Ed Vitagliano: And welcome back to Today's Issues. So glad for those of you who returned to rejoin us after the break. Ed Vitagliano sitting in for Tim Wildmon this week. I'm also joined in studio by Wesley Wildmon and Tony Vitagliano. Our thanks to Chris Woodward, who has gone back to his desk to continue the workday. Our thanks to Jenna Ellis as well, who has gone to do Jenna things with her family. That was an exciting time to go back to Colorado with family coming in to celebrate a wedding.
We're joined now by Steve Paisley-Jordan, who has joined us with the news of the day. Good morning to you, Steve.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Hey, everybody. Good to see you. Good to hear you.
Ed Vitagliano: You can hear him.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: I can hear everybody.
Ed Vitagliano: You can hear the people.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: I've got voices in my head you wouldn't have believed.
Ed Vitagliano: Well, just don't do anything crazy with those voices in your head.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Why should I change anything now?
Ed Vitagliano: That's right. Too late now. All right, Steve, let's get started with the news of the day.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: There is a popular recording artist named Ed Sheeran, who is currently on a world tour. He's calling it his Loop Tour, and it began in 2025. It is going to continue. He's got a concert in Philadelphia at Lincoln Financial Field. He's doing stadiums here in the United States before he heads to South America and Mexico.
The opening act for Ed Sheeran, by the way, Ed is kind of a pop-rock singer-songwriter, really a tame artist compared with some. Opening for him is an artist named Macklemore, who is better described as a rap or hip-hop artist. Macklemore has been talking at the concert during his opening act and saying things like this:
Macklemore: So the people all the way in Gaza, to the occupied West Bank, know that we have not forgotten about them. I say, free Palestine. Free Cuba, the Congo, Sudan, Iran, and all the people living in America that have to live in fear because of this terrorist organization, ICE.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: So he's doing the woke thing, and promoters heard about this. One in particular, the owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, also owns the stadium in which the concert was held or is going to be held. He said he didn't like this, and so they have asked Macklemore to step off the tour.
Ed Vitagliano: Wait a minute. At the very end, did I hear him say that ICE is a terrorist organization? That's new information for me.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said it.
Ed Vitagliano: All right, so for the record, you're supporting him?
Steve Paisley-Jordan: We're supporting him off the tour.
Ed Vitagliano: That's a literal terrorist organization?
Steve Paisley-Jordan: We're not supporting ICE because they're the terrorists.
Ed Vitagliano: Right. And you wonder why they're kicking him off the tour.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Yeah. That changes a little bit of what I was about to say, but I'll share my thoughts before I heard that, because it's also relevant.
I do think you have to calculate in, as an artist, sports figure, teacher, or whatever, if you're an independent person and you have a job, that you want to use your platform to promote politics. I don't recommend it, although I do like it when conservatives do it.
Wesley Wildmon: I do like it when our side does it.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: I don't recommend doing it either way, but if you do it, it comes with a cost. Both sides have to understand that your platform was not built on your politics. It was built on your skills, and your skills are what people want to see you do.
If you're going to use your platform and the concert stage that people pay tickets for to promote politics, and you're on a tour with multiple other artists, what you say impacts ticket sales, for better or worse. It impacts them based on your politics. So if you do this, I just don't want to hear you complain or say it's not fair when you get booted or kicked off, boycotted, when people quit buying tickets, or when you lose fans. It's part of it. This comes with the territory.
Now, it changes a little bit for me, and I'll be a little stronger, now that I've heard the fact that he referred to ICE as a terrorist group. That's stupid. That's beyond simply sharing your right- or left-wing opinion. ICE is not a terrorist group. We're not going to spend the next 20 minutes explaining that, because any person with any sense at all knows that ICE is doing a job of enforcing immigration rules.
Wesley Wildmon: The other four supporting acts for Sheeran also dropped out.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: That's right. To me, what you're seeing is just how deep the ideological roots run. This is not a revelation. I'm not telling anybody in this room or anybody listening to this program anything they don't already know. But that thought process is pervasive in the entertainment industry and in Hollywood at all levels.
What you're seeing is the business side of it having to come to grips with the ideological side of it. Hollywood and the music industry are used to having their worldview supported, throwing the weight of their worldview and opinions around, and having financial support for their talents and whatever they're doing. But now they're starting to see that not every worldview and not every opinion you have is going to be supported. When that runs into the financial aspect of it, as you said, there are consequences. If you're saying stupid things, as Wesley said, you go too far and you have to suffer the consequences.
Wesley Wildmon: I do miss the days when politics was not involved in businesses and stores. There was a time when Target did not get involved in politics. There was a time when the NFL did not allow you to kneel during the national anthem. I remember when I was in high school and in the early days of college, if it wasn't in Washington, D.C., state government, or local government, that's where we talked about politics and had our debates.
Now people have taken their politics everywhere. They are activists in every phase of life. That's why I miss the days when Michael Jordan would say, "Republicans and Democrats both buy Nike shoes, so that's not the platform I'm going to use."
Tony Vitagliano: I would suggest that this came to the fore during Barack Obama's presidency, when he decided to split everybody up into identity politics. When he started pushing identity politics and saying that this was a racist country, and that anybody who had any hint of slavery in their background was still suffering from it, everybody started being painted as either a victim or a victimizer. The victim card started becoming currency. That's when you saw everybody starting to pick sides.
Ed Vitagliano: The reason I wanted to deal with this story is that this is why we continue talking about the Lindsey Clancy story. It's a small story, really, in a country of 330 million people, but there are broader issues under the microscope.
This is the same way, because the fact that a bunch of artists dropped out of Ed Sheeran's tour indicates to me that this country has split wide open. On one side, you have people who honestly and deeply hate America. They hate everything about it. They're not going to be celebrating Constitution Day. They want to get rid of it.
That is being linked to the Israel issue in the Middle East. People who support Israel are supporting America, and they hate both of them. I could easily see Ed Sheeran being forced to apologize. He has a tour that is 10 shows long, and he's from the United Kingdom. It continues Friday in Philadelphia, but I think this could force Ed Sheeran to apologize.
Wesley Wildmon: Apologize for what?
Ed Vitagliano: For dropping an act, admittedly under pressure from Robert Kraft, who didn't want his stadium to be used to promote that kind of insane hatred by Macklemore. I would not be surprised to see Sheeran apologize for removing that kind of person from his tour in order to keep the tour alive.
This country has split open like a ripe fig, which is a biblical prophetic illustration. I think our country is in serious trouble, folks. Jesus can save it, but the church better start praying and start getting busy winning people, or we could, on Constitution Day, admit the possibility of losing the Constitution.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Sheeran has spoken on this, basically. He said that kicking Macklemore off was the promoter's decision. The promoter is the one who stands to make or lose money on the tour, so they have the right, I suppose, to do this. He added that his audience is made up of young people from different backgrounds who do not expect his shows to be a political forum, basically taking the same tack Wesley was talking about.
David Portnoy, who owns Barstool Sports, is also speaking out on this. He had something interesting to say:
David Portnoy: Bob Kraft catches wind that Macklemore is the opener, and it's essentially turning this into a political rally, a pro-Palestine rally. He has the Palestinian flag and brutal imagery from the war on the big screens behind him while singing a song. Bob Kraft, I'm sure, did what I did when I saw this: He researched Macklemore.
It didn't take long to learn Macklemore has a pretty shady past. He already, at a prior concert, dressed in a wildly anti-Semitic costume before the October 7 attacks. It was wildly anti-Semitic, like Trump, with a huge nose, like the greedy Jew meme, and he did a Hitler symbol. He had to apologize for it, saying, "Oh, sorry about that." But still, maybe this free-Palestine thing he's doing is a little more deep-seated hatred than what he's making it seem like.
Bob Kraft owns Gillette Stadium, and Macklemore, you're going to come into Bob Kraft's house and spit in his face? That's not censorship. Everyone is saying, "Bob Kraft got Macklemore fired. That's censorship. Freedom of speech." This ain't freedom of speech, homie. He owns the stadium. It's his house.
Do you have a party and invite somebody over who's just going to spew what you consider hatred? Macklemore, you're the opener for Ed Sheeran. People are buying Ed Sheeran tickets.
Ed Vitagliano: I think David Portnoy's comments there were outstanding. Let me also say he's not a role model or a paragon of virtue.
Wesley Wildmon: He's not a paragon of virtue. He has his own issues.
Ed Vitagliano: But he's Jewish. Robert Kraft is Jewish. I don't know what Jews in this country are going to do. They have to be getting awfully nervous about all this stuff that's happening.
Tony Vitagliano: My dad, Tim Wildmon, has mentioned quite a bit over the last couple of months, as we've talked about the main problems with each party as it relates to the midterms and then the 2028 general election. One of the bigger problems he has pointed out is this growing hatred for Jews and Israel in the Democratic Party. Does it seem like it has any way to escape, return, or neutralize itself? It's growing, and it seems as if they have forgotten that many of their voters are Jewish.
Ed Vitagliano: Most of the people speaking publicly are figures like Macklemore, but there are Democratic Party leaders too. Some of them, the Squad, either don't care or have decided they don't care that a lot of their party is made up of Jews. That's going to be a problem.
Wesley Wildmon: Many self-hating Jews, too.
Ed Vitagliano: That's right. It's going to be a problem moving forward for the Democrats as they continue to have people speak on their behalf against Israel and the Jews, because so much of their electorate is Jewish. Where do those voters go? I don't know. I don't think they go to the Republican Party, but they may.
The Democrats have every opportunity to win. We're giving them some really good ammunition with gas prices, the war, and a couple of other issues that Republicans aren't doing a good job on. We're giving them an opportunity, but when they keep doing stuff like this, it's offsetting those issues.
Tony Vitagliano: For the Democratic Party, I absolutely agree with what you're saying. My prediction in the short term is that they're going to win because of what you just said: the economic conditions, the war in Iran, which could expand, the Houthis chiming in, and all that kind of thing.
In the short term they can win. I think in the long term, and this is why we talk about people like James Carville and Bill Maher, they see the dangers for the survival of the Democratic Party. The people taking over the party, especially young people, including the young people going to Ed Sheeran concerts who are fans of Macklemore, are going to continue to tie this Marxist idea, support for the Palestinians, antagonism and hatred for Israel, and thus hatred for the Jews, to America.
They are going to double down on their hatred for this country, and that is going to put the Democratic Party in serious jeopardy with the majority of American people. You're going to have conservatives, independents, and traditional classical liberals like Bill Maher, who are Democrats. You're going to have Jews who are increasingly afraid for their lives. They're not going to have anywhere to go. They're not going to stay in the Democratic Party that has rejected them.
Some of them may go to the Republican Party, but at the very least, they're going to stop voting Democrat. That is going to threaten the Democratic Party's existence.
Ed Vitagliano: I know we said we would move on, but the irony occurred to me as you were describing what the Democratic Party is going to have to contend with over the next several years. Republicans and conservatives have been called Nazis because of Trump. "Trump is literally Hitler. Republicans are literally Nazis."
The irony is that what is developing and bubbling up in the Democratic Party is a lot of the same ingredients that got the actual Nazi Party in Germany into power. It was economic turmoil. There was very little economic opportunity. Germany had been punished economically, and the people of Germany were suffering economically. Then these people came along and said, "We'll do something about it."
Wesley Wildmon: The Jews are the problem.
Ed Vitagliano: Yes, the Jews are the problem. They control a lot of the money, and we'll bring back economic prosperity. You just have to put us in power.
To me, I'm seeing very similar parallels that could give way and give rise to something akin to an actual fascist or Marxist-minded party, where we need to fix these economic woes, and to do that, we're going to go after the capitalists. Most of the capitalists are Jews, so we're going to go after the Jews too. Those are actual setups for something that looks like the Nazi Party.
Wesley Wildmon: And Robert Kraft is Jewish. This plays right into their worldview. Their ideology is that the Jews are the problem. The candidate in Maine who had to drop out had literal Nazi tattoos.
Ed Vitagliano: You just can't make it up.
Tony Vitagliano: That's why one of the main objectives of Marxism, communism, or fascism is to accuse the accuser of the very thing they're doing.
Ed Vitagliano: That's probably true of any of those. The difference between communists and Nazis is that both of those kinds of movements are technically fascist because they're totalitarian. They want universal control and dictatorships.
The communists generally have an international engine driving them. They don't really care about the nation; they care about the worldwide movement of communism. The Nazis, and generally speaking, real fascists during World War II, care about the nation. You had the Nazi Party supporting its goal of making Germany a power again in Europe, but they used the same tactics and had the same strategy.
That's why I say there isn't really more than a piece of tissue paper between them. They both want dictatorships, they both want totalitarian control of your life, and they both want absolute power. I don't know what form it will take in our country, but something fascist is coming, whether it has a Marxist flavor or a Nazi flavor.
Wesley Wildmon: Good insights from both of you.
Ed Vitagliano: All right, Steve, I think it's time we should check in with New York City and see what Mayor Mamdani is doing.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: You only get me for a minute.
Ed Vitagliano: Go ahead.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Mayor Mamdani has rolled out 17 new free public toilets in New York City across the five boroughs. Each one has a flushing toilet, a running-water sink, heating and air conditioning, and a baby-changing station. They're touchless and free. You have to have a QR code from the city or a card. They are being distributed and run by a group called Throne Labs.
This is the part I love: You get 10 minutes in this toilet to do whatever it is you came to do. You're put on a strict 10-minute time limit. As an occupant approaches the time limit, the speaker inside the room plays an automated message telling them that they're running out of time. Once the 10 minutes are up, the speaker states, "Attention, your time has expired and the door is now opening." It says it in English and Spanish, and then you are thrown out. The world is invited to come on in. The door is open and your time is up.
Ed Vitagliano: We need to provide some context before we mock this, okay? The reason they're doing this is because they have problems with homelessness and drug addiction.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: These are available to the homeless. You can get cards from local businesses.
Ed Vitagliano: I will just point out that this is costing the city something. I don't know, it's four million dollars for the pilot program. In San Francisco, in 2022, they spent 1.7 million dollars to put up one single toilet.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: We were hearing about that.
Ed Vitagliano: The reason why is that a lot of businesses won't let even their patrons use the restrooms anymore, because the problem is so pervasive.
Wesley Wildmon: This is dystopian. Can you imagine? You're like cattle, folks, in New York City. You're on the fringe of the dystopian future when a voice tells you, "Please finish your business. Please remember, one square of toilet paper per person."
Ed Vitagliano: Well, that's crazy. Your time is up.
Tony Vitagliano: We mentioned this in the story meeting this morning. The reason our founders said a republic can only exist if we have a moral populace is for this. The country, especially in big cities, is decaying, where you have homeless people, addicts, and all kinds of other things going on.
Ed Vitagliano: Wow. Is that being proved in New York City? All right, we're done. More great programming directly ahead.
Ed Vitagliano: And welcome back to Today's Issues. So glad for those of you who returned to rejoin us after the break. Ed Vitagliano sitting in for Tim Wildmon this week. I'm also joined in studio by Wesley Wildmon and Tony Vitagliano. Our thanks to Chris Woodward, who has gone back to his desk to continue the workday. Our thanks to Jenna Ellis as well, who has gone to do Jenna things with her family. That was an exciting time to go back to Colorado with family coming in to celebrate a wedding.
We're joined now by Steve Paisley-Jordan, who has joined us with the news of the day. Good morning to you, Steve.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Hey, everybody. Good to see you. Good to hear you.
Ed Vitagliano: You can hear him.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: I can hear everybody.
Ed Vitagliano: You can hear the people.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: I've got voices in my head you wouldn't have believed.
Ed Vitagliano: Well, just don't do anything crazy with those voices in your head.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Why should I change anything now?
Ed Vitagliano: That's right. Too late now. All right, Steve, let's get started with the news of the day.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: There is a popular recording artist named Ed Sheeran, who is currently on a world tour. He's calling it his Loop Tour, and it began in 2025. It is going to continue. He's got a concert in Philadelphia at Lincoln Financial Field. He's doing stadiums here in the United States before he heads to South America and Mexico.
The opening act for Ed Sheeran, by the way, Ed is kind of a pop-rock singer-songwriter, really a tame artist compared with some. Opening for him is an artist named Macklemore, who is better described as a rap or hip-hop artist. Macklemore has been talking at the concert during his opening act and saying things like this:
Macklemore: So the people all the way in Gaza, to the occupied West Bank, know that we have not forgotten about them. I say, free Palestine. Free Cuba, the Congo, Sudan, Iran, and all the people living in America that have to live in fear because of this terrorist organization, ICE.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: So he's doing the woke thing, and promoters heard about this. One in particular, the owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, also owns the stadium in which the concert was held or is going to be held. He said he didn't like this, and so they have asked Macklemore to step off the tour.
Ed Vitagliano: Wait a minute. At the very end, did I hear him say that ICE is a terrorist organization? That's new information for me.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said it.
Ed Vitagliano: All right, so for the record, you're supporting him?
Steve Paisley-Jordan: We're supporting him off the tour.
Ed Vitagliano: That's a literal terrorist organization?
Steve Paisley-Jordan: We're not supporting ICE because they're the terrorists.
Ed Vitagliano: Right. And you wonder why they're kicking him off the tour.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Yeah. That changes a little bit of what I was about to say, but I'll share my thoughts before I heard that, because it's also relevant.
I do think you have to calculate in, as an artist, sports figure, teacher, or whatever, if you're an independent person and you have a job, that you want to use your platform to promote politics. I don't recommend it, although I do like it when conservatives do it.
Wesley Wildmon: I do like it when our side does it.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: I don't recommend doing it either way, but if you do it, it comes with a cost. Both sides have to understand that your platform was not built on your politics. It was built on your skills, and your skills are what people want to see you do.
If you're going to use your platform and the concert stage that people pay tickets for to promote politics, and you're on a tour with multiple other artists, what you say impacts ticket sales, for better or worse. It impacts them based on your politics. So if you do this, I just don't want to hear you complain or say it's not fair when you get booted or kicked off, boycotted, when people quit buying tickets, or when you lose fans. It's part of it. This comes with the territory.
Now, it changes a little bit for me, and I'll be a little stronger, now that I've heard the fact that he referred to ICE as a terrorist group. That's stupid. That's beyond simply sharing your right- or left-wing opinion. ICE is not a terrorist group. We're not going to spend the next 20 minutes explaining that, because any person with any sense at all knows that ICE is doing a job of enforcing immigration rules.
Wesley Wildmon: The other four supporting acts for Sheeran also dropped out.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: That's right. To me, what you're seeing is just how deep the ideological roots run. This is not a revelation. I'm not telling anybody in this room or anybody listening to this program anything they don't already know. But that thought process is pervasive in the entertainment industry and in Hollywood at all levels.
What you're seeing is the business side of it having to come to grips with the ideological side of it. Hollywood and the music industry are used to having their worldview supported, throwing the weight of their worldview and opinions around, and having financial support for their talents and whatever they're doing. But now they're starting to see that not every worldview and not every opinion you have is going to be supported. When that runs into the financial aspect of it, as you said, there are consequences. If you're saying stupid things, as Wesley said, you go too far and you have to suffer the consequences.
Wesley Wildmon: I do miss the days when politics was not involved in businesses and stores. There was a time when Target did not get involved in politics. There was a time when the NFL did not allow you to kneel during the national anthem. I remember when I was in high school and in the early days of college, if it wasn't in Washington, D.C., state government, or local government, that's where we talked about politics and had our debates.
Now people have taken their politics everywhere. They are activists in every phase of life. That's why I miss the days when Michael Jordan would say, "Republicans and Democrats both buy Nike shoes, so that's not the platform I'm going to use."
Tony Vitagliano: I would suggest that this came to the fore during Barack Obama's presidency, when he decided to split everybody up into identity politics. When he started pushing identity politics and saying that this was a racist country, and that anybody who had any hint of slavery in their background was still suffering from it, everybody started being painted as either a victim or a victimizer. The victim card started becoming currency. That's when you saw everybody starting to pick sides.
Ed Vitagliano: The reason I wanted to deal with this story is that this is why we continue talking about the Lindsey Clancy story. It's a small story, really, in a country of 330 million people, but there are broader issues under the microscope.
This is the same way, because the fact that a bunch of artists dropped out of Ed Sheeran's tour indicates to me that this country has split wide open. On one side, you have people who honestly and deeply hate America. They hate everything about it. They're not going to be celebrating Constitution Day. They want to get rid of it.
That is being linked to the Israel issue in the Middle East. People who support Israel are supporting America, and they hate both of them. I could easily see Ed Sheeran being forced to apologize. He has a tour that is 10 shows long, and he's from the United Kingdom. It continues Friday in Philadelphia, but I think this could force Ed Sheeran to apologize.
Wesley Wildmon: Apologize for what?
Ed Vitagliano: For dropping an act, admittedly under pressure from Robert Kraft, who didn't want his stadium to be used to promote that kind of insane hatred by Macklemore. I would not be surprised to see Sheeran apologize for removing that kind of person from his tour in order to keep the tour alive.
This country has split open like a ripe fig, which is a biblical prophetic illustration. I think our country is in serious trouble, folks. Jesus can save it, but the church better start praying and start getting busy winning people, or we could, on Constitution Day, admit the possibility of losing the Constitution.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Sheeran has spoken on this, basically. He said that kicking Macklemore off was the promoter's decision. The promoter is the one who stands to make or lose money on the tour, so they have the right, I suppose, to do this. He added that his audience is made up of young people from different backgrounds who do not expect his shows to be a political forum, basically taking the same tack Wesley was talking about.
David Portnoy, who owns Barstool Sports, is also speaking out on this. He had something interesting to say:
David Portnoy: Bob Kraft catches wind that Macklemore is the opener, and it's essentially turning this into a political rally, a pro-Palestine rally. He has the Palestinian flag and brutal imagery from the war on the big screens behind him while singing a song. Bob Kraft, I'm sure, did what I did when I saw this: He researched Macklemore.
It didn't take long to learn Macklemore has a pretty shady past. He already, at a prior concert, dressed in a wildly anti-Semitic costume before the October 7 attacks. It was wildly anti-Semitic, like Trump, with a huge nose, like the greedy Jew meme, and he did a Hitler symbol. He had to apologize for it, saying, "Oh, sorry about that." But still, maybe this free-Palestine thing he's doing is a little more deep-seated hatred than what he's making it seem like.
Bob Kraft owns Gillette Stadium, and Macklemore, you're going to come into Bob Kraft's house and spit in his face? That's not censorship. Everyone is saying, "Bob Kraft got Macklemore fired. That's censorship. Freedom of speech." This ain't freedom of speech, homie. He owns the stadium. It's his house.
Do you have a party and invite somebody over who's just going to spew what you consider hatred? Macklemore, you're the opener for Ed Sheeran. People are buying Ed Sheeran tickets.
Ed Vitagliano: I think David Portnoy's comments there were outstanding. Let me also say he's not a role model or a paragon of virtue.
Wesley Wildmon: He's not a paragon of virtue. He has his own issues.
Ed Vitagliano: But he's Jewish. Robert Kraft is Jewish. I don't know what Jews in this country are going to do. They have to be getting awfully nervous about all this stuff that's happening.
Tony Vitagliano: My dad, Tim Wildmon, has mentioned quite a bit over the last couple of months, as we've talked about the main problems with each party as it relates to the midterms and then the 2028 general election. One of the bigger problems he has pointed out is this growing hatred for Jews and Israel in the Democratic Party. Does it seem like it has any way to escape, return, or neutralize itself? It's growing, and it seems as if they have forgotten that many of their voters are Jewish.
Ed Vitagliano: Most of the people speaking publicly are figures like Macklemore, but there are Democratic Party leaders too. Some of them, the Squad, either don't care or have decided they don't care that a lot of their party is made up of Jews. That's going to be a problem.
Wesley Wildmon: Many self-hating Jews, too.
Ed Vitagliano: That's right. It's going to be a problem moving forward for the Democrats as they continue to have people speak on their behalf against Israel and the Jews, because so much of their electorate is Jewish. Where do those voters go? I don't know. I don't think they go to the Republican Party, but they may.
The Democrats have every opportunity to win. We're giving them some really good ammunition with gas prices, the war, and a couple of other issues that Republicans aren't doing a good job on. We're giving them an opportunity, but when they keep doing stuff like this, it's offsetting those issues.
Tony Vitagliano: For the Democratic Party, I absolutely agree with what you're saying. My prediction in the short term is that they're going to win because of what you just said: the economic conditions, the war in Iran, which could expand, the Houthis chiming in, and all that kind of thing.
In the short term they can win. I think in the long term, and this is why we talk about people like James Carville and Bill Maher, they see the dangers for the survival of the Democratic Party. The people taking over the party, especially young people, including the young people going to Ed Sheeran concerts who are fans of Macklemore, are going to continue to tie this Marxist idea, support for the Palestinians, antagonism and hatred for Israel, and thus hatred for the Jews, to America.
They are going to double down on their hatred for this country, and that is going to put the Democratic Party in serious jeopardy with the majority of American people. You're going to have conservatives, independents, and traditional classical liberals like Bill Maher, who are Democrats. You're going to have Jews who are increasingly afraid for their lives. They're not going to have anywhere to go. They're not going to stay in the Democratic Party that has rejected them.
Some of them may go to the Republican Party, but at the very least, they're going to stop voting Democrat. That is going to threaten the Democratic Party's existence.
Ed Vitagliano: I know we said we would move on, but the irony occurred to me as you were describing what the Democratic Party is going to have to contend with over the next several years. Republicans and conservatives have been called Nazis because of Trump. "Trump is literally Hitler. Republicans are literally Nazis."
The irony is that what is developing and bubbling up in the Democratic Party is a lot of the same ingredients that got the actual Nazi Party in Germany into power. It was economic turmoil. There was very little economic opportunity. Germany had been punished economically, and the people of Germany were suffering economically. Then these people came along and said, "We'll do something about it."
Wesley Wildmon: The Jews are the problem.
Ed Vitagliano: Yes, the Jews are the problem. They control a lot of the money, and we'll bring back economic prosperity. You just have to put us in power.
To me, I'm seeing very similar parallels that could give way and give rise to something akin to an actual fascist or Marxist-minded party, where we need to fix these economic woes, and to do that, we're going to go after the capitalists. Most of the capitalists are Jews, so we're going to go after the Jews too. Those are actual setups for something that looks like the Nazi Party.
Wesley Wildmon: And Robert Kraft is Jewish. This plays right into their worldview. Their ideology is that the Jews are the problem. The candidate in Maine who had to drop out had literal Nazi tattoos.
Ed Vitagliano: You just can't make it up.
Tony Vitagliano: That's why one of the main objectives of Marxism, communism, or fascism is to accuse the accuser of the very thing they're doing.
Ed Vitagliano: That's probably true of any of those. The difference between communists and Nazis is that both of those kinds of movements are technically fascist because they're totalitarian. They want universal control and dictatorships.
The communists generally have an international engine driving them. They don't really care about the nation; they care about the worldwide movement of communism. The Nazis, and generally speaking, real fascists during World War II, care about the nation. You had the Nazi Party supporting its goal of making Germany a power again in Europe, but they used the same tactics and had the same strategy.
That's why I say there isn't really more than a piece of tissue paper between them. They both want dictatorships, they both want totalitarian control of your life, and they both want absolute power. I don't know what form it will take in our country, but something fascist is coming, whether it has a Marxist flavor or a Nazi flavor.
Wesley Wildmon: Good insights from both of you.
Ed Vitagliano: All right, Steve, I think it's time we should check in with New York City and see what Mayor Mamdani is doing.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: You only get me for a minute.
Ed Vitagliano: Go ahead.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: Mayor Mamdani has rolled out 17 new free public toilets in New York City across the five boroughs. Each one has a flushing toilet, a running-water sink, heating and air conditioning, and a baby-changing station. They're touchless and free. You have to have a QR code from the city or a card. They are being distributed and run by a group called Throne Labs.
This is the part I love: You get 10 minutes in this toilet to do whatever it is you came to do. You're put on a strict 10-minute time limit. As an occupant approaches the time limit, the speaker inside the room plays an automated message telling them that they're running out of time. Once the 10 minutes are up, the speaker states, "Attention, your time has expired and the door is now opening." It says it in English and Spanish, and then you are thrown out. The world is invited to come on in. The door is open and your time is up.
Ed Vitagliano: We need to provide some context before we mock this, okay? The reason they're doing this is because they have problems with homelessness and drug addiction.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: These are available to the homeless. You can get cards from local businesses.
Ed Vitagliano: I will just point out that this is costing the city something. I don't know, it's four million dollars for the pilot program. In San Francisco, in 2022, they spent 1.7 million dollars to put up one single toilet.
Steve Paisley-Jordan: We were hearing about that.
Ed Vitagliano: The reason why is that a lot of businesses won't let even their patrons use the restrooms anymore, because the problem is so pervasive.
Wesley Wildmon: This is dystopian. Can you imagine? You're like cattle, folks, in New York City. You're on the fringe of the dystopian future when a voice tells you, "Please finish your business. Please remember, one square of toilet paper per person."
Ed Vitagliano: Well, that's crazy. Your time is up.
Tony Vitagliano: We mentioned this in the story meeting this morning. The reason our founders said a republic can only exist if we have a moral populace is for this. The country, especially in big cities, is decaying, where you have homeless people, addicts, and all kinds of other things going on.
Ed Vitagliano: Wow. Is that being proved in New York City? All right, we're done. More great programming directly ahead.
Ed Vitagliano fills in for Tim Wildmon, joined by Wesley Wildmon, Tony Vitagliano, and Steve Paisley-Jordan. The program examines Macklemore’s removal from Ed Sheeran’s tour after political remarks about Gaza, Palestine, and ICE, along with Robert Kraft’s role in the decision. The hosts discuss whether using a concert platform for political activism carries professional consequences and consider concerns about antisemitism, Israel, and growing ideological divisions in American entertainment and politics. They also offer their analysis of how these issues could affect the Democratic Party and the country’s future. The program closes with a discussion of New York City’s rollout of 17 free public toilets, including the units’ ten-minute time limit and the city’s stated concerns about homelessness and drug addiction.
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