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 Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening to afr. And I, told you an hour ago, in case you forgot, today's Monday.

Ed Vitagliano In case you forgot, who doesn't know when it's Monday?

Donald Trump Monday.

Tim Wildmon Do rainy days and Mondays always get you down?

Ed Vitagliano They do. They do that. You know what? That is extremely accurate for me. Mondays and rainy days.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. I just like you and Karen Carpenter.

Ed Vitagliano I. I just want every day to be a Friday, Tim.

Tim Wildmon Well, sorry.

Ed Vitagliano I should write a book that has that title.

Tim Wildmon Hey, Steve Jordan.

Steve Jordahl I'm in a mama's and papa's mood. Monday, Monday.

Tim Wildmon Oh, that's another so good to me. Name me one other song from the 70s that mentions Monday.

Steve Jordahl You have one in the 80s, huh?

Tim Wildmon all right.

Ed Vitagliano Manic Monday.

Tim Wildmon Well, yeah, you got that. That's true.

Steve Jordahl well, I know there's a Beatles song is from the 60s that has a reference to Monday in it.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. Right.

Steve Jordahl Yeah. But I.

Tim Wildmon Do you have a song by Jimmy Buffett called Come Monday?

Steve Jordahl Oh, yeah. Come Monday. it'll be pretty.

Tim Wildmon Pretty. Pretty fun song there.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon All right. What's going on, Steve?

Steve Jordahl Oh, not much. not much.

Ed Vitagliano Okay.

Steve Jordahl Not much.

Ed Vitagliano All right, folks, that's all the time we have.

Steve Jordahl We'll see you tomorrow, everybody.

Tim Wildmon All right, Enjoy some smooth jazz. 30 minutes.

President Trump answers question from Japanese reporter about war with Iran

Steve Jordahl I wanted to start here. we have a president that has a little bit of a sense of humor, even if it is a little biting. You remember, that the president had the Japanese prime minister. Ah, San Takaichi in the Oval Office.

Tim Wildmon What's your name? Steve?

Steve Jordahl Sanay Taikachi. Takaichi. Sorry.

Tim Wildmon can you pronounce that?

Ed Vitagliano And I can, but I don't want to show off.

Steve Jordahl This is the thing I've learned about Japanese is it's always pretty much pronounced like it's spelled. There's not a lot of deceptive stuff in these spellings.

Tim Wildmon Anyway, she's in Washington. At the White House.

Steve Jordahl Yeah, she's in the Washington White House. And, the president opened up. She was in the Oval Office. And, he invited the press in, as he will. And, at one point, he gives a, He gives a shot at a question from one of the Japanese, reporters. He says, is there a Japanese reporter that would like to ask a question? And you'll hear the question, but in case it's a little low, the Japanese reporter says, we're wondering why you didn't give your allies like Japan a, heads up that you're going to do this attack on Iran. Okay, listen to his answer. Cut 16.

Speaker E Why didn't you tell US allies in Europe and Asia like Japan about the war before attacking Iran? So we are very confused about.

Ed Vitagliano Well, one thing.

Donald Trump You don't want to signal too much. You know, when we go in, we went in very hard and we didn't tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan?

Steve Jordahl Okay.

Donald Trump Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?

Tim Wildmon Okay,

Ed Vitagliano Listen, this was last, last late last week, was it?

Steve Jordahl I think it's yes.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, yeah. And, and I was hoping we would run that because that, that's just it.

Tim Wildmon Is that, is that a top 10 Trump moment?

Ed Vitagliano He's has some for humor. I mean, he has so many of them. But that was, that was good. Now, it is not diplomatic. it is tacky.

Tim Wildmon Nobody's ever accused him of that.

Ed Vitagliano But it's funny. I think you said that. I think you said that morning you said that is just one of the funniest things. But it is a tacky thing to bring up.

Tim Wildmon But that reporter deserved that. He said, what did you tell your. We're confused. Why didn't you tell Japan you were gonna attack, Iran? And I going, that is a stupid question.

Ed Vitagliano It is.

Tim Wildmon Okay, you, you're, you're not even relevant here in this conversation. maybe, Israel, but that would be maybe, I don't know, maybe the UK I don't know. It's President Trump. And the. Unless does not owe anybody a heads

Ed Vitagliano up, for the more people you tell.

Tim Wildmon That's right.

Ed Vitagliano More chances it could get. Right. And then Americans could die.

Tim Wildmon That's right. So it was a dumb question and he got it, but he got an answer to, I think President Trump, he just thought of that as he was answering.

Ed Vitagliano Oh, yeah, that was off the cuff.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. Then he goes, who better to. Who better to. What did he say?

Steve Jordahl Who knows?

Tim Wildmon Who knows?

Steve Jordahl Surprises like Japan.

Ed Vitagliano I'd like to hear it again.

Tim Wildmon Okay, well, do that. It's worthy.

Ed Vitagliano It's, it's worthy of a replay.

Why didn't you tell allies about war before attacking Iran, Steve asks

Tim Wildmon This is President Trump. Japanese, prime minister was in, Washington, D.C. last week. Her name again, Steve.

Steve Jordahl Sanne Takaichi.

Tim Wildmon Okay. She's sitting there. And, the Japanese press corps asked President Trump a question. Here we go.

Speaker E Why didn't you tell US allies in Europe and Asia, like Japan, about the war before attacking Iran? So we are very confused with Japanese systems.

Donald Trump Well, one thing you don't want to signal too much. You know, when we go in. We went in very hard and we didn't tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?

Steve Jordahl Okay.

Ed Vitagliano You, you can tell the moment when that thought popped into his can. You can. I mean, he's a surprise. He's trying to explain.

Tim Wildmon Filter bypass, filter bypass, filter bypass, filter bypass.

Steve Jordahl That's continually playing. That, that program just pops into his head.

Ed Vitagliano And here I go.

Tim Wildmon Well, that.

Ed Vitagliano Earlier, I love that he said, if

Tim Wildmon Iran doesn't do what we tell, him to do, they don't agree with our terms, we're going to, quote, bomb our little hearts out. Listen, war is not funny. We're not la. About that. It's just sometimes the way he says things is, it's maybe even unintentionally humorous.

Ed Vitagliano I don't think he was. He might have been. He might have.

Steve Jordahl Oh, he knew it was funny. You could tell. He could.

Tim Wildmon Oh, yeah.

Ed Vitagliano But bomb our little hearts out. He's, he's just, he. Listen, President Trump says exactly what he's thinking. Other political leaders say what they think in private.

Tim Wildmon Yeah.

Ed Vitagliano Donald Trump says it publicly. And so you at you. So you say, well, is, is either one better? Well, political leaders are saying what they think, whether it's only in private. And you're going to criticize President Trump. That's almost hypocritical. He just, you just always know what he's thinking when he says, we're going to bomb our little hearts out. Guess what? The Iranian leaders, whoever's left, they, they say, yeah, that's what he's going to do.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. What, what I don't like is when he insults people, and he does even good people sometimes, which I think is gratuitous and unnecessary and unprecedential. but off the cuff, humorous things, like those things we, we just cited here, to me, those are just Donald Trump. That's his personality, you know, that's who he is. And he's always been that way.

Ed Vitagliano So, you know, anyway, I thought it was fun.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, go ahead, Steve.

Senator Lindsey Graham is urging President Trump to take Kharg Island

Steve Jordahl All right. Well, Pearl harbor, not the only reference to World War II. Over the weekend, Lindsey Graham was on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream. He is urging Donald Trump to send Marines who are on the way to the theater there. not the movie theater, the war theater. He wants them to take Kharg Island. Now, Kharg island is the island. It's the place where Iran's processing oil processing facilities are. So all the oil gets shipped to Kharg island, and then it gets distributed to whatever, vessels Iran, has. And, so it's kind of the key to, holding the Strait of Hormuz. But Lindsey, Graham, I tell you, I knew he was kind of hawkish, but I had no idea. He is guns. He talk about bombing to your heart's content. Let's listen to what he makes. Kind of an unfortunate, in my mind, an unfortunate allusion to another World War II battle. Cut 11.

Speaker F So here's what I tell President Trump. Keep it up for a few more weeks. Take Carg island, where all of the resources they have to produce oil. Control that island. Let this regime die on a vine.

Speaker G Is this going to, though, take Carg Island? Is it going to involve US Troops on the ground? Let me just read you something from the Atlantic does an assessment on that. U.S. troops may well take Cargill, and we believe their ability to do so, but only to endure ballistic missile strikes, drone attacks, petrochemical smoke, all without a reliable means of obtaining logistical support. The result could be a grinding war of attrition. They talk about how far away they would be from.

Speaker F Sort of tired of all this, armchair quarterback. And this has been amazing military operation. God bless the fallen, but it's a difference.

Speaker G Troops on the ground.

Speaker F I trust the Marines, not that guy. I trust dod. We got two Marine Expeditionary Units sailing to this island. We did Iwo Jima. We can do this.

Steve Jordahl The battle for Iwo Jima took, 70,000 U.S. soldiers to complete, and, we lost 6,800 U.S. servicemen killed. 19,000 and change were wounded. So I'm not sure that that's what you want to, hearken to when you say we're going to.

Tim Wildmon He did. Listen, I like Lindsey Graham a lot of times, but he didn't want to answer that question. Or if he did, he didn't answer it. That made any sense to me. Did it? Did it to you?

Ed Vitagliano I didn't like his answer. Now, listen, I am not a military person. I didn't serve in the military like Senator Graham. I do trust the military to carry out the wishes of the Commander in Chief. They, our military, as they're proving in this war, they are, very efficient. Our military is top notch. Best in the world. Okay, so, if they think the Marines should land at Carg island, what

Tim Wildmon is Car Guy Island? First I heard of that.

Ed Vitagliano It is, an island. It's way up in The Persian Gulf by Kuwait City. But it is, it is in the place, I think, where the, the oil from Iran gets. I don't know if it gets put in tankers or. I don't know what they do there, but it is a big fat target. If you want to squeeze further, squeeze shut the economic blood lifeblood, of Iran. So if the military says the marines need to take it, fine. But first of all, I don't like the idea. Again, I'm deferring to the military because I think the person who's asking the question of Senator Graham is exactly right. They're going to be stuck on that island. You have to actually go through the straits of Hormuz if you're going to do it in terms of the navy to relieve those marines there, and they're going to be subject to all sorts of attacks. And second of all, frankly, I didn't like, I didn't like Senator Graham's attitude towards. That's a legitimate question. The American people have a right to know.

Tim Wildmon He's saying that we can take Iwo Jima. We can take this.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure they can take it. But then what you do, you're stuck there.

Tim Wildmon I think we lost 6, 800 lives taking Iwo Jim is what Steve's saying, too.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That it was not a fortunate, analogy or. Yeah, yeah, analogy. He should have been Senator Graham, who is in the know on a lot of these military matters. He should have understood. The American people want to know if the U. S. Marines are going to get right, jammed up where you can't get them out, and they just sit there and get pummeled. Nobody wants that. It's a legitimate question. I didn't like him to being not only dismissive, he was, like, insulting, about people asking these questions.

Anyone with an iPhone can now be the target of invasive malware

Tim Wildmon Next story, Steve.

Steve Jordahl All right. Do you have an Apple iPhone?

Tim Wildmon I do.

Steve Jordahl Well, you, need to beware. Anyone with an iPhone can now be the target of invasive malware that siphons off personal text messages, photos and notes and calendar data. because cyber criminals have gotten their hands on spyware tools that were once the domain of governments and spy agencies, they kind of got leaked out.

Tim Wildmon This is just the kind of news I needed for a Monday. Thank you very much.

Steve Jordahl Monday. Monday.

Tim Wildmon So, so what, what does that mean for the average?

Steve Jordahl Well, in the one case, this is a software kit, a hacking kit called Corona, and it, was a government case. Now, this has been.

Tim Wildmon I've seen their commercials yeah, on tv.

Ed Vitagliano Now I think you're thinking Corona.

Tim Wildmon Oh, yeah, my bad. Yeah, my bad.

Steve Jordahl So, yeah, it was, taken over by cybercriminals. This isn't an app. You can go to the app store and download, but if you, if you are a little savvy in hacking, you can get this. And in the one case that they said that you go, to certain hackers deployed Karuna on fake Chinese lango crypto and financial platforms, infecting vulnerable iPhones that visited the sites. You didn't even have to download or click anywhere. You just had to visit the site and your phone would be.

Ed Vitagliano In fact, that's a real concern to me because I spend a lot of time on Chinese cryptocurrencies.

Steve Jordahl Yes.

Ed Vitagliano okay. So this is a serious thing though.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Well, you need to keep your, you need to keep your iPhone updated as the main thing. They have software updates. IPhone does.

Steve Jordahl They do.

Tim Wildmon And I was just checking. So you need to keep, you need to keep your, pay attention to that. Your software updates. and that's what they're. Now, I've seen a lot of these stories and a lot of them are just scare, scare stories.

Ed Vitagliano Well, it works with me.

Tim Wildmon It works. But I mean people, so I

Ed Vitagliano do update my phone. In fact, I have one waiting. A new update.

Tim Wildmon Do you. What's it waiting for?

Ed Vitagliano Security improvement. Well, I don't, I don't like to do it like while I'm on the air. I might need my phone.

Tim Wildmon But. Next story, Steve.

Apple News is one of the most, uh, viewed news aggregate services

Steve Jordahl All right, so, we brought you a story a couple weeks ago about Apple News. Apple News is one of the most, viewed news aggregate services. It's on your phone. If you go, you can look at. There's a little cryptic crypto or crypto. N, the letter N on an app. It's the Apple News.

Tim Wildmon if you got an iPhone or an iPad, you get these Apple News. they send you these alerts.

Steve Jordahl It's automatically, it's a new site and it's automatically installed on your Apple phone.

Tim Wildmon It's an aggregate though. It's not a news service per se.

Steve Jordahl Right. They link to other new services. And this has been the issue is, that they were caught. this would be meter. Research center showed in a study that this Apple, they failed to link to a conservative news site at all. At all.

Speaker E At all.

Tim Wildmon Wow.

Steve Jordahl At all.

Tim Wildmon Yahoo pretends.

Steve Jordahl Yeah. So they brought this up and ftc, chairman had formally warned Apple that it could be violating federal consumer protection Laws against unfair deceptive acts or practices. So they were given notice. You better start being more balanced. And so they were. Then we got to give them some credit, in the, last month, 2% of all the links.

Ed Vitagliano So we give them 2% credit.

Steve Jordahl Credit because. And what the thought is, is that this is just damage control. They just did it so that they could kind of check the box. There's not been a change of heart at Apple as far as their bias.

Tim Wildmon Okay. The, these aggregate news services like Apple, like Drudge, like Yahoo. I mentioned Yahoo. I do, I do visit those, at least during the week because I research a lot of the news stories that we would cover here on today's issues. So I usually usually look at those news services in the evening. But what I've noticed, if you, if you're, if you're a, if you, if you're a consumer of these, these aggregate news sites, by aggregate, I mean they don't provide their own news service. They link to stories that. I mean by aggregate. So Yahoo. And I know I'm conservative, so I'm kind of keeping, I kind of am sensitive to this. but I just, I said it to say I haven't done a count okay myself to, to, to, to, to verify my claims here.

Ed Vitagliano Right.

Tim Wildmon I'm just going on my observations. It's, it's, it's linked on Yahoo. It's linked three liberals. Liberal links to every one conservative.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon Maybe four to one. They all, they might have, Fox, news link, but then there's like three HuffPost links. You know, our salon. They're the, the guy who. Somebody, some. Listen, we're all have our biases and somebody sits down at Yahoo and decides we're going to link mostly to liberal

Ed Vitagliano news sources that are making a call.

Tim Wildmon The other making a call. Yeah. So. And Drudge, I remember.

Ed Vitagliano I don't even go to Drudge anymore.

Tim Wildmon Well, I didn't for like 10 years.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon but I went back there recently and they've got some good news, links to news stories. But, but, they're very,

Steve Jordahl I don't think that Matt Drudge is in control of that. I don't think he sold it.

Ed Vitagliano I think he did right after President Trump won in 2016.

Tim Wildmon What's another news site? now we encourage people to go to our own.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Steve Jordahl AFM is a great site. We, have our own reporters. I know them very well.

Ed Vitagliano Yes.

Steve Jordahl you're one of them. I am one of them. but I use a site called Citizen, Free Press dot com.

Tim Wildmon Okay.

Ed Vitagliano It's kind of. It kind of even looks like the old.

Steve Jordahl It, does crunch.

Tim Wildmon They got no left wingers there. Right. Well, it is pretty white, pretty right wing, isn't it?

Steve Jordahl It is pretty conservative. It has conservative, what's it called? Citizen Free Press, all one word dot com is a good, news aggregate service.

Tim Wildmon What do you go, what do you read ed in News? Fox News or what?

Ed Vitagliano I read the Bible.

Tim Wildmon Okay.

Ed Vitagliano I go to. Besides afn. I go to Fox News and NewSong, York Post.

Tim Wildmon NewSong York Post is good for the most part.

Ed Vitagliano I will sometimes go to cnn.

Where do you go for your Boston Bruins news? I just Google it

They still do a good job of being up to speed on major events. Remember, they used to be the only game town. and I do recognize the bias. That's.

Tim Wildmon Where do you go for your Boston Bruins news?

Ed Vitagliano I just go to Boston. I just Google Boston Bruins, whatever comes up and then I'll click through to wherever. and, and how long do you spend, by the way? I should say X. for news I go to X.

Steve Jordahl X is very good if you have the right accounts in your feed. Yeah. Ah, it has a lot of. What, are they calling slop these days? A lot of worthless, Internet stuff.

Tim Wildmon Yeah, worthless and Internet go together often do, unfortunately. You're listening to today's Issues on American Family Radio. We have four and a half minutes left from this year's show.

Steve Jordahl Yeah.

Tim Wildmon And Steve will bring forth unto us our last and closing.

Not everyone in the federal government is a happy camper

All right, stories.

Steve Jordahl Not everyone in the federal government is a happy camper. During, Trump's first, Trump 45, his first, administration, he tried to start cleaning out some of the agencies and he went with, with Doge. He went kind of full force at the beginning of Trump 47. And he tried to clean out all of the malcontents and those that were using our, federal government for, like lawfare. And.

Tim Wildmon And Is that what Elon Musk was doing?

Steve Jordahl Well, aside from, the money that Elon Musk took out, he was also helping, I think, ferret out some of the malcontents. And Trump kind of has other people in there that are doing that. And he kind of knows. But, at least one malcontent, at least one holdover was left at hhs, the Department of Health and Human Services. This is Kennedy's, Robert Kennedy's department. And someone went in over the weekend and changed their answering machine. So when you called him and of course no one's going to be there to answer your phone over the weekend. You get a message, right? Well, there was someone that was playing this message for Senator Joni Ernst, Iowa. Senator Joni Ernst. Listen. Listen to what it said. Cut 14. This is that same number yesterday.

Speaker G Okay,

Steve Jordahl thanks for calling Domino's Pizza. Can you please hold? Thank you. No, yeah, that was. That was up yesterday. Yeah. All right, thank you for calling Domino's Pizza.

Ed Vitagliano Okay, so. All right, explain. So somebody, near do well in hhs.

Steve Jordahl Yes.

Ed Vitagliano Changed the phone number.

Steve Jordahl No, it's the same, but the answering machine, when you answer it says, you've reached hhs. Please leave a message. Yeah, they changed it to, you've reached Domino's.

Ed Vitagliano So it's not a real Domino's.

Steve Jordahl No. You weren't going to get a pizza.

Tim Wildmon This reminds me of what my uncle did one time. True story. his. His number was one digit different than Pizza Hut delivery.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah.

Tim Wildmon And, Well, and he would get calls at his house regularly.

Ed Vitagliano Yeah, that would be irritating.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. So I don't know how long he. He fought that he would be polite. So finally he just said, I give up, and he just started taking orders.

Ed Vitagliano I remember you telling me, that's one of the funniest things I've ever heard. He just, start taking. Okay to be ready in 15 minutes.

Tim Wildmon Yeah. Oh, man, he just got tired of. He just said, all right, what do you want?

Steve Jordahl All right.

Tim Wildmon Thank you for calling.

Ed Vitagliano You have any specials? Yeah, three for the price of one. Only today.

Tim Wildmon We'll have it right out. All right. All right. So, Steve, thank you.

Steve Jordahl My pleasure.

Tim Wildmon Thanks to Ed. Or, and for a lot of things. Ed.

Steve Jordahl Oh, yeah.

Ed Vitagliano Great, great. Thank you.

Tim Wildmon Frank Creeley, our producer. Cole Greene, our video man.

Ed Vitagliano And Fred Jackson.

Tim Wildmon Fred Jackson, our Canadian American. And, we'll see you tomorrow, everybody. Have a great day.