Today's Issues continues on AFR with American Family Association President Chris Woodward

Ed Vitagliano Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.

Tim Wildmon Hey, welcome back, everybody, to the radio program, Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. I'm Tim with Ed, and, Chris Woodward now joins us. Good morning, Chris. Good morning. I must start calling you Chris Plaid Woodward. You're donning the plaid this morning.

Chris Woodward You can do what you want to President.

Tim Wildmon Okay, so, not many people wear plaid anymore, do they? Or I only have a few.

Ed Vitagliano Just those old souls that.

Tim Wildmon That's all right.

Ed Vitagliano Want to bring plaid back when you.

Chris Woodward Hear also, you picture me.

Ed Vitagliano I have some plaid. I have some plaid shirts.

Chris Woodward Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano But then again, I'm really.

Tim Wildmon I don't. I think I have. Well, I'm trying to think it.

Ed Vitagliano Might be back to your closet somewhere. Lonely corner.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, it's a plaid. It's from 1984.

Chris Woodward All right, so it's got Oshkosh bagash or something or some. What would have been big 40 years ago.

Tim Wildmon Hey, watch your language, Chris. Yeah, this is a family show.

Chris Woodward What was the, clothing. There was a clothing brand for, like, kids back in the day. Oshkosh. But, like, you could mat. Like the. It was like, animal prints or whatever, and, you know, you could match. There you go. There you go. There you go. Flashback Monday.

Tim Wildmon Those were. Aren't those, like, the little cookies? look. Yeah, animal cookies. What are they called?

Ed Vitagliano Animals?

Tim Wildmon Yeah. Aren't they called Granimals?

Ed Vitagliano Oh, nice.

Tim Wildmon Listen, those things are good now.

Ed Vitagliano Animal crackers. Yeah.

Tim Wildmon I remember when we used to give animal crackers to our grandchildren. No, to our children.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Because I got grandchildren now. Anyway, I give. Give them to our children or for the nursery. Church nursery.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon I probably sinned because I ate those things instead of giving them to the children.

Ed Vitagliano Well, they don't need at that age.

Tim Wildmon Should I. Do I. Should I feel bad about that, or is that long ago?

Ed Vitagliano Sound like. You didn't sound like you'd be sincere feeling badly about it.

Tim Wildmon Did you ever.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, listen, my, my. When we. My wife and I go to babysit our grandkids, there's a pantry, little small pantry, little closet kind of thing in the kitchen.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano But they have some of the snacks, so I go to the pantry Right. When we're babysitting to see what snacks are available, you know, for the whole family.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. You're just going to check them out.

Ed Vitagliano And make sure they have a big tub. It looks like a. It's not a glass jar, but it's a big Plastic jar with a little, spin off. Yeah, a little. Yeah. Thank you.

Tim Wildmon You're welcome. That's a hard word.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, my. My goodness.

Chris Woodward Yeah, I'm falling apart.

Ed Vitagliano but it's. It's all animal cookies and I'll take that thing.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano Into the recliner, I hear, with some of the grandkids. Come on, get some. And I. One for you, one for me.

Tim Wildmon Well, one and then one for you, two for me.

Ed Vitagliano But it's not like those little boxes, the little circ. Circus boxes anymore.

Chris says he has to hide junk food from his grandchildren when babysitting

Tim Wildmon That's what big. Oh, they don't do those anymore.

Ed Vitagliano But that's not what they. That's not what my.

Tim Wildmon Okay.

Ed Vitagliano Son and daughter in law have. They have the big jar anyway with the lid.

Tim Wildmon I always wondered if I should felt bad about taking the animal cookies from the children.

Ed Vitagliano You can if you want. Yeah.

Tim Wildmon but I was watching the nursery, so it was kind of paid.

Ed Vitagliano No sense being a hip.

Tim Wildmon I didn't get paid squats.

Ed Vitagliano That's what I always say.

Tim Wildmon What's that? No sense of being a hypocrite.

Ed Vitagliano If you like the cookies, don't pretend like you feel guilty when you eat them.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Chris Woodward Since it is,

Tim Wildmon Thank you. Appreciate it. What Chris, share with us.

Chris Woodward Yeah. Since it is confession time. I, have, We used to have like a walk in pantry and I've. I've walked in there before and like shut the door and I'm sitting there like eating, eating the junk food after supper, you know, to. To hide from the kids.

Ed Vitagliano Listen, I have to sneak. When we babysit, I have to sneak around and get sips of my diet Coke because my grandkids, if they see it, oh, I want some. I want even the little one. And I have to pretend like I'm pouring it into their little sippy cup. And it's just the amount of deception that goes on around my grandkids is just enormous.

Have you and your wife ever spelled, like, when your kids were little

Chris Woodward Have you and your wife ever spelled, like, when your kids were little, did you and your wife ever spell things? Because, you know, you're trying to get around your kids. That happened to me one time. I have two daughters. And, somehow like, my wife and I were, you know, talking about how the, the youngest hadn't maybe eaten enough for, For C, A, K, E. And my oldest daughter, who could spell at that point was like, why can't she have any cake?

Ed Vitagliano Yes. And then, you know, it was bad when someone can. When someone has learned to spell.

Tim Wildmon Well, I'll tell you what's bad is when you use that trick. Of course, when you. Then you're in, you learn your grandchildren can spell.

Chris Woodward Yes.

Tim Wildmon And they. They tell you exactly what you're saying. Of course you're saying that. But then when you slip into spelling around your dog.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, no, we do that. We do that.

Tim Wildmon Oh, so we're not. I'm not the.

Ed Vitagliano You're not the only one. Because I'll ask my wife. I said, Mara is my daughter's dog. Has Mara been out? Because if you say the word out.

Tim Wildmon Okay.

Ed Vitagliano She gets all excited.

Tim Wildmon We. We do that, too. But, Alison, I. With our little, Maltese dog. But, and he's like, 12, so he understands half the English language, you know. So you're, like, going, you. Do you spell words? Because they do recognize words.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah. You can't say the word leash.

Tim Wildmon Right.

Ed Vitagliano Because then she goes crazy then. Now you got to take her for a walk or she won't leave you.

Tim Wildmon Right. It's. People think that that's not. I don't know. There's a certain amount of, words that dogs can.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, yeah.

Tim Wildmon And so you don't want to say it in front of. You want to spell it out.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon All right, Chris, well, what's your first story?

Florida's Surgeon General is working to eliminate childhood vaccine requirements

Chris Woodward Well, speaking of spelling, many people learn how to spell at schools, and there has been a big, story in for several days now. We've covered this with a couple of different groups. We'll continue to cover it because on our website, afn.net, in recent days, the Surgeon General of Florida announced that he was going to be working to eliminate the, mandate for all childhood vaccine requirements. And a lot of people, were very concerned about this, saying it's going to bring people to danger if, kids and adults are not going to be vaccinated. the surgeon, general has since come back with an update, outlining what he's talking about. Florida's plan to drop school vaccine mandates likely will not take effect for 90 days and would include only chickenpox and a few other illnesses unless legislators decide to extend it to other diseases like polio and measles. So the concern that all of a sudden kids and other people aren't going to be vaccinated for things like polio and measles may have turned out to be a big fat nothing. And that is something that we were talking about with Ray last Thursday when I brought this in, the announcement from the Surgeon general, because Ray said, look, I'm in favor of some vaccines here. And a lot of people have said as much to Us, since last Thursday when we began covering this.

Ed Vitagliano Listen, I am not a scientist. I'm not like Tim. Tim is. He's good at science. Don't. Ah.

Tim Wildmon You're embarrassing me, man. Don't bring that up. I don't want any. You know what I'm saying? I don't want people, okay? I'm just an average person.

Ed Vitagliano Yes. And, every Friday, he. Tim, makes. Makes it clear that science is his thing.

Tim Wildmon Okay?

Ed Vitagliano That's not me. Yeah. All right, so I. Here's. Here's the way I've always approached these things. I rely upon the medical and scientific community to do the research and tell us what they know or what they believe to be true. Okay? But after Covid, I. My. The amount of trust I have has disintegrated. All right? Now I'm asking questions like, is the medical scientific community, are they beholden to big pharma, the pharmaceutical companies? So I would be willing, if we could get real science that's not influenced by payoffs or influenced by grant money, that could disappear if you don't produce the study results that the corporation wants. If we could get real scientific and real health information. Okay. I'm more willing to accept that, but I don't know who to trust anymore. Very true. And that's not on me.

Chris Woodward Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano That is on the medical and scientific and political communities who did what they did during COVID So this is. This is your payback.

Chris Woodward Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano And if you don't like it, you should come clean. And we need to break the stranglehold that much of the medical community and health community and scientific community has on corporate money. Right.

Chris Woodward it was almost a miracle that as many Americans believed, in what doctors and scientists said before COVID because, you know, ours is a nation born out of mistrust. We didn't like what the British monarchy was telling us, that we formed our own government. And before we even did that, we laid out all these things that government can't do to us, knowing that somebody down the road was going to be a tyrant and infringe upon our rights. So Americans are born not trusting somebody.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Chris Woodward and, that's. I think that's part of the reason why even before COVID many Americans were like, I don't believe you, or I'm going to look into that myself.

Ed Vitagliano Listen, this is the problem that the mainstream media has, is they have destroyed their own credibility by clearly picking sides when they report and when they, put forth information stories, what have you. So these are self inflicted Wounds on the part of people that we should be able to trust but don't. And as far as. Listen, I don't know how to sift through this information on vaccines for polio and for measles and all that kind of stuff. I mean I know people who say, well, I've read the studies. Well, are you trained in this? Okay, well then why does your opinion any more than mine? Americans are looking for people they can trust. I like a lot of what Robert f. Kennedy Jr. Has been saying, but I don't know if he's right either. So I'm following all this discussion that is going on. I'm not sure where it's going to wind up. I have a, I have a feeling that maybe a lot of people are throwing out the vaccine baby with the vaccine bathwater. but I don't know and I don't. I don't know you like that. I don't know how to. I don't know how to sort through this.

Chris Woodward See what you did there?

Tim Wildmon Yeah, that was funny. Throwing out the black. What did you say?

Ed Vitagliano The vaccine baby with the vaccine bath water.

Tim Wildmon Yes. That's. Yeah, that's.

Ed Vitagliano That was. There was a touch original.

Tim Wildmon It was a touch of brilliant.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah. Touch.

Experts who you suspect have a political agenda often use science to scare people

Tim Wildmon Hey, speaking of scientists being wrong and doctors and m. Experts, so called experts who you suspect have a political agenda.

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Tim Wildmon And though that, that's what, that's what makes people question the so called experts about things is when they prove to be politically driven rather than factually driven.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon Okay. this is, I saw this over the weekend. I'm reading now from the What's the name of this? Is this the Daily Signal?

Chris Woodward Yeah, that's Heritage Foundation's new site.

Tim Wildmon Okay. The Daily Signal. And I read it other places too, but this, the headline says sea levels not surging despite years of climate activists and corporate media freaking out. That's the headline. Study funds. So the, this is from the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, which I used to write for. But that's, that's, that's a whole other story that would take another life. That would be a diversion to take a solid topic. so they published the peer reviewed study on August 27th by these two, Dutch, engineering consultants or whatever. They're, they're very smart people. The study concluded that the, the reason I bring this up is because we've all heard that the oceans are going to rise. Right.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Chris Woodward I'm posting because the polar sea levels.

Tim Wildmon Ice caps are going to melt.

Ed Vitagliano Cities Will, just because of global warming.

Tim Wildmon We've all heard that. 20 years now.

Ed Vitagliano Yes, all the way back to Al Gore, Inconvenient Truth.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. Okay, well, guess what? The study concluded that the average rate of sea level rise in 2020 was well below other widely edited, cited analysis. And that when projections were compared with the local data, there was little evidence climate change was driving the acceleration seen in a few regions.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon In other words, these two scientists, they went around the world and they used a tape measure, for lack of a better word. They, they, tape measure. I'm using that metaphorically. They did, they did their test, but in essence what they found was there was like six inches of rise in like a hundred years or something like that.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon In the ocean. So this says overall, the study indicates that in most places sea levels are not rising unusually quickly. In the relatively few locations where sea levels are rising faster than average, the cause is almost certainly local factors such as land substance, substance, or ground complications. they go on to say global sea levels are currently rising more slowly than they have for years. For much of the time since the last ice age ended, a period that, which, seas rose more than 400ft. Any possible increase in the recent race or recent rate of rise compared with the past century is small within the margin of error and did not, and not outside of historical patterns. So I bring that up, and I quote that to say that, the. We have. Those of us on the conservative side have grown to be very skeptical of the professional organizations in the worlds of medicine and science. Am I right?

Ed Vitagliano Correct.

Tim Wildmon Because we think our first, default is to think, okay, why are these people saying this? And are they promoting a leftist agenda, by using science to try to scare people? Am I right?

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Tim Wildmon Okay.

Ed Vitagliano And scare people when you say agenda to accomplish a political end.

Tim Wildmon Right. So how do you get people. I'm just asking M. I'm throwing this out there. How do you get people to change their behavior? Well, one of the ways you get them to change their behavior is you scare them to death.

Chris Woodward Yeah, yeah.

Tim Wildmon Okay. Fear does work in, moving an individual or a society. And so how do you scare the American people away from capitalism? Well, you tell them that if we don't embrace, global control of the climate by imposing all these rules and regulations on the American people, that you know, and the world's supposed to go along. But we know China and India, the top polluters in the world, they don't care. but what Americans are supposed to conform to all these rules and regulations by, because the globe, because the global warming is going to kill us all.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon And then when you learn me finish this. And then when you learn that these scientists are politically driven because they want to for whatever reason, maybe they're being bought off or they don't, they don't get a grant that they're supposed to get unless they cite global warming as a huge risk to mankind. You see what I'm saying?

Ed Vitagliano Yeah. And the problem for these folks you're talking about in terms of the climate scientists is going to be the same problem as we're talking about on the COVID and the media. They're going to lose credibility.

Tim Wildmon Yes.

Ed Vitagliano And then when they have a real issue they want to discuss, guess what? No one's going to believe them.

Tim Wildmon Little boy. The crab wolf.

Ed Vitagliano That's right. So I think we're going to find out in the next 10 to 20 years that this global warming, this global climate change agenda is not true.

Tim Wildmon Right.

Ed Vitagliano And then who's going to believe the experts after that?

Chris Woodward Right. One big reason why people believe what they believe about climate change is because news outlets tell them this is the way it is. And many news outlets like the Associated Press or the BBC, places around the world with big reputations and have been around for a long time. A lot of those places no longer interview or include comments from skeptics when it comes to climate change. This right here is not new. It's, it's an announcement from three years ago. But I've covered it. Steve Jordal's covered it. We will continue to cover it. Back in February of 2022, the Associated Press, which everybody and their brother with a news outlet runs to some extent announced in February of 2022 that they were launching. I'll just read it here.

The Associated Press is assigning more than two dozen journalists to cover climate issues

The Associated Press says it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues in the news organization's largest citizen single expansion, paid for through philanthropic grants. Those grants are, ah, coming from organizations and individuals that tell you.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Chris Woodward Which is why you cannot believe anything the Associated Press tells you because the.

Ed Vitagliano Associated Press is not going to publish stories that bite, that bites the hand, causes them to bite the hand feeds.

Chris Woodward Exactly.

Tim Wildmon I'm surprised they admitted that.

Chris Woodward Yeah, well, and the sad thing is a lot of people don't realize this, but particularly in medium to small markets, they just run whatever the AP says.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Chris Woodward They don't change any of it. Now AFN does have AP Material. We have a contract with the ap, but Fred and I and Parrish, we take painstaking steps, to edit out a lot of the garbage. And if it's just too much garbage, it doesn't make our website. We will cover like I'll call a skeptic today with this story that Tim read from the Daily Signal. And I'll include a little bit about what the researchers claim. But, but we're going to have the. Yeah, but that the AP won't give you. And that's the difference between us and afn.

Tim Wildmon You know, President Trump did the right thing. He took the US out of the. Was it the they call Paris Courts? Because he rightly said, you know what, all this is meant to do is punish America.

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Tim Wildmon They want these global climate change people. All they want advocates, all they want, really. Not all they want, but a lot of what they want is to handcuff the American, industries, businesses, oil and gas and coal. and they want to handcuff these folks, so that they can control them. Well, how do they control them? They scare the general public into believing that using these products causes global warming.

Chris Woodward Exactly.

Tim Wildmon And we're all going to burn up.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon and what I'm saying is that's, that's always been unproven. And a lot of the, projections by these people, like Al Gore said the. Didn't he say the, the Arctic was going to melt?

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Chris Woodward Oh yeah. Snow was going to be a thing.

Tim Wildmon Of the past by now.

Tim Wildmon By a long time ago, I think.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, I think he said like within five years and the ocean is going.

Tim Wildmon To rise and then it's going to wipe out.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon It's going to wipe out coastlines in the U.S. remember that? Well, it's not happening.

Chris Woodward Right.

Ed Vitagliano And part, and we have discussed this on the show before, but part of what kept the American people from believing all this nonsense was the actions, the actual actions of the people promoting.

Tim Wildmon Yes.

Ed Vitagliano Climate change. So the Obamas bought houses on the coastline.

Tim Wildmon Right.

Ed Vitagliano And so everyone goes, oh, well, I guess the ocean's not going to rise that much, is it?

Tim Wildmon And Al Gore and John Kerry fly away, fly around in private jets.

Chris Woodward Exactly.

Tim Wildmon Which is supposed to be terrible for the environment.

Ed Vitagliano And Al, Gore had several houses, big houses.

Tim Wildmon Right. So they vacation homes.

Ed Vitagliano And you go.

Tim Wildmon Their actions belie their words.

Chris Woodward Right. Do you remember the movie in the mid-90s called, the American President? Michael Douglas played the president.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Chris Woodward It's a fictional movie. but part of that story or plot Involved an environmental lobbyist played by Annette, Benning. and then she's talking about how we need to pass this bill that would reduce fossil fuel emissions because of what it's doing to the climate. That movie is from 30 years ago. You can watch that movie today and hear some of the same claims people are still warning about or making today. It's the same stuff throughout my lifetime.

Tim Wildmon Listen, the climate may be changing, but that's not, is that anything new? I'm talking about change may become warmer, cooler here or there the other. But it's not because I'm driving a car.

Ed Vitagliano Well, and, and you, you find out what you just said is true. when you hear actual debates between climate change skeptics and climate change proponents and this is starting, this is starting to happen more and more. The skeptic will ask the proponent how much will the temperature come down if we do everything you are suggesting and you never get an answer because there is no answer. And they can't answer that question. They can't say if we do X, Y and Z for the next 10 years, temperature will come down one degree. Because I think they know deep down inside while human activity may contribute a certain percentage, this is mostly natural fluctuation.

Tim Wildmon And look at all these Hollywood and entertainment elites, they, they tell us all, it's almost universally agreed among that crowd that global warming is happening and it's because of, it's manmade. And then they go jetting off in their private jets all over the world without a thought or care in the world. But the little people are supposed to take the public buses.

Ed Vitagliano Yes. You know, you think, or Michael Douglas, married to each other. You think they've, you think they down sized their home and bulldoze their big energy sucking homes?

Tim Wildmon No.

Ed Vitagliano Bulldoze them to save the planet. No.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Chris Woodward excuse me, long story short, the people that have been out there sounding the alarm about what they call man made climate change have carbon footprints for far bigger than any of us will ever have in our lifetimes combined. Yeah, and it, that's why I mentioned.

Ed Vitagliano Al Gore who was criticized after an inconvenient trip.

Tim Wildmon Where did he go by the way?

Al Gore makes statements every night when you're watching evening news

Ed Vitagliano no, he's still Al Gore. He's still out there campaigning and he's been about, for about.

Chris Woodward One of the things that he is known for in recent years is he'll make statements. It's, it's the same line at different venues. And he said it for several years now every night when you're watching the evening news. It's like a walk through the Book of Revelations. Now, that's where I. He says revelation, Revelations. That whenever I hear somebody mention the Book of Revelations, I stop listening at that point. Because that's not what it's called.

Ed Vitagliano It's revelation.

Chris Woodward Correct.

Ed Vitagliano Revelation. Well, and listen, if it was true, what he's saying, nobody should be watching the evening news.

Chris Woodward Very true.

Ed Vitagliano Because you got your TV on and your lights on. You should be burning a candle.

Tim Wildmon Instead of burning down the planet.

Ed Vitagliano Instead of burning down the planet.

Chris Woodward Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Burning down the house.

Ed Vitagliano I've been fired up all day.

Chris Woodward That was the carpenter's best hit since.

Ed Vitagliano The first beginning of this program.

Chris Woodward 1979.

Ed Vitagliano Be wound up about the commies, hate the Communists.

Chris Woodward If somebody gets elected in New York, they may only have candles to burn.

Tim Wildmon Probably a good thing this show's ending.

Ed Vitagliano Probably for my blood pressure.

Tim Wildmon All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us on the program today. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your Monday afternoon, and we'll see you back tomorrow.