Transcript

Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildman

>> 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. Thanks for listening to afr. we do podcast this show, so if you miss a, an addition and you want to listen, you can just go to our afr.net website, click on podcast and you'll see the banner for today's Issues. Check that out. Afr.net, afr.net that's American Family Radio. Tim, Wesley, Ray. And, now joining us in studio is Steve Paisley Jordal. Good morning, Steve.

>> Steve Jordahl: Hey, good morning everybody. How y' all doing?

>> Tim Wildmon: We're doing great. Good, Doing great. We counting on you not to bring us down.

>> Steve Jordahl: No, I, No, I got, actually, I got good news to lead with if.

>> Tim Wildmon: You want to go ahead.

Two National Guardsmen shot Wednesday in D.C. by Afghan national

>> Steve Jordahl: so you remember the shooting in D.C. how's that the way to start with the good news, the guardsmen that were shot in D.C. by an Afghan national who was brought into the country, the Sarah, Beckstrom has died the other day. She died the same day we found out, but 20 year old, the 20 year old Andrew Wolf, the other victim is now reported being alert and awake.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yep.

>> Wesley Wildmon: He gave a thumbs up, moved his toes.

>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah. So good news, good news for him. So just an update. We don't have to, I don't know a whole lot more than what, Wesley just said, so. But good news that the guy that.

>> Tim Wildmon: What about the assailant, his name.

>> Steve Jordahl: Is Ramanwal Lock and wall, Ramanula Lockhinwal. And he was injured and there's no, I don't have an update on his health, although I don't believe it was grave injury. he will be charged with, murder in the first degree, according to Jeanine Pirro, who's the attorney in D.C. facing charges of assault with intent to kill while armed.

>> Tim Wildmon: Did he ever, did he ever m. Did he ever state a motive or ah. Did you know, they reported or did they discover, you know, how people leave a manifesto or writings or they tell people why they're doing something? Was that ever.

>> Steve Jordahl: I've seen several things written. I don't know anything official. Of course they're going to need an investigation and they're going to hold things like that pretty close to the vest while they're doing the investigation. He was a former aide to the CIA in Afghanistan. He was one of the nationals that we had employed. You know how sometimes they have translators and people that Help on the ground in there. And they were given fairly broad discretion to bring those people in to this country, I think. And of course, everybody that was coming into the country was broadly brought in under President Biden. there's now a discussion on about, did we vet him enough? Because he has shown tendencies of either being radicalized here or we missed it on his way in.

>> Tim Wildmon: Well, I would say, Ray, if this fella is. By the way, we praise, the Lord that.

>> Steve Jordahl: Yes.

>> Tim Wildmon: That the, National Guardsman is recovering.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Yeah.

>> Steve Jordahl: I guess you could say Andrew Wolf is his name.

>> Tim Wildmon: Okay. And we were heartbroken, you know, when we learned the news that the 20 year old young lady had. She was that Thanksgiving or day or, she passed. anyway, he shot him Wednesday. He shot him at point blank range. evidently the attack took place at point blank. Point blank range, yeah. Against two of them. but by the way, did they have weapons?

>> Steve Jordahl: Yes, but they did. They did. But I think the general was engaged by, a, third, troop.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Yeah, there's a third National Guard. Guard gentleman that got involved as he saw it on play. And he's. And he shot.

>> Steve Jordahl: He shot him. Yeah.

>> Tim Wildmon: So they were, they were basically ambushed by this guy.

>> Steve Jordahl: Exactly how it's been described.

>> Tim Wildmon: Okay. And he, he drove the driver fly. He drove, he drove from the state of Washington, Ray, to Washington D.C. that's as I said yesterday, I think it was. That's a long, long time to think about what you're going to do.

>> Steve Jordahl: You can't get further without getting wet.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, well, I mean, this is a case where it was boiling inside him for a long time. And I'm not surprised, Steve, that they didn't catch it. They didn't. look, if you're, if you helped our troops in Afghanistan, right, that puts you way over, ostensibly on the good side of the leg.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Right.

>> Tim Wildmon: And I understand why those people got, preferential treatment. You help, you help the guys, we'll give you a chance over here. But something snapped inside him. Or maybe Steve, maybe he got radicalized after he got here.

>> Steve Jordahl: That's what they're trying to figure out. It's one of the discussions they're having right now. And, I'm sure that the investigators will have that in hand. They haven't told us yet.

Steve Berman: Maybe he was mentally unstable or radicalized by Islam

>> Tim Wildmon: Well, the obvious, which I know the liberal media won't talk about much, but the obvious thought that most of us have is this is a guy who got, if you want to call it, got radicalized by Islam. and, when you're in the eyes of, a committed Islamist, the infidels are need, to be killed. Okay, that's right. That's why they yell Allie Akbar when they commit a atrocity or a crime. So in somebody, like, if this guy was radicalized in the same way at the 911 Islamists, were, then he. He drove all the way across the country because he wanted to kill two of, what he would call Satan's agents, which would be. Or more. Which would be the American soldiers.

>> Steve Jordahl: There's another possibility I probably should. Which probably should bring up, which are reports of him being just fairly mentally unwell in Washington. There were reports of him locking himself in his bedroom for long periods of time when his wife was away and he had to take care of the kids. They'd show up at school dirty and unkempt.

>> Tim Wildmon: He may have been, mentally unstable. I'm sure some. But at the same time as I say, you don't drive 3,000 miles and know which direction you're going, how to get there, how to get my gun, how to walk out on the street, how to ambush somebody. That's not a crazy person. A crazy person goes out in the backyard and howls at the moon. Yes. Okay. This is a guy who was plotting and planning his evil deeds. That's not insane. That's right. whatever it is, that's not insane. So. So it leads me to believe it's, as I described it, he became an Islamist, and he believed that he was doing the work of Allah to kill the infidel. And the infidel's agents would be American soldiers. So who knows why he went in that direction? Because if he came to this country, you know, after helping our CIA, and then he goes off on this tangent like this.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Yeah.

>> Tim Wildmon: so, all right. but anyway, good news. Your second story. Steve.

When is it appropriate to give your child a cell phone or a digital screen

>> Steve Jordahl: All right. If you are the parent of a child in the digital age, this is a question you have asked yourself. I know. Probably, we could talk with, Wesley about this topic. When is it appropriate to give your child a cell phone or a digital screen? because I'm glad I'm not raising.

>> Tim Wildmon: Kids in this era.

>> Steve Jordahl: Boy, howdy.

>> Tim Wildmon: Ray, you glad you're.

>> Tim Wildmon: Look, look, I paid my dues.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, I know. But I'm glad.

>> Wesley Wildmon: It's tough.

>> Tim Wildmon: It's tougher now. The pressures are much greater now.

>> Steve Jordahl: There's a study out of the journal Pediatrics that finds that children who had smartphones by the age of 12 were at a higher risk of Depression, obesity, and insufficient sleep than those that had not yet been given a cell.

>> Wesley Wildmon: So there's different layers here.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah. Tell us, because you have young children, all under 10, right?

>> Wesley Wildmon: That's right. All under 10.

>> Tim Wildmon: Kids under 10. How are you handling this one?

>> Wesley Wildmon: So there's different layers here. And so you've got people that are absolutes, you know? You know?

>> Tim Wildmon: You mean absolutely not.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Well, I'm gonna be careful with my analogy here, but I'll just do this. It'd be helpful. So you got those that believe. There's those in the Christian camp that believe that homeschool is the only way, and anything else short of that is bad. Okay. and they don't calculate any other factors. They just say homeschool or nothing. Well, then you've got others that would say, what. What difference does it make? They're gonna have to learn on their own. They're gonna have to learn one day. So they just are careless with all things because they got to grow up sometime. So what? So just having a legitimate screen in front of you, is not in and of itself bad. I think it's what they're watching you.

>> Tim Wildmon: Excuse me for interrupting, though. I'm trying to try to connect what you mean about homeschooling or public school and having to do with phones.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Okay, so what.

>> Steve Jordahl: What.

>> Wesley Wildmon: What I'm using is in. In. In school or in, with the screen time that we're talking about. There's two camps. There's a couple camps. There's. There's. There's the camp that says absolutely no screen under any circumstances. It's all evil. It's all bad.

>> Steve Jordahl: The homeschool thing was a category of extremist on one side of stream, it's on another. Like, there's extremists on the schooling issue. There's extremists on the.

>> Tim Wildmon: Okay, just to be clear, I don't think homeschooling families would want to be called extremists here.

>> Wesley Wildmon: we're not. Well, no, there are. There are Christians in the. In the homeschooling camp that would. That would demonize people that go to public school that are Christians.

>> Tim Wildmon: Okay, I understand what you're saying. Back to the phones.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Yeah, so back to the phones. So that you got phones, you've got. You got tablets, you've got TVs, you got computers. There's multiple different devices here. So I think the point I'm making is each situation, these circumstances would have maybe a little different answer. So let's just go with what the. Some of the basics, some of the things that are common ground. So I would say that you should limit all screen time at home or in the car or with your family that you can control. Because the world in and of itself is already a tech world. We now live in a tech world. So you can. Of the point I'm making is you can't avoid technology altogether. That's not, that's not a reasonable people. For most people, that's not a reasonable goal. Or so I think. So you don't need to have, you don't need to look at it like, any tech at all is always bad. However, I think you need with within what you can control. I would limit the amount of time that they're on the screen.

>> Tim Wildmon: You do that?

>> Wesley Wildmon: I do. I limit, I limit the amount of time. So for example, and it varies. You know, some people are more rigid or more, they're like this amount of time, it varies for me. So some days they may get an hour of screen time. but come back to the question of what, what the screen. But. So you want to limit your screen time maybe an hour a day. But if you're, but, but what if you're traveling and you're in the car, you know, maybe, you know, maybe it's two or three hours. But there is a limit.

Christian: The biggest danger of a cell phone for a kid is being connected to Internet

You need to be conscientious about how much you're looking at a screen and not interact at the expense of not interacting with people. Now, at the dinner table, there are certain locations that the absolute nose. So for us, we don't do it at the dinner table. We don't do it when we go out in public. And we're like, we don't do it when we're out in public. But also it's more concerned about what they're, what they're taking in. So you don't want to, you want to monitor what they take in. Meaning that you want to put, limitations on their devices to make sure they can't watch.

>> Tim Wildmon: Parental controls.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Parental controls. That's another thing. As far as what age, I don't, I don't think, I don't think, 3, 4, 5, 6. I don't give phones. I think that's more specific to what they're talking about here. I, I wouldn't give a phone that had Internet access. I'm not one that says a kid can't have a phone with a screen because that's no different than an iPad. But. And if they can enter and if they can call me for an emergencies at 10 or 12 years old. I think that's fine. I think the biggest danger of a cell phone for a kid is being connected to the Internet. I think that's the bigger problem than just actually having a phone if you're limiting how much they use it.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, I can't imagine any responsible parent member. Maybe I'm wrong today. Just giving a phone or an iPad over to a kid, a kid with with unfettered access to the Internet. Responsible parenting is the ray you're asking for. You're asking for danger right there.

>> Tim Wildmon: Oh, oh. And there are too many parents, Christian or otherwise, who use, you know, who use the iPad. Well, I see that a lot. The iPad with the kids is a kind of narcotic. Keep them quiet, you know, substitute for the babysitter. Substitute for parents spending time with them. That's dangerous. You're just handing your kids over.

>> Wesley Wildmon: That's right.

>> Tim Wildmon: To the forces of evil in the world. Now I have, oh, of our two oldest grandkids, both boys, 115 and 1 14. Their parents have allowed them to have phones. But I don't know, they're like the old fashioned flip phones.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Not like, you know, not like emergencies. It's for communication. It's for updating their parents on if things have changed based on the plans that they told them they were doing. Things like that. There's a time, there's a place for that, for sure.

>> Tim Wildmon: Well, and Wesley, they can text me grandpa, right? That we can text back and forth, but if I have a picture, I have to send it to their parents. They, they have mom and dad have rigged up the phones, however that works. So they can't send or receive pictures or YouTube videos or anything like that. So basically it's old fashioned texting. And I think that's a pretty good safeguard.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Yeah, I just, I guess back to my original point is when you begin down this road, this conversation about should kids have phones and technology, the old school would say absolutely not. It's awful. It's so bad for so many reasons. But the reality is, is that you just can't avoid technology for the most part in 2025, the question is how do we use it and how do we go about. but now there is, there is the other side of this too. If this unfettered access, even if it's not, even if they don't have access to the Internet, let's say, let's say that they don't even, they're not even doing bad things. I I do think there's a certain level of a child looking at a screen that does.

>> Tim Wildmon: Unhealthy.

>> Wesley Wildmon: That's unhealthy, yeah, for many reasons.

>> Tim Wildmon: that would include tv.

>> Wesley Wildmon: I mean include TV mentally. it would also, how they interact with other kids, how do they handle, how do they handle problem solving issues.

>> Tim Wildmon: you don't want them zombied out all the time. And we see that with kids too.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Well, see, 15, 20 years ago, this was a little bit easier. But like I said, I've just given you multiple nuances here. You can have, you can have a tablet, a computer. The, the question is, is what are your kids watching and how often are they watching it? That's, that's the main question. And I think that both of those have to have limitations as far as the age goes, which is really back to the original article. I don't think if it's. I don't think there's a, too young of an age that's wrong for them to look at a screen or be a part of a screen. I think given a phone, it has. I would not give a child, I wouldn't give any kid under eight. I don't know, I hadn't thought about it. Maybe under 17, a phone with just. With Internet or unfeathered.

>> Steve Jordahl: The bettered, the filtered.

A new study suggests banning electronic devices in teens' bedrooms

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.

>> Steve Jordahl: The study here, it deals with health outcomes. So we're talking about a couple different things. You're talking about teaching and the moral instruction of your children and the harm m that can come to them from like exposure to pornography and that kind of stuff. This particular study is talking about health outcomes, depression, obesity and insufficient sleep. and I don't know why they chose the random age of 12 as the delineation. I think just as a, ah, let's say by the time they're a teenager, should they or shouldn't they is what they were trying to find out. And they did come up with different. like you said, there are certain times and places. One of the solutions they had, they said they found that 63% of 11 and 12 year olds reported having electronic device in their bedroom. and so, yeah, one of the rules that this study suggests maybe putting in place is you can't use your device in your bedroom.

>> Wesley Wildmon: That's right.

>> Tim Wildmon: I got a comic strip yesterday. It was a meme, not a comic strip. You know, the three monkeys. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. You know that, right?

>> Tim Wildmon: Yep.

>> Tim Wildmon: Okay. You guys know what I'm talking about?

>> Steve Jordahl: Yep.

>> Tim Wildmon: You know what I'm Talking about. Yeah, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. They said that the fourth monkey has emerged. He sees no one, hears no one, and speaks to no one. And it's got a monkey looking at his phone.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yep, that's right.

>> Tim Wildmon: You know, like, zombied out.

>> Tim Wildmon: Right.

>> Tim Wildmon: You know, and, you know, we all have, you know, 99% of us have to look at our phones. I'm looking at my phone right now to see this. But I'm talking about. We know the folks, especially teenagers. Especially teenagers who are on the phone 24 7, and they're always looking down. I'm telling you. Chiropractors in 20 years.

>> Wesley Wildmon: That's right.

>> Tim Wildmon: And thumb surgeons.

>> Tim Wildmon: That's right.

>> Tim Wildmon: Big market for those. All right, next story, Steve.

There's a pattern to all of the crises that Democrats and the left are bringing up

>> Steve Jordahl: All right. Hey, there's a video out that I wanted to play or, some audio I want to play for you guys by a former Fox TV host. Her name is Laura Logan. And she has determined that there's a pattern to all of the crises that the Democrats and the left are bringing up. There's some things in common. Let's listen to cut 13.

>> Speaker E: They want to take race, they want to take differences, and they want to create them, turn them into problems which can never, ever be solved. So the color of your skin, you can't change it. Therefore, you can never solve this problem. Unbiased racism, it's unconscious. If you're not conscious of it, you can't fix it. And if you look in all of these places, they create issues like, as a man, you're going to have masculine instincts. They now teach you that that masculine instinct is evil. It's a problem can never be solved. CO2, we create CO2 as we breathe out. It's critical for life on Earth. They created a nonsense problem that can also never be solved. Transgenderism, it's the same thing. They've made those things that are natural and instinctive in us. They've made those war crimes.

>> Steve Jordahl: And basically, once they have a problem you can never solve, they can control it forever. They have to manage it. And that's why global warming and all those kind of things seem like an endless series of, control issues.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Sounds like a good evil strategy to me. Exactly. Yeah.

>> Steve Jordahl: I mean, just about every issue that if they call it a crisis, it falls under this.

>> Tim Wildmon: Well, the global warming. Global warming is a prime example. Man made global warming. the. The, what Rush Limbaugh called environmental wackos, figured out that they couldn't sell that to the public. so they got rid of. Because of the global. The globe wasn't always warming.

>> Steve Jordahl: Right.

>> Tim Wildmon: And so they had to switch to climate change because there's always climate change.

>> Steve Jordahl: But, you notice how quickly it became the climate crisis. They attach your crisis to a whole bunch of things that they want to be crises because then it's.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah. Bill Gates, who was one of the people screaming the loudest about this, but what about six weeks ago, came out, said, oh, well, it's not as bad as I thought it was. You remember this?

>> Wesley Wildmon: Yes.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, well, it's not as bad as we thought it was. Like, what, 20 years of any saying we really need to be dealing with, like, world hunger or something like that.

>> Tim Wildmon: Right.

>> Wesley Wildmon: You know why that. Why he did that, right?

>> Tim Wildmon: Why is that?

>> Wesley Wildmon: He tried it. He tried creating meat without using meat.

>> Tim Wildmon: Did.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Yeah. And it didn't work. So he was trying to create a world without red meat, and it didn't work. So he didn't know that. Yeah, that's wrong.

>> Tim Wildmon: Just wrong.

>> Wesley Wildmon: So then, because it failed, then we got to go back to, yeah, we can use natural gases. We can.

>> Steve Jordahl: Actually, they came up with solutions to the red meat thing. I've been hearing the last couple weeks, some geneticists have found a way that there's a tick that if it bites you, it makes you allergic to red meat. And some of the more wackier are saying they could bioengineer that to make it so that humans consume this, even without their knowing, consume this particular, DNA strand. And what it does is it makes everybody allergic to meat. That way they can do red meat consumption down. Problem solved.

>> Wesley Wildmon: Now, problem's not solved for me.

>> Tim Wildmon: No, what, what, what he said was. Let me interpret this for you, Ray.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, please do. I heard the word tick.

>> Tim Wildmon: He's saying that they're going to start. Whoever these people are, let's call them.

>> Steve Jordahl: environmental wackos, they're going to want.

>> Tim Wildmon: You to get a tick bite intentionally. So you are allergic to red meat.

>> Steve Jordahl: There are some ticks that exist that way.

>> Tim Wildmon: You don't eat cows. And you know what cows do that increase global warming. Right.

>> Tim Wildmon: So, that's just evil. So many left.

>> Wesley Wildmon: So let me go back to what I was saying. So to clarify, I was joking about that. There was a direct correlation to the red meat and Bill, Gates changing his mind. However, it was ironic that about a year ago, he invested a lot of money and was trying to produce ground beef using plants.

>> Steve Jordahl: Ah. yes.

>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, that didn't work.

>> Wesley Wildmon: It did work because his investment from plants. So his investment fails from what my point, the joke I'm making is because he realizes that we can't sell meat through plants, that therefore we're going to need the cows. So therefore, he's got to change his mind.

>> Tim Wildmon: Right. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Well, all right. We're out of time here. Have a great Tuesday afternoon

Well, all right. We're out of time here. Thank you, Steve.

>> Steve Jordahl: My pleasure.

>> Tim Wildmon: Thanks, Ray.

>> Tim Wildmon: You bet.

>> Tim Wildmon: Thanks to Wesley.

>> Tim Wildmon: And to, Chris Woodberg and Jenna Ellis and Brent Creely, our, producer here. Cole Greene, our videographer. What? He is video man. Good video man. and we thank you for listening to today's issues. Have a great Tuesday afternoon. Keep listening, dayfar, and we'll see you back here tomorrow.

>> Steve Jordahl: Sam.