Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildman
Ed Vitagliano: Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.
Tim Wildmon: Welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues. That's the name of this show on the American Family Radio Network. We are live here on this August 10th, and we got 24 and a half more minutes of great, programming
Ed Vitagliano: to bring to you of radio goodness.
Tim Wildmon: It's all positive and encouraging. That's where the state of the world right now, isn't it?
Ed Vitagliano: All positive and encouraging. Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: Steve Paisley Jordal joins us. Good morning, Steve.
Steve Jordahl: Hey, everybody.
Tim Wildmon: What do you think, Steve? Aren't you encouraged today and positive and I am.
Steve Jordahl: It's, nothing but good news.
Tim Wildmon: That's right.
Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: kind of nothing but blue skies coming our way at blue skies.
Ed Vitagliano: It's always bad being in between two people who like to see.
Tim Wildmon: Right, right. Who are positive.
Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: We're trying to give you a little shot of encouragement for your Monday.
Ed Vitagliano: It's every day's a Monday in my life, Tim. Every day's a Monday. I'm gonna write a book.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, you write a book.
Ed Vitagliano: Book. everydays and Mondays. See, there we go. I just got to listen to you.
Steve Jordahl: Here we go.
Ed Vitagliano: Sing. Sing away. Try to cheer me up. I refuse.
Tim Wildmon: All right, Krish.
Ed Vitagliano: To be cheer.
Tim Wildmon: You know, we all make life choices and, Go ahead, Krish. Steve. Is that your name? Steve.
Ed Vitagliano: Krish.
Steve Jordahl: Steve, Krish. I just. I want to tell you guys, I, Heather and I went down to a wedding, over the weekend in Crystal. Crystal River, Florida. I was down in Ray's part of the world in Florida.
Ed Vitagliano: Really?
Tim Wildmon: Where is Crystal River, Florida?
Steve Jordahl: It's about an hour north of Tampa.
Tim Wildmon: and you were right next to Ray.
Steve Jordahl: I. I texted him. I was gonna see if we wanted to go out for breakfast. Of course, he's on his world tour, so. Yes, he says, I'd love to if you can meet me in Philadelphia.
Ed Vitagliano: We'll come up there next.
Steve Jordahl: But,
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, you drive down there.
Steve Jordahl: We drove. We drove. Take two days going down. But yesterday we drove all the,
Tim Wildmon: So I've driven. I've driven as far as from Sarasota.
Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: To Tupelo before. It's been a few years ago. Driven that Orlando drive many times, but. So you drove. So did y' all drive up to, I know people don't care about this, but I'm just curious.
Steve Jordahl: Is it 85 that goes down? There's a. I tell you, there is a.
Tim Wildmon: You go up to Tallahassee and cut across, or do you skim around the Panama City Beach?
Steve Jordahl: No. Tallahassee? No. what's the capital?
Tim Wildmon: Well, the capital is Tallahassee with Florida. You got that curve, you got that band in Florida, and there's just nothing there.
Steve Jordahl: I'll tell you what there is in Chiefland. There is a meat place. We went and,
Ed Vitagliano: A meat place?
Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
Ed Vitagliano: Can you be more specific?
Steve Jordahl: Starts with the Q. Man, I should have, like a butcher place. No, like a butcher place. Like a place where you buy steaks.
Tim Wildmon: You see the cattle.
Steve Jordahl: No. You see the remains of the cattle. Let me tell you. and so we have a. We have a tri tip that I'm going to be baking, cooking here in the next day or two.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, you bought some meat along the way home. I got you.
Ed Vitagliano: Wow. You were talking about Sarasota. Did you go down there?
Steve Jordahl: Quincy. Beef. Quincy, beef in Chiefland.
Ed Vitagliano: Did you go down to Sarasota, like for spring training or something when you were.
Tim Wildmon: No, that was a long time ago. And my dad, Don Wildmon, the founder of this ministry, had a speaking engagement down there. Sarasota's on the beach. It's a beautiful beach south of Tampa. And so the host there said, hey, you know, it was in the summer. Said, if you'll bring your family, we'll put you up in a condo on the beach.
Ed Vitagliano: So, that was nice.
Tim Wildmon: So they. We went down there, had a week down there in, ah, in Sarasota. I say it's beautiful. Beautiful beach. It's a long way to drive, though.
Ed Vitagliano: Sure is.
Steve Jordahl: From here.
Tim Wildmon: Long haul.
Ed Vitagliano: I'm just looking.
Tim Wildmon: I'm not going to do that again. I wouldn't do that even for a free condo. Unless it's in the winter. Might do it in the winter, but summertime. You got beautiful beaches along the Gulf coast already.
Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: You don't have to drive that far, right? Anywhere from Gulf Shores all the way over to Panama City Beach. That's some beautiful beaches out there. All right. What's your first story, Krish? I mean, Steve, is it Steve, right?
Steve Jordahl: It still is, yeah.
Ed Vitagliano: Why keep calling him Krish?
Tim Wildmon: Well, you know, it's a, Monday morning slip of the tongue, but I appreciate you pointing it out.
Steve Jordahl: You can only. I can't replace him. I can only hope to, follow him.
Tim Wildmon: You know, when you make a mistake, I don't point it out, do I? On the radio?
Ed Vitagliano: Yes, you do.
Tim Wildmon: I do.
Ed Vitagliano: Yes, you do.
Tim Wildmon: Well, that's rare. It's rare that you make.
Ed Vitagliano: In fact, you're pointing things out right now that I just did.
Tim Wildmon: Duly noted.
President Trump says he's going to resume negotiations with Iran
Let's move on next story, whatever
Steve Jordahl: your name is over there, so tell me, if you stopping me, if you've heard this before, but, the Strait of Hormuz may or may not be open.
Tim Wildmon: Is that still number one on the hits list?
Steve Jordahl: It's still number one on the hits list.
Tim Wildmon: The Beatles record.
Steve Jordahl: So, over the weekend, the president, thought we had the straight open.
Tim Wildmon: Did he really?
Steve Jordahl: Yeah. But Iran came back, and for some reason, Iran is making demands on, the United States. We'll open it, but we've got a whole bunch of stuff that, we're going to demand that happen. Anyway. Let's listen to what the Iranian foreign Minister had to say about it. Cut nine.
Tim Wildmon: The talks with Oman are about the temporary routes. We are almost very close to the result. Determining the route by Iran and Oman does not necessarily mean the reopening the Strait of Hormuz. That is dependent on other factors. The violations of the Memorandum of Understanding by America should be compensated.
Steve Jordahl: Yeah. So one of the things they want is they want war, reparations for, the war. They want Israel to cease, and desist on all, operations against Iranian proskis and Hezbollah. Something, that, the President Trump has very little, despite what he says, control.
Ed Vitagliano: Iran wants us out of bases.
Steve Jordahl: Yeah. Throughout the Middle east, they are making
Ed Vitagliano: demands and promise never to attack him again.
Steve Jordahl: I know. So, I'm guessing, Tim, we're about to hear the President say that we're going resume negotiations with Iran.
Ed Vitagliano: I don't know, trying to ruin Tim's day.
Steve Jordahl: I'm thinking.
Tim Wildmon: Well, what I got to say about this is President Trump is being played, and he's being played day after day after day. and I don't know how else to say it. And do you now, let me, Let me caveat that in one manner, if in fact, we have nowhere to. We have no way to get out of this situation without the world viewing it as a loss for President Trump and the US Then maybe we're not. Maybe Trump's not being played at least as much as I say he is. By played, what I mean is he says one thing one day, and the next thing, something else happens to prove what he said the day before is not, in fact happening. And that's been what we've been doing for how long?
Ed Vitagliano: Months.
Tim Wildmon: Months now. So President Trump's word has zero credibility anymore on this subject. Okay. On this subject, I'm not wholly condemning President Trump, and he's still doing some good things, but on this, nobody believes him anymore. So I don't know where he goes from here. Unless he just pulls up and says, okay, we're leaving, and we've done all we can do, and that's the end of that. If they want to say they won, then they can say whatever they want to. But this is our position, as that might be the best route to take.
President Trump has to decide between two options regarding Iran
So, is there anything I just said that you disagree with?
Ed Vitagliano: No. By play. By played, I understood what you meant, and I think this is exactly right, is that there are factions within Iran that are maybe promising things behind closed doors, and then doing a complete about face and doing the complete opposite in an attempt to embarrass President Trump and frustrate.
Tim Wildmon: And it happens over and over again.
Ed Vitagliano: It happens over and over and over again. And I think President Trump is coming up to a fork in the road where he has to decide between two options. All right? And I'm not sure either of these.
Tim Wildmon: What are they?
Ed Vitagliano: I don't think either of these are what the president wanted at the start of things in February. And those two options are, you cut bait. You say, all right, we did the best we could.
Tim Wildmon: usually people say fish first, but go ahead.
Ed Vitagliano: Well, because we're not going to fish. We're not going to fish anymore. That's what I'm saying. It's fish or cut bait. So you got to cut bait. And you just say, we're done. We did our best. You've mentioned this. we tried to stop them. We couldn't. Nobody else really helped us except for Israel. So we're not going to be able to get regime change, and we're not going to draw this out any longer. And that's going to be humiliating for the President because the forces in Iran are going to gloat and they're going to publicly try to embarrass the president. I'm not sure the president is going to want to take that. And the only. The only other option on a personal level, and there would be political fallout, too. And the only other option is to invade, which would be a disaster. And I don't think Congress would go along with it.
Tim Wildmon: So it's time to leave then.
Ed Vitagliano: It's time to leave. We are running out of missiles. We are drawing missiles from other parts of the world, and it could reach critical levels to where we do not have missiles in Southeast Asia, in the Pacific, or in other places.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know what's wrong with saying we've done everything we could do and leave. I don't know why Is that, why is that terrible?
Ed Vitagliano: Because I think that would be embarrassing for the president.
Tim Wildmon: So what, you're getting embarrassed already?
Ed Vitagliano: I know, but what we're talking about, President Trump, I don't think personality was.
Tim Wildmon: If you're a kind of person who's going to let your personal ego interfere with what's best for the country diplomatically, militarily, then you don't need to be in that office. I'm not accusing him of that. You did wait.
Ed Vitagliano: I did not accuse.
Steve Jordahl: Send your cards and letters. I didn't see.
Ed Vitagliano: You just put me in a corner by saying, I'm not accusing him of that. You did. And you're the one who said he shouldn't be in office if he does that.
Tim Wildmon: Absolutely.
Ed Vitagliano: he wouldn't be the only president to do that, though. I think President Bush, gw, President, George W. Bush, got himself into the Iraq war for 20 years because he thought there were weapons of mass destruction. And when they couldn't be found, maybe they were moved, I don't know. But when they couldn't be found, he turned that into, we are going to make Iraq into the, the Middle East's democracy. His ego. He should have said, listen, we thought there were weapons of mass destruction. Our intelligence agencies said they were there. We've got in there and we found they were gone. so we're pulling out. But he didn't, he got him. He got us stuck in a 20 year war there. Same thing in Afghanistan. I said from the beginning, when we went into your finger, I know, I'm fired up now, go ahead. When we got it, I said, we should have hit the Taliban and gotten out and said, if we see you open these Al Qaeda bases again, and boy, we can see you, we got satellites, we'll hit you again instead. We occupied the country for 20 years. Both of those things cost us trillions of dollars, untold people dying. President Trump's not the only one to get himself stuck. Same thing with the Vietnam War, all right, JFK got us into that with so called, you know, people training the, South Vietnamese. And then LBJ got us stuck. All of that is because you can't. If you back out of those kind of things, you have to admit you were wrong. And most politicians, you reach that stage, that level of success, it is extremely difficult to pull yourself out.
Tim Wildmon: Humiliating in this situation. We can, we can move on after this. I don't think that, a pull out of the Iranian situation is an admittance that you were wrong. The premise was to keep them from getting a nuclear weapon, which you have,
Ed Vitagliano: which you will fail to do.
Tim Wildmon: That's when you say, just because you lose a football game doesn't mean it wasn't worth the effort. Okay, you follow me here?
Ed Vitagliano: Sure.
Tim Wildmon: So, saying to the world and to the American people, our United States military has done the best it could do under the circumstances to. To, eliminate, the possibility of Iran getting a nuclear war weapon and using it against their neighbors of the world or firing it to NewSong York City or whatever. But we can't do any more than what we've done. And, short of sending in the Marines and the army and whoever else, or, bombing the people of Iran, cutting off. Starving them to death by cutting off their water and their.
Ed Vitagliano: You can't do that.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, then you say that. You say that. I'm not going to do that. He. Now, this is where I go back to Trump's credibility. He said many times that he was going to do that, and then he didn't. Right. So they don't believe him anymore.
Ed Vitagliano: Why? Why?
President Trump should pull out of Iran war
Why? Oh, you're talking about bombing, Thom.
Tim Wildmon: That the Iranian leadership don't believe him anymore, that he's going to bomb them into.
Ed Vitagliano: Right. Oblivion and their civilization because he said
Tim Wildmon: it over and over again and he hasn't done it. And by the way, I'm conflicted on that. Anyway, I understand President Trump, if, in fact, he's struggling with, Do I really want to see millions of people starve to death or be displaced or have a humanitarian crisis, for millions of people? Do I want to be responsible for that in the sense that I tell our jets to go make their life a living hell? I understand. I don't know that I could make that call. And I think Trump's heart of humanity is preventing him from going all in to win a war, if that's what it takes to win it. You see what I'm saying?
Ed Vitagliano: Absolutely.
Tim Wildmon: So, anyway, he's stuck. President Trump is stuck. And I think the best thing to do for him is to pull out. Now. You got warhawks who say no.
Ed Vitagliano: Right. You know, oh, you got all kinds of people saying, you got to finish the job.
Tim Wildmon: What is that?
Ed Vitagliano: Finish the job. Without boots on the ground, you can't finish the job. Right.
Tim Wildmon: What does finish the job mean?
Ed Vitagliano: It means regime change.
Tim Wildmon: You can't do that. That's not going to happen.
Ed Vitagliano: It's not going to happen. Listen, I like your idea. I think that's what he should do. President Trump Ought to say, all right, we've done everything.
Tim Wildmon: We've done everything we could.
Ed Vitagliano: We've done everything we could. We degraded this, we delayed this. But I'm not going to, I'm not going to bomb the Iranian, Iranian people back to the stone Age.
Tim Wildmon: And I'm not sending in the Marines.
Ed Vitagliano: I'm not sending in the Marines. And plus I'm not going to let the Iranians destroy the world's economy. So anybody else who wants to take a crack at this, go right ahead, but I'm pulling our people out.
Tim Wildmon: Do that.
Ed Vitagliano: I.
Tim Wildmon: That'd be a two week story.
Ed Vitagliano: But.
Tim Wildmon: And they'll be, they'll be over.
Ed Vitagliano: It will be politically costly because he should have done that a month after they started in February. Now we are in August.
Tim Wildmon: Agree.
Ed Vitagliano: So it's going to come with some political fallout, but I think the President can pull that off. If he will do that, he'll say,
Tim Wildmon: you got the midterms coming up too. And the Republicans are going to be really hurt, if this war keeps on going and going and going, with no end in sight. Go ahead, Steve.
A lot of Muslim candidates are winning midterms
Steve Jordahl: All right, we have been watching a lot of, candidates being winning midterms. A lot of Muslim candidates are. Now we talk about the DSA and the, the fact that they're socialist and communist, but a lot of them are Muslim. El Sayed is Muslim, of course, Mamdani is Muslim. We have a couple Muslim members of Congress. And I want you to hear a, an immigrant from Iran. His name is Ari Shah and He was in McKinney, Texas, at the city council there because they are proposing an Islamic center in McKinney, Texas. And Ari Shah has a warning for McKinney and for the rest of the country. And I wanted to let you hear about this.
Ed Vitagliano: And this is a former Muslim.
Steve Jordahl: Former Muslim, yeah. Correct. And so now, let's listen to what he has to say. Got 15.
Speaker D: Hello, my name is Eddie Issa. I'm, a Sharia law survivor from Iran. And I'm here to tell you this is a dangerous ideology you're allowing in their country. Every country that is Islamic. Now, it used to be a Christian country and we were soft Christians. And we allowed these people to come in, bring their Sharia law into our countries and slowly kill us off left and right. Let me make it very clear to you. Christianity is a personal relationship with God where it says, render on to Caesar's. What is Caesar's? Render unto God what is God's Islam is Sharia law, deen wad dawah religion and state, which is not even compatible with the American thing. And when these people will use taqiyah to lie to you, to manipulate you, because whenever Islam is little, they will lie to you and tell you they come in peace. This is level one. Level two is what's happening in UK right now where you have two tier policing where you have like the blasphemy laws, Islamophobia, racism, all this nonsense that they talk about. First of all, Islam is not a race. So anytime you criticize Islam, they will use the race card. But there's all. Every country has this disgusting ideology inside their country, including my own country, Iran, Russia. Islamophobia is made up because they don't want you to criticize their death cult. That's why they will put that, that's why they push it in UK in every country they go to M103 is in Canada right now. They deliberately try to silence us. And the worst people that are trapped in it is Muslims themselves because they can't leave that death cult because they're told if you question that disgusting book, you're called a Kufar. And they get killed over it, just like my friends who are apostates in prison or dead right now in Iran. I'm telling you this is a bad idea and you're going to regret not listening to people like us who lived under Sharia law. Thank you, Eddie.
Steve Jordahl: It's coming.
Ed Vitagliano: Yeah. Listen, I don't know what's going to happen in Europe. I tend to think that most of those countries are already cooked because they have allowed the Muslim population to grow. It's not a majority. Even in places like France, I think it's maybe 20%. You think, well, that's only 20%. But you get 10% of 20% who are radical and you've got a huge problem on your hands. In the United States, I think Islam is still like under 2% of the population. But they are starting to learn that they can congregate in a particular area, like around in areas in Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota, and they can start there by carving out a Muslim enclave and then influence other elections because of the fact that they are concentrated. And I don't, I don't know what is going to happen in America because we're a very open people. We, have always enjoyed allowing legal immigration. But what happens when those immigrants start to act in a way that is threatening to your constitution and your way of life? What are you going to do?
Steve Jordahl: I've heard it said, Tim. That they are using our freedoms against us.
Tim Wildmon: Well, that's possible. listen, I. It's easy to generalize, right? About people, and, It's easy to. What? I said that's easy. That's what we tend to do. I don't know. You can't forbid people from coming to the US because they're Muslims. I mean, how are you going to do that? You just gonna say, no, you can't come? Well, you can't.
Ed Vitagliano: You can say. And the president has done this in the past, you can say, no immigration from these countries that are on a terrorist watch list, but you can't make a broad generalization.
Tim Wildmon: Talking about. But you can't say we're not. Because you're m. Muslim.
Ed Vitagliano: Right. That again, struck down. An official policy like that would get struck down in the courts.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, probably. So, anyway, I do think. Also you. Anyway, I don't know. We're gonna. Europe has letting so many. You said so many Muslims in. To their continent, they're gonna. It's gonna be a real problem going forward if, in fact, the Muslims. The majority of Muslims are there to, try to impose Sharia law on everybody.
Ed Vitagliano: There's. There's bound to be people that we could. I would like to have somebody on the program and. And say, what do you think we should do? You know, Mark Stein or, Robert Spencer or some of these folks. What do you think a free nation should do? This is what's happened in Europe.
Tim Wildmon: Well, you can restrict immigration. You can if you want to. To maybe, like you said, to prevent different countries from. Yeah, but, now, see, as soon as we got. If you start generalizing, you have people like Rick Cantor, Right. Who is a Muslim. Enos, Enos Cantor, who's a Muslim, and he's one of the ones standing up against the transgender movement.
Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: In America. So, anyway. All right, Steve, thank you.
Steve Jordahl: My pleasure.
Tim Wildmon: Ed. Huh?
Steve Jordahl: Uh-huh.
Tim Wildmon: On your own? No, Just kidding. Just kidding. all right. Have a great day, everybody. Keep listening to American Family Radio.
Ed Vitagliano: Happy birthday, Jonathan.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, we'll see you tomorrow, everybody. It.
