Tim Wildman: I'm occasionally critical of President Trump
>> Ed Vitagliano: Today's Issues continues on AFR with your host, Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association.
>> Tim Wildmon: All right, welcome back, everybody, to Today's Issues on the American Family Radio Network. Tim, Ed and Wesley. Yes, we have last names, but do they really matter? Huh? it's. It's the words that come out of our mouth that we're judged by, I think, not our last names. That's in proverbs.
>> Ed Vitagliano: if it's not, it should be, right?
>> Tim Wildmon: Should be Steve Paisley, Giordo.
>> Steve Jordahl: Hey, I got a last name. What's that, Jordal, you just said?
>> Tim Wildmon: Oh, yeah, you do. You do. I thought you.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I got a name.
>> Tim Wildmon: That's Jim Croce. And that's what came to my mind, too. yeah, me too. Good morning to you.
>> Steve Jordahl: You know who Jim approach you was? No clue.
>> Ed Vitagliano: You mean you never. Bad, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.
>> Tim Wildmon: yeah. You can't sing that on here.
>> Ed Vitagliano: No, no.
>> Tim Wildmon: Christian radio.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: No, but Leroy Brown was a pretty cool song.
>> Ed Vitagliano: That was my favorite song in the seventh grade.
>> Steve Jordahl: I just. I was listening to, one of the influences that I listened to on YouTube has been going through all the top songs of every year. He's a, music producer, but he's in his 20s and 30s right now, and so he's going back and listening to old music to figure out what made it great, what can he learn in his production work. And Bad, Bad Leroy Brown was one of the songs that he had never heard that he analyzed.
>> Tim Wildmon: The best Jim Croce song, in my opinion, was Operator.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah, Operator, you gotta help me make this call.
>> Tim Wildmon: All right, that's back when calls were a Dime or something like that.
>> Steve Jordahl: Right?
>> Tim Wildmon: Because he. At the end of the song, he says, you can keep the dime.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And. And that was back when people found it hard to come up with a dime. Oh, no. Oh, that's this week. All right, Walmart.
>> Tim Wildmon: I gotta say one thing. We were talking about this before the radio, before the, show came back on the air. President Trump's in China. Right. Okay. You know, you have all heard the Express Trump derangement syndrome, which means basically an irrational, And irrational, view of anything Trump says or does as trying to put the worst negative spin on it, are lying to people about what he said or did. Okay? So I made the comment, if they let people listen to this show, they know I'm occasionally critical. Critical of President Trump. He does put his foot in his mouth by himself. Okay. From time. From time to time. Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: He shoots from the hip a lot.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yes. Which is a good characteristic for a president, I think, don't you?
>> Steve Jordahl: Sure.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It, it depends.
>> Tim Wildmon: I'm kidding. We all know what we're talking about. You're m saying he talks frankly. he doesn't spin a lot.
>> Ed Vitagliano: No, I'm saying he'll, he'll just say what he's thinking at that moment.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It's not, kind of a something that he has thought out ahead of time.
>> Tim Wildmon: That could be good and bad.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It can be good and bad.
>> Tim Wildmon: Okay. Be good or bad. That's not the point, me saying this. Okay, but, but you. Almost every. I go to Yahoo News a lot. and I say a lot three or four times a week. I shouldn't. But I go there because it is a good place to find news stories that we're going to talk about on this show in an easy to find fashion. That's, it's convenience, basically.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Regardless.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Regardless of the angle of the commentary.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right. But I'm about stories I'm about to quit because you know what they do? they, they're an aggregate. So, but for every, so they link to news stories are, they use news stories and they source where they got the information from. But it's four to one, liberal to conservative. Okay, they'll have a Fox News or maybe a National Review link. But that, compared to that, they're going to have three HuffPost, two salons. Right.
Steve Martin: The liberal news media has a bias against Democrats
For those who follow the news. You know what I'm talking about? Those are liberal news outlets. Okay? So my point is, this is when you say the bias of the liberal news media, which has always been there in favor of liberalism and Democrats for the most part, it just gets, where it becomes obvious because. Okay, but they do this with President Trump all the time. Okay? they, I'll give you two examples here. And this is why people don't trust the liberal news media anymore. And President Trump rightly called them fake news. Remember when he got that got popped up, you call them fake news because it's over and over again. This happens. Okay? Yesterday they said Trump sick. Trump calls Vice, President Vance a little boy. Okay? That was, he was, he puts him down. This is what the criticism was, Right? Well, okay. As if he was making a personal slight against his own vice president. Now, sometimes you read things about Trump and he does say things that are inappropriate about other people and he personalizes criticism. But I was going like, he call Vance a little boy. So I read the story. Well, no, he didn't call Vance a little boy. He said Trump said that during the event where you have the shooter at the hotel, that the Secret Service pulled him up like he was a little boy to move him away from the podium. Well, there's a world of difference between calling somebody a little boy, which is like a slight, and saying the Secret Service pulled him away like a little boy. You see what I'm saying?
>> Ed Vitagliano: Oh, yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: But the headlines made you believe that Trump was actually criticizing or making a, ah, you know, a joke about Vance being like, quote, like a little boy. You understand this happens all the time. And so here's another example today, and on a more serious note, today President Trump and his team are traveling in China. They're over there meeting with the Chinese, leadership. okay, it's, and it has a quote about President Trump. And the quote is basically, and I'm paraphrasing here, I wish I had it, that he does. He's saying that, he doesn't think about how the Iran war affects the American citizens pocketbook. okay, that's what they were saying that he said.
>> Wesley Wildmon: That's right.
>> Tim Wildmon: Okay, well, he did say that, but that wasn't the context. What he was saying was, I have to think about, I'm thinking about the first national security first, and that is preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is the first thing on my mind with respect to the, this war. He didn't say, I don't care about what the average American is going through because of it. He's saying, he's saying I have to keep the reason why we're doing this in the first place. The point, the first point. So do you see how that would, so the news media, the liberal news media, not everybody falls into that category. Certainly we don't and Fox doesn't, and some others. But, they, they, they want to spin this and they'll, they'll tell you, well, here's, here will be the headline. Trump says he doesn't care about people, about, about people's finances. Okay. We all know that inflation has been on the rise and we're suffering at the gas pump. And that's primary reason for the inflation, I think, which I've hopefully is temporary. When the war is over, the prices, gas goes down, everything gets back more, back to what, what it, what it was beforehand. but the news media, the liberal news media wants to put that narrative out there now. So a lot of people, all they're going to do is read the headline. Oh, Trump said he doesn't care about Me. He just. He didn't care about my. Yeah, he's a billionaire. What does he care? He's a president. What does he care about our finance? You see how that narrative gets out there, right? And it's unfair. And I will say, you know, sometimes President Trump could do a better job of setting the narrative, and he does, oftentimes to keep this kind of thing from happening. But when you say tds, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Oh, yeah, yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: That makes sense.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Oh, yes. I know we don't want to get to Steve here, but I'll just add this little bit to it. It's for that reason that you just described, which is why you have a good portion of the MAGA that calculates that in. When Trump does do wrong, they just go, you know what? I know. I know he's got this from.
>> Tim Wildmon: Or.
>> Wesley Wildmon: I don't like the way he's done this. But the way he's been treated, we'll call it.
>> Tim Wildmon: You're right.
>> Wesley Wildmon: We'll call it even.
>> Tim Wildmon: He gets a lot of grace because he's been so maligned.
>> Wesley Wildmon: That's it.
>> Speaker E: Yep.
>> Tim Wildmon: Is that right? Unfairly? Right Out. Can you be fairly maligned?
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, you can. If you've done something wrong, you can be, you know, fairly mild.
>> Tim Wildmon: It's like saying somebody who struck out at the end of the game and the headline says, the player doesn't care about winning or losing.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Right.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Wesley Wildmon: When he's,
>> Tim Wildmon: Wait a minute. No, that's not the context. Yeah, he did cost him the game because he did strike out, but it doesn't mean he doesn't care about the game. Like silly sports like that.
The Atlantic put out a hit piece on FBI Director Cash Patel in April
All right, Steve, go ahead.
>> Steve Jordahl: Well, the first story I have to bring you is kind of related. And, back in April, the Atlantic TDS is. Is filtering down to Trump's cabinet. And, in April, the Atlantic put out a hit piece on Cash Patel. They claimed he was drinking, that he got drunk during the day, and that they couldn't find him in his office. He was passed out on the couch. All of it, according to everything that I've been able to, it's anonymous sourcing, is a bold lie. And, in fact, Cash Patel is suing the Atlantic over these things. But it came up in a hearing yesterday. Cash Patel, the FBI director, was, in the Senate. And, it came up, Maryland, Senator Krish Vanliere Hollen just decided he couldn't help himself. And he brought it up and wanted to ask, is it true? Is it True. And, Cash gave back as good as he got. Listen to this. Cut 10.
>> Tim Wildmon: And so there have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you, is that right?
>> Speaker E: Nope. It's a total farce. I don't even know where you get this stuff. But it doesn't make it credible because you say so.
>> Tim Wildmon: I'm not saying it, Director Patel. I, I. It's been written and documented.
>> Speaker E: You are literally saying it.
>> Tim Wildmon: No, I'm saying that these are reports, Director.
>> Steve Jordahl: Ah.
>> Tim Wildmon: Patel.
>> Speaker E: Unlike, unlike baseless reports. Courts. The only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gang banging rapist was you. You know, the only person that ran up a director thousand dollar bar tab in Washington D.C. at the lobby m. Was you. This room. Allegations. Drinking on taxpayer dime during the day. Polygraphing. Director Patel, come on. These are serious allegations that were made against you. Their allegations are false.
>> Tim Wildmon: Filed.
>> Speaker E: You drinking margaritas with a gang just goes to show you running a $7,000 bar tab at the lobby bar has been filed by your own office. Goes to show during the day that's you. This is the ultimate example of hypocrisy. Chairman, I will not be who.
>> Tim Wildmon: Who. I know Cash Patel there. But who's the other fellow?
>> Steve Jordahl: Krish Vanliere Holland is the senator from Maryland. Democrat.
>> Ed Vitagliano: He's the one who is famously. He was pictured. Remember when they, when they. One of the
>> Wesley Wildmon: Oh, yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Was it Ms. 13.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yes.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Gang member. El Salvador.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: Right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And then he, the senator, what's his name? Holland.
>> Steve Jordahl: Vanliere Holland.
>> Tim Wildmon: He the one that went down there to try to get him out.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yes. And was drinking, was drinking alcohol while he's talking to this guy.
>> Tim Wildmon: Margarita was ready for that one.
>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: You would think that he would say.
>> Wesley Wildmon: All right, when, when his Stafford comes and says here's, here's your talking points. He would go, no, try. Scratch these. Give me two more. Just replace them with two more.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Cash Patel. He was ready. He emptied both barrels on Vanliere Holland.
>> Tim Wildmon: Also. The guy goes. The Vanliere Holland. The guy goes, come on, man. These are reports. Allegations. No, if you're going to accuse a man of being an alcoholic, who's. You better bring the receipts specifically.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.
>> Tim Wildmon: Not go off of a. This has been alleged against you.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It's anonymous sources which.
>> Tim Wildmon: Go ahead West.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Well, Krish Vanliere Hollen, he's got, he's been videoed and it's been documented of his alcohol and drinking. And then he goes, come on, man.
>> Ed Vitagliano: When he, when it Come on, that's, that's Me.
>> Wesley Wildmon: That's me.
>> Ed Vitagliano: we're talking about you.
Castell says he's just a senator, not FBI director
>> Tim Wildmon: I'm just a senator, you know, you're the FBI director. I'm just a measly US Senator here.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Oh, that didn't. That did not go.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It was fun when I. When I first heard it, and it was even more fun. It was funner to hear it just now. Well, good on Castell.
>> Tim Wildmon: All right, go ahead. Next story.
Davey504 says socialized medicine doesn't work in Italy
>> Steve Jordahl: All right. socialism does not work. It's been tried many, many times, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work here, and it doesn't work in. In. In, Europe. And one of the countries in which it doesn't work is Italy.
>> Tim Wildmon: Okay.
>> Steve Jordahl: I watch, a several YouTube channels if I get a chance. There's a guy who's a bass player. His name is Davey504. He goes by. He's got a YouTube channel that has 13.8 million viewers.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Wow.
>> Steve Jordahl: By the way, that he will be making anywhere between, 500,000 to about 13, to $5 million a year off of that.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Wow.
>> Steve Jordahl: So he's been living abroad, but his home is Italy, and he loves Italy. But he put a video out that said, I'm leaving Italy. I have a story that's running. I don't usually do this, but I have a story that's running today, and I just wanted to play the story here so we could comment on it. Let's listen to that story. It's got, 13. Davey504 is an Italian bass player who has a channel with 13.8 million subscribers which he built from scratch. He plays bass lines and issues challenges to his viewers. Looks like he's having fun and probably makes a good living here. He's analyzing Micah Jackson baselines.
>> Speaker F: It's a masterclass of wide groove. It's the only thing that actually matters.
>> Steve Jordahl: But in his latest video, he says he's officially closing the Italy chapter of his life.
>> Speaker F: For years, I had faith in my country. I paid over 60% of what I earned in taxes. I told myself, if those taxes help improve my country, better future for the next generation, then it's a price I'm proud to pay.
>> Steve Jordahl: But he started asking what he was getting for his 60%.
>> Speaker F: Healthcare is free, sure. But if you ever try to use it for something urgent, if you need to see a specialist or you need an important scan, then the waiting list are six months, even one year long.
>> Steve Jordahl: He says the moment he lost faith in Italy was when his home was raided by the financial police.
>> Speaker F: When you have spent a decade building A career out of nothing, trying to follow every complicated rule, and you are still being treated like a fugitive. Something breaks inside you.
>> Steve Jordahl: Davey 504 says the smartest and most ambitious people he knows are all leaving Italy not because they want to, but because they have to. Sooner or later, it happens in all socialist countries.
>> Speaker F: You can see the system failing everywhere, including how Italy handles immigration issues. The system is so broken, it's just unfair.
>> Tim Wildmon: Where is he going?
>> Steve Jordahl: he, hasn't said where he's living, going. He might be coming to the US but it's going to be a non socialist country. He's proud to be Italian. He says the food is really that good and it breaks his heart. But, he says, it's exhausting trying to love, a country that
>> Tim Wildmon: doesn't hold you back. I've never, I've always obviously been a US citizen, so my experience with healthcare is here and here alone. but these poor people who live in socialist met and countries that have socialist medical systems, that. Would you call it.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, socialized medicine.
>> Tim Wildmon: Socialized medicine. You know, they bill it as, quote, free.
>> Wesley Wildmon: That's right.
>> Tim Wildmon: Okay, well, and. But a. They oftentimes when they say free health care provided in Sweden or Britain or Canada or Italy, they don't tell you, well, wait a minute. It's not free, okay? You're paying for it. Citizens are paying for it. Like this gentleman here.
>> Steve Jordahl: Just 60% of his income was taken in taxes.
>> Tim Wildmon: That's obscene. That'll make you go postal. Mm, my apologies to the postal service. I think we know what I'm talking about. That'll make you so angry. But the worst part of that is of socialized medicine is what he said. And that is if you try to get care. Forget about urgent now, they may put a tourniquet on you and give you some Tylenol. But, but if you've got a serious illness, you're going to have to wait in line, so to speak. And by the time you wait in line, if you got some kind of aggressive form of cancer, for example, you're
>> Wesley Wildmon: going to be dead or heart condition or,
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, before the. A lot of things that they, that you're not, a lot of things that you're treated for. If found early enough, you can get well from. But if you let some kind of something advance, it could, it could. It could take you out in the interim or make your disease terminal, when it could have been dealt with had you follow me here. That's the difference between our country And our medical system, which is far from perfect, but it's the best for the most. That is private insurance, doctors being able to make money and they do, and we should, and nurses, these people go to school for a profession that none of us can do. And they try to help people hospital. I mean, I know that, I know they have their problems, that whole industry in terms a lot of people think that they, you know, they take advantage of people and gouge and so forth. But overall, our health care system in the United States is the envy of the world and does the best for the most. Okay. And so is. Okay, everybody. Okay.
>> Steve Jordahl: Absolutely.
>> Tim Wildmon: So socialized medicine. I would not want to live in a country. This is my bottom line. And where that had socialized medicine like this gentleman's talking about. And he's a, he's a born Italian who's 32 or 33 years old, very, very well known in the music industry evidently because he's basis and has 30. How many million followers?
>> Ed Vitagliano: 13.58 million.
Steve: Birth rate in the US is below replacement rate for 2025
>> Wesley Wildmon: Another thing to point out with the differences between the two is that in the event you do go to a local health care service or doctor and you don't like what you're getting, you can go to another one.
>> Tim Wildmon: You can go. That's exactly right. But in a socialized medicine, it's all the same. You get told what doctor to go to and when to show up.
>> Wesley Wildmon: That's right.
>> Tim Wildmon: Nothing you can do about it.
>> Steve Jordahl: So if you can afford it, these people will just go ahead to a private clinic and get the scan so that they don't die. But that means, means they're paying for health care that they don't use and they're paying again for the healthcare that they do. M. Yeah, Fred told me that it's the same thing in Canada.
>> Ed Vitagliano: one of the things that struck me about what he was saying is, you know, in this country you have people leaving California, moving to Nashville, Tennessee or the Dallas, Texas area. You have people leaving NewSong York and moving to other parts of the country. He's talking about leaving his entire country. And what's going to happen and is increasingly happening is that people like him are moving out and immigrants are moving in and the culture is going to continue to change dramatically. And a lot of these, the majority of these moving in are going to be Muslims. And once they reach critical mass, they may very well vote to end the liberties that led to the socialism to begin with. It is a very bizarre thing that's happening in Europe.
>> Tim Wildmon: they're not Having children either.
>> Ed Vitagliano: And they're not having children.
>> Tim Wildmon: Native Europeans. And this is happening in America now. I just read a couple of days ago that the birth rate in the US was record low, for 2025. Did you see this?
>> Wesley Wildmon: Oh yeah.
>> Steve Jordahl: Don't feel it's been.
>> Ed Vitagliano: It is now beneath the replacement, rate. We were for a while, perhaps because of immigration, legal as well as illegal. Us you're talking about in the US we were staying pretty close replacement rate. And that means is you have two adult. You have two parents. They need to have two children to replace themselves. 2.1 is the replacement rate because that takes into account, infant mortality. But if you have, if two parents have one kid, then one generation later your population is cut in half. That's the way the thinking goes. and it's it's. It's a real. Elon Musk talks about this all the time. He's not exactly a paragon in terms of a biblical view of marriage because he doesn't marry.
>> Tim Wildmon: He is adding to the population.
>> Ed Vitagliano: So this is a, socialism. And there's different forms of socialism. I do want to kind of stress this. There's the communist version where you have a totalitarian state. There is increasingly what's called democratic socialism. That is big government, heavy taxation. That is a form of socialism. But it doesn't. In, in the end, it does not work. And you're seeing that in an entire country like Italy. And you're seeing it in a city or a state in the US where people are leaving because it's too oppressive and burdensome.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah, but back to my point, that was very well said. But back to my point about in Europe, native Europeans, the Brits, the Germans, the Italians, etc. They're not having children.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Right.
>> Tim Wildmon: And what's going to happen, sadly now we'll be dead and gone. But Wesley may be hanging on. But, but you're going to lose the identity eventually of those peoples.
>> Wesley Wildmon: That's right.
>> Ed Vitagliano: So you could have no more Italians
>> Tim Wildmon: 100 years from now.
>> Ed Vitagliano: No more Russians.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah. 100 years from now. 200 years from now, you're going to be reading about the, the people known as Italians who were once more. Who once were.
>> Ed Vitagliano: the same thing said even worse in Japan.
>> Tim Wildmon: Japan.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Their, their birth rates even lower.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Than most of the European countries.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah. It's, it's. They're not, they're not going to be any kids to take care of the
>> Ed Vitagliano: old people, which in Japan's me.
>> Tim Wildmon: Yeah.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Of course, like you said, by that time. That time, I'll be dead and gone.
>> Tim Wildmon: Dead and gone. All right.
>> Tim Wildmon: thank you, Steve.
>> Steve Jordahl: My pleasure.
>> Tim Wildmon: And my thanks to Ed. What kind of shirt is that exactly? You got a. That pine tree?
>> Ed Vitagliano: no, I don't. So kind of a palm tree look.
>> Tim Wildmon: The palm tree look.
>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.
Cole Green is a cyber criminal. Wesley Brent is our producer
>> Tim Wildmon: You're a tropical guy, you know, Absolutely tropical.
>> Wesley Wildmon: Try to be good.
>> Ed Vitagliano: I go sometimes. I go.
>> Tim Wildmon: Known as Good Time Charlie. Wesley Brent, our producer. Cole Greene, cyber criminal. Greene over there on the, video player. And, Fred and Joe, we'll see you tomorrow, buddy.
