Tim Wildmon: Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Tim and Wesley and Ray. Ray's in Florida.
Wesley: And Steve Jordanoff, Steve Paisley Jordanoff, joined us.
Steve: We're in Mississippi.
Wesley: Yes, we are.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know which one of us got a banjo on our knee.
Wesley: Wait a minute, wrong song.
Steve: Yeah, wrong song. Wrong state, too.
Tim Wildmon: Went from Louisiana to Alabama with a banjo, huh? Somebody who did that, who went to, who did that? Do you know that song?
Steve: That would have been someone like, "Oh, Susanna." "Susanna, she went to, from Louisiana to Alabama with a banjo."
Wesley: And she had to go through Mississippi, you would think.
Steve: She must have had to.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know how you do that, with a banjo on your knee. You got somebody driving you, I guess.
Wesley: Of course, a carriage, I guess.
Tim Wildmon: I don't care. Maybe it's just a silly little song.
Steve: Maybe it's not. There's a lot of those that are catchy, though.
Wesley: That's true. We'll be talking about that a little bit later.
Tim Wildmon: By the way, today is National Coffee Day. Did you know this?
Wesley: Not until you sent the article around.
Tim Wildmon: Have you done, Tim, have you done your patriotic duty then?
Wesley: Oh, yeah.
Tim Wildmon: I'm a coffee consumer.
Wesley: It better be good for you, because if it ain't, I'm in trouble.
Tim Wildmon: But yeah, I drink coffee. I love coffee. Probably six out of seven days, I drink coffee in the morning.
Wesley: How much, just out of curiosity, how much on an average day is for you? How many cups?
Tim Wildmon: Okay, so I don't fill my cup up because I don't like my coffee to get cold. So I only go with about a quarter of a glass, or maybe a half a cup. That's the most I go, because I don't like my coffee to go lukewarm.
Wesley: I like cold coffee, actually.
Tim Wildmon: I like hot coffee. I'm not a big fan of lukewarm coffee.
Steve: I'm kind of like, that's a biblical view right there.
Tim Wildmon: I like the Lord.
Wesley: Yeah, I like the Lord, the view.
Tim Wildmon: So what about you, Steve? You drink coffee?
Wesley: You don't drink coffee.
Tim Wildmon: You don't?
Steve: No. Occasionally I'll have something if it's sweet, like I'll have a black coffee with dessert, or an espresso with dessert.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah. What about you, Wes? Are you a coffee man?
Wesley: I was for a long time, and then I misused it and I started getting my heart racing.
Tim Wildmon: You can misuse coffee?
Wesley: You can. Let me tell you how to do it. I skipped breakfast, and I would have about five to six cups before the show.
Tim Wildmon: And then that caught up to you?
Wesley: Yes. I had that catch up to me about a year ago, and I started having some heart racing.
Tim Wildmon: You think?
Wesley: But at the time, I was knocking down five or six cups before ten o'clock.
Tim Wildmon: That's what you were doing?
Wesley: I was, but I did it for two or three years with no issues. Then all of a sudden, I started having problems, so I went to the doctor.
Tim Wildmon: You're serious?
Wesley: I'm serious. They called it PVCs, which could be caffeine-related.
Steve: Could be. There are some other things it could be, but on the checklist of things to stop, that was at the top.
Wesley: So I stopped drinking coffee for a week, and it went away.
Tim Wildmon: How about decaf? You can drink decaf.
Wesley: Well, that would not be misusing it.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
Wesley: It's been a while, so I'll have two cups a week, three cups a week. I'm trying to ease back in.
Tim Wildmon: What about you, Ray?
Ray: Yeah, there's a National Coffee Day, folks, in case you're wondering why we're talking about this topic. And Ray, you drink coffee, do you?
Ray: I had a Red Bull this morning. Does that count as coffee?
Wesley: I think that's stretching beyond the definition.
Ray: An eight-ounce Red Bull is one and a half cups of coffee.
Tim Wildmon: Why do people drink Red Bull, is my question.
Ray: Same thing. I just want to start the day.
Tim Wildmon: Do you do it for the taste, or do you do it for the sole purpose of jump-starting your day?
Ray: Okay, well, really, just to start the day. But I don't drink that regular Red Bull stuff. I can't do that. They have that summer flavor called sudachi.
Wesley: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray: Which comes from my wife. They're in the newspaper.
Wesley: Wait a minute. That's Sudoku.
Ray: Oh, my bad. I'm sorry. I got confused.
Tim Wildmon: Close enough.
Wesley: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: Anyway, it's National Coffee Day for those who enjoy coffee. Steve doesn't.
Steve: No.
Tim Wildmon: Ray's an outlier.
Steve: I'm an outlier in my own family. The boys do, my wife does, but no coffee for me.
Wesley: Maybe you have to develop a taste for it.
Tim Wildmon: I enjoy it. All right, go ahead, Steve. What's your first story?
Steve: Well, let's get an update on what's going on over at Ole Miss. We still do not have a toxicology report to tell us exactly what happened to the two young men, as college students at Ole Miss, who died the other day.
Steve: To set this up, two students, Aidan Hamilton and Robert Strang, both died on September 21 at separate locations in Oxford. Next to the bodies, pills were found. We have discovered that they were a specific product called SMACS pseudo-DHM tablets, which are a very concentrated form of kratom, plus some other chemicals.
Tim Wildmon: How do you spell kratom?
Steve: K-R-A-T-O-M.
Tim Wildmon: K-R-A-T-O-M. Kratom. And what is kratom, for those who don't know?
Steve: Kratom in its original form is a plant. It's native, I believe, to Southeast Asia, and they chew the leaf of this. It gives them a moderate high and everything, but in concentrated forms, it gives you a stronger high. It is good for pain relief, and it is very addictive.
Steve: It is legal in sporadic counties here in Mississippi. I haven't looked at what the rest of the country is like, but there is a National Kratom Association, I find out, so there must be some states that outlaw it altogether.
Steve: I was talking to Perry Salford here on our news team. He hails from Louisiana originally. He said that kratom is banned in the whole state.
Tim Wildmon: It might be, and it probably should be.
Steve: Other states, although this kratom association wants to find some medicinal uses for it. That doesn't mean you couldn't get it on the prescription black market.
Steve: This one they found out from Fox reporter Madison Scarpino, who has been doing some research. They found out that they bought these particular packages of pills at a vape store in Oxford called Puff's Vape and Tobacco. It's on Heritage Drive in Oxford.
Wesley: People in Topeka don't have any idea what you're talking about.
Steve: No, and it doesn't really matter. But an undercover agent went into this place after the students had died to see if he could get some more. Madison Scarpino picks up the story.
Madison Scarpino: The court documents say investigators traced Aidan's bank records in the days leading up to his death to a nearby vape, tobacco, and beer store, where two men were arrested after investigators say a confidential informant went inside and bought similar kratom-like pills just days after the deaths. The clerk allegedly told the informant to be careful taking the pills because people were dying from them, and he also told the informant to be quiet about the pills.
Tim Wildmon: Wow. How addictive is that? They tell you people are dying from these, and you still buy them?
Wesley: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: So it's called kratom. I'm a little bit embarrassed to say I never even heard of that before these two deaths. Ray, it's so sad and tragic. These two young men at Ole Miss, these students who died last week, they both bought this from the same place?
Ray: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: But they didn't know each other?
Ray: I don't know if they knew each other, but they didn't die together, partying.
Tim Wildmon: Correct.
Ray: One died on campus, and the other died off campus. We do not have the toxicology reports to find out if kratom had anything to do at all with their deaths.
Tim Wildmon: Right. You know, have you heard of this drug?
Ray: I had only seen it mentioned in a story. I've learned basically everything I know about it in our discussions here on the air.
Tim Wildmon: What surprises me, Steve, is what you made clear. Here you have a guy selling it, warning people, "Be careful, because some people are dying from it." Not only is he still selling it, it's still legal to sell.
Steve: Yeah. If someone told me someone was dying from this, I wouldn't buy it.
Wesley: But you think about this. This is called "gas station heroin," and it is addictive. If you are addicted and you need some of this in order to stay well, I don't know what it feels like to be addicted.
Tim Wildmon: I mean, if you had a heroin addict going off heroin, you need it. You're going to buy it even if they tell you it could kill you.
Wesley: A lot of people think it can't hurt you as badly, maybe because it's a synthetic or man-made drug, because this is natural. But that's not true.
Steve: Heroin is natural.
Wesley: Well, that's true.
Tim Wildmon: Kratom. Anyway, next story.
Steve: There's a lady over at Fox named Carol Markowitz who is warning parents that there is a kids' show called Miss Rachel. Miss Rachel is kind of a Mr. Rogers-type person for very young kids.
Steve: She does not only do the regular, "Here's the letter of the day." She has become very, very political. She's on the internet, mostly on YouTube.
Tim Wildmon: Wesley has young children and is familiar with this world. Who is she? What's her name?
Wesley: Miss Rachel.
Tim Wildmon: What do you know about her?
Wesley: She probably has her own website where her content is on there as well, but she became most popular among adults with young children on YouTube. She's been popular for about five years.
Wesley: She's akin to what baby boomers would know as Mr. Rogers, or the kind of thing Captain Kangaroo did.
Steve: Yes. I want to give you a little example. You're going to hear her introduce a letter of the day. One of the people she brings on at the beginning of this clip is a known Hamas supporter. Then you're going to hear her with Mayor Mamdani in front of some kids. She's going to thank the kids and wish all the kids happy Pride. These are little three-year-olds.
Miss Rachel: Friends, what's the letter of the day? It's M. I'm Rachel. Hi. Yes, it's M for my friend Matas. Yay! Hi! Happy Pride to all of our wonderful families and friends. This month and every month, I celebrate you. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're exactly who you are. Oh my goodness! Today, the mayor's on the bus!
Miss Rachel: The mayor on the bus says, "Hello, friends." Can you be? Show us the words!
Mira Mamdani: The mayor on the bus says hello, friends, hello, friends, hello, friends. The mayor on the bus says hello, friends, all through the town.
Miss Rachel: The money on the bus goes clink, clink, clink.
Mira Mamdani: The buses are going to be free, though.
Miss Rachel: That's so wonderful.
Mira Mamdani: This is my song, and the kids like to do it.
Miss Rachel: Okay. Actually, I have another one.
Mira Mamdani: Yeah, I have another one.
Miss Rachel: The babies on the bus go, "Where, where, where, where, where."
Mira Mamdani: Aren't the babies happy about the child care?
Miss Rachel: They're so happy.
Mira Mamdani: Actually, the parents are really happy.
Miss Rachel: This is like my big hit. I need to, like, this is your shot.
Steve: That was her and Mira Mamdani playing their trait together.
Wesley: Yeah.
Steve: She's a New Yorker, I guess.
Steve: One Million Moms took note of her. Back in June 2024, they sent out a notice to parents to be aware of her.
Wesley: What bothers me is that when somebody builds an audience and builds trust by talking, especially with kids, about things that are common to all of us, things we can all agree on, such as colors and numbers, and then turns around and surprises them with this left-wing politics, which is what she's doing right there, she'll probably lose some viewers, and rightfully so. But the point is, she is a very popular host.
Tim Wildmon: What did you mean about a terrorist supporter?
Steve: The first person, remember, the letter of the day was M, and it was a terrorist supporter, a friend of hers who is associated with Hamas. I left the specifics at my desk, but this is a person who is strongly linked to Hamas. She is very vocal about what's going on in Gaza and calls it a genocide.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, I got you. She's bringing her on to her show.
Steve: The reason this is important to our listening audience is because a lot of her content, especially early on as she was building her platform and her audience, is very innocent, helpful, and entertaining for kids. It's clean, wholesome content. But now there's been a great shift over the last couple of years.
Wesley: I noticed this in one of her episodes on YouTube. We obviously quit following her and quit watching her because of it, but she was having someone transgender on there. She started off trickling it in, for a minute out of a thirty-minute episode, with LGBTQ material. I saw it right away, and we cut it off altogether.
Wesley: Since I've cut it off, she's ramped up her politics. So just be aware of that.
Tim Wildmon: What's her name?
Wesley: Miss Rachel.
Tim Wildmon: If you've got young kids and they've been watching her while you've been cooking, just know that that's what you're dealing with now.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. Tim, Wesley, Steve, and Ray.
Steve: Some people might say the adult version of Miss Rachel would be James Talarico, who is running for the Democratic Senate nomination in Texas.
Tim Wildmon: Correct.
Steve: He has, as Newsmax says, been putting on his Christian skin suit again. He has a new video out where he is saying that his socialist views are biblical. This is what he means.
James Talarico: When Jesus healed the sick, he didn't ask for a deductible. So when I fight for universal health care, I'm doing it on biblical grounds.
James Talarico: When Jesus fed the hungry, he didn't price gouge to turn a profit. So when I say that no child in the state of Texas should go to bed hungry, I'm doing it on biblical grounds.
James Talarico: When the Hebrew prophets saw corruption in high places, they spoke truth to power. So when I take on the politicians who are serving themselves and not the people, I am doing it on biblical grounds.
Wesley: You keep doing that.
Tim Wildmon: All right, so I have a problem here, and the problem is there's just too much Christianity in politics here.
Wesley: Yeah. Where's the separation of church and state? I almost feel like I got proselytized there.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, right.
Wesley: These Christian activists like that need to be banned. I don't want to hear about his religion anymore. I'm tired of him reading from the Bible.
Tim Wildmon: Good.
Wesley: I have a question for Ray. He is saying that socialism is biblical.
Tim Wildmon: By the way, we were being sarcastic there. Wesley and I were mocking, because when it's us on the right, on the conservative side, who bring biblical issues and biblical principles to apply to politics, we're told, "Keep your religion to yourself." But when it's left-wing politics, they don't say, "Keep your religion to yourself."
Tim Wildmon: Go ahead, Steve.
Steve: Well played, both of you.
Tim Wildmon: Thank you.
Steve: Does the Bible support us in saying that biblical things mean we should be involved in national health care, et cetera?
Tim Wildmon: It does not.
Steve: Okay, let's just be clear about this. Jesus worked miracles. He worked miracles to meet the needs of the people who were there. He worked miracles to demonstrate to the world that he truly was who he said he was, the one and only Son of God.
Steve: It's a very false, and I would even say fake, theology that tries to reason from the miracles of Jesus to somehow provide free health care for everybody.
Tim Wildmon: I also have to say this about Talarico. He's a good speaker.
Wesley: He is that.
Tim Wildmon: He is. If you just listen to him.
Steve: Yes, he is.
Wesley: He's very good.
Tim Wildmon: I can see how untaught people, or people who are loosely religious, would hear that and go, "Oh, Jesus wants me to vote for him."
Steve: Amen, brother.
Tim Wildmon: That's what you want them to say. "Jesus didn't charge a deductible."
Wesley: Jesus did a lot of things. He also tied a whip together and turned over some tables. There's a bunch of things we're leaving out here.
Tim Wildmon: Anyway, I'm going to tell folks in Texas, if they listen to our network, you're going to have to go out and vote and get your friends and family to go vote in this election coming up for the Senate.
Tim Wildmon: Every poll I've seen in the last month has Talarico beating Paxton.
Ray: But now they're close. They're within two, three, or four points usually.
Tim Wildmon: It's going to be a close election, if you define what I just said as close. I think that is. Still, the Democrats have not won Texas in a Senate race since 1988, I think. It's been that long, but they're threatening to win that one.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know exactly why, because Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, is ahead, and he's going to win. But the Republican candidate, these are the same voters, all right? The same voters are going to cast a vote for Senate and governor on the same day, and yet Abbott is ahead and Paxton is behind. I don't know exactly why that is. Ray, do you understand anything about what's going on?
Ray: There are certain things said about Ken Paxton, his background, his marriage, and things that have been used against him, as well as questions about how much support he's getting from the Republican establishment. If I had to guess, and it's just a guess, it's going to be close. I think Ken Paxton will probably pull it out. But Governor Abbott is going to go back into office, I think overwhelmingly. The Senate race is going to be a whole lot closer.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, do you know, in Texas, can you be elected more than twice as governor? In most states, you're termed out after two consecutive elections as governor, but it seems like Abbott's been there a long time.
Ray: I don't know what the rules are in Texas as far as how long he's been governor.
Tim Wildmon: Can you be elected more than twice? That's what I want to know.
Wesley: Some states don't have a term limit. You can be governor for as long as you can be elected.
Tim Wildmon: Are you typing that in?
Wesley: I am, but my fingers don't work very well.
Tim Wildmon: I'll just ask, can you be elected more than twice in Texas?
Wesley: That's what I'm asking for governor.
Tim Wildmon: While we're getting the answer there, I'll say this. When you get two candidates of the same Republican party who are pretty close in mind, or at least in practice, their personal life is more persuasive as an argument to choose one over the other. That's an added layer to what kind of person they are.
Tim Wildmon: But when you're talking about Talarico and Ken Paxton, the argument about what's going on in their personal lives shouldn't even be part of the discussion because of the policy that's going to be in place if the alternative wins.
Wesley: There are no term limits for governor in Texas.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, that's what I thought. Type in how many times Abbott has been governor.
Wesley: I know a lot of others in Texas know the answer and they're letting me know by shouting at the radio, but I'm just curious, because it seems like Abbott's been there. Maybe he came after Rick Perry. I don't know if there was somebody in between.
Wesley: Abbott has served three terms. He's been elected for three terms already, in 2014, 2018, and 2022.
Tim Wildmon: All right, type in Costello.
Wesley: We got it.
Tim Wildmon: We'll be back, folks. We have a very important podcast by Stephen McDowell on overcoming socialism in America through biblical capitalism. He's got two episodes. I listened to both of them. They give you great, articulate words. We're going to sign off with those podcasts with Stephen McDowell, America's Providential History.
Tim Wildmon: Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Tim and Wesley and Ray. Ray's in Florida.
Wesley: And Steve Jordanoff, Steve Paisley Jordanoff, joined us.
Steve: We're in Mississippi.
Wesley: Yes, we are.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know which one of us got a banjo on our knee.
Wesley: Wait a minute, wrong song.
Steve: Yeah, wrong song. Wrong state, too.
Tim Wildmon: Went from Louisiana to Alabama with a banjo, huh? Somebody who did that, who went to, who did that? Do you know that song?
Steve: That would have been someone like, "Oh, Susanna." "Susanna, she went to, from Louisiana to Alabama with a banjo."
Wesley: And she had to go through Mississippi, you would think.
Steve: She must have had to.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know how you do that, with a banjo on your knee. You got somebody driving you, I guess.
Wesley: Of course, a carriage, I guess.
Tim Wildmon: I don't care. Maybe it's just a silly little song.
Steve: Maybe it's not. There's a lot of those that are catchy, though.
Wesley: That's true. We'll be talking about that a little bit later.
Tim Wildmon: By the way, today is National Coffee Day. Did you know this?
Wesley: Not until you sent the article around.
Tim Wildmon: Have you done, Tim, have you done your patriotic duty then?
Wesley: Oh, yeah.
Tim Wildmon: I'm a coffee consumer.
Wesley: It better be good for you, because if it ain't, I'm in trouble.
Tim Wildmon: But yeah, I drink coffee. I love coffee. Probably six out of seven days, I drink coffee in the morning.
Wesley: How much, just out of curiosity, how much on an average day is for you? How many cups?
Tim Wildmon: Okay, so I don't fill my cup up because I don't like my coffee to get cold. So I only go with about a quarter of a glass, or maybe a half a cup. That's the most I go, because I don't like my coffee to go lukewarm.
Wesley: I like cold coffee, actually.
Tim Wildmon: I like hot coffee. I'm not a big fan of lukewarm coffee.
Steve: I'm kind of like, that's a biblical view right there.
Tim Wildmon: I like the Lord.
Wesley: Yeah, I like the Lord, the view.
Tim Wildmon: So what about you, Steve? You drink coffee?
Wesley: You don't drink coffee.
Tim Wildmon: You don't?
Steve: No. Occasionally I'll have something if it's sweet, like I'll have a black coffee with dessert, or an espresso with dessert.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah. What about you, Wes? Are you a coffee man?
Wesley: I was for a long time, and then I misused it and I started getting my heart racing.
Tim Wildmon: You can misuse coffee?
Wesley: You can. Let me tell you how to do it. I skipped breakfast, and I would have about five to six cups before the show.
Tim Wildmon: And then that caught up to you?
Wesley: Yes. I had that catch up to me about a year ago, and I started having some heart racing.
Tim Wildmon: You think?
Wesley: But at the time, I was knocking down five or six cups before ten o'clock.
Tim Wildmon: That's what you were doing?
Wesley: I was, but I did it for two or three years with no issues. Then all of a sudden, I started having problems, so I went to the doctor.
Tim Wildmon: You're serious?
Wesley: I'm serious. They called it PVCs, which could be caffeine-related.
Steve: Could be. There are some other things it could be, but on the checklist of things to stop, that was at the top.
Wesley: So I stopped drinking coffee for a week, and it went away.
Tim Wildmon: How about decaf? You can drink decaf.
Wesley: Well, that would not be misusing it.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
Wesley: It's been a while, so I'll have two cups a week, three cups a week. I'm trying to ease back in.
Tim Wildmon: What about you, Ray?
Ray: Yeah, there's a National Coffee Day, folks, in case you're wondering why we're talking about this topic. And Ray, you drink coffee, do you?
Ray: I had a Red Bull this morning. Does that count as coffee?
Wesley: I think that's stretching beyond the definition.
Ray: An eight-ounce Red Bull is one and a half cups of coffee.
Tim Wildmon: Why do people drink Red Bull, is my question.
Ray: Same thing. I just want to start the day.
Tim Wildmon: Do you do it for the taste, or do you do it for the sole purpose of jump-starting your day?
Ray: Okay, well, really, just to start the day. But I don't drink that regular Red Bull stuff. I can't do that. They have that summer flavor called sudachi.
Wesley: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray: Which comes from my wife. They're in the newspaper.
Wesley: Wait a minute. That's Sudoku.
Ray: Oh, my bad. I'm sorry. I got confused.
Tim Wildmon: Close enough.
Wesley: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: Anyway, it's National Coffee Day for those who enjoy coffee. Steve doesn't.
Steve: No.
Tim Wildmon: Ray's an outlier.
Steve: I'm an outlier in my own family. The boys do, my wife does, but no coffee for me.
Wesley: Maybe you have to develop a taste for it.
Tim Wildmon: I enjoy it. All right, go ahead, Steve. What's your first story?
Steve: Well, let's get an update on what's going on over at Ole Miss. We still do not have a toxicology report to tell us exactly what happened to the two young men, as college students at Ole Miss, who died the other day.
Steve: To set this up, two students, Aidan Hamilton and Robert Strang, both died on September 21 at separate locations in Oxford. Next to the bodies, pills were found. We have discovered that they were a specific product called SMACS pseudo-DHM tablets, which are a very concentrated form of kratom, plus some other chemicals.
Tim Wildmon: How do you spell kratom?
Steve: K-R-A-T-O-M.
Tim Wildmon: K-R-A-T-O-M. Kratom. And what is kratom, for those who don't know?
Steve: Kratom in its original form is a plant. It's native, I believe, to Southeast Asia, and they chew the leaf of this. It gives them a moderate high and everything, but in concentrated forms, it gives you a stronger high. It is good for pain relief, and it is very addictive.
Steve: It is legal in sporadic counties here in Mississippi. I haven't looked at what the rest of the country is like, but there is a National Kratom Association, I find out, so there must be some states that outlaw it altogether.
Steve: I was talking to Perry Salford here on our news team. He hails from Louisiana originally. He said that kratom is banned in the whole state.
Tim Wildmon: It might be, and it probably should be.
Steve: Other states, although this kratom association wants to find some medicinal uses for it. That doesn't mean you couldn't get it on the prescription black market.
Steve: This one they found out from Fox reporter Madison Scarpino, who has been doing some research. They found out that they bought these particular packages of pills at a vape store in Oxford called Puff's Vape and Tobacco. It's on Heritage Drive in Oxford.
Wesley: People in Topeka don't have any idea what you're talking about.
Steve: No, and it doesn't really matter. But an undercover agent went into this place after the students had died to see if he could get some more. Madison Scarpino picks up the story.
Madison Scarpino: The court documents say investigators traced Aidan's bank records in the days leading up to his death to a nearby vape, tobacco, and beer store, where two men were arrested after investigators say a confidential informant went inside and bought similar kratom-like pills just days after the deaths. The clerk allegedly told the informant to be careful taking the pills because people were dying from them, and he also told the informant to be quiet about the pills.
Tim Wildmon: Wow. How addictive is that? They tell you people are dying from these, and you still buy them?
Wesley: Yeah.
Tim Wildmon: So it's called kratom. I'm a little bit embarrassed to say I never even heard of that before these two deaths. Ray, it's so sad and tragic. These two young men at Ole Miss, these students who died last week, they both bought this from the same place?
Ray: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: But they didn't know each other?
Ray: I don't know if they knew each other, but they didn't die together, partying.
Tim Wildmon: Correct.
Ray: One died on campus, and the other died off campus. We do not have the toxicology reports to find out if kratom had anything to do at all with their deaths.
Tim Wildmon: Right. You know, have you heard of this drug?
Ray: I had only seen it mentioned in a story. I've learned basically everything I know about it in our discussions here on the air.
Tim Wildmon: What surprises me, Steve, is what you made clear. Here you have a guy selling it, warning people, "Be careful, because some people are dying from it." Not only is he still selling it, it's still legal to sell.
Steve: Yeah. If someone told me someone was dying from this, I wouldn't buy it.
Wesley: But you think about this. This is called "gas station heroin," and it is addictive. If you are addicted and you need some of this in order to stay well, I don't know what it feels like to be addicted.
Tim Wildmon: I mean, if you had a heroin addict going off heroin, you need it. You're going to buy it even if they tell you it could kill you.
Wesley: A lot of people think it can't hurt you as badly, maybe because it's a synthetic or man-made drug, because this is natural. But that's not true.
Steve: Heroin is natural.
Wesley: Well, that's true.
Tim Wildmon: Kratom. Anyway, next story.
Steve: There's a lady over at Fox named Carol Markowitz who is warning parents that there is a kids' show called Miss Rachel. Miss Rachel is kind of a Mr. Rogers-type person for very young kids.
Steve: She does not only do the regular, "Here's the letter of the day." She has become very, very political. She's on the internet, mostly on YouTube.
Tim Wildmon: Wesley has young children and is familiar with this world. Who is she? What's her name?
Wesley: Miss Rachel.
Tim Wildmon: What do you know about her?
Wesley: She probably has her own website where her content is on there as well, but she became most popular among adults with young children on YouTube. She's been popular for about five years.
Wesley: She's akin to what baby boomers would know as Mr. Rogers, or the kind of thing Captain Kangaroo did.
Steve: Yes. I want to give you a little example. You're going to hear her introduce a letter of the day. One of the people she brings on at the beginning of this clip is a known Hamas supporter. Then you're going to hear her with Mayor Mamdani in front of some kids. She's going to thank the kids and wish all the kids happy Pride. These are little three-year-olds.
Miss Rachel: Friends, what's the letter of the day? It's M. I'm Rachel. Hi. Yes, it's M for my friend Matas. Yay! Hi! Happy Pride to all of our wonderful families and friends. This month and every month, I celebrate you. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're exactly who you are. Oh my goodness! Today, the mayor's on the bus!
Miss Rachel: The mayor on the bus says, "Hello, friends." Can you be? Show us the words!
Mira Mamdani: The mayor on the bus says hello, friends, hello, friends, hello, friends. The mayor on the bus says hello, friends, all through the town.
Miss Rachel: The money on the bus goes clink, clink, clink.
Mira Mamdani: The buses are going to be free, though.
Miss Rachel: That's so wonderful.
Mira Mamdani: This is my song, and the kids like to do it.
Miss Rachel: Okay. Actually, I have another one.
Mira Mamdani: Yeah, I have another one.
Miss Rachel: The babies on the bus go, "Where, where, where, where, where."
Mira Mamdani: Aren't the babies happy about the child care?
Miss Rachel: They're so happy.
Mira Mamdani: Actually, the parents are really happy.
Miss Rachel: This is like my big hit. I need to, like, this is your shot.
Steve: That was her and Mira Mamdani playing their trait together.
Wesley: Yeah.
Steve: She's a New Yorker, I guess.
Steve: One Million Moms took note of her. Back in June 2024, they sent out a notice to parents to be aware of her.
Wesley: What bothers me is that when somebody builds an audience and builds trust by talking, especially with kids, about things that are common to all of us, things we can all agree on, such as colors and numbers, and then turns around and surprises them with this left-wing politics, which is what she's doing right there, she'll probably lose some viewers, and rightfully so. But the point is, she is a very popular host.
Tim Wildmon: What did you mean about a terrorist supporter?
Steve: The first person, remember, the letter of the day was M, and it was a terrorist supporter, a friend of hers who is associated with Hamas. I left the specifics at my desk, but this is a person who is strongly linked to Hamas. She is very vocal about what's going on in Gaza and calls it a genocide.
Tim Wildmon: Oh, I got you. She's bringing her on to her show.
Steve: The reason this is important to our listening audience is because a lot of her content, especially early on as she was building her platform and her audience, is very innocent, helpful, and entertaining for kids. It's clean, wholesome content. But now there's been a great shift over the last couple of years.
Wesley: I noticed this in one of her episodes on YouTube. We obviously quit following her and quit watching her because of it, but she was having someone transgender on there. She started off trickling it in, for a minute out of a thirty-minute episode, with LGBTQ material. I saw it right away, and we cut it off altogether.
Wesley: Since I've cut it off, she's ramped up her politics. So just be aware of that.
Tim Wildmon: What's her name?
Wesley: Miss Rachel.
Tim Wildmon: If you've got young kids and they've been watching her while you've been cooking, just know that that's what you're dealing with now.
Tim Wildmon: All right, you're listening to Today's Issues on American Family Radio. Tim, Wesley, Steve, and Ray.
Steve: Some people might say the adult version of Miss Rachel would be James Talarico, who is running for the Democratic Senate nomination in Texas.
Tim Wildmon: Correct.
Steve: He has, as Newsmax says, been putting on his Christian skin suit again. He has a new video out where he is saying that his socialist views are biblical. This is what he means.
James Talarico: When Jesus healed the sick, he didn't ask for a deductible. So when I fight for universal health care, I'm doing it on biblical grounds.
James Talarico: When Jesus fed the hungry, he didn't price gouge to turn a profit. So when I say that no child in the state of Texas should go to bed hungry, I'm doing it on biblical grounds.
James Talarico: When the Hebrew prophets saw corruption in high places, they spoke truth to power. So when I take on the politicians who are serving themselves and not the people, I am doing it on biblical grounds.
Wesley: You keep doing that.
Tim Wildmon: All right, so I have a problem here, and the problem is there's just too much Christianity in politics here.
Wesley: Yeah. Where's the separation of church and state? I almost feel like I got proselytized there.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah, right.
Wesley: These Christian activists like that need to be banned. I don't want to hear about his religion anymore. I'm tired of him reading from the Bible.
Tim Wildmon: Good.
Wesley: I have a question for Ray. He is saying that socialism is biblical.
Tim Wildmon: By the way, we were being sarcastic there. Wesley and I were mocking, because when it's us on the right, on the conservative side, who bring biblical issues and biblical principles to apply to politics, we're told, "Keep your religion to yourself." But when it's left-wing politics, they don't say, "Keep your religion to yourself."
Tim Wildmon: Go ahead, Steve.
Steve: Well played, both of you.
Tim Wildmon: Thank you.
Steve: Does the Bible support us in saying that biblical things mean we should be involved in national health care, et cetera?
Tim Wildmon: It does not.
Steve: Okay, let's just be clear about this. Jesus worked miracles. He worked miracles to meet the needs of the people who were there. He worked miracles to demonstrate to the world that he truly was who he said he was, the one and only Son of God.
Steve: It's a very false, and I would even say fake, theology that tries to reason from the miracles of Jesus to somehow provide free health care for everybody.
Tim Wildmon: I also have to say this about Talarico. He's a good speaker.
Wesley: He is that.
Tim Wildmon: He is. If you just listen to him.
Steve: Yes, he is.
Wesley: He's very good.
Tim Wildmon: I can see how untaught people, or people who are loosely religious, would hear that and go, "Oh, Jesus wants me to vote for him."
Steve: Amen, brother.
Tim Wildmon: That's what you want them to say. "Jesus didn't charge a deductible."
Wesley: Jesus did a lot of things. He also tied a whip together and turned over some tables. There's a bunch of things we're leaving out here.
Tim Wildmon: Anyway, I'm going to tell folks in Texas, if they listen to our network, you're going to have to go out and vote and get your friends and family to go vote in this election coming up for the Senate.
Tim Wildmon: Every poll I've seen in the last month has Talarico beating Paxton.
Ray: But now they're close. They're within two, three, or four points usually.
Tim Wildmon: It's going to be a close election, if you define what I just said as close. I think that is. Still, the Democrats have not won Texas in a Senate race since 1988, I think. It's been that long, but they're threatening to win that one.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know exactly why, because Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, is ahead, and he's going to win. But the Republican candidate, these are the same voters, all right? The same voters are going to cast a vote for Senate and governor on the same day, and yet Abbott is ahead and Paxton is behind. I don't know exactly why that is. Ray, do you understand anything about what's going on?
Ray: There are certain things said about Ken Paxton, his background, his marriage, and things that have been used against him, as well as questions about how much support he's getting from the Republican establishment. If I had to guess, and it's just a guess, it's going to be close. I think Ken Paxton will probably pull it out. But Governor Abbott is going to go back into office, I think overwhelmingly. The Senate race is going to be a whole lot closer.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, do you know, in Texas, can you be elected more than twice as governor? In most states, you're termed out after two consecutive elections as governor, but it seems like Abbott's been there a long time.
Ray: I don't know what the rules are in Texas as far as how long he's been governor.
Tim Wildmon: Can you be elected more than twice? That's what I want to know.
Wesley: Some states don't have a term limit. You can be governor for as long as you can be elected.
Tim Wildmon: Are you typing that in?
Wesley: I am, but my fingers don't work very well.
Tim Wildmon: I'll just ask, can you be elected more than twice in Texas?
Wesley: That's what I'm asking for governor.
Tim Wildmon: While we're getting the answer there, I'll say this. When you get two candidates of the same Republican party who are pretty close in mind, or at least in practice, their personal life is more persuasive as an argument to choose one over the other. That's an added layer to what kind of person they are.
Tim Wildmon: But when you're talking about Talarico and Ken Paxton, the argument about what's going on in their personal lives shouldn't even be part of the discussion because of the policy that's going to be in place if the alternative wins.
Wesley: There are no term limits for governor in Texas.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, that's what I thought. Type in how many times Abbott has been governor.
Wesley: I know a lot of others in Texas know the answer and they're letting me know by shouting at the radio, but I'm just curious, because it seems like Abbott's been there. Maybe he came after Rick Perry. I don't know if there was somebody in between.
Wesley: Abbott has served three terms. He's been elected for three terms already, in 2014, 2018, and 2022.
Tim Wildmon: All right, type in Costello.
Wesley: We got it.
Tim Wildmon: We'll be back, folks. We have a very important podcast by Stephen McDowell on overcoming socialism in America through biblical capitalism. He's got two episodes. I listened to both of them. They give you great, articulate words. We're going to sign off with those podcasts with Stephen McDowell, America's Providential History.
Tim Wildmon, Wesley, Steve, and Ray discuss the deaths of Ole Miss students Aidan Hamilton and Robert Strang in Oxford, Mississippi. Investigators found suspected kratom-based pills near the students, but the hosts note that toxicology reports have not confirmed whether the product contributed to their deaths. The hosts also warn parents about political and LGBTQ-related content associated with children’s entertainer Miss Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Accurso. They examine Texas Senate candidate James Talarico’s use of biblical language to support universal health care and other progressive policies, and discuss the closely watched race between Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton.
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