Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. I'm Tim with Parrish, Chris, and Steve. We thank you for listening to AFR. We've got 24 and a half minutes left to share brilliance, or share something. I'm not sure. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
Tim Wildmon: We were talking about the upcoming midterm elections, obviously taking place across America. You've got a lot of governorships up for grabs. A third of the U.S. Senate is up for grabs every two years. And then every two years, every House seat is up. That's what we've got going on. Thus, it's called the midterms. Where were we? Did we wrap this up? Chris, do you have something to bring up, or do we want to move on here?
Chris: I think we wrapped it up.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, we wrapped it up. Steve, over to you.
Steve: Let's talk about the Ed Sheeran tour. Many of you may remember we talked a little bit about this last Thursday. There's a gentleman named Macklemore, an artist who was opening for another artist named Ed Sheeran. Macklemore said some things from the stage about Palestine, like "Free Palestine," that upset the owner of one of the stadiums where this tour was scheduled to appear.
Tim Wildmon: Let me set the stage here for why we're having this conversation. If you were to say the name James Taylor, people in our audience would know who you were talking about. If you say Ed Sheeran, he is not as well known to our listening audience. People need to understand what we're talking about here. Ed Sheeran is today's James Taylor, or maybe even bigger, in terms of his international superstardom. He is almost the male equivalent of Taylor Swift. He is one of the biggest names in pop music.
Tim Wildmon: He's in the middle of a tour of North America, a stadium tour. That's how big he is. He doesn't play coliseums or arenas. He does stadiums. This is a big deal. He had another singing artist named Macklemore, which is a stage name, as one of his opening acts. You know how big bands or singers have somebody open for them, right?
Steve: This Macklemore fellow, who is barely well known in pop music circles, is opening for Ed Sheeran, and he does something. Tell folks what he did onstage.
Tim Wildmon: Well, I can actually let them listen to what he did onstage.
Steve: Okay. Macklemore was in New York, and he went onstage and said this.
Macklemore: So the people all the way in Gaza, 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 in America who have to live in fear because of this terrorist organization, ICE.
Steve: That's who we're talking about. He's championing the cause of Hamas.
Tim Wildmon: Yes, basically. One of the owners of the stadium where he was scheduled to perform is Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, who is Jewish. He did not take kindly to this and pressured Ed Sheeran to kick Macklemore off his tour.
Steve: Ed Sheeran released Macklemore. A lot of his other opening acts went with him in solidarity. Ed Sheeran was at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on September 19, and it was the first show after Macklemore was removed. He said this.
Ed Sheeran: It is a humanitarian issue, and I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore. What happened in Israel and the surrounding areas on October 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic, unjustifiable, and disproportionate. It's hard not to be broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilian lives and children's lives. The systemic injustice we're seeing unfold in the West Bank cannot be overlooked. I am always speaking to people across the spectrum to work out how to make a contribution that helps victims of these terrible times, and listening and learning, as I do not know enough.
Tim Wildmon: He has a very thick British accent, but what he was saying was, "Ed Sheeran." That's who we were hearing from there, the pop superstar. Do you think he's trying to play both sides of the fence here?
Steve: He kind of went back and forth there. I think he's marketing. He's trying not to upset people who consume his music, and he's trying to walk both sides.
Steve: I think people go to concerts to hear music, not to hear the political views of the person singing or playing, or the band's views pushed on them, unless you go to a place where you're expecting that and you know what you're getting into. If you go to a concert by a Christian artist, guess what? They're going to push their views on you because they are proclaiming a message about Jesus Christ and Christianity. Everybody knows that. You know what you're signing up for.
Steve: If you go to a concert by Bruce Springsteen, for example, you know you're going to get a heavy dose of left-wing politics. So many of these entertainers take in the crowd and the cheers for their vocal skills, music, and performance, and it's like they believe there's a demand to hear what they say about politics and their worldview. They can't separate it as I can and as you can, when you know that you buy a ticket and have a certain expectation for a certain type of performance.
Steve: Another thing here is that this Macklemore artist did this promotion of "Free Palestine," which is basically code for support of the cause of Hamas in Israel, without getting the approval of the headliner, Ed Sheeran. He sort of put him on the spot.
Tim Wildmon: From what I understand, this is how it went down. Macklemore does his "Free Palestine" speech. Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, also owns Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where the Patriots play. A lot of musical acts come to that stadium to perform before an audience.
Tim Wildmon: Robert Kraft is Jewish, and he said to Ed Sheeran, "You can't come here if this fellow Macklemore is going to get onstage and basically champion the cause of Free Palestine, because that's very hateful speech that he's proclaiming against Jews. It's very anti-Semitic, and you're not going to be able to do that in my stadium." That's what happened here.
Steve: Robert Kraft is not just a little bit Jewish. His childhood upbringing was very strictly observant. His dad hoped and wanted him to become a rabbi. That's the type of individual you're talking about, Robert Kraft. A lot of Jews are just culturally Jewish.
Chris: I am still confused as to why in the world a folk-pop singer like Ed Sheeran would have Macklemore as his opening act. Is he a rapper? That's his genre.
Steve: Let's go back to the seventies. We joke often on the show about the Carpenters. The Carpenters would not have had somebody from the Ramones or The Who open for them. That's what Ed Sheeran did here by having this guy be his opening act. I think it's disrespectful.
Tim Wildmon: Now, you heard Ed Sheeran earlier. He was basically weeping to the audience, saying there needs to be justice in Gaza and Palestine. Listen, this is another issue. You remember what started all this was the fact that Hamas went into Israel and butchered 1,100 people. You remember that? That October 7 attack is what set off all this.
Tim Wildmon: Israel then went in with its military and started taking out Hamas in Gaza. As a result, a lot of buildings were destroyed and people were displaced in Gaza. Those are real things that really did happen, but it was a response from Israel against what happened to its own people when I say 1,100 people were murdered that day.
Tim Wildmon: Almost immediately, people on the political left started to say, "Ceasefire, ceasefire. We need a ceasefire." My thought was, since when do you attack and murder 1,100 Jews and whoever else was there that day in Israel, and then get to set the terms of how Israel responds to that? That's kind of bizarre to me.
Steve: The word genocide has been brought up a lot by people on the left because there have been a number of civilians who have died in Gaza. But they died because Hamas used them as human shields. I have a clip here from Ben Shapiro talking about this. This is from an Oxford Union speech or debate. He starts by talking about the complaint that so many Palestinians have died.
Ben Shapiro: If, based on the numbers, more Germans died than Brits in World War II, did that mean the British were wrong in World War II? Because they did. Based on the numbers, that means Britain was wrong in World War II?
Ben Shapiro: Hamas keeps hiding civilians on top of the active combatants. Hamas thought that Israel was simply going to target civilians, and they wanted to save their own civilians. Theoretically, they would not put their rockets in apartment buildings.
Ben Shapiro: One of the things that drives me absolutely up a wall is this notion that Hamas itself knows that Israel is attempting to stop civilian casualties. There are tapes of Israel literally calling people standing outside buildings who work for Hamas, telling them, "Get the civilians out of the building. We're about to hit the building." The Hamas guy is saying, "I don't want them to get the people out of the building." The idea is, soldiers are saying, "Get them out or they're going to die," and Hamas says, "I want them to die."
Steve: Also, let me ask you this: Why isn't the cause of Ukraine popular with the left-wing Hollywood crowd? Why is it just the cause of the citizens of Gaza?
Chris: According to a clip we played months ago of Bill Maher, it's because the Jews aren't involved.
Steve: Well, I'm kind of growing to that conclusion myself. It's just hatred for the Jews.
Chris: Because otherwise, why wouldn't you say, "Free Ukraine"?
Steve: Why did Macklemore champion that? Maybe he does. I don't know.
Chris: Didn't they say that for a time? I mean, they didn't hold on to it long.
Steve: You mean the left? "Free Ukraine" wasn't that a thing for a little while?
Chris: I don't know.
Tim Wildmon: Listen, the situation in Israel is complicated in many respects, in the sense that you've got a division there that's been going on for decades and decades and decades of history. The Israelis tried to solve this by giving the Palestinian people their own land, and that was the Gaza Strip. They even removed Israel from it, which used to belong to Israel. Well, it still does in a sense that they can police it if they want to, but they tried to leave it alone.
Tim Wildmon: They removed a lot of Israelis. Remember this was in the news 15 or 20 years ago, when Israel went and removed Jews who lived in Gaza so that the Palestinians there, the Arabs there, could have their own land. But it's hatred that goes back a long, long time.
Tim Wildmon: When they say, "From the river to the sea," these Hamas types believe in killing all the Jews and driving them to the sea, annihilating them and getting rid of them. It's a hatred, and they teach this to their children. It's a hatred that runs deep and wide, and it's going to be hard to deal with.
Tim Wildmon: Israelis, in my view, just want to live in peace in the region. But you can't live in peace when people are firing rockets at you, killing your people, and committing acts of terrorism against your country.
Tim Wildmon: People on the left would say, "Well, Israel is committing acts of terror against them, too, by firing rockets into civilian areas." You see what I'm saying? So back and forth we go. Go ahead, Steve. You want to say something?
Steve: There's a lot of violence in that part of the world, but that's just misdefining words. Terrorism has a meaning, and it's not firing defensively against you. Getting into a war isn't terrorism by design.
Steve: There's a pernicious lie that keeps going through the West, which is that all the reason terrorism happens from Islamic countries or from the Middle East to the West is because of all the foreign policy that the United States has. We've meddled in their countries, we've taken resources from them, and they're just angry because of everything the West has done to them.
Steve: The actual reason there is terrorism coming from the East to the West is because the East has an inbred hatred that I believe is put there demonically against God's chosen people and those who defend God's chosen people. That's a spiritual twist on it that you're not going to hear from, and probably doesn't belong in, the secular media necessarily. But it is not a response to what the West has done. Terrorism happens because there are evil people who do terrorist things.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah. All right. Next story.
Steve: Since we're talking about it, do you want to sing a Macklemore song?
Tim Wildmon: I don't know any Macklemore songs.
Steve: Does anybody know any Macklemore?
Chris: I looked up the average price of a ticket in the U.S., and I think this is low. It's $130.
Tim Wildmon: For what?
Chris: The average price of a concert ticket.
Tim Wildmon: I'm not paying that after I drove there and it cost me $300 to drive there. I'm not going to go to a political stump.
Steve: Right.
Tim Wildmon: All right. President Trump announced Friday that he's banning CNN, Politico, and MS NOW, effective immediately, from the White House.
Chris: Who am I writing down?
Tim Wildmon: CNN.
Chris: CNN's banned?
Tim Wildmon: Politico, that's a news organization, and MS NOW.
Steve: It used to be MSNBC.
Tim Wildmon: I'm going to read you the Truth Social post. It is the most Trumpian thing ever. He writes, "I am proud to announce that effective immediately, I'm banning fake news CNN, MS NOW, who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to a lack of viewership and credibility, and Politico, the recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 million subscription, an all-time record, directly from the United States government under Crooked Joe Biden to keep them alive. Seems like corruption to me. From the White House as a result of their constant reported fake news. Other fake news media outlets to follow."
Tim Wildmon: What do you think about that, Steve?
Steve: I think it's petty.
Chris: I do, too. The news has always had a bias against Donald Trump, but you kind of have to bake that into the cake and move on.
Steve: Yeah, I agree. I don't think you should be banning news agencies just because they report news. The liberal news media has been against Republicans for as long as, back to Richard Nixon or so. That bias has always existed. I don't see the need to kick them out of the newsroom now.
Tim Wildmon: Maybe if there are only so many spots available. CNN has been around forever, and Politico and MSNBC now. Is he saying they can't come to the White House to cover it?
Chris: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: He has that right?
Steve: Well, it is his house.
Tim Wildmon: It is the people's house.
Steve: Yes, he does control who gets to come into the White House.
Tim Wildmon: They're going to sue, though.
Steve: They're going to go to court to try to get reinstated.
Tim Wildmon: What about this crowd? Where are Fox News in all this? Has Fox News said anything about this? Are they standing up with their media brethren, or are they going with Trump on this one?
Steve: I have not seen it.
Chris: It wouldn't surprise me.
Steve: The Correspondents' Association is the one that sets the seating arrangement in the White House. Usually, the media stick together when they consider something censorship.
Tim Wildmon: Bob Parrish, you've got an answer.
Bob Parrish: I've got something on the $8 million. They mean dollars.
Tim Wildmon: What?
Bob Parrish: Trump says, "$8 million subscription, an all-time record, from the U.S. government under Crooked Joe Biden." According to Variety, Trump's reference to the government subscriptions to Politico, the $8 million, is based on data from usaspending.gov, a government website that tracks federal spending. It showed government agencies collectively spent more than $8 million in combined payments.
Tim Wildmon: The federal government pays for its employees to sign up for a news service?
Bob Parrish: That's what you're talking about here. That's the word "subscriptions." But $8 million? How many people need that Politico subscription?
Tim Wildmon: And they share it.
Bob Parrish: Yeah.
Steve: The White House Correspondents' Association is headed by Jackie Heinrich, who at least at one point was a Fox reporter, and they are opposing this and saying it's a violation of the First Amendment.
Chris: At this point, why does it even matter? We've known CNN and MS NOW have been favoring left-wing politics for a long time.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know why now. Why now does Trump kick them out of the White House?
Chris: Interestingly enough, Jim Acosta, the CNN guy that Trump hated in the first term, and the feeling was mutual.
Steve: Yes. I did see Jim Acosta. He pops up every once in a while on MS NOW. He's now an MS NOW contributor.
Chris: Which stands for?
Steve: "My Source for News, Opinion and the World."
Chris: Was that a joke?
Steve: No, that's what it stands for.
Chris: Wow. What a claim.
Steve: It's very confusing.
Chris: Every time I see that, I'm thinking Mississippi.
Steve: Yeah, he didn't mess it up.
Chris: MS NOW? Mississippi Now?
Steve: Well, that's what I think when I see it here.
Chris: Yeah, I think Mississippi.
Tim Wildmon: So, CNN, Politico, we'll see what happens with it. I'm sure they'll go to court and try to get their reporters back in. The one up Trump really doesn't like is the young lady from CNN. I say young lady; she's probably in her thirties. Caitlin Collins.
Steve: Yeah. He didn't like her at all.
Tim Wildmon: He does not. He has never liked her.
Chris: She's the female Jim Acosta.
Steve: Again, the feeling is mutual.
Tim Wildmon: All right. Well, there's the music. We're out of stories and we're out of time. We thank you for yours, and we hope you have a wonderful rest of your Monday afternoon. For those who live in the Deep South, I don't know when this heat is going to relent. We're supposed to have highs in the eighties come Thursday.
Steve: Praise the Lord.
Chris: Thursday? For the first year of fall?
Steve: I was going to say, you'll never hear me complain. I hate cold weather, so you'll never hear me complain.
Tim Wildmon: Well, I'm about to start complaining, because 98 in the middle of September is just not right, people.
Steve: Right. Just not right.
Tim Wildmon: All right. We'll be back tomorrow.
Tim Wildmon: Hey, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. I'm Tim with Parrish, Chris, and Steve. We thank you for listening to AFR. We've got 24 and a half minutes left to share brilliance, or share something. I'm not sure. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
Tim Wildmon: We were talking about the upcoming midterm elections, obviously taking place across America. You've got a lot of governorships up for grabs. A third of the U.S. Senate is up for grabs every two years. And then every two years, every House seat is up. That's what we've got going on. Thus, it's called the midterms. Where were we? Did we wrap this up? Chris, do you have something to bring up, or do we want to move on here?
Chris: I think we wrapped it up.
Tim Wildmon: Okay, we wrapped it up. Steve, over to you.
Steve: Let's talk about the Ed Sheeran tour. Many of you may remember we talked a little bit about this last Thursday. There's a gentleman named Macklemore, an artist who was opening for another artist named Ed Sheeran. Macklemore said some things from the stage about Palestine, like "Free Palestine," that upset the owner of one of the stadiums where this tour was scheduled to appear.
Tim Wildmon: Let me set the stage here for why we're having this conversation. If you were to say the name James Taylor, people in our audience would know who you were talking about. If you say Ed Sheeran, he is not as well known to our listening audience. People need to understand what we're talking about here. Ed Sheeran is today's James Taylor, or maybe even bigger, in terms of his international superstardom. He is almost the male equivalent of Taylor Swift. He is one of the biggest names in pop music.
Tim Wildmon: He's in the middle of a tour of North America, a stadium tour. That's how big he is. He doesn't play coliseums or arenas. He does stadiums. This is a big deal. He had another singing artist named Macklemore, which is a stage name, as one of his opening acts. You know how big bands or singers have somebody open for them, right?
Steve: This Macklemore fellow, who is barely well known in pop music circles, is opening for Ed Sheeran, and he does something. Tell folks what he did onstage.
Tim Wildmon: Well, I can actually let them listen to what he did onstage.
Steve: Okay. Macklemore was in New York, and he went onstage and said this.
Macklemore: So the people all the way in Gaza, 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 in America who have to live in fear because of this terrorist organization, ICE.
Steve: That's who we're talking about. He's championing the cause of Hamas.
Tim Wildmon: Yes, basically. One of the owners of the stadium where he was scheduled to perform is Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, who is Jewish. He did not take kindly to this and pressured Ed Sheeran to kick Macklemore off his tour.
Steve: Ed Sheeran released Macklemore. A lot of his other opening acts went with him in solidarity. Ed Sheeran was at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on September 19, and it was the first show after Macklemore was removed. He said this.
Ed Sheeran: It is a humanitarian issue, and I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore. What happened in Israel and the surrounding areas on October 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic, unjustifiable, and disproportionate. It's hard not to be broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilian lives and children's lives. The systemic injustice we're seeing unfold in the West Bank cannot be overlooked. I am always speaking to people across the spectrum to work out how to make a contribution that helps victims of these terrible times, and listening and learning, as I do not know enough.
Tim Wildmon: He has a very thick British accent, but what he was saying was, "Ed Sheeran." That's who we were hearing from there, the pop superstar. Do you think he's trying to play both sides of the fence here?
Steve: He kind of went back and forth there. I think he's marketing. He's trying not to upset people who consume his music, and he's trying to walk both sides.
Steve: I think people go to concerts to hear music, not to hear the political views of the person singing or playing, or the band's views pushed on them, unless you go to a place where you're expecting that and you know what you're getting into. If you go to a concert by a Christian artist, guess what? They're going to push their views on you because they are proclaiming a message about Jesus Christ and Christianity. Everybody knows that. You know what you're signing up for.
Steve: If you go to a concert by Bruce Springsteen, for example, you know you're going to get a heavy dose of left-wing politics. So many of these entertainers take in the crowd and the cheers for their vocal skills, music, and performance, and it's like they believe there's a demand to hear what they say about politics and their worldview. They can't separate it as I can and as you can, when you know that you buy a ticket and have a certain expectation for a certain type of performance.
Steve: Another thing here is that this Macklemore artist did this promotion of "Free Palestine," which is basically code for support of the cause of Hamas in Israel, without getting the approval of the headliner, Ed Sheeran. He sort of put him on the spot.
Tim Wildmon: From what I understand, this is how it went down. Macklemore does his "Free Palestine" speech. Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, also owns Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where the Patriots play. A lot of musical acts come to that stadium to perform before an audience.
Tim Wildmon: Robert Kraft is Jewish, and he said to Ed Sheeran, "You can't come here if this fellow Macklemore is going to get onstage and basically champion the cause of Free Palestine, because that's very hateful speech that he's proclaiming against Jews. It's very anti-Semitic, and you're not going to be able to do that in my stadium." That's what happened here.
Steve: Robert Kraft is not just a little bit Jewish. His childhood upbringing was very strictly observant. His dad hoped and wanted him to become a rabbi. That's the type of individual you're talking about, Robert Kraft. A lot of Jews are just culturally Jewish.
Chris: I am still confused as to why in the world a folk-pop singer like Ed Sheeran would have Macklemore as his opening act. Is he a rapper? That's his genre.
Steve: Let's go back to the seventies. We joke often on the show about the Carpenters. The Carpenters would not have had somebody from the Ramones or The Who open for them. That's what Ed Sheeran did here by having this guy be his opening act. I think it's disrespectful.
Tim Wildmon: Now, you heard Ed Sheeran earlier. He was basically weeping to the audience, saying there needs to be justice in Gaza and Palestine. Listen, this is another issue. You remember what started all this was the fact that Hamas went into Israel and butchered 1,100 people. You remember that? That October 7 attack is what set off all this.
Tim Wildmon: Israel then went in with its military and started taking out Hamas in Gaza. As a result, a lot of buildings were destroyed and people were displaced in Gaza. Those are real things that really did happen, but it was a response from Israel against what happened to its own people when I say 1,100 people were murdered that day.
Tim Wildmon: Almost immediately, people on the political left started to say, "Ceasefire, ceasefire. We need a ceasefire." My thought was, since when do you attack and murder 1,100 Jews and whoever else was there that day in Israel, and then get to set the terms of how Israel responds to that? That's kind of bizarre to me.
Steve: The word genocide has been brought up a lot by people on the left because there have been a number of civilians who have died in Gaza. But they died because Hamas used them as human shields. I have a clip here from Ben Shapiro talking about this. This is from an Oxford Union speech or debate. He starts by talking about the complaint that so many Palestinians have died.
Ben Shapiro: If, based on the numbers, more Germans died than Brits in World War II, did that mean the British were wrong in World War II? Because they did. Based on the numbers, that means Britain was wrong in World War II?
Ben Shapiro: Hamas keeps hiding civilians on top of the active combatants. Hamas thought that Israel was simply going to target civilians, and they wanted to save their own civilians. Theoretically, they would not put their rockets in apartment buildings.
Ben Shapiro: One of the things that drives me absolutely up a wall is this notion that Hamas itself knows that Israel is attempting to stop civilian casualties. There are tapes of Israel literally calling people standing outside buildings who work for Hamas, telling them, "Get the civilians out of the building. We're about to hit the building." The Hamas guy is saying, "I don't want them to get the people out of the building." The idea is, soldiers are saying, "Get them out or they're going to die," and Hamas says, "I want them to die."
Steve: Also, let me ask you this: Why isn't the cause of Ukraine popular with the left-wing Hollywood crowd? Why is it just the cause of the citizens of Gaza?
Chris: According to a clip we played months ago of Bill Maher, it's because the Jews aren't involved.
Steve: Well, I'm kind of growing to that conclusion myself. It's just hatred for the Jews.
Chris: Because otherwise, why wouldn't you say, "Free Ukraine"?
Steve: Why did Macklemore champion that? Maybe he does. I don't know.
Chris: Didn't they say that for a time? I mean, they didn't hold on to it long.
Steve: You mean the left? "Free Ukraine" wasn't that a thing for a little while?
Chris: I don't know.
Tim Wildmon: Listen, the situation in Israel is complicated in many respects, in the sense that you've got a division there that's been going on for decades and decades and decades of history. The Israelis tried to solve this by giving the Palestinian people their own land, and that was the Gaza Strip. They even removed Israel from it, which used to belong to Israel. Well, it still does in a sense that they can police it if they want to, but they tried to leave it alone.
Tim Wildmon: They removed a lot of Israelis. Remember this was in the news 15 or 20 years ago, when Israel went and removed Jews who lived in Gaza so that the Palestinians there, the Arabs there, could have their own land. But it's hatred that goes back a long, long time.
Tim Wildmon: When they say, "From the river to the sea," these Hamas types believe in killing all the Jews and driving them to the sea, annihilating them and getting rid of them. It's a hatred, and they teach this to their children. It's a hatred that runs deep and wide, and it's going to be hard to deal with.
Tim Wildmon: Israelis, in my view, just want to live in peace in the region. But you can't live in peace when people are firing rockets at you, killing your people, and committing acts of terrorism against your country.
Tim Wildmon: People on the left would say, "Well, Israel is committing acts of terror against them, too, by firing rockets into civilian areas." You see what I'm saying? So back and forth we go. Go ahead, Steve. You want to say something?
Steve: There's a lot of violence in that part of the world, but that's just misdefining words. Terrorism has a meaning, and it's not firing defensively against you. Getting into a war isn't terrorism by design.
Steve: There's a pernicious lie that keeps going through the West, which is that all the reason terrorism happens from Islamic countries or from the Middle East to the West is because of all the foreign policy that the United States has. We've meddled in their countries, we've taken resources from them, and they're just angry because of everything the West has done to them.
Steve: The actual reason there is terrorism coming from the East to the West is because the East has an inbred hatred that I believe is put there demonically against God's chosen people and those who defend God's chosen people. That's a spiritual twist on it that you're not going to hear from, and probably doesn't belong in, the secular media necessarily. But it is not a response to what the West has done. Terrorism happens because there are evil people who do terrorist things.
Tim Wildmon: Yeah. All right. Next story.
Steve: Since we're talking about it, do you want to sing a Macklemore song?
Tim Wildmon: I don't know any Macklemore songs.
Steve: Does anybody know any Macklemore?
Chris: I looked up the average price of a ticket in the U.S., and I think this is low. It's $130.
Tim Wildmon: For what?
Chris: The average price of a concert ticket.
Tim Wildmon: I'm not paying that after I drove there and it cost me $300 to drive there. I'm not going to go to a political stump.
Steve: Right.
Tim Wildmon: All right. President Trump announced Friday that he's banning CNN, Politico, and MS NOW, effective immediately, from the White House.
Chris: Who am I writing down?
Tim Wildmon: CNN.
Chris: CNN's banned?
Tim Wildmon: Politico, that's a news organization, and MS NOW.
Steve: It used to be MSNBC.
Tim Wildmon: I'm going to read you the Truth Social post. It is the most Trumpian thing ever. He writes, "I am proud to announce that effective immediately, I'm banning fake news CNN, MS NOW, who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to a lack of viewership and credibility, and Politico, the recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 million subscription, an all-time record, directly from the United States government under Crooked Joe Biden to keep them alive. Seems like corruption to me. From the White House as a result of their constant reported fake news. Other fake news media outlets to follow."
Tim Wildmon: What do you think about that, Steve?
Steve: I think it's petty.
Chris: I do, too. The news has always had a bias against Donald Trump, but you kind of have to bake that into the cake and move on.
Steve: Yeah, I agree. I don't think you should be banning news agencies just because they report news. The liberal news media has been against Republicans for as long as, back to Richard Nixon or so. That bias has always existed. I don't see the need to kick them out of the newsroom now.
Tim Wildmon: Maybe if there are only so many spots available. CNN has been around forever, and Politico and MSNBC now. Is he saying they can't come to the White House to cover it?
Chris: Yes.
Tim Wildmon: He has that right?
Steve: Well, it is his house.
Tim Wildmon: It is the people's house.
Steve: Yes, he does control who gets to come into the White House.
Tim Wildmon: They're going to sue, though.
Steve: They're going to go to court to try to get reinstated.
Tim Wildmon: What about this crowd? Where are Fox News in all this? Has Fox News said anything about this? Are they standing up with their media brethren, or are they going with Trump on this one?
Steve: I have not seen it.
Chris: It wouldn't surprise me.
Steve: The Correspondents' Association is the one that sets the seating arrangement in the White House. Usually, the media stick together when they consider something censorship.
Tim Wildmon: Bob Parrish, you've got an answer.
Bob Parrish: I've got something on the $8 million. They mean dollars.
Tim Wildmon: What?
Bob Parrish: Trump says, "$8 million subscription, an all-time record, from the U.S. government under Crooked Joe Biden." According to Variety, Trump's reference to the government subscriptions to Politico, the $8 million, is based on data from usaspending.gov, a government website that tracks federal spending. It showed government agencies collectively spent more than $8 million in combined payments.
Tim Wildmon: The federal government pays for its employees to sign up for a news service?
Bob Parrish: That's what you're talking about here. That's the word "subscriptions." But $8 million? How many people need that Politico subscription?
Tim Wildmon: And they share it.
Bob Parrish: Yeah.
Steve: The White House Correspondents' Association is headed by Jackie Heinrich, who at least at one point was a Fox reporter, and they are opposing this and saying it's a violation of the First Amendment.
Chris: At this point, why does it even matter? We've known CNN and MS NOW have been favoring left-wing politics for a long time.
Tim Wildmon: I don't know why now. Why now does Trump kick them out of the White House?
Chris: Interestingly enough, Jim Acosta, the CNN guy that Trump hated in the first term, and the feeling was mutual.
Steve: Yes. I did see Jim Acosta. He pops up every once in a while on MS NOW. He's now an MS NOW contributor.
Chris: Which stands for?
Steve: "My Source for News, Opinion and the World."
Chris: Was that a joke?
Steve: No, that's what it stands for.
Chris: Wow. What a claim.
Steve: It's very confusing.
Chris: Every time I see that, I'm thinking Mississippi.
Steve: Yeah, he didn't mess it up.
Chris: MS NOW? Mississippi Now?
Steve: Well, that's what I think when I see it here.
Chris: Yeah, I think Mississippi.
Tim Wildmon: So, CNN, Politico, we'll see what happens with it. I'm sure they'll go to court and try to get their reporters back in. The one up Trump really doesn't like is the young lady from CNN. I say young lady; she's probably in her thirties. Caitlin Collins.
Steve: Yeah. He didn't like her at all.
Tim Wildmon: He does not. He has never liked her.
Chris: She's the female Jim Acosta.
Steve: Again, the feeling is mutual.
Tim Wildmon: All right. Well, there's the music. We're out of stories and we're out of time. We thank you for yours, and we hope you have a wonderful rest of your Monday afternoon. For those who live in the Deep South, I don't know when this heat is going to relent. We're supposed to have highs in the eighties come Thursday.
Steve: Praise the Lord.
Chris: Thursday? For the first year of fall?
Steve: I was going to say, you'll never hear me complain. I hate cold weather, so you'll never hear me complain.
Tim Wildmon: Well, I'm about to start complaining, because 98 in the middle of September is just not right, people.
Steve: Right. Just not right.
Tim Wildmon: All right. We'll be back tomorrow.
Tim Wildmon and the Today's Issues team discuss the controversy surrounding Macklemore's pro-Palestinian remarks during Ed Sheeran's concert tour, Robert Kraft's objections, and Sheeran's comments about the Israel-Gaza conflict. The hosts examine the political messages entertainers bring to concert audiences and debate claims about Hamas, civilian casualties, and Israel's response. The program also examines President Donald Trump's announcement restricting CNN, Politico, and MS NOW from White House access. The hosts consider criticism from the White House Correspondents' Association, reported federal spending on Politico subscriptions, and the ongoing debate over media bias and press access.
Live
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