. They're not US Citizens. Okay? They're not US Citizens. So they're rounding up these non US Citizens. If they're US Citizens, I guess they're. And they bust them, they try them and imprison them here maybe. But what I'm saying is they're sending them to El Salvador. Thus the meet to prisons down there. Prisoner prisons. Thus the meeting today at the White House by President Trump with the president of El Salvador. So this, relate. So and the, this, this, this where they go down there. Del Salvador, that is, that is a bad prison. You don't want to be in that prison. Right. This is where you see all these guys with their head shaven and they're shackled a lot of the time. And it's just, you don't want to go there. Call it.

Ed Vitagliano They're crammed in. It's a, it's something.

Tim Wildmon It doesn't meet U.S. standards, right. Or incarceration. Okay? But what Trump is doing and his team again is sending, rounding up these people and sending them down there. That's not going to take too many of these examples because the word is going to get back to the gang members, cartel members in the U.S. who are operating in the U.S. if you get caught in the U.S. and ice catches you, you're going to be potentially shipped down to El Salvador, never to be heard from again, so to speak. That's going to deter, you see how that, that's going to deter a lot of drug sales and gang activities and other forms of criminal, activity that gangs and cartels are prone to be involved in, like the mafia of old, so to speak. so that's that's to me, this is a winner for President Trump today. Today meeting with the El Salvador president and getting to publicize what I've just said.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, no, absolutely. And finding people, like minded people, in our own hemisphere is important. A, ah, lot of the kind of cultural Marxism has been in Latin America for a long time and I think it seems like a lot of people there Are tired of it and they're.

Tim Wildmon Not going to take it anymore there.

Ed Vitagliano Yes. So the president here of El Salvador, Bukele, he's very popular in Central America. I hope a lot more of the countries go in that direction.

Steve Jordahl Yeah, I've been watching this a little bit. I haven't been able to focus on it, but I have been a little bit. The couple impressions. Mr. Bekele has excellent English. He's, I mean, you could, you could hardly tell, hardly an accent. he's. The press is in there as we speak, and one of the questions was to president Trump, are you going to get this guy back? There's one person that people think they got down there illegally or wrongly, and they want him back. And Steve Miller, Stephen Miller, the advisor to the president, was standing in the middle of the press and gave a lecture on, international politics and ended up telling the press, if you have to ask about that, ask Mr. Bukele. And they did. and he said, I don't know, I probably can't. I'd have to smuggle him out or something like that. But, so he's not coming back. Courtesy of them. And then Trump, they were talking. Mr. Trump said, a reporter asked, president Trump, how many of these illegal alien criminals, gang members are you going to send down there? As many as possible. I might ask Mr. Bukele to build some more prisons.

Ed Vitagliano Well, you know, for someone like Bukele, President Bukele, I'm sure the US Is going to be footing the bill. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, that's, that's jobs for the El Salvadoran people, and it's jobs to staff these prisons. And I'm sure the U. S. Will continue to fund some of these prisoners who are there. It's almost, almost like, you know, you see some of these superhero movies where they have, like, floating prisons in the middle of the ocean.

Steve Jordahl Right.

Ed Vitagliano Where you put your hardened criminals so they can't escape and, you know, you know, break in next door. This El Salvador could be our floating prison.

What do Democrats do with this issue that we're talking about here today

Tim Wildmon What, what is, what do the Democrats do with this issue that we're talking about here today? in other words, is there a Democrat response to this?

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Tim Wildmon To Trump, sending the gang members to El Salvador?

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Tim Wildmon What is it?

Ed Vitagliano It is that you are violating the rights of these individuals that you are shipping to El Salvador to this prison without actually knowing whether they are members of a gang or not. They have no hearings, no judge to decide whether they've broken the law. This is so A violation of constitutional.

Tim Wildmon Democrats would be saying, you need to, A public defender needs to be provided for thousands and thousands. Each one of these. Each one. And they need to languish in the U.S. well, they're not going to be languishing. They're going to need to be out on. No, no. well, they call it no bail, no cash bail. So in other words, do nothing.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah. And they need to. They need to be languishing. This process needs to go on until a Democrat is elected.

Tim Wildmon Okay, then that's doing nothing, in essence. That's. That's protecting the criminals. That's where the Democrats come down on this.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Steve Jordahl I would say. I would hope it's not that they're going to appoint a public defender, because that would take forever for that guy.

Tim Wildmon I think if these were US Citizens, I would agree with them.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Because you have constitutional, due process.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon But when you're not a citizen and you're just floating around in our country, we. We are whoever has the right to deport you.

Ed Vitagliano Yes. And if the end of Venezuela won't take members of Trend.

Tim Wildmon Aragua and El Salvador will.

Ed Vitagliano El Salvador will.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

President Trump says he has great mental acuity, according to CNN

one other observation that, from this meeting, and I didn't hear the context and, well, perhaps there was no context at all, but I heard President Trump say, I was just in my medical exam and they took my mental acuity, and it was great. And the doctor said, we've never seen anyone with mental acuity like this.

Ed Vitagliano You're gonna have to work on your Trump.

Tim Wildmon Did he say that?

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano Invitation.

Steve Jordahl Yeah. Except he said it with a better Trump voice.

Tim Wildmon But you say we've never seen a doctor said. Did they say that?

Steve Jordahl I don't.

Ed Vitagliano You're being serious about that?

Steve Jordahl Yes, I'm being serious.

Ed Vitagliano Have you ever seen anybody probably my age?

Tim Wildmon Oh, me?

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Nobody's ever gonna accuse Trump of being too humble, are they?

Ed Vitagliano Well, you know, if you can.

Tim Wildmon It's funny how he wins.

Ed Vitagliano Back it up.

Tim Wildmon Funny how he wins, all, the golf tournaments at all his golf courses.

Steve Jordahl Right. That'd be me playing golf against you, except I didn't have to try to lose.

Tim Wildmon Anyway, listen, I don't care. I don't care if he's humble or not.

Ed Vitagliano He's getting the job done.

Tim Wildmon The job done. So, anyway, he. He's, we give him five stars on the, controlling the border issue because that.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, man.

Tim Wildmon That was one of his biggest issues running that.

Ed Vitagliano That may very well have that and judges.

Tim Wildmon Right.

Ed Vitagliano His first term. And then maybe here in his second, term. But the border, the, that may very well have saved our country.

Steve Jordahl He has handed a strip of land, I don't know how wide it is, but it's as long as Texas and the border and given it to the U.S. military.

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Steve Jordahl And any illegal, anybody that's crossing there has to contend, not with border patrol, with the US Military. The, justification is it's an invasion. And so he has given this strip of land to Pete Hegseth, basically.

Ed Vitagliano Well, you know, ordinarily I'd be a little bit hesitant to have the military performing what is essentially. I, ah, understand the technicality that you're saying that Trump is, is talking about an invasion, but you, you know, you have the military performing a law enforcement duty that's prohibited by law. The posse comitatus law, however.

Tim Wildmon What, the what law?

Ed Vitagliano Posse Comitatus.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, you can get that on Saturday night at the, There's a Mexican restaurant here.

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Tim Wildmon Okay, now get with me off the air.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, the posse commentators.

Tim Wildmon Yes.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, that's good.

Steve Jordahl I believe that one's possum commentators. So that's different.

Tim Wildmon Oh, the little Mississippi joke there, are you. Yeah, take a little dig at the redneck.

President Trump says there has been gunfire on the border

Ed Vitagliano Okay, now the, the, the, what I was going to say before we started talking about Mexican food. No, that's okay. Is that there has been gunfire on the border.

Steve Jordahl Yeah, yeah.

Ed Vitagliano And, and so listen, President Trump's idea that this is an invasion and we are not going to cede control. There's been a lot of talk about, about these gangs controlling X number of miles into the US on, on the border. So I'm in favor of deploying them in that case. In this case. Yeah, absolutely.

In a world with President Trump's tariffs, other countries tremble

Steve Jordahl All right, all right, let's, let's talk, these tariffs.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, yes, tell them, M Ed.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon What are we about to do?

Ed Vitagliano Welcome to Tariff Talk, huh? This is almost an hour, an hour and 20 minutes into the show.

Tim Wildmon In a world, welcome to terror.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, do I do that?

Steve Jordahl In a world?

Ed Vitagliano In a world.

Tim Wildmon You mean the rest of it?

Ed Vitagliano In a world with President Trump's tariffs, other countries shake in fear in an outpost at the edge of space.

Steve Jordahl Now you're, now you're mixing it up without it or.

Tim Wildmon What was that movie, that Mel Gibson was in about the apocalyptic.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, Mad Max.

Tim Wildmon Mad Max, yeah.

Ed Vitagliano Ah, I've never seen any of the Mad Max movies, but, yeah, you definitely want movie, trailer voice on this.

China has suspended exports of rare earth minerals and Magnets crucial for tech

Steve Jordahl All right, well, this is. China has, and this is serious, actually. China, Beijing has suspended exports of rare earth minerals and Magnets that are crucial for anything tech in this country. So they're not sending us now. I could do. Maybe Americans could do without my smartwatch or my. What are we going to do if we can't build jets or laser targets?

Ed Vitagliano Yeah. what we do is we buy it through a third party. Well, it drives up the price some.

Steve Jordahl Let me give you the opinion of one of our friends, Bob McGinnis, talked to about this just a little bit ago. Cut 12.

Speaker D This will impact, high tech, weapons certainly, as simple as your cell phone. anything that has, you know, microchips is impacted by rare earth metals. We have some of them, not all of them. but we have access to the same places that they do the Chinese, you know, that's why they're all over Africa and they're exploiting the cops, Congo and a number of other places. Don't trust them for one second. They will lie, cheat, steal. They will not follow through. They never have. Never will.

Ed Vitagliano You don't like Chinese?

Steve Jordahl Yes.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, I absolutely agree. I said it last week or the week before. I've been saying it for years. Never trust a commie. I sound. And when I say that, I know I sound like my dad, but listen, this is many, many years of watching how communist countries operate. They do not have our best interests in heart, at heart and you. And we need to treat them that way.

Steve Jordahl I've heard from several sources if we lose, out. If we can no longer get access to rare earth minerals, it would tank our economy. I mean, we would.

Ed Vitagliano It's not going to happen. Well, no, because we will buy them. We will have another country will buy them from China and we'll buy them from them until we get our own.

Steve Jordahl We need to wrap up that. We do have a processing plant in California and we do have some of these minerals here. and this was, by the way, also one of the negotiating points that Mr. President Trump had with Ukraine because Ukraine has a whole bunch of.

Ed Vitagliano And Greenland.

Steve Jordahl And Greenland too.

Ed Vitagliano Yes. Yeah. I think part of the problem is just like with oil prices, they're not, it's not just dependent on the, the price per. For, what do you call it? Drum. barrel. The price per barrel of oil. It's also the gas prices at the pump are also a product of refining capacity. So you've got to have refineries that take the crude oil and can make it into various forms of gasoline or diesel or what have you. That affects the price too. And with rare earth minerals, the same Thing you got to have access to the actual minerals, but there's a processing, that goes on that makes them usable for industry.

13% of the medications Americans take are made in China

Tim Wildmon Do you guys know some reason I don't know if it was during COVID this topic came up where, we were discussing how many how many medications we got from China.

Steve Jordahl Oh yeah.

Tim Wildmon That Americans take. Do you remember this?

Steve Jordahl Yes, the number.

Tim Wildmon I don't know enough to comment about that. I just know at the time it was very concerning. We were talking about that and it. I don't think it had anything. Well, I don't know. I've forgotten what the context was. Maybe it was at the time punishing China for releasing Covid on the world. Maybe that's what it was. And how do you, how do, how do you, And what if you. China decided to retaliate by saying, okay, then we'll just stop sending these, these medications to the United States.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, this, from the Food and Drug Administration says the remaining. This is a partial. I don't, I don't want to click on it in case I get a pop up ad. The, remaining 72% of the API manufacturers. This is for pharmaceuticals supplying the US market were overseas. 13%. 13% are in China.

Tim Wildmon 13% of the medicines that we take.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon So I wonder, would they be, would they actually be made in China and then shipped to the US or are they. Are the ingredients in China and then we make them here? This drugs. I'm talking about this from the new.

Steve Jordahl American article, titled China making your medicine. they say the truth is that America's dependence on a single country for active ingredients, raw materials and chemical building blocks for so many essential medicines is a risk of epic proportions. That's no exaggeration. The communist behemoth is well on its way to controlling the global generic drug market. In June, International Business Times reported that though India still leads in generics, expert note, the country, that country receives some 80% of its raw ingredients from China. That means the key components to 90% of the prescription and over the counter meds Americans take are sourced from a country that our Department of Defense considers a major adversary.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, that's just foolish. And we, and we got, we got a glimpse of that during COVID and with the supply chain issues we had on other things too. This is part of what drives President Trump. This is part of why he wants tariffs, because he wants America making the things, manufacturing the things that we absolutely cannot live without. If it's sneakers, or the latest Game. Or low price jeans. Okay, fine. We can get those from China.

Steve Jordahl Right.

Ed Vitagliano But. But the things we absolutely. Or Vietnam or something. But the things we absolutely need have,

Steve Jordahl To be made here critical to our self defense.

Ed Vitagliano Yes. I mean, it just makes sense.

Steve Jordahl Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. We should. Hey, guess what? Scientists have finally figured out how to get rid of the mosquito epidemic.

Tim Wildmon How's that?

Steve Jordahl Well, they've got a new drug. It's called Nitishon nitis, known N I T I S I N O, N E. And you inject it into your bloodstream. And when the mosquito bites and drinks your blood as this, they die within 12 hours.

Ed Vitagliano Oh. What could go wrong?

Steve Jordahl Nothing.

Ed Vitagliano Something else. Something else to inject. Well, and.

Steve Jordahl Or the mosquito gets covered. One of the two.

Ed Vitagliano Just listen, after what we all went through with COVID Let, me just say it in the vernacular. Ain't no way that's going to happen. I mean, what are they going to do, say, well, you got to get the shot or you can't work here.

Steve Jordahl Or you can't fly. I will tell you that in places like Africa, where, where borne diseases that are born by mosquitoes are rampant, it might make more sense.

Tim Wildmon That's true.

Ed Vitagliano You know, I don't trust.

Tim Wildmon How would you know that you actually worked. You like see a mosquito just fall off your arm?

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Steve Jordahl So they put little tracking bands of mosquitoes.

Ed Vitagliano They have to have a, a real id.

Steve Jordahl Yeah, that's right.

Ed Vitagliano So we can track them.

Tim Wildmon I can't wait to see this, this drug in a musical commercial. I'll send these musical commanders commercials for drugs.

Steve Jordahl Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Wildmon I'm changing my.

Ed Vitagliano Whatever, atv, my AC or whatever.

Tim Wildmon Whatever it is. Anyway. And they dance around.

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Tim Wildmon Like. Like a, like a.

Ed Vitagliano That's.

Keep listening to American family radio. Take care

That's like a diabetes.

Tim Wildmon Like a Broadway musical, you know, when you're talking about that makes me want to buy it. All right, all right, have a great day, everybody. Keep listening to American family radio. Take care.