Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Thanks for joining us here on AFR. I'm Tim with Ed and Steve Paisley.

Steve Paisley: Hey, what is that design you have today? That's not paisley.

Ed Vitagliano: No, it's just called geometric. It goes with the pants. I bought this online. I bought two shirts with this same pattern, one in this color and one in bold blues and reds, primary colors.

Tim Wildmon: I admire you. You do your own shopping.

Ed Vitagliano: Well, I'm a fan of good-looking shirts, and so I do.

Tim Wildmon: We were not going to go that far, but you know.

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: It did not take long for that.

Ed Vitagliano: I was not the one who turned the flip phone on you.

Tim Wildmon: Let me tell you what I mean.

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, I was.

Tim Wildmon: College football is in full bloom.

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, it was a good weekend.

Tim Wildmon: Some people married into an Alabama family. Alabama won.

Steve Paisley: He could have married into a Tulane family, but he did not get married into one.

Ed Vitagliano: My wife went to State. State won. My Raiders were three and a half.

Tim Wildmon: Wait a minute. Your wife went to State?

Ed Vitagliano: She was talking about Mississippi State.

Tim Wildmon: Okay.

Ed Vitagliano: She grew up an Alabama fan. She went to graduate school at Alabama and played in the marching band at both schools. At some point in her life, she had to choose her football team, and she had to choose between Alabama and Mississippi State.

Tim Wildmon: And she chose the blue blood.

Ed Vitagliano: She said she was going with the blue-collar team.

Tim Wildmon: She went with the blue blood.

Ed Vitagliano: It is a mystery.

Tim Wildmon: If you are going to go through life and you have a choice like that, I guess.

Steve Paisley: We are all Alabama fans growing up.

Tim Wildmon: No, today has no other name to it.

Steve Paisley: Number three in the country.

Tim Wildmon: That is right.

Steve Paisley: And it beat Purdue, that powerhouse, on Saturday.

Tim Wildmon: You took down the Boilermakers.

Steve Paisley: Yeah. I mean, we put a beatdown on the Boilermakers. They rue the day they came up against the Fighting Irish.

Ed Vitagliano: Well, let me just say this. I woke up Sunday morning, and sometimes I put my phone on mute because I tend to go to bed early. I woke up and looked at the leadership text thread. There were a whole bunch of Mississippi State people, about 66 messages.

Tim Wildmon: I first thought someone, some big politician, had died or something and I had missed it.

Ed Vitagliano: No, I looked at it. It was Mississippi State, scroll, scroll, scroll.

Tim Wildmon: What that says is that there are four or five Mississippi State fans and graduates on that text message thread.

Ed Vitagliano: What it says is how starved all these people are for a win.

Tim Wildmon: And it was quite a win.

Ed Vitagliano: Yes.

Tim Wildmon: Missouri is very good, were they not?

Ed Vitagliano: Yes. Missouri was ahead in the fourth quarter by a touchdown, and Mississippi State won it at the end of the ball game.

Tim Wildmon: I would have texted, too.

Ed Vitagliano: It was not the last-second play, but they won the ball game.

Tim Wildmon: Mississippi State played South Carolina.

Ed Vitagliano: No, Steve.

Steve Paisley: Do you want me to embarrass myself?

Ed Vitagliano: Yes, do not embarrass yourself.

Steve Paisley: I am sorry.

Tim Wildmon: You already got the funny look for the shirt.

Steve Paisley: That was a week before.

Ed Vitagliano: Just put that phone down.

Tim Wildmon: If you need to know about college football, you can ask me.

Ed Vitagliano: That is it.

Steve Paisley: I am asking you.

Tim Wildmon: If you need to know about hockey, ask Ed.

Ed Vitagliano: That is right. We can tell you where to go for expertise.

Steve Paisley: So Alabama plays at Mississippi State next Saturday. That is the next game on the schedule, if you are wondering.

Tim Wildmon: You are listening to Today's Issues. President Trump was in Knoxville for the University of Tennessee versus the University of Texas game on Saturday.

Ed Vitagliano: Texas and Tennessee?

Tim Wildmon: Yes. It must be nice being president, where you can just pick your college football game or your NFL game. He also went to the Presidents Cup golf tournament this weekend, so I do not blame President Trump for taking full advantage of his office.

Ed Vitagliano: I know. Absolutely.

Steve Paisley: You might blame him after the story I have coming up later in this half hour.

Tim Wildmon: I do not know. We will see.

Ed Vitagliano: As a Diet Coke fan, President Trump is my man because he is a big Diet Coke guy.

Tim Wildmon: Your guys are in solidarity on that.

Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.

Tim Wildmon: Steve, what is your first story?

Steve Paisley: We already talked about the tragedy that happened with Ed and his non-flip phone. Unfortunately, John Fetterman had a similar issue over the weekend. The senator from Pennsylvania was live at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas. He was having a town hall, or he was onstage with CBS chief correspondent Major Garrett.

In the middle of the conversation, this is what came out of his mouth.

Guest: Why not become an independent?

John Fetterman: Because I am a lifelong Republican Democrat.

Steve Paisley: That is a moment right there. That is clippable, ladies and gentlemen. That is going to break through.

Ed Vitagliano: That will get clipped.

Steve Paisley: I am a lifelong Democrat.

Tim Wildmon: It did get clipped, by the way.

Ed Vitagliano: That is funny.

Tim Wildmon: It is a faux pas.

Steve Paisley: Yes, it is.

Tim Wildmon: A Freudian slip, as they might say. He is a lifelong Democrat, but he has talked about how his party has some really bizarre ideas and is heading in a bad direction. There have been people wondering whether he is going to become an independent. I do not think he will flip parties, but he is going to be lifelong something or other.

The Democrats thought their troubles were over when Joe Manchin left. Here comes John Fetterman, giving them grief from inside the party.

Steve Paisley: Next story. Meanwhile, in Ithaca, New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attended an event called “Students Versus Billionaires.” It was a town hall organized by More Perfect Union and Cornell’s Young Democratic Socialists of America.

Ed Vitagliano: I used to be a part of that, but they quit saying I did not pay my membership.

Steve Paisley: Yes, about three years ago.

Ed Vitagliano: It works.

Steve Paisley: Here is what you missed. You are not going to hear AOC. Neither of the two ladies speaking is AOC, although one of them has the same high-pitched voice.

Ed Vitagliano: Whiny.

Steve Paisley: Do we not shame people for their voices?

Ed Vitagliano: AOC sounds like she uses helium.

Steve Paisley: These ladies, and AOC, seem to be products of our public school system. This is how they opened the event where AOC spoke.

Speaker: Here we stand as anti-imperialists and believe that nobody is disposable. We have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere. Student activism is not dead. Long live student resistance, and long live the student intifada.

Thank you. Thank you. For just one second, I would like you guys to repeat after me: From the river to the sea, I will be free.

Steve Paisley: AOC got up and spoke and said nothing about any of that.

Tim Wildmon: For those who do not know, what does “from the river to the sea” mean, Ed?

Ed Vitagliano: That means a Palestinian state will exist all the way from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea, which means Israel is no longer a nation. It would probably qualify under the definition of genocide.

Tim Wildmon: Ironically, they were talking about that earlier. AOC spoke there and did not condemn that statement.

Ed Vitagliano: Wow. I would suggest that she agrees with it.

Tim Wildmon: What do you do if you are Jewish, you have always voted Democrat, and now you realize the Democratic Party has been taken over by people who hate you? What are you going to do with that information?

Ed Vitagliano: First of all, I think your first reaction is going to be, “This cannot really be happening.” You may think this is a small percentage, and that the Democratic Party is never going to turn against Jewish people because, after World War II, we said we would never forget what happened. It is not going to happen again. We are talking about the attempts to wipe out the Jews in Europe under Adolf Hitler.

Your first reaction is going to be denial, but I do not think this is going away. I think Jews increasingly in this country, even those who have historically been very supportive of the Democratic Party, are going to have to understand that this is a movement. It is real, it is growing, and it threatens to take over the Democratic Party, which means you no longer have a home if you are a very liberal Jewish person.

A lot of Jews on college campuses in New York City are feeling this. We heard Benjamin Netanyahu say that Jews in New York do not feel safe anymore. Increasingly, that is going to become the reality, I think.

Steve Paisley: Next story. I would like to introduce you to a woman and mother. This is Michelle Morrow. She is speaking at a Wake County Public School System Board of Education meeting in Wake County, North Carolina.

Tim Wildmon: I was invited. I had another engagement.

Steve Paisley: You were supposed to be in North Carolina at Wake County.

Tim Wildmon: Anyway, Michelle Morrow was speaking to her board of education. She is a frequent speaker there. She got up to speak about something, but then something struck her when she heard the school board talking about how wonderful things were, how woke they were, and how their mission was to make sure their children grew up intersectional and everything.

This is about a two-and-a-half-minute clip. It is a little long, but I thought it was wonderful. I thought it was pretty good, and I would like to have you hear some of it.

Michelle Morrow: There is one goal for the educational system. It should be to prepare children to enter careers and to be productive members of society. It is not a counseling session. It is not a self-help area. It is not somewhere to find yourself, and we should not be led by the children, for goodness’ sake.

The children are called dependents for a reason. They depend on us, who have fully developed brains. You cannot feel your way through life.

The issues that we are talking about, we are bringing you statistics, we are talking about scholastics, we are talking about funding, and we are talking about busing. We are talking about trying to figure out how to make our children as successful as possible. I am sure that is your goal.

What we have been called tonight is what they are claiming we are saying to children. We are having an adult conversation. There are not children in this room. We are not going into the schools and calling them names. They call us Marxists, hateful, bigots, and everything else under the sun.

Let me tell you, less than 5 percent of the entire population of North Carolina identifies as LGBTQ. You all claim you want democracy. Well, you know what democracy is? It is the majority plus one. It is 50 plus one.

More than 50 percent of the people in this state claim that they believe in God, almighty God, who made us male and female; God, who made marriage between a man and a woman; God, who said that we must protect our children.

The fact that we can stand up here and brag about all of the wonderful graduations, but we know the statistics: 50 percent of children did not pass their end-of-grade tests. What are we celebrating?

You have real children coming up here telling us how horrible the mental health crisis is. Why? Most of us went to public school, and all of our peers are not in mental health crises. We have to ask ourselves, what are we doing to our children?

I am going to say we are discussing things with them that they are not emotionally, intellectually, and morally able to handle. That is what is causing the anxiety. That is what is causing the depression. That is what is causing the confusion.

We need our children to be able to be children, to be able to be innocent, to be able to enjoy childhood, and not know all of the drama and all of the difficulties in adult life. That is what we want.

We want our children to be able to read and write and think for themselves, and we demand that the children who fear God are protected in your school.

Tim Wildmon: That was a wonderful indictment of a woke school board and the consequences to students.

Ed Vitagliano: What was her name again?

Steve Paisley: Michelle Morrow.

Ed Vitagliano: Michelle Morrow. I am not sure what her marital status is, but she nailed what schools are supposed to be doing. They are supposed to be teaching children how to be productive members of society, teaching them how to read and write and do math, and teaching them the basic skills that are building blocks for a fruitful life in our country.

Instead, you have a school board bragging about how woke they are and how they are involved in DEI and all those kinds of things. What is sad about this is that the school board probably listened with stony hearts and stony faces. They are not going to do anything to listen to what she had to say or answer the concerns of the vast majority of parents.

What I thought was particularly important about what she said is that she is asking why all of the kids in our schools have mental health crises going on. She says it is because we are making them digest all of this stuff that they are not emotionally, mentally, or age-wise ready to handle.

Tim Wildmon: Let me just share your concern about sexuality and everything else. That third grader has no business dealing with any of that stuff. This is why they are in a mental health crisis.

Ed Vitagliano: Let me say this. I feel the need to say this. The vast majority of public schools do not teach that garbage, especially not at a third-grade level. Whether you choose to go to a Christian school, a private school, or homeschool, which we promote, those are decisions families have to make.

But when you are talking about public education, I do not think it is fair to make blanket statements. I am not saying you are doing that, Steve. I am just saying that it depends on what part of the country you are in.

Around here, where we live in Mississippi, the vast majority of teachers, principals, and administrators are Christians themselves. People have to make a decision about where to send their children: homeschool, Christian school, or public education.

Tim Wildmon: Does that make sense?

Ed Vitagliano: Yes.

Tim Wildmon: To be fair to Michelle Morrow, she was addressing the Wake County school board. That is a college town.

Ed Vitagliano: It is probably a very liberal place, and that is probably indicative, as you pointed out, Tim, of most of the blue cities, blue regions, and blue states in our country.

Parents probably feel overwhelmed. But in red states, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida launched a war against DEI, and he is still struggling to get it out of colleges and university campuses.

It is true that the lower you go in grade levels, the less you see this kind of thing when you are in a red state. But on college and university campuses, I would not be surprised to see a lot of woke ideology.

Steve Paisley: Next story. I have to ask, Tim, how is your blood pressure doing?

Tim Wildmon: I am going to the doctor in two hours, so we will find out.

Steve Paisley: My blood pressure is fine.

Ed Vitagliano: How do you know what your blood pressure is?

Steve Paisley: Right. How do you?

Tim Wildmon: You are about to trigger me, I think.

Steve Paisley: Okay, trigger me.

Tim Wildmon: Senator John Kennedy, our favorite senator from Louisiana, was on Meet the Press over the weekend. He was asked about Donald Trump putting his name on certain things. There was a court ruling that said Trump could not have his name on the Kennedy Center. This is what John Kennedy had to say.

John Kennedy: I do not think any public official, including President Trump, Kristi Noem, or John Kennedy, should spend public money on private ads for themselves. The White House sees it differently, but I think there ought to be a rule that you cannot spend public money to promote yourself. There probably is a rule. You cannot spend public money to promote yourself.

I may end up with a sombrero on my head, but I also think we ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him while he is alive. I think that would settle a lot of this controversy.

Steve Paisley: We have that rule in Louisiana, and it works pretty well.

Ed Vitagliano: I do not know what he means by that.

Tim Wildmon: I think he could be in the doghouse. That is what he means by Donald Trump.

Ed Vitagliano: Was that recently?

Steve Paisley: Over the weekend. I happen to have a list in front of me of all the things Donald Trump or his administration have proposed putting his name on since his second term in office. It is quite lengthy.

Tim Wildmon: Are you surprised?

Steve Paisley: I will say, to lower your blood pressure and in defense of the president, I have renamed our lunchroom upstairs the Donald J. Trump Memorial Cafeteria.

Ed Vitagliano: Not memorial.

Tim Wildmon: What do you call it?

Steve Paisley: The Donald J. Trump Memorial Cafeteria.

Tim Wildmon: We all know about the Kennedy Center. Trump wanted it named after him, or at least jointly named after him and John F. Kennedy, but that is on hold right now, pending a court ruling.

Ed Vitagliano: It is jointly named the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Tim Wildmon: He wants it to be the Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial.

Steve Paisley: Remember, he put his name on it. He did not physically do it, but his handpicked board said they wanted to rename it after Donald Trump. Then Trump said he was honored.

Ed Vitagliano: That was so funny. He was honored that his own handpicked board would want to rename the Kennedy Center after him.

Steve Paisley: He did put his name on the Peace Center, which is right next door to the United States Institute of Peace. Now they have the Donald Trump Institute for Peace.

Tim Wildmon: President Trump lost the attempt to rename the Kennedy Center, did he not?

Ed Vitagliano: Yes, of course. He cannot do that because Congress has to do it.

Tim Wildmon: I am just going to say I agree with Senator Kennedy from Louisiana. I do not like the idea of politicians naming buildings after themselves. I do not like the idea of the federal government spending money on things like this.

It is kind of like going into the Hall of Fame in most sports. You have to be out of the league for a number of years before you can be inducted. I think there was one exemption for Wayne Gretzky in the NHL, but I do not remember.

Steve Paisley: That would not be surprising. He is one of the greats.

Tim Wildmon: Anyway, I agree with Senator Kennedy on this. You need to wait until they die before you rename a building after them, or at least say they have to be out of office for five or ten years.

Ed Vitagliano: Yes, let somebody else do it. I am sure there are people all over this building who would like to say how great they think I am.

Tim Wildmon: There are many.

Ed Vitagliano: I would like to let other people do that. I do not do it for myself.

Tim Wildmon: Why not?

Ed Vitagliano: You know what? This was a bad joke. I should not have gone down this road.

Tim Wildmon: But you do not ever praise yourself.

Ed Vitagliano: Have you done Trump today?

Tim Wildmon: No.

Ed Vitagliano: He is a great person.

Tim Wildmon: My mom used to always say, “You do not say anything. If somebody wants to say something nice about you, let them say it.” You deflect the praise, especially if you have a team you are working with. You say, “That is a great team. It is not an individual thing.”

That is the way my parents raised me, and that is how my generation was raised. You do not praise yourself. You let somebody else do it.

Ed Vitagliano: You are right. I think that is it.

Tim Wildmon: President Trump has a bombastic personality. I think we all know that. We can all agree.

Steve Paisley: He likes buildings named after him.

Tim Wildmon: I cannot even get my home named after me.

Ed Vitagliano: We are about out of time here.

Tim Wildmon: We are going to rename this half hour the Ed Vitagliano half hour.

Ed Vitagliano: Oh, please. No, please stop.

Steve Paisley: The contributions you have made to this show.

Ed Vitagliano: Let us not.

Tim Wildmon: Thank you, Tim. You deserve it.

Ed Vitagliano: Please, no. Do not.

Steve Paisley: You deserve it.

Ed Vitagliano: Stop. Do not stop.

Tim Wildmon: Do not stop. Do not stop.

Steve Paisley: Look at that. The music.

Tim Wildmon: That was not anything to do with me. The show is ending.

Ed Vitagliano: Yes, probably a good thing.

Tim Wildmon: We have renamed the music for the show to the glory of Ed.

Steve Paisley: My name is Steve Paisley. Thanks for your time.

Tim Wildmon: It is a happy day today.

Steve Paisley: Ed, thanks for allowing him to go on the Boston trip.

Ed Vitagliano: My pleasure.

Tim Wildmon: Thanks to Steve, Ed, Brent, Fred, and Cole Green, our video man. I cannot talk to him because his hockey team plays mine tomorrow night.

Have a great day, everybody. We will see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening.