Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening today. This is a live radio show, people, and it's Thursday. Tuesday's nightmare is over. Thursday is here, and we are going to talk about a lot of good stuff today, along with some stuff that is not so good.
Tim Wildmon: Ed, how are you doing, brother?
Ed Vitagliano: I'm doing fine. I say we just declare this the only good-news hour and a half.
Tim Wildmon: I'm with you, brother. We probably couldn't fill 90 minutes. We would need to play a lot of music.
Tim Wildmon: Good morning, Chris.
Chris Woodward: Good morning.
Tim Wildmon: Chris Woodward, our newsman. Steve's out because his dad had a fall. I don't think he would mind me sharing this because he wants people to pray. His dad is elderly, in his 80s or something like that, and he lives in Nashville. He had a bad fall, and Steve had to drive up there from Tupelo to be with him. I think he is going to be okay, but he has a head injury and that kind of thing. Steve said to pray for him.
Tim Wildmon: Our listeners feel like we are family, and we feel like our listeners are family. They like to know about prayer needs.
Tim Wildmon: All right, brother Ray Pritchard. How are you doing, Ray?
Ray Pritchard: Rocking and rolling here in Florida. How are you doing there in Tupelo, Tim?
Tim Wildmon: Everything is good. Solid red state. Solid red state, Florida. We might be the only one left.
Ray Pritchard: I know. Here we are. Governor Ron DeSantis calls it the free state of Florida.
Tim Wildmon: He is on to something.
Tim Wildmon: Fall is here around most of the country. What is the temperature in Florida today, about 80?
Ray Pritchard: Exactly 80 here.
Tim Wildmon: We are 65 where we live.
Ed Vitagliano: We are 62 right now. It is supposed to go up to about 70. It is going to be a little cooler here on the weekend.
Tim Wildmon: Fall has reached America, and everybody enjoys fall after the hot summer. But in about three weeks, I will start asking my wife, “When will summer be here?” She will say, “Would you show up? You have a very low threshold.”
Ed Vitagliano: Yes, you start complaining about cold weather.
Tim Wildmon: When I looked ahead and saw there are going to be some nights under 40 coming up, I thought, “I am moving.”
Ed Vitagliano: A week from Saturday, the low is 37.
Tim Wildmon: It will be frost time. Anyway, there is your weather report, ladies and gentlemen.
Tim Wildmon: We have a lot to talk about today. Jenna Ellis will be with us at the bottom of the hour. We will talk to Jenna and see what she is hearing about the fallout from Tuesday and what is likely to come in politics that our listeners would be interested in.
Tim Wildmon: Adam Sudd is our producer. Brent Creeley is normally our producer, but he is off for a couple of days. Adam stepped in.
Ed Vitagliano: At the end of the year, Brent takes off and goes hunting.
Tim Wildmon: He is like the Chuck Norris of hunting.
Ed Vitagliano: What do you mean, with his bare hands?
Tim Wildmon: That is what Chuck Norris hunts with, his bare hands.
Ed Vitagliano: That is true.
Tim Wildmon: In light of what happened Tuesday, we need to get this washed out of our system. In order to do that, you have to properly mourn. You have to have mourning music. You need to face reality, get it out of your system, and move on. We cannot despair.
Ed Vitagliano: No, despair is a sin.
Tim Wildmon: It was a bad day. If you are a conservative, it was a bad day. We are going to talk about the ramifications because it is serious. We are laughing and having a little fun with it, but there are serious consequences to what happened Tuesday.
Tim Wildmon: Just to give you a big-picture view, what you are looking at for the next two years on the federal level is a Republican in the White House for two more years, Donald Trump, and in January a left-wing Democratic Congress, House and Senate. They will be energized, and they will have big majorities in the House and the Senate, but they will not have enough votes to impeach Trump unless they get help from Republicans.
Tim Wildmon: There is some debate about whether they will put any energy into impeachment. I think Trump is the best thing Democrats have going for them in many respects, so why would they want to impeach him?
Ed Vitagliano: They will have the numbers to impeach in the House, but not to convict in the Senate.
Tim Wildmon: We do not know exactly what their numbers will be, but they are not going to have the numbers in the Senate to complete the impeachment process. It would be a big exercise in futility. I do not think they will impeach President Trump, but everybody I say that to laughs in my face and says, “Oh, really? You little naive man.”
Tim Wildmon: You only have two years, and when you persecute Trump, you only help his numbers. People rally to his side. I do not think they will, but we will see what happens.
Tim Wildmon: The big picture is that you are going to have a stalemate in Washington because President Trump has veto power. If the Democrats want to get him out of office and get J.D. Vance to be president, they could try to impeach Trump, but they would not be successful anyway.
Ray Pritchard: You need 67 votes to convict if you are going to impeach a federal official. The Democrats have 54. If they win Mississippi and Alaska, where Democrats are leading in both states, they would have 56 in the Senate. That is four votes away from the 60-vote threshold where you can do just about anything you want. We are getting close to very scary numbers, but they would have either 54, 55 if they win Mississippi, or 56 if they win Alaska.
Tim Wildmon: I think they are going to try impeachment for performative propaganda. It is raw meat to the left and to their base, the people who came out by the millions and put Elissa Slotkin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other Democrats in office. They may impeach him in the House, but there is no way I think he will be convicted in the Senate. It is good theater that reinforces in the public mind how bad they think Donald Trump really is.
Ray Pritchard: They may go after other officials in the administration as well.
Ed Vitagliano: I think you are right. It would be illogical for them to do it, because it would be a waste of their political capital when Trump is the best thing they have going for them. They probably contributed to Trump's victory in 2024 by going after him so aggressively.
Ray Pritchard: You are underestimating the vindictiveness of the Democrats. They despise Trump, and I think they want to make him, his family, and everyone in his administration absolutely miserable. We are going to find out pretty quickly.
Chris Woodward: President Trump was asked about the possibility of impeachment. He said it would destroy the Democratic Party if they did that. He said it would be impeachment for no reason, asking what he had done wrong when the country is more successful than at any time in its history.
Tim Wildmon: He is an upbeat person, the eternal optimist.
Ed Vitagliano: I think he is right that it would destroy the Democrats.
Tim Wildmon: We are coming at it from different angles, but I agree with President Trump. I would not say it would destroy the Democratic Party because that word is overused. It would be a big waste of time and a net positive for Trump. Whether it would also be a net positive for the Republican Party, who knows.
Tim Wildmon: You have two years, and Trump cannot run again. What would be the point in wasting all that time and energy when you could focus on what you think you should be doing in Congress and then let him veto what you are trying to do?
Ed Vitagliano: I think part of the reason Republicans got steamrolled on Tuesday was the perception that voters gave them the opening in 2024 to do something to help the country and the economy, and they wasted the two years. Voters are saying, “We are putting the other guys and gals in office. Give them a shot.” If the Democrats waste those two years, they may get the same treatment in 2028.
Ray Pritchard: Democrats will not be able to do much because Trump can veto their bills, and they do not have the votes to override a veto. If they choose not to impeach, I think they will pass Medicare-for-all and other free-stuff bills to get him to veto them. Then they will campaign on those vetoes in 2028.
Ed Vitagliano: That is smart politics. It does not cost them anything.
Tim Wildmon: Let me explain what I mean by “squat.” It is the equivalent of saying “nothing.” Democrats are not going to be able to do anything legislatively if the president vetoes their bills and they cannot override the veto.
Tim Wildmon: I do think Ray is right about performative politics. The Democrats are going to get their list of things they want and pass them one after another because they will have the numbers in the House and the Senate. Then they will send the legislation to President Trump, and he will have to decide whether to veto it. In most cases, they will not have the two-thirds vote in both houses to overcome a veto.
Tim Wildmon: In two years, they will say, “We tried to do A, B, C, D, and E, which would be great for our country and the American people, but Trump blocked them all. The way we can get them unblocked is to change who is in the White House.” That could be a very effective strategy. A lot depends on whom the Democrats pick as their standard-bearer for the White House.
Ed Vitagliano: If you actually care about the American people, you could pass bipartisan legislation. If neither side can get a whole loaf, each side could get half a loaf and do something everyone can agree on. I am talking about infrastructure and other things that both parties could work together to accomplish.
Tim Wildmon: That is a third option, and it is possible. But if they pass a bunch of legislation, get Trump to veto it, and campaign on that, I would not be shocked if Republican presidential candidates in 2028 were asked how they felt about those vetoes. If they agree with Trump, the media will pounce on that.
Tim Wildmon: You are listening to Today's Issues, where we have it all figured out, people. I am here for the answers on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Speaking of what you said about multiple candidates, you were describing a possible scenario for the 2028 presidential election. The spotlight is now on Vice President J.D. Vance. Will everybody assume he is going to be the standard-bearer and heir apparent? The office of vice president is a big deal because if you want to run for president, the party usually rallies around you. So the question now is, will J.D. Vance run for president?
Chris Woodward: President Trump was asked whether he had spoken to Vice President Vance about 2028. He said, “I speak to him about a lot of things, but we will see what happens. You do not know who is talking about running. You can have people running, a lot of people running, maybe nobody running, or maybe he will not run. I do not know who is going to run.” He also said that, as far as the war in Iran is concerned, he would have done nothing differently.
Tim Wildmon: That was a typical Trump answer. He gave a little of this and a little of that, went all the way around, and then said he did not regret anything.
Ed Vitagliano: It is too early for the president to put J.D. Vance forward. It would be bad politics. You also have Marco Rubio's name out there, and people are thinking about him. How closely does J.D. Vance want to be associated with the president at this moment?
Tim Wildmon: President Trump may not have wanted to answer for J.D. Vance. Genuinely, President Trump and Vance may not know for sure because Vance has not told him one way or another. Vance said about a month ago that he is a procrastinator. He has a young family and has not made up his mind whether he is going to run for president.
Ray Pritchard: If he does not run, the field is wide open for other people to jump in.
Tim Wildmon: Do you think saying “I am a procrastinator” is something you need to say? That could be used against you. If you are president, people could ask whether you are going to be President Procrastinator.
Ed Vitagliano: We talked about that when he said it. It almost sounds like he is saying he cannot make up his mind, and you do not want someone as president who cannot make up his mind. On the other hand, it was probably just an offhand comment.
Tim Wildmon: His family dynamics have changed. He has another child. It is easy to say you are going to run for president when you do not have children or when you have one child who is a year old and the child's mother is doing most of the work. When you have multiple young children, it changes things.
Ed Vitagliano: He has four children, including the baby, and he is relatively new to national politics. J.D. Vance was a senator from Ohio for only two years. He has not been in Washington for 20 years, and he is seeing what the job entails. When he says he is a procrastinator, I think he is genuinely saying he has some decisions to make and is not ready to announce. I think he would be decisive as president.
Tim Wildmon: We will be back momentarily with more of Today's Issues on AFR.
Ed Vitagliano: I want to address the question of the 17 percent figure. A caller asked about Tony Perkins saying that only 17 percent of evangelicals voted in the midterm election. I have seen that number all over Facebook, but I have not been able to validate it. That seems incredibly low to me. I do not believe that only 17 percent of evangelicals voted.
Tim Wildmon: How would you know that?
Ed Vitagliano: It could be exit polling. Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council used that number.
Ray Pritchard: I think I have the answer. The question was about the makeup of the electorate. Seventeen percent of the total voting population identified themselves as evangelical Christians. That is not the same as saying that only 17 percent of evangelicals voted.
Ed Vitagliano: I have seen numbers like that in the high teens. It is the percentage of the electorate that is evangelical. That is almost 20 percent of the population.
Ray Pritchard: Someone probably saw that number and misunderstood it. I am not saying that about Tony Perkins. He may have additional information. But if we found out that only 17 percent of evangelicals voted in the midterm, that would be inexcusable. That would be awfully low.
Tim Wildmon: We are not going to pound on people who did the right thing. We would pound on those who stayed home and did not vote.
Ray Pritchard: That is what gets me when a pastor goes into a tirade against people who do not come to church. It never works. It always blows up. You need to encourage people instead of attacking them.
Tim Wildmon: So the clarification is that 17 percent of voters overall were evangelical. That is different from saying that 17 percent of evangelicals voted.
Jenna Ellis: The source is a Fox News 2026 voter poll. It reports that white evangelical or born-again Christians constituted 17 percent of voters, with 82 percent supporting Republicans. The critical figure is not that 17 percent. Compared with the same 2022 exit poll, 24 percent of voters in that demographic identified as evangelical or born-again Christians, with 83 percent supporting Republicans.
Jenna Ellis: The point is that 24 percent of voters in the 2022 exit poll identified as born-again Christians or evangelicals, and only 17 percent did so this year. The allegation, or what it looks like from the exit polling, is that the share of people who self-identify as Christians went down by that percentage.
Tim Wildmon: That would mean fewer people identify as evangelical, rather than there being a seven percent drop in evangelical voting. But it could also mean that more evangelicals stayed home.
Ray Pritchard: Our listeners are highly engaged. If you surveyed American Family Radio listeners, everyone who could go to the polls would probably have gone. We talk about engagement and being active and informed. That is why we have this network.
Tim Wildmon: Our people do vote, so I am not going to beat up on them. We encourage them to find somebody else in their church or family who may be ignorant, uninformed, or disengaged and try to bring them in. We need more troops.
Tim Wildmon: Jenna, you were not with us during the last half hour, but we played Louis Armstrong singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen.” I told Adam Sudd that we needed one more song, and I thought we should play the response President Trump is going to give the Democrats when they send legislation to his desk over the next two years.
Tim Wildmon: The song was “I Can't Go for That.” That is what Trump will be telling the Democrats if they send over ridiculous legislation. It is coming, and it is going to be ridiculous.
Ed Vitagliano: The Democrats have said that President Trump and people who work for him or have done business with him should “lawyer up.” We have audio from Representative Ilhan Omar, who said that Trump and his allies should lawyer up because their time of harassment is over and it is now time for accountability and transparency.
Tim Wildmon: I thought she was going to say, “It is our time for harassment,” which would have been more accurate. That is what she meant.
Tim Wildmon: First, I want to get your take on what the Democrats will spend the next two years doing. Second, what is the actual power of Congress when it comes to investigating the Trump family and its financial dealings? Can Congress do that, or do you need a grand jury? It seems to me that people could simply refuse to answer questions and take the Fifth.
Jenna Ellis: There is a lot to unpack there. When we are talking about congressional oversight, this is not about criminal prosecutions because Congress does not have that authority. Congress does have broad oversight authority derived from Article I and its legislative power. Although the Constitution does not expressly enumerate a general power to investigate, the Supreme Court has recognized that Congress has an implied power to investigate and compel testimony in aid of legislation. That is what the purpose should be.
Jenna Ellis: Congress also has the power of impeachment. As for what the Democrats are going to do, they are not going to be smart about this. They are going to overplay their hand. They will not read the election as a referendum on Trump and his lack of fulfillment of promises. They will read it as meaning that everyone wants socialism, wants their form of governance, and wants them to crush the Trump dynasty.
Jenna Ellis: There have been reports from the Associated Press and elsewhere that Democrats are preparing investigations into several areas. Congress can conduct investigations for purposes of gathering testimony for impeachments, which I think are going to happen. There was even a report that Trump was telling people that if he were impeached and it looked like he might be convicted in the Senate, the establishment Republican Party might broker a deal with the Democrats under which he would resign. That is always a possibility.
Jenna Ellis: Attorneys general and state-level prosecutors can also assemble grand juries. According to these reports, Democrats are looking at investigations into the Trump family's business interests, immigration enforcement and ICE operations, DOGE and federal spending, Epstein, and other administrative policies.
Jenna Ellis: The Supreme Court, in the Trump case, held that much presidential decision-making is shielded from civil and potential criminal penalties. I think the Democrats will look more to personal interests for criminal investigations, and they will use congressional investigations and impeachment to go after presidential decision-making. They may target not only Trump but also Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and the whole administration.
Tim Wildmon: I am not saying I believe everything the liberal media says about Trump. I have read enough to know there are a couple of things the Democrats will probably focus on. They will say that Trump and his family are making money from the war, stocks, investments, Bitcoin dealings, and other things. They will say the Trump family and others are profiting or grifting. Not all grifting is illegal, but are those the kinds of things where they will focus?
Jenna Ellis: The catch-all term for that is corruption. The question is where it looks bad. I am not saying anybody is guilty, but what looks bad to me is the report of a Russian billionaire paying for Don Jr.'s wedding. There is also the pardon that Alina Habba allegedly facilitated and the $10 million contract for five years. Some of those things should be investigated, not necessarily because of mainstream-media reporting, but because factual allegations have also been reported by Fox News and other conservative sources.
Jenna Ellis: Corruption, if it happens, should not be partisan. We should not let it slide just because the people involved are Republicans. Unfortunately, some people in Trump's orbit may have opened themselves up to potential liability.
Tim Wildmon: You need to live above reproach as much as possible. Why does Don Jr. need his wedding paid for by anybody? Does he not have enough money to pay for his own wedding? Why is it being paid for by a Russian oligarch who is close to Putin? Then Trump brokers a deal with Putin, and later President Trump says Don Jr. is paying back the cost of the wedding. That looks strange to the average person. Those are the kinds of things that make these investigations possible.
Jenna Ellis: This is exactly why you do not give your opponents a legitimate reason to look into you. A lot of the reason the mob was taken down was not necessarily because of what they were alleged to have done, but because there were tax-fraud issues. If you are on the radar of your political opponents or the law, you need to make sure you are doing everything correctly and are law-abiding. You do not want to give anyone a reason to investigate you.
Jenna Ellis: We can admit that Democrats and the left-wing media will raise red flags where there is nothing there, but do not raise the flags yourself.
Tim Wildmon: To answer the question, Congress has investigatory rights and subpoena power. They can subpoena you, but they cannot convict you of a crime or prosecute you.
Jenna Ellis: Let us remember the last time Democrats came into power and investigated Trump and his associates. It started with the January 6 committee. They subpoenaed everybody. In full disclosure, I was one of the people subpoenaed because I worked for Trump at the time. They used a lot of that congressional testimony in state and Department of Justice indictments and in federal and state prosecutions later. Congress had started the process.
Jenna Ellis: This can become a multiyear process and can result in more than congressional penalties. They could also pursue a third impeachment of Trump.
Tim Wildmon: Governor Ron DeSantis will be governor until January, and Byron Donalds will become the new governor of Florida. Governor DeSantis was asked about the Democratic sweep across the United States on Tuesday, and he did not sugarcoat it.
Ron DeSantis: Let us be clear about what happened last night. This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country, probably unlike anything we have seen in the last 100 years. In January, when everyone in office leaves who was either term-limited or voted out, of the ten largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control: the state of Florida.
Ron DeSantis: If you look at our chief rival in a healthy sense, the state of Texas, over my lifetime Texas has been the crown jewel of Republican politics. I think Florida has been the leader for Republicans and conservatives since I have been governor, but over the whole generation no one holds a candle on the Republican side to the Lone Star State. Yet Texas did not just lose a highly publicized U.S. Senate race. They lost everything.
Tim Wildmon: That was insightful and hard to listen to. What do you think of that initial statement?
Jenna Ellis: He is entirely correct, and he is one of the few people who can say that from a position of having consistently delivered conservative wins regardless of who was coming after him or what the MAGA movement or the establishment said about him. He is positioned very well to be the next Republican leader because Florida was the only state that held the line.
Jenna Ellis: As a voter here in Florida, I believe the reason Florida held the line was not Byron Donalds. He is not very popular here. Of all the statewide races, he received the fewest votes among the Republican candidates, even though he won. Florida held the line because Governor DeSantis put Amendment 3, the property-tax-relief issue, on the ballot and gave people something to turn out for, even though they were frustrated with Byron Donalds and how he won the primary.
Jenna Ellis: DeSantis is continuing to deliver wins, and he is willing to say things bluntly. It is hard to hear, but it is truthful. I think he is positioned to be the next leader if Republicans are smart.
Tim Wildmon: Is he going to run for president?
Jenna Ellis: Knowing him and from conversations I have had with him and his staff, I believe he will be contemplating it until the moment he announces either way. If he runs, it will be because he genuinely believes there is a chance that the Democrats could botch things so badly that Republicans have a chance in 2028. If he sits it out, I believe it will be because he does not think a Republican has a shot in 2028.
Tim Wildmon: That is sobering. Three people rise to the top when you talk about potential Republican presidential candidates for 2028: J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Ron DeSantis. Two of them are Floridians. Governor DeSantis and Marco Rubio have more experience than J.D. Vance, although neither has vice-presidential experience.
Tim Wildmon: Governor DeSantis is a two-time elected governor of a large state and a former congressman. His resume for conservatives is stellar, and he does not have the Trump administration issues hanging around his neck the way Rubio does. He challenged Trump because he felt there needed to be a true conservative alternative. He was not successful, but you could say it took some courage to challenge the big dog.
Tim Wildmon: Jenna, take care. Thank you for being with us.
Jenna Ellis: Thanks, guys.
Tim Wildmon: We will be back, and we will let Ray Pritchard talk some next half hour.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for listening today. This is a live radio show, people, and it's Thursday. Tuesday's nightmare is over. Thursday is here, and we are going to talk about a lot of good stuff today, along with some stuff that is not so good.
Tim Wildmon: Ed, how are you doing, brother?
Ed Vitagliano: I'm doing fine. I say we just declare this the only good-news hour and a half.
Tim Wildmon: I'm with you, brother. We probably couldn't fill 90 minutes. We would need to play a lot of music.
Tim Wildmon: Good morning, Chris.
Chris Woodward: Good morning.
Tim Wildmon: Chris Woodward, our newsman. Steve's out because his dad had a fall. I don't think he would mind me sharing this because he wants people to pray. His dad is elderly, in his 80s or something like that, and he lives in Nashville. He had a bad fall, and Steve had to drive up there from Tupelo to be with him. I think he is going to be okay, but he has a head injury and that kind of thing. Steve said to pray for him.
Tim Wildmon: Our listeners feel like we are family, and we feel like our listeners are family. They like to know about prayer needs.
Tim Wildmon: All right, brother Ray Pritchard. How are you doing, Ray?
Ray Pritchard: Rocking and rolling here in Florida. How are you doing there in Tupelo, Tim?
Tim Wildmon: Everything is good. Solid red state. Solid red state, Florida. We might be the only one left.
Ray Pritchard: I know. Here we are. Governor Ron DeSantis calls it the free state of Florida.
Tim Wildmon: He is on to something.
Tim Wildmon: Fall is here around most of the country. What is the temperature in Florida today, about 80?
Ray Pritchard: Exactly 80 here.
Tim Wildmon: We are 65 where we live.
Ed Vitagliano: We are 62 right now. It is supposed to go up to about 70. It is going to be a little cooler here on the weekend.
Tim Wildmon: Fall has reached America, and everybody enjoys fall after the hot summer. But in about three weeks, I will start asking my wife, “When will summer be here?” She will say, “Would you show up? You have a very low threshold.”
Ed Vitagliano: Yes, you start complaining about cold weather.
Tim Wildmon: When I looked ahead and saw there are going to be some nights under 40 coming up, I thought, “I am moving.”
Ed Vitagliano: A week from Saturday, the low is 37.
Tim Wildmon: It will be frost time. Anyway, there is your weather report, ladies and gentlemen.
Tim Wildmon: We have a lot to talk about today. Jenna Ellis will be with us at the bottom of the hour. We will talk to Jenna and see what she is hearing about the fallout from Tuesday and what is likely to come in politics that our listeners would be interested in.
Tim Wildmon: Adam Sudd is our producer. Brent Creeley is normally our producer, but he is off for a couple of days. Adam stepped in.
Ed Vitagliano: At the end of the year, Brent takes off and goes hunting.
Tim Wildmon: He is like the Chuck Norris of hunting.
Ed Vitagliano: What do you mean, with his bare hands?
Tim Wildmon: That is what Chuck Norris hunts with, his bare hands.
Ed Vitagliano: That is true.
Tim Wildmon: In light of what happened Tuesday, we need to get this washed out of our system. In order to do that, you have to properly mourn. You have to have mourning music. You need to face reality, get it out of your system, and move on. We cannot despair.
Ed Vitagliano: No, despair is a sin.
Tim Wildmon: It was a bad day. If you are a conservative, it was a bad day. We are going to talk about the ramifications because it is serious. We are laughing and having a little fun with it, but there are serious consequences to what happened Tuesday.
Tim Wildmon: Just to give you a big-picture view, what you are looking at for the next two years on the federal level is a Republican in the White House for two more years, Donald Trump, and in January a left-wing Democratic Congress, House and Senate. They will be energized, and they will have big majorities in the House and the Senate, but they will not have enough votes to impeach Trump unless they get help from Republicans.
Tim Wildmon: There is some debate about whether they will put any energy into impeachment. I think Trump is the best thing Democrats have going for them in many respects, so why would they want to impeach him?
Ed Vitagliano: They will have the numbers to impeach in the House, but not to convict in the Senate.
Tim Wildmon: We do not know exactly what their numbers will be, but they are not going to have the numbers in the Senate to complete the impeachment process. It would be a big exercise in futility. I do not think they will impeach President Trump, but everybody I say that to laughs in my face and says, “Oh, really? You little naive man.”
Tim Wildmon: You only have two years, and when you persecute Trump, you only help his numbers. People rally to his side. I do not think they will, but we will see what happens.
Tim Wildmon: The big picture is that you are going to have a stalemate in Washington because President Trump has veto power. If the Democrats want to get him out of office and get J.D. Vance to be president, they could try to impeach Trump, but they would not be successful anyway.
Ray Pritchard: You need 67 votes to convict if you are going to impeach a federal official. The Democrats have 54. If they win Mississippi and Alaska, where Democrats are leading in both states, they would have 56 in the Senate. That is four votes away from the 60-vote threshold where you can do just about anything you want. We are getting close to very scary numbers, but they would have either 54, 55 if they win Mississippi, or 56 if they win Alaska.
Tim Wildmon: I think they are going to try impeachment for performative propaganda. It is raw meat to the left and to their base, the people who came out by the millions and put Elissa Slotkin, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other Democrats in office. They may impeach him in the House, but there is no way I think he will be convicted in the Senate. It is good theater that reinforces in the public mind how bad they think Donald Trump really is.
Ray Pritchard: They may go after other officials in the administration as well.
Ed Vitagliano: I think you are right. It would be illogical for them to do it, because it would be a waste of their political capital when Trump is the best thing they have going for them. They probably contributed to Trump's victory in 2024 by going after him so aggressively.
Ray Pritchard: You are underestimating the vindictiveness of the Democrats. They despise Trump, and I think they want to make him, his family, and everyone in his administration absolutely miserable. We are going to find out pretty quickly.
Chris Woodward: President Trump was asked about the possibility of impeachment. He said it would destroy the Democratic Party if they did that. He said it would be impeachment for no reason, asking what he had done wrong when the country is more successful than at any time in its history.
Tim Wildmon: He is an upbeat person, the eternal optimist.
Ed Vitagliano: I think he is right that it would destroy the Democrats.
Tim Wildmon: We are coming at it from different angles, but I agree with President Trump. I would not say it would destroy the Democratic Party because that word is overused. It would be a big waste of time and a net positive for Trump. Whether it would also be a net positive for the Republican Party, who knows.
Tim Wildmon: You have two years, and Trump cannot run again. What would be the point in wasting all that time and energy when you could focus on what you think you should be doing in Congress and then let him veto what you are trying to do?
Ed Vitagliano: I think part of the reason Republicans got steamrolled on Tuesday was the perception that voters gave them the opening in 2024 to do something to help the country and the economy, and they wasted the two years. Voters are saying, “We are putting the other guys and gals in office. Give them a shot.” If the Democrats waste those two years, they may get the same treatment in 2028.
Ray Pritchard: Democrats will not be able to do much because Trump can veto their bills, and they do not have the votes to override a veto. If they choose not to impeach, I think they will pass Medicare-for-all and other free-stuff bills to get him to veto them. Then they will campaign on those vetoes in 2028.
Ed Vitagliano: That is smart politics. It does not cost them anything.
Tim Wildmon: Let me explain what I mean by “squat.” It is the equivalent of saying “nothing.” Democrats are not going to be able to do anything legislatively if the president vetoes their bills and they cannot override the veto.
Tim Wildmon: I do think Ray is right about performative politics. The Democrats are going to get their list of things they want and pass them one after another because they will have the numbers in the House and the Senate. Then they will send the legislation to President Trump, and he will have to decide whether to veto it. In most cases, they will not have the two-thirds vote in both houses to overcome a veto.
Tim Wildmon: In two years, they will say, “We tried to do A, B, C, D, and E, which would be great for our country and the American people, but Trump blocked them all. The way we can get them unblocked is to change who is in the White House.” That could be a very effective strategy. A lot depends on whom the Democrats pick as their standard-bearer for the White House.
Ed Vitagliano: If you actually care about the American people, you could pass bipartisan legislation. If neither side can get a whole loaf, each side could get half a loaf and do something everyone can agree on. I am talking about infrastructure and other things that both parties could work together to accomplish.
Tim Wildmon: That is a third option, and it is possible. But if they pass a bunch of legislation, get Trump to veto it, and campaign on that, I would not be shocked if Republican presidential candidates in 2028 were asked how they felt about those vetoes. If they agree with Trump, the media will pounce on that.
Tim Wildmon: You are listening to Today's Issues, where we have it all figured out, people. I am here for the answers on the American Family Radio Network.
Tim Wildmon: Speaking of what you said about multiple candidates, you were describing a possible scenario for the 2028 presidential election. The spotlight is now on Vice President J.D. Vance. Will everybody assume he is going to be the standard-bearer and heir apparent? The office of vice president is a big deal because if you want to run for president, the party usually rallies around you. So the question now is, will J.D. Vance run for president?
Chris Woodward: President Trump was asked whether he had spoken to Vice President Vance about 2028. He said, “I speak to him about a lot of things, but we will see what happens. You do not know who is talking about running. You can have people running, a lot of people running, maybe nobody running, or maybe he will not run. I do not know who is going to run.” He also said that, as far as the war in Iran is concerned, he would have done nothing differently.
Tim Wildmon: That was a typical Trump answer. He gave a little of this and a little of that, went all the way around, and then said he did not regret anything.
Ed Vitagliano: It is too early for the president to put J.D. Vance forward. It would be bad politics. You also have Marco Rubio's name out there, and people are thinking about him. How closely does J.D. Vance want to be associated with the president at this moment?
Tim Wildmon: President Trump may not have wanted to answer for J.D. Vance. Genuinely, President Trump and Vance may not know for sure because Vance has not told him one way or another. Vance said about a month ago that he is a procrastinator. He has a young family and has not made up his mind whether he is going to run for president.
Ray Pritchard: If he does not run, the field is wide open for other people to jump in.
Tim Wildmon: Do you think saying “I am a procrastinator” is something you need to say? That could be used against you. If you are president, people could ask whether you are going to be President Procrastinator.
Ed Vitagliano: We talked about that when he said it. It almost sounds like he is saying he cannot make up his mind, and you do not want someone as president who cannot make up his mind. On the other hand, it was probably just an offhand comment.
Tim Wildmon: His family dynamics have changed. He has another child. It is easy to say you are going to run for president when you do not have children or when you have one child who is a year old and the child's mother is doing most of the work. When you have multiple young children, it changes things.
Ed Vitagliano: He has four children, including the baby, and he is relatively new to national politics. J.D. Vance was a senator from Ohio for only two years. He has not been in Washington for 20 years, and he is seeing what the job entails. When he says he is a procrastinator, I think he is genuinely saying he has some decisions to make and is not ready to announce. I think he would be decisive as president.
Tim Wildmon: We will be back momentarily with more of Today's Issues on AFR.
Ed Vitagliano: I want to address the question of the 17 percent figure. A caller asked about Tony Perkins saying that only 17 percent of evangelicals voted in the midterm election. I have seen that number all over Facebook, but I have not been able to validate it. That seems incredibly low to me. I do not believe that only 17 percent of evangelicals voted.
Tim Wildmon: How would you know that?
Ed Vitagliano: It could be exit polling. Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council used that number.
Ray Pritchard: I think I have the answer. The question was about the makeup of the electorate. Seventeen percent of the total voting population identified themselves as evangelical Christians. That is not the same as saying that only 17 percent of evangelicals voted.
Ed Vitagliano: I have seen numbers like that in the high teens. It is the percentage of the electorate that is evangelical. That is almost 20 percent of the population.
Ray Pritchard: Someone probably saw that number and misunderstood it. I am not saying that about Tony Perkins. He may have additional information. But if we found out that only 17 percent of evangelicals voted in the midterm, that would be inexcusable. That would be awfully low.
Tim Wildmon: We are not going to pound on people who did the right thing. We would pound on those who stayed home and did not vote.
Ray Pritchard: That is what gets me when a pastor goes into a tirade against people who do not come to church. It never works. It always blows up. You need to encourage people instead of attacking them.
Tim Wildmon: So the clarification is that 17 percent of voters overall were evangelical. That is different from saying that 17 percent of evangelicals voted.
Jenna Ellis: The source is a Fox News 2026 voter poll. It reports that white evangelical or born-again Christians constituted 17 percent of voters, with 82 percent supporting Republicans. The critical figure is not that 17 percent. Compared with the same 2022 exit poll, 24 percent of voters in that demographic identified as evangelical or born-again Christians, with 83 percent supporting Republicans.
Jenna Ellis: The point is that 24 percent of voters in the 2022 exit poll identified as born-again Christians or evangelicals, and only 17 percent did so this year. The allegation, or what it looks like from the exit polling, is that the share of people who self-identify as Christians went down by that percentage.
Tim Wildmon: That would mean fewer people identify as evangelical, rather than there being a seven percent drop in evangelical voting. But it could also mean that more evangelicals stayed home.
Ray Pritchard: Our listeners are highly engaged. If you surveyed American Family Radio listeners, everyone who could go to the polls would probably have gone. We talk about engagement and being active and informed. That is why we have this network.
Tim Wildmon: Our people do vote, so I am not going to beat up on them. We encourage them to find somebody else in their church or family who may be ignorant, uninformed, or disengaged and try to bring them in. We need more troops.
Tim Wildmon: Jenna, you were not with us during the last half hour, but we played Louis Armstrong singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen.” I told Adam Sudd that we needed one more song, and I thought we should play the response President Trump is going to give the Democrats when they send legislation to his desk over the next two years.
Tim Wildmon: The song was “I Can't Go for That.” That is what Trump will be telling the Democrats if they send over ridiculous legislation. It is coming, and it is going to be ridiculous.
Ed Vitagliano: The Democrats have said that President Trump and people who work for him or have done business with him should “lawyer up.” We have audio from Representative Ilhan Omar, who said that Trump and his allies should lawyer up because their time of harassment is over and it is now time for accountability and transparency.
Tim Wildmon: I thought she was going to say, “It is our time for harassment,” which would have been more accurate. That is what she meant.
Tim Wildmon: First, I want to get your take on what the Democrats will spend the next two years doing. Second, what is the actual power of Congress when it comes to investigating the Trump family and its financial dealings? Can Congress do that, or do you need a grand jury? It seems to me that people could simply refuse to answer questions and take the Fifth.
Jenna Ellis: There is a lot to unpack there. When we are talking about congressional oversight, this is not about criminal prosecutions because Congress does not have that authority. Congress does have broad oversight authority derived from Article I and its legislative power. Although the Constitution does not expressly enumerate a general power to investigate, the Supreme Court has recognized that Congress has an implied power to investigate and compel testimony in aid of legislation. That is what the purpose should be.
Jenna Ellis: Congress also has the power of impeachment. As for what the Democrats are going to do, they are not going to be smart about this. They are going to overplay their hand. They will not read the election as a referendum on Trump and his lack of fulfillment of promises. They will read it as meaning that everyone wants socialism, wants their form of governance, and wants them to crush the Trump dynasty.
Jenna Ellis: There have been reports from the Associated Press and elsewhere that Democrats are preparing investigations into several areas. Congress can conduct investigations for purposes of gathering testimony for impeachments, which I think are going to happen. There was even a report that Trump was telling people that if he were impeached and it looked like he might be convicted in the Senate, the establishment Republican Party might broker a deal with the Democrats under which he would resign. That is always a possibility.
Jenna Ellis: Attorneys general and state-level prosecutors can also assemble grand juries. According to these reports, Democrats are looking at investigations into the Trump family's business interests, immigration enforcement and ICE operations, DOGE and federal spending, Epstein, and other administrative policies.
Jenna Ellis: The Supreme Court, in the Trump case, held that much presidential decision-making is shielded from civil and potential criminal penalties. I think the Democrats will look more to personal interests for criminal investigations, and they will use congressional investigations and impeachment to go after presidential decision-making. They may target not only Trump but also Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and the whole administration.
Tim Wildmon: I am not saying I believe everything the liberal media says about Trump. I have read enough to know there are a couple of things the Democrats will probably focus on. They will say that Trump and his family are making money from the war, stocks, investments, Bitcoin dealings, and other things. They will say the Trump family and others are profiting or grifting. Not all grifting is illegal, but are those the kinds of things where they will focus?
Jenna Ellis: The catch-all term for that is corruption. The question is where it looks bad. I am not saying anybody is guilty, but what looks bad to me is the report of a Russian billionaire paying for Don Jr.'s wedding. There is also the pardon that Alina Habba allegedly facilitated and the $10 million contract for five years. Some of those things should be investigated, not necessarily because of mainstream-media reporting, but because factual allegations have also been reported by Fox News and other conservative sources.
Jenna Ellis: Corruption, if it happens, should not be partisan. We should not let it slide just because the people involved are Republicans. Unfortunately, some people in Trump's orbit may have opened themselves up to potential liability.
Tim Wildmon: You need to live above reproach as much as possible. Why does Don Jr. need his wedding paid for by anybody? Does he not have enough money to pay for his own wedding? Why is it being paid for by a Russian oligarch who is close to Putin? Then Trump brokers a deal with Putin, and later President Trump says Don Jr. is paying back the cost of the wedding. That looks strange to the average person. Those are the kinds of things that make these investigations possible.
Jenna Ellis: This is exactly why you do not give your opponents a legitimate reason to look into you. A lot of the reason the mob was taken down was not necessarily because of what they were alleged to have done, but because there were tax-fraud issues. If you are on the radar of your political opponents or the law, you need to make sure you are doing everything correctly and are law-abiding. You do not want to give anyone a reason to investigate you.
Jenna Ellis: We can admit that Democrats and the left-wing media will raise red flags where there is nothing there, but do not raise the flags yourself.
Tim Wildmon: To answer the question, Congress has investigatory rights and subpoena power. They can subpoena you, but they cannot convict you of a crime or prosecute you.
Jenna Ellis: Let us remember the last time Democrats came into power and investigated Trump and his associates. It started with the January 6 committee. They subpoenaed everybody. In full disclosure, I was one of the people subpoenaed because I worked for Trump at the time. They used a lot of that congressional testimony in state and Department of Justice indictments and in federal and state prosecutions later. Congress had started the process.
Jenna Ellis: This can become a multiyear process and can result in more than congressional penalties. They could also pursue a third impeachment of Trump.
Tim Wildmon: Governor Ron DeSantis will be governor until January, and Byron Donalds will become the new governor of Florida. Governor DeSantis was asked about the Democratic sweep across the United States on Tuesday, and he did not sugarcoat it.
Ron DeSantis: Let us be clear about what happened last night. This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country, probably unlike anything we have seen in the last 100 years. In January, when everyone in office leaves who was either term-limited or voted out, of the ten largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control: the state of Florida.
Ron DeSantis: If you look at our chief rival in a healthy sense, the state of Texas, over my lifetime Texas has been the crown jewel of Republican politics. I think Florida has been the leader for Republicans and conservatives since I have been governor, but over the whole generation no one holds a candle on the Republican side to the Lone Star State. Yet Texas did not just lose a highly publicized U.S. Senate race. They lost everything.
Tim Wildmon: That was insightful and hard to listen to. What do you think of that initial statement?
Jenna Ellis: He is entirely correct, and he is one of the few people who can say that from a position of having consistently delivered conservative wins regardless of who was coming after him or what the MAGA movement or the establishment said about him. He is positioned very well to be the next Republican leader because Florida was the only state that held the line.
Jenna Ellis: As a voter here in Florida, I believe the reason Florida held the line was not Byron Donalds. He is not very popular here. Of all the statewide races, he received the fewest votes among the Republican candidates, even though he won. Florida held the line because Governor DeSantis put Amendment 3, the property-tax-relief issue, on the ballot and gave people something to turn out for, even though they were frustrated with Byron Donalds and how he won the primary.
Jenna Ellis: DeSantis is continuing to deliver wins, and he is willing to say things bluntly. It is hard to hear, but it is truthful. I think he is positioned to be the next leader if Republicans are smart.
Tim Wildmon: Is he going to run for president?
Jenna Ellis: Knowing him and from conversations I have had with him and his staff, I believe he will be contemplating it until the moment he announces either way. If he runs, it will be because he genuinely believes there is a chance that the Democrats could botch things so badly that Republicans have a chance in 2028. If he sits it out, I believe it will be because he does not think a Republican has a shot in 2028.
Tim Wildmon: That is sobering. Three people rise to the top when you talk about potential Republican presidential candidates for 2028: J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and Ron DeSantis. Two of them are Floridians. Governor DeSantis and Marco Rubio have more experience than J.D. Vance, although neither has vice-presidential experience.
Tim Wildmon: Governor DeSantis is a two-time elected governor of a large state and a former congressman. His resume for conservatives is stellar, and he does not have the Trump administration issues hanging around his neck the way Rubio does. He challenged Trump because he felt there needed to be a true conservative alternative. He was not successful, but you could say it took some courage to challenge the big dog.
Tim Wildmon: Jenna, take care. Thank you for being with us.
Jenna Ellis: Thanks, guys.
Tim Wildmon: We will be back, and we will let Ray Pritchard talk some next half hour.
Tim Wildmon, Ed Vitagliano and their colleagues assess the political consequences of Tuesday’s election, including the possibility of a Democratic-controlled Congress pursuing investigations or impeachment efforts against President Donald Trump. They discuss how Trump could use his veto power and whether Democrats might pass legislation designed to create campaign issues for 2028.
Jenna Ellis explains the distinction between congressional oversight and criminal prosecution while discussing potential investigations involving the Trump family, immigration enforcement, federal spending and other administration policies. She also evaluates Ron DeSantis’ assessment of Republican losses and the prospects of DeSantis, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio in the 2028 presidential race.
The program also examines reports about evangelical turnout, clarifying what a 17 percent exit-poll figure represents and encouraging Christians to remain informed and engaged in civic life.
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