The Rod and Greg Show: Left Pushing for Ranked Choice Voting; Ballooning Federal Spending; Grandchildren

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'll finish up with some shopping.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I hope finish up.

Speaker 3 (00:03):
I may start, I don't know, a week from now
if I'm lucky.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is a man who went to seven to eleven
to get a rose for his wife on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
You have that story half right, half well, once again
the narc rod arcade reporting.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Never share anything with.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Me that you don't want to goodness, I'll say that
story wasn't folks, That story wasn't true.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
There was just some just some bits. There are some
elements of it that are true. Yes, correct.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Hey, let's move on big news and sporting.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
A lot of news, a lot of news today.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
There is I think one of the local stories. It's
a it's a sports story, but we can we I
think our listeners would be interested. Kyle Whittingham has announced
his retirement, and uh, you know, I'm a b YU fan.
If you haven't noticed on the show for listening to me,
but I will tell you that I think that Kyle
Whittingham probably because he was a BAYU player and coach.
It's probably why you deserve you know it just benefited

(01:02):
from his great coaching abilities. But no, he was when
Urban Meyer left, I don't think the program slowed down
a single second, I think, and it wasn't an easy
program to sustain that kind of moment. I'm given that
you entered the Power five Conference, and you saw in
the past Arizona, Arizona State, even Colorado enter into the
Pac twelve and do nothing, be doormats for a long

(01:24):
long time. And and then University Utah comes in there.
They're not even full fledged revenue sharing, so they're not
even seeing the money that comes with being a Power
five conference, and they immediately were competitive and better and
better more than just competitive. And so that doesn't happen
by itself. Many many well funded schools could not get
to that level, and the University of Tah did. And

(01:46):
I lay it right at the feat of cal whitting him.
I think he's a brilliant coach, and but you know,
there's a time and a season. I think that I
feel that way with our the Steelers head coach. It's
time for him to go. But I think Kyle Whningham
leaves on a very high note. Only two losses this year,
He's done very well in the Big twelve, and he
is what a heck of a coach in a legacy.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Well, Morgan Scaley has been the coach in waiting, will
now become the head coach next year. Morgan's a great guy. Yes,
my son who played up there and I think was
on the team with Morgan at one time, and I
think Morgan's final year or whatever really admires Morgan. Skalle says,
he's a heck of a guy. He loved coach Wit
as well and coach Sataki. So we've got some great
coaches here in the state of Utah when it comes
to football, and coach Wit, you're right, he knew it

(02:32):
was time to go. It's time to He's been head
coached in what two thousand and four, two thousand and five,
As I mentioned, you know, you think about it. You
had a Super Bowl victory, Sugar Bowl victory over Alabama,
yes years ago. I mean he really beat them up.
They were in the Pac twelve, then made it to
two Rose Bulls and although they didn't win him, that
first one was an exciting one because they lost to

(02:53):
an Ohio State team that was very good at that time.
So coach Wit, congratulations, you've done a fantastic job and
we wish you all the best.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, it is I again, I think that he's he's
been a bright spot in collegiate sports nationally. Yeah, you know,
you never you never saw his programs ever embroiled and
any kind of scandal anything going on. There's a just
a solid, solid individual but also program. And I got
to tell you, I know that he had a great relate.
Maybe I don't want to talk out of school, but

(03:22):
he had a great personal relationship with Governor Herbert and
they and they and they, and they got along really well.
I think they played tennis together the day. But he
had some friends that were outside the football world that
were you know, like the governor of our state. And
and I enjoyed a very close friendship there too, which
I thought. I I witnessed that and thought that was
very genuine. And anyway, it speaks to call Wedningham because

(03:43):
Herbert is hard to get along with. I I just
got to tell you from personal experience.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
I'd tell you what his wife used to listen to,
Thank Rod, It's Friday. Every time I see the former governor,
he'll come up and go Friday.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
I don't think that's happening anymore of this. I don't know.
We used to clash later just a little bit, just.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
So well, I get there are two things that Wit
will enjoy.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
Now.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
He loves riding his motorcycle. It's got a great looking bike,
does he And that's been on college game day a
few times before you're right up to him. And he
loves to ski. Now, hopefully we'll have snow to ski
on this year, but he'll probably have a little bit
more time.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
To enjoy it.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, he's just a general athlete. Like I didn't know that,
but I know other sports he likes to play, and
so he is.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
I bet he.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
I bet he's retired from Tennessee's bet you. I bet
he's playing picklebam.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
I'd whip him.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, I'd love to see that. Let's let's have you
two play.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
I'll play him, Okay, I'll play him.

Speaker 4 (04:32):
Yeah, you know what.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
You know what. I think it's sad about this because
I think it's a it's a big national story with
coach Witt stepping down today. Unfortunately, Greg, I think it's
going to be overshadowed by what's going on in Michigan. Yeah,
what a story.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
This is tring that and is uh is inspiring of
a story that coach Winningham was in his tenure as
the head coach of the University of Utah football program.
The Minnesota story is the polar a Michigan story. Mishian
story with that coach is a complete nightmare. He gets like,
they do an investigation on his conduct with a staffer.

(05:08):
They fire him with cause, which is not You don't
get the buy out that these other coaches get, and
he comes unwound and ultimately finds himself in the custody
of sheriffs and detained and in prisoner in jail because
of his conduct. In the hours after being fired.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Well, the story is going that his lover showed up
at the university with her attorneys and was about to
spill the being apparently this has been rumored for a
little while. I didn't know that, but showed up at
the university Greg at the University of Michigan with her
attorneys and basically spilled the beans. Okay, he was fired.
Somewhere in that time frame, he went to her apartment,

(05:52):
burst into the apartment, Okay, grabbed a bunch of knives
and basically said, I'm gonna make you watch me kill myself.
Don't you to because there's going to be blood on
your hands for doing this to me. So he just
went whoa.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, I'll tell you what it's it's a cautionary tale
in that he is the guy that goes into you know,
young athletes parents' homes to talk about recruiting them and
bringing them into Michigan to get a degree and play football.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
For him. He had a young team.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
They were good, they were they nine wins this year,
young freshman quarterback, so all upside and that just went
to downright.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Out the windows.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Point two million dollars salary.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah wow.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
And that's why I say it's unfortunate because it's a
great story. He's been a great coach, you know, an
inspiration to a lot of young men out there. I mean,
how many lives as coach would affect it over the
years in coaching them, and you you know, the relationship
between coaches and players, they develop a strong bond for
a lot of these kids, and that should be honored.
But now we're talking today about Sharon Brown. They're from

(06:54):
the University of Michigan, Sharon Moore, I'm sorry, from the
University of Michigan, and that bizarre st because it is
a bizarro story out there.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
It is.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
And I don't think any any part of that story
gets better. I just think it's going to be. Yeah,
it's it's just it's just unfortunate. So but you know,
there's a that's a pretty uh prime coaching job that's
open now.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
And Marey has three he's married, three children. They just
had a child a few months ago. Really, and this
this affair have been going on for a couple of years.
From what I understand, it's just bizarre. Wow, And you
got to you know, it's sad story. And and that's
why I say here, coach Wit done a great job
overshadowed today because everyone's gonna be talking about what's going

(07:37):
on in Michigan and you hate to see that. But
you know what he looked. There's you have the Vegas Ball.
You gotta he's coach, you got coach, you got to
take on uh.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
And I'm sure there's going to be a lot of
uh just thanks.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
There's gonna be a lot. I think there's gonna be
a lot.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Of expressions of gratitude for coach Winningham in the in the.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Weeks to come.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah, And I hope in a way this kind of
spurs ticket sales for a lot of Utah fans who
want to see coach coaches last game to get on
down there. I think it's played at the Allegiant Stadium, right, well,
I haven't been there so long. I think it is.
It used to be played out at Hal Boyd Stadium
or whatever. That's the way out there. I think it's
now played at Allegiant Stadium. And folks, if you've never

(08:19):
been to Allegiant Stadium, I hadn't until a couple of
about a month ago when I saw the Cowboys play.
It's a wonderful stadium. Great place to watch a game.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
I watched.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
I watched the Vegas ball in that Sam Boyd Stadium
is freezing. Oh yeah, it's way out there. Yeah, way
out there and so cold. It'd be way more comfortable
in Allegiance.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
We'll see, we'll see. So we've got a lot to
get to today. When we come back, we'll talk about
how the Feds have priced our grandkids. A lot of
us boomers, I'm one of them, wanted grandkids and we've
got them. But now apparently they may not be able
to afford to live at a home, or to even
buy a home. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about
how the left is pushing ranked choice voting and you

(08:56):
and I just hate this idea.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
It's it's it completely.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
You lose the one person, one vote concept entirely, and
then you're just looking at computer screens.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, nightmare. So we've got a lot to get to today.
We hope you enjoyed the ride home with us. You're
welcome to join us by weighing in on whatever is
on your mind tonight eight eight eight five seven eight
zero one zero on your cell phone, dial pound two
to fifty and say hey Rod, or download the iHeartRadio
WEP and leave us a message on our talk back line.
So a lot to get to is we're just getting

(09:27):
started on this Friday afternoon here on Utah's Talk Radio
one O five nine k n RS. It feels like
march out there. It feels like spring it yeah, it does.
I guess they're talking about a change. Maybe Wednesday is
coming something like fan.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Well, it's inevitable. It's it is December. I'm waiting for
the shoe to drop the.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Well, we we do need the onslaught to begin. We
are running way down. I like snow, warm weather. I
like it, well, we all love warm weather. But we
also like to bathe.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Buy some bottled water. I don't know. I again, I
like it. I want my cake and I want to
eat it too. I want to see those I want
to see those mountains covered in so I don't want
to drop to hit the valley floor.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's all.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
That's not too much aasas that's not too much tass No,
that's easy. All right. Let's talk about baby boomers. Baby
boomers grew up, they want to have grandkids. I have
seven of them now. They're just simply darlings. I absolutely
love them. But you know, there is concern among I
have for our grandchildren, and my wife and I have
talked about this. Will they be able to afford the
things that we've been able to enjoy as we've grown up,

(10:35):
like getting into a house or having a comfortable lifestyle. Well,
that question is being raised by a lot of people
these days, and joining us on our Newsmaker line to
talk about it right now is Jeff Danger. Jeff is
the dean of the School of Business and Innovation at
Cornerstone University. Jeff, thanks for joining us. Jeff. A lot
of talk about population, a decrease in population. We aren't
having as many babies as we used to and how

(10:57):
to having families. Does any of this surprise you right now.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
Jeff, not terribly surprised.

Speaker 5 (11:02):
And one of the drivers of oncoing fertility decline is
the fact that young people are getting.

Speaker 4 (11:10):
Married at a later and later age.

Speaker 5 (11:13):
And not to sound like somebody's mother in law here,
but there is this limited time in which you can
have children, and that's one of the key drivers. But
I've written on how the Federal Reserve and some of
its policies with respect to credit expansion, and how young
people are taking on more and more debt in different forms.

(11:34):
This is delaying marriage and then creating a situation where
you've got again that limited time wind to have kids.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
What about the first the average age of a first
time home buyer now going out to the age of forty.
I was twenty nine when I was able to I
was fortunate enough to be able to purchase my first
time That age is forty. I've got twenty somethings. I
got young twenty year old kids. If forty is not
a good number, it's not one that's given them a
lot of optimism. What does that mean is that a

(12:03):
number do you think that'll come back. I mean, I
don't see houses shrinking in value, so what happens from
here right?

Speaker 5 (12:09):
I think that we need a little bit of a
cultural shift and the preferences of young people to start
thinking about marriage before they're thinking about building a career
and so on and so forth, because it's those marriage
delays that are pushing that that age, that average age
of a new home purchaser out of forty and so on.

(12:31):
One of the data points I've looked at is that
about fifty years back, you had an average age of
first marriage for men around twenty six, and then the
average age at that time for a home purchase was
thirty two. So it's interesting now that was a six
year gap. Now young men on average at first marriage

(12:53):
are getting married at thirty and waiting to build enough
of a savings account for that down payment. It's taking
them ten years, and that's how we get to that
forty mark. So it's really extraordinary. Young people are discouraged
by this, and as I work at Cornerstone University with
a lot of young people, they do desire to be married.

(13:15):
So that I think is a positive sign and it's
just going to be a matter of taking that step,
that leap of faith a little bit earlier rather than having,
you know, that perfect job and all those sorts of things,
you can build a life together at a younger age.
And I'm blessed to say that my wife and I
did that with a lot of success.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
So I think that's a path forward.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
Jeff, that desire to get married, but they don't. What
is it fear of? Can we afford to be married?
Can we afford to get in a house? What kind
of fear are they facing? Do you think?

Speaker 5 (13:48):
I think there's a number of things going on there.
One is they're facing some of the costs and wondering
whether they can do that meet those costs. Another is
the debt loads that they carry. You might have a
young man look at a young woman or vice versa,
and frankly, part of the conversation these young people are
having is how much college debt do you have? Because

(14:09):
they're going to have to carry this as a couple
into the marriage and that is one of those one
of those debts that you cannot default on, and so
that's becoming a major factor in those marriage delays. But
a lot of these kids have also experienced divorce. They
have some fear around that whether that will be them.
So there's a number of factors here. But as you

(14:30):
pointed out here, my article really emphasizes some of the
economic realities that I think have been ignored by policy makers.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
And I think you're right. I don't think we discussed
it enough.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
I do think that if you're over fifty, you pull
people about the economy, they say it's good, it's positives
going in the right direction. If you're under fifty you
have a very different take. I believe that there's a
chasm there and it isn't being spoken about enough. Interestingly,
what you said, my wife, Queen Bee thirty one years
of holy matrimony, she didn't blink at any of the
college debt I took on. She it was water off
a ducts back. It was fine. There's yeah, I guess

(15:04):
you must have because I don't know. This was not
a factor and it was actually a factor. So I
don't know what happened there. No, But I have this
other question, what about what about our kids? Social media?
How kids, how young people socialize with one another. Have
we just brought up a just a batch of a
generation of nerds that don't know how to date and
know how to get together to get married. I mean,

(15:24):
is that part of the problem. You know, it's on
my mind, you know, I thought.

Speaker 6 (15:27):
I did.

Speaker 5 (15:28):
I'm glad to bring that up because there's a colleague
of mine here in Grand Rapids. But anyway, Anthony Bradley,
and he noted the statistic to me that nearly half
of young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty
five right now have not ever asked a girl out
on a date. So I think there's a culture of
fear there. There's also, if you kind of perused pack

(15:51):
in some of these places, you've got young women who
frankly have done a lot better in school than their
male peers, and they've got very high expectations in terms
of income, looks and so forth. And I think that
the impact of social media here is that now the
world is available to you, rather than just looking in

(16:13):
your community. You know, when I came up, it was, okay,
I'm going to church. Here's a pool of nice young
ladies and let's make a good choice. Oh my God's grace,
I did. But if you can continue swiping right or left,
whichever way it is forever in the belief that you'll
find someone just who's a show stopper. This I think

(16:33):
is affecting the way that young people kind of look
past really wonderful, wonderful candidates who are right in front
of their noses.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Jeff, how do we turn this around? Because you mentioned
there's been such an emphasis over the last several decades
so for women to succeed, get a college education, you know,
advanced degrees that we're seeing a lot far out numbering men.
How do we turn that around to get the young
men back into this game and to be able to
be successful as the women appear to be right now.

Speaker 5 (17:03):
Yeah, this is what's causing a so called mismatch in
marriage markets. And there have been a lot of people
who have written about this. There's a film, not the
best film I've ever seen, but it came out a
year ago called The Materialists, and it kind of walks
through this mismatch that's happening between young men and young women.
So I'm distressed by this, But the question how do

(17:25):
we turn it around?

Speaker 4 (17:27):
I do think it's a value shift.

Speaker 5 (17:29):
I think that, sadly, one of the things that we've
seen after Charlie Kirk's assassination. Is that his messaging around
getting married early and starting that life together. I think
that that is one thing that we have to continue
to reiterate. And also economists can just point to the
fact that if you want home ownership as a kind

(17:50):
of life goal, that marriage is actually the pathway to it.
Rather than spending all of your twenties blowing through your income,
having separate apartments with escalating rents and other costs of
living that really chew away at your ability to build
that down payment, living in a married state that is

(18:11):
very stable, and that tends to put people on a
better path economically so that they can get into that
housing market. So I think encouraging marriage again, making marriage
great again, if you will, I think that's a step
forward culturally and economically.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Jeff Danger, he is with a Cornerstone University talking about
the FEDS priced grain kids out of existence. Greg And
what's the magic of the formula? Graduate, get a job,
get married, and have children. Yes, that's the path in
that order. That in that order, and you could have
a wonderful, rich life the way you and I have
and been blessed with great companions and happy families.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
I was broken. We got married. I mean I was,
I was all upside. I was just there.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
You had to have an appraisal because there was no
real value at the time. Yeah, there had to be
an upside coming. And we were dead broke. We lived
in a little tiny apartment and U but yeah, so
I think he's right. I think you don't wait till
you have all your professional success and can buy a
home to get married.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
You get get married poor and you.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Go out throw it together, and there's a bond that
takes place when you're going through all of this together.
I mean, how Mary years ago, in our early we
get the Sunday paper and I'd sit at the kitchen
table all Sunday afternoon clipping out coupons. Yeah, a little
bit the grocer.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
I remember the big Sunday papers and all the coupons,
and yeah, you know Christad when we were both in college,
she managed to in Utah County a very popular Mexican restaurant,
so she was she was a server. Then they moved
her up to be a manager and I was working
as well. And yeah, I look back at those times,
not negatively, but fun.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Fun times. Yeah, fun times. All right, more coming up.
It is the Friday edition of The Roden greg Show
and Talk Radio one oh five nine. Kayn R s uh,
it must be Friday. At the White House, Donald Trump
did something today I've never seen him do.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah, I I saw it as well.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
There was a ceremony of the White House just a
short time ago. He honored the miracle on ice hockey
team that beat the Russians and one gold medal back
in nineteen eighty in Lake Placid. He honored them the
anniversary today. They gave him a white cowboy hat. Yeah,
that they I think they were during the Olympic. I
think that was part of the uniform. I've never seen
him wear a cowboy hat.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
It was the first for me.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, pretty good.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
You think I know what?

Speaker 4 (20:25):
You know what?

Speaker 1 (20:25):
That's good? No, that's good. Trigger Taylor Sheridan's going to
see find a part for him on Landman wearing a
cowboy hat being an oil.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
That would be funny. I don't.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
I don't think that the hat suited him. I liked
the Maga hat better on Yeah. Yeah, the cowboy hat
looked to look good.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
I go that was all right.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
You ever wore a cowboy hat?

Speaker 3 (20:46):
No, no, no, I don't play cowboys and Indians anymore.
I'm a grown man.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Good for I don't do that.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Good for you. Well, let's talk about the election. Of course,
we've got the mid terms coming up next year. As
soon as we turned the corner on twenty twenty five,
that's all. Oh, we will be talking about, Well, what
is the left trying to do to reshape not only
twenty twenty six, but how about twenty twenty eight. Joining
us on our newsmaker line to talk about that is JT. Young,
and author a contributor at The Blaze. He's written about

(21:13):
this called ranked choice voting. JT, how are you? And
welcome to the Riding Greg Show.

Speaker 7 (21:18):
Hi, thank you so much for having me on today.
It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
I want to ask you, JT. What concerns you most
about this ranked choice voting idea that the Democrats are
really pushing hard on now.

Speaker 7 (21:31):
I think the thing that's the most frightening about it
is ranked choice voting. And let's be clear, what they're
looking to do is to do it within their own
primaries during the presidential election in twenty twenty eight. And
I think the thing that's the most frightening about rank
choice voting is it draws in more marginal candidates with

(21:55):
more marginal positions, It makes it harder for them to
reach majority had decided winner in a race. And it
also is going to then draw in more marginal people
into the voting process, and of course, in the Democrat Party,
more marginal will mean more extreme.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
So what comes to mind for me is I believe
his name was Andrew Yang. Wasn't he a presidential candidate?

Speaker 2 (22:22):
He ran for.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Mayor of New York City and they used rank choice voting,
and when the first results came in, I think this
is in twenty twenty one, he dropped out. He saw
the numbers. He's a math major, he's a pretty smart guy.
He saw that there was no way that they dropped
off the candidates that he had any chance of winning.
But someone that was around the same margin that he

(22:46):
had seemed to miraculously start rising as a contender as
they were counting these ballots, and so his supporters were saying,
you dropped out too early, Look what's happened here, and
he's like, it's not mathematically possible. They looked into it,
and they had test ballots that were still left into
that in that they're voting counting algorithm machine. However, they're

(23:06):
doing the rank choice voting, and they said, oh, you know,
you're right. We had these in here and these were
we got to take those out. And when they took
them out, because Andrew Yang was at least a high
profile enough candidate that it drew a lot of media
attention what he was saying, then they pulled them out
and it was true what he was saying. Those candis
that were around the same spot he was, they were
never going to ascend to the top sameyway. My point is,

(23:28):
when it's not one person on one vote, and when
you have algorithms and computers telling you who's actually getting
ahead of the other candidate, what are we looking at anymore?
It seems to be highly vulnerable to manipulation and cheating.

Speaker 7 (23:44):
I think those are all legitimate concerns. And you're also
going to say more jockeying among the candidates themselves is
they start to have to embrace more extremistpositions as they
look ahead, thinking I'm not going to win on the
first ballot, and I want to then attract the supporters

(24:07):
of other candidates who are probably going to be more
extreme to have them vote for me in one of
their second, third, or fifth choice. New York City uses
five choices and their ranked voting. So just to your point,
it opens it up to all kinds of practices that

(24:32):
will undermine the integrity of the election.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
JT.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
How likely are the chances that we could see this
in the Democratic primary come twenty twenty four era at
the convention? How real is?

Speaker 7 (24:46):
I think it's real enough that.

Speaker 8 (24:49):
The hierarchy within the Democrat.

Speaker 7 (24:52):
Party had a meeting in late October with people who
are pushing this. And if you look back at Democrat
Party at least back to nineteen seventy two, which is
over half a century ago, every move Democrats have made
have been towards trying to take the presidential selection process

(25:13):
away from their party establishment and give it to the voters,
the rank and file, and the rank and file, and
the Democrat Party is growing ever more to the left,
so I think there is a real concern that they
will do this, and what they will do is then

(25:37):
create an extremist nominee, or at least increase the likelihood
of one. I think just look at what went on
in twenty twenty when you had or in twenty twenty,
when you had Biden happen to go through a left field,
a left dominated field, there's no way he would have

(25:59):
survived that.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, so I do see.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
I've seen this before and party elections where they want
to make it quicker, so they say, look, put your first, second,
third choice and do it so ring choice voting, maybe
when voting for a candidate for like a mid term
vacancy or something like that. To your point, I have
seen it happen almost every time. In the first round
there is someone who is the clear most popular candidate

(26:27):
amongst the voting delegates, and they're leading by a lot,
and then you see in the subsequent rounds that lead
start to diminish and diminish because all the losers start
to combine, and then if you take all the losers
instead of just having one vote, they will ultimately overcome
the leader who was the one in the room who

(26:49):
was garnering more support than anyone else. So it does.
I think I've seen it with my own eyes. It
does do what you say. It takes people that are
unviable and gives them a greater boost eventually by those
that are able to keep voting over and over again
versus somebody who comes out and in the room is
clearly the most popular candidate with the most votes. So

(27:12):
why is this why? So my question would be, is
that is what I just described what the Democrats want.
They want that, and that's why they're pushing it. I mean,
or do people misunderstand ranked choice voting and don't realize
the risks involved in and how those votes climb. What's
the reason that ranked choice voting has traction at all?

Speaker 7 (27:33):
I think they're two. One is that I think just
what you said that people have a hard time understanding
it and they don't play out the scenarios that it
will create. And on the other hand, I think we
have to recognize the Democrat Party is giving ever more
to the left and what they now call themselves is

(27:55):
the progressive leftists of that party realize that will give
them a much stronger hand because people who want to
win a contest will have to curry favor with those
and support progressive positions in order to get those people's

(28:17):
supporters to vote for them down the ballot, you know,
on the on their multiple choice positions. So they will
do just what you were saying, where you see as
the rounds go on. These these people who clearly wouldn't
have won the election, they keep picking up support. And
that's part of the game playing that would take place

(28:40):
under ranked choice.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Voting, especially for the radical left within the Democratic Party. JT.
Appreciate a few moments of your time. Enjoy the weekend,
you too, all right, James JT. Young from the Blades
talking about ranked choice voting. More of the Rod and
Greg show coming up.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
I'm talking to him about sports in the commercial break.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
He doesn't know. He just doesn't know sports. It's really frustrated.
I can't even believe it.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
No, you don't. I'm not even going there with you.
I just let you feel that you're right, and I'm
because it doesn't bother me because I know you aren't right.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
He is.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
He doesn't know what he's talking about. It I may.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, it's so horrible. I hope this is true, Greg,
and I don't know why it wouldn't be. But uh
Treasury Secretary is Scott Bessont, who you and I both
really like rock Star, he says, working Americans better get
ready for this. They all could be getting a very
large refund anywhere from one thousand to two thousand dollars
per household early next year as a result of the

(29:37):
big beautiful bill and changes in the tax structure.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
I think it gets better than that. I think that
there's going to be your traditional tax you know, deductions
and what you get back. You're people are going to
see more of that money that's been deducted over over
the course of time for their taxes coming right back
into their pockets, and and and grand fashion it'll be.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
I think.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
I think from what I've heard, Americans are going to
be quite pleased.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Yeah, well, Bestin is saying they're going to see anywhere
from one hundred to one hundred and fifty billion dollars
in refunds GREG, which could be between one thousand to
two thousand per household this year.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
That's exciting.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
I think it's good and I think that's some of
the ways that we have to dig out of Biden's
bad economy. We have good we have good indicators out there.
But I don't want to be like the Biden administration
saying oh, everything's fine. If people don't believe it's fine,
then it's not fine.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
And what has Steve Moore been telling us, Grover Norquists
have been telling us, and we've had them on the show.
Wait till it all kicks in in twenty twenty six,
it could be a banner year for the accounty. Ye
can only hope, We can only hope. All right, another
hour of the Rudd in Greg Show coming your way
as we open up the films to you to join
us and talk about whatever is on your mind. That's
coming up next on talk radio one oh five nine

(30:48):
k n rs folks, and let them talk about whatever
is on their mind tonight eight eight eight five seven
O eight zero one zero, triple eight five seven o
eight zero one zero, Or on your cell phone dial
pound two fifty and say hey Rod. Or if you
download the iHeartRadio app right now, you can leave us
a message on our talk back line. Just search for
kanarrest dot com and there's a little red microphone button

(31:11):
up in the right hand corner and you can tap
on that and leave us a thirty second message. More
and more of our great listeners are using that. Greg
Nice hear their comments. But here's a chance now to
talk to us today.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah maybe maybe, folks, you've heard that this Abrago Garcia,
Marilyn Manu, huh who his wife put restraining orders against
him in the past. He's a human trafficker, caught you
know on the police you know, body cam with these
people in the van that he's you know, he's trafficking
north and drug cartel as well. Anyway, he got a

(31:46):
leftist judge to give a restraining order against Ice to
stay away from him, to not be able to deport him.
So he's holding a press conference and I'm just watching
all the people in this video around him. They're just
celebrating this guy. Wouldn't you just love the Democrats to
just think of Americans in the same way they look
at this Mariland man. Wouldn't it be nice if they
they went after they did think that illegal immigration was

(32:09):
illegal and they wanted to enforced federal law. What if
they thought that narco terrorists, you know, aren't worth trying
to save or feel sorry for it. But they're here,
they're trying to send poison to kill Americans and they
didn't like that. What if they could just be as
excited to protect Americans against that as they are this
Abrego guy. What about the NGOs that are just all

(32:31):
a bunch of they're just they're just money machine making machines.
They make so much money they spend ten percent of
it ruining this country with what the work they do.
But these NGOs are are just killing us. But Democrats
say they love It's not like there's nothing. There isn't
any everyday American that's benefited from the narco terrorist, from Abrago,

(32:52):
from the NGOs. None of us are helped by that.
We're all on the wrong side of that equation. Why
Democrats get to take on the most indefensible positions and
people and we sit here and talk about whether Trump
has a high approval rating or not compared to what,
compared to who. This party is not for anybody but

(33:15):
the most radical causes of which none of us subscribe.
And I'm telling you there are a lot of people
that don't consider themselves card carrying Republicans, who can't recognize
what the Democrats say today. They don't know what that
party is.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Which wouldn't you like to someday just ask a group
of Democrats, you know, solid Democrats, if they like America.
I'd like to know if they really like America and
why they like America, because the perception is Greg and
Kurt Schlickter we were talking about this earlier. You know,
wrote last week, why is it that the Democratic Party

(33:48):
is in favor of everything that most Americans oppose? I mean,
you had here's an example, great you had, who was
Gavin Newsom in an interview on one of the podcasts
saying yes to that. He's all behind trans people. He
wants more trans people in America and he is the
most you know, his state has done more than anything

(34:09):
to help trans people. Is that message going to sell
to everyday Americans? The American people are gonna wait a minute,
there's a real issue here now. And if you want
to be the party of trans Americans, go ahead, because
you are not going to get elected in that regard. Now.
He may win in California, there may be a few
other states he wins with, but you know, for the
most part, people, most Americans look at this. You're kidding me, right,

(34:33):
And the thing is, I just think that Americans need
to know. Elon Musk posted this earlier today or maybe
late last night, that these incentives they drive behavior. Well,
if the world knows that they can live ten one
hundred times better than they're living around the world by
way of quality of life paid for entirely by the

(34:56):
United States taxpayers. Why wouldn't that be a magnet for
the world to want to come here. If they can
have a taxpayer paid US, taxpayer paid life beginning to end,
and it's all better than what they are living in
at the time, why wouldn't they Why wouldn't they be
incentivized to be here? But the question then needs to

(35:16):
be asked, why would we have political leaders who would facilitate, promote,
and implement that the taking care of the entire world,
incentivizing the whole world to come here, to have taxpayers
take care of them, take that money fraudulently and enrich
themselves with it. Why are they for that? You know,
we I think, I know it's to break down our

(35:39):
foundational institutions. There's a different form of government that a
lot of these leftists would prefer. They hate this whole
self determination thing. They actually look at the masses with
contempt or they look down at them thinking you're not
smart enough, capable enough to make your own decisions. We
used to have cast systems. We need to get back
to that. Well, even even going back to that Newsome interview,
another thing he admitted was, you know how long have Democrats, uh,

(36:04):
defended the position. No, we are not providing free health
care to illegal aliens. I mean you hear that over.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
No, Oh yeah, it was all fiction. Some admitted it.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
In this podcast he says, yes, we provided, we provided
health care to illegal immigrants in the country, and we're
proud of it. Yeah, it's just you gotta be kidding me, folks.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, and he's proud of it because he wants to
do what what I think John Curtis did, and that
is not getting into any complexity of issues or talk
about the actual harm that people are feeling. Then either
intended or unattended consequences of decisions or the absence of
good decision making. They just want to boil it all
down to love, hug it out, be nice.

Speaker 9 (36:46):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
You know none of those things.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
I'm not against hugging, I'm not against loving, I'm not
against being nice. But if you want to take some
of these issues that are ripping this country apart and
and just and then just say it's that, that's the
that's the answer, that's the or the problem is we
just don't love enough. The problem is we have to
the answer is we need to hug more and think more,
how can we help people you have just it's just

(37:08):
disrespected the pain and the harm that people are feeling
because you're making it a moral failure that you're just
not kind enough. And that is just a Democrats do
it very well. Gavin Newsom, we're going to get that
in doses. He'll never be held to his record, or
he'll try not to be and I don't think a
media will ever put them to it. But he's just

(37:30):
going to try and use emotional please and he's going
to try and talk about how much he cares and
how much he is John Curtis's poster child of asserting
how much he loves, how much he hugs, how much
he cares. He's going to say everything that John Curtis
says is the silver bullet to save America.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
He's going to say it all.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
None of it's real, none of it's true, none of
it's getting to the heart of real problems that are happening.
But that kind of performative politics is what's sadly carrying
the day with, you know, with the regime media and
a lot of American.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
Well, let me tell you what if he run if
one of the platforms he runs on, Greg is, I'm
going to welcome as many trans people as I can.
I'm going to help trans people, people who are struggling
with our identity, We're going to help them. That will
turn off more Americans than anything. The American people, the
fair minded, common sense, whatever you want to call them, Americans,
we'll look at that and say, no, that is that

(38:24):
doesn't flow with us.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
The problem is, the challenge will be absent a candidate
like Donald Trump, they willing to on this, which he is.
If you don't have a candidate like him, they're going
to say the things that you just said to get
to the base. But the mainstream Americans won't vote against
Gavin Newsom for that, because what Gavin Newsom will be
saying simultaneously is that Republicans he's a fascist or he's

(38:48):
a NAZII. They're going to say he's going to try
and scare the daylights out of Americans to not vote,
not to vote for him because you want him, but
to vote against the Republican because that's the devil in Carnate.
That's what he's gonna say. Get to get the way
that America, that's the way they and he says all
the leftist things to keep his base happy. He's a
good politician, got admit, Hey, he knows what he's doing. Yeah,

(39:10):
we'll see, we'll see. All right.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Lines are open to you tonight about anything on your
mind eight eight eight five seven oh eight zero one
zero eight eight eight five seven o eight zero one
zero on your cell phone the ALP pound two to
fifteen and say hey Rod, or leave us a message
on our talkback line. Just download the iHeartRadio up when
we come back. Time Magazine has announced it's twenty twenty
five Person of the Year. If you haven't heard this yet,

(39:33):
we'll share that information with you coming up next on
the Rod and Gregg Show. Also on our talkback line,
you can leave a comment about the events of this
week real quick before do we go to our caller.
The Architects of AI are Time Magazine's Person of the
Year in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
So it's not Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
No, it's not Charlie kirk No, noid. The architects of AI.
Years ago. Remember when they I think they broke tradition
years ago. Was it in the early eighties where they
named the computer the person of the year When the
computer was just starting to flourish.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
I mean, I think it's a little early to name
the architects of AI the person of the year. I mean,
we don't know how in the event, I would be
very dangerous. I don't think we're looking back yet to
make a judgment.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Call here.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Are you worried about something like the Terminator happening?

Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yes, I've seen that movie many times and it just
gets more and more familiar. The plot line just doesn't
get crazier, it gets more real. I don't and I'm
disturbed by that fast. Yeah, okay, you know, real quick
for you, bug. I am surprised one of these AI
companies have not hired Arnold to be their spokesperson to
do an ad for them. I mean, yeah, that'd be perfect,

(40:47):
would all right? Should we go to the phones? Let's
all right, let's go to the phones. Let's go to Alan,
who's on I fifteen heading home? I guess Alan. Welcome
to the Rod and Greg Show.

Speaker 5 (40:56):
Hey, thanks Greg and Rod.

Speaker 8 (40:58):
Hey I was in the last week.

Speaker 4 (41:00):
You know, our little primily.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
City to the east. Ye, Blue Blue can.

Speaker 10 (41:05):
Be sanctuary city.

Speaker 8 (41:08):
They have a homeless.

Speaker 10 (41:11):
Problem, Like you wouldn't believe.

Speaker 11 (41:14):
All these problems they fight ice and gas was a
Bucks seventy eight gallon.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Ouch.

Speaker 11 (41:21):
Yeah, four million people in Denver more than Utah.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
It's crazy.

Speaker 11 (41:27):
Why is it so high here? And I know we
all say it's great, it's only two sixty or whatever.

Speaker 8 (41:33):
It's still a problem in Utah.

Speaker 10 (41:37):
It is.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
And I'm glad. I'm glad Alan, thank you for your call.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
But I'm glad you bring this up because as people
see the price coming under three dollars, they're like, okay,
we're good.

Speaker 4 (41:44):
Now.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
You just heard them say it's a Bucks sixty, a
Bucks seventy nine. Okay, I'm looking at gas buddy right now.
The range is anywhere from now the two fifty two.
Some of these are like costco where you pay a
membership to be there, and sometimes you got to take
membership like costcos or sam Clubs into consideration. But two
fifty two is the lowest in Utah. Highest is still

(42:06):
two ninety nine. So there's a forty seven cent spread
between cheapest gas and most expensive gasoline at eighty five
octane regular unleaded in the state of Utah. It makes
no sense whatsoever that the blue liberal state of Colorado
is more than a dollar less a gallon or about
a dollar less a gallon, pretty close. When they don't

(42:27):
have wells, they don't have pipelines, they don't have five refineries,
they don't have the fuel infrastructure, supply chain infrastructure that
we have in the state. And I don't want to
sound like a broken record, but I don't want to
let go of the fact that Utah forever enjoyed regionally
and even nationally some of the lowest gas prices in
this country because we had that supply chain infrastructure. It

(42:50):
was a symbiotic arrangement. You're going to drive on our roads,
You're going to have your refineries in our valley. We're
going to do all this, but we want you to
do the Tier three cleaner fuel. We're going to incentifize
and give tax credits to that. Why I say, we
the state will, but you're gonna have cleaner fuel here,
but we're gonna have at the end of the day,
cheaper gas prices. And that deal that two way street.

(43:12):
Since and this is just recent, it has has been broken.
It is not the same agreement that that Utons have
always been able to enjoy.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
How much do you know, Greg, how much did this
this step we took to uh get Tier three gas.
Did that increase the cost of gasoline here in the
state because the refining process has to be a little
bit different, does it not?

Speaker 3 (43:33):
It does, but the but the cost to refine it
they were given. They were giving tax credits. Okay, they
were tax credits, so they were given. So the e
PA was requiring these refineries to sorrow Chevron the holiday
the uh Maverick has it's it's it's uh it's refineries too.
But anyway, the e PA was required by a certain
date that they had to have a certain portion of

(43:54):
their refined fuel at this very very clean Tier three. Well,
it made all the sense in the world that if
they had to do it, we wanted to part The
state wanted to partner with them to make sure they
did it here with the idea that those five refineries
are primarily providing the fuel for us here in Utah.
That would make our gas, our emissions less, it would
make these inversion days less frequent, it would clean the air,

(44:15):
frankly clean the air. So that was the partnership that
we entered into, and I was very I'm still thinking
that's a very smart thing for us to do. But
part of that agreement had always been that the Utah
motorists would enjoy lower gas prices regionally and nationally, and
that deal was a solid deal for the longest time.

(44:37):
And now I watch these prices and we are just
Colorado that doesn't have any of that. You can go
to a like Iowa, I think, doesn't have any infrastructure.
They pipe it all in from either Minnesota or Illinois
or from the Gulf States, all their fuel and they're
a buck less a gallon than we are, and there's
just there's no Sometimes you just feel like we're just

(44:58):
a captive market that we don't don't have. If you
go down, if you drive your car, I think this
is still the case.

Speaker 4 (45:03):
I was.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
This is probably maybe a month ago or so. I
was driving I fifteen through Filmore and there's a brand
new and maybe it's a Terribles. I can't remember the
name of the new convenience store that was on the.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
West side of the Maverick And then I do think
Terribles has just built one on the other.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Brand new one on the east on the west east
west side of the freeway at Fillmore exit, and then
Maverick fairly new but not brand new on the west
side or no, they're on the east and the and
the other ones on the west. Well, what the what
the brand new gas station did is what every gas
station in America typically does. They tried to have the cheap,
least expensive gas to get more customers to come in

(45:42):
to their store. It brings it's a many times it's
even seen as a lost leader to get you to
come into their store and spend. Well, Maverick wasn't going
to have it. So when they went low, they went lower,
and then when they went lower the other two back
when we were at three twenty a gallon, they were
at two seventy a gallon, you.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Were looking a forty two forty three we were three twenty.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
No, you're looking at a fifty cents a gallon difference
in Utah from little old film whre where they don't
have a they don't have the volume of gas are
selling to even say it's two seventy. So anyway, I'm
just saying that there is a problem here, and my
and I think that the solution is I mean, I
don't want, you know, price fixing. We're not democrats. We're
not going to price fix anything but lower the gas

(46:24):
tax legisla, Yeah, why not lower it and then all
this tax exempt gas that you're sending over to Colorado
tax and all you tax the gas at the rack,
tax at the rack, quit making that exempt and lower
the tax at the pump.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
My sense is the law Macker. I hope lawmakers are
hearing from their constituents because I hope in January, lawmakers,
when they convene for their twenty twenty six session, we'll say, Okay,
we're gonna do something about gas.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, I need to because that long standing partnership, but
is not is not a two way streeting.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
All right, let's go back to the phones. Koren is
in patient tonight has them some thoughts on gas prices
as well. Korin, how are you welcome to the Rod
and Gregg Show.

Speaker 7 (47:04):
I'm good.

Speaker 12 (47:04):
How are you?

Speaker 1 (47:05):
We're doing fine? Thank you.

Speaker 7 (47:09):
Hey.

Speaker 12 (47:10):
I just had some insight on one of the reasons
that our gas prices stay so high in Utah. And
I'm not sure if uton's are familiar with this or
know that one hundred percent of our income chats goes
to the public school. I believe it's in our constitution
and there's close to eighty percent of our property tats

(47:31):
also goes to the public schools. And so the reality
of it is is that our state legislature they don't
have a lot of money to work with because they
can't touch it. And so it's my understanding that they
they don't have a choice, and that's the reason why
they keep giving us a gas tax and we can't
keep getting tax in all of these areas, and Utah

(47:53):
has become a high tax state in a lot of
ways because we can't our legislators can't touch those coffers
because it all goes to the public schools, which for
me personally, I don't like that because my children were
never in the public schools. Property taxes are shouldn't even exist.
But that's just something that Utons need to understand that

(48:16):
we need to change that. And our state legislators they
don't have a choice. They don't know where to pool
the money from.

Speaker 13 (48:23):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
I know you would know. I mean, I think our
in just knows what she's talking about.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
So the income tax, there's there's some slight exceptions as
of late where they can use it for child healthcare.
But look, the income tax was created really almost right
during the Great depression as a way for you taught
to fund public schools, and so the income tax was
dedicated to that issue. Then in the nineties they included
higher education with the income tax. It is absolutely the case.

(48:50):
Gren brings up that a good portion of your property
tax is for your public schools. The property tax portion
goes for the school facilities, for the buildings themselves, the
end class instruction. That would be everything in the class,
including the teacher. It's the teacher salaries and benefits are
your income tax. So they call that the weighted pupil
in it. So your income tax pays for everything going
on to educate a child inside the classroom, the class,

(49:13):
the physical classroom, building, schools itself, property that's funded by
the property tax, and so those are dedicated tax funds.
At my point, with even the taxes that are that
are you know the gas tax that we have and
I was part of you know this, I was part
of the legislature. I understand the gas tax. We should
cut that tax at the pump, we should cut not

(49:35):
eliminate it, cut it. But then the tax the rack price,
where we're sending at least forty percent of the refined
fuel out of this state that is tax free leaving
this state. Let those I do not understand how we
can help Colorado get You know, they're receiving and enjoying
almost a dollar less a gallon gasoline in a blue state.
Democrats state they hate the extraction industry. They'll never have

(49:57):
any fuel, you know, fuel infrastructure, supply chain infrastructure. There
should be a tax on that that Utahs don't have
to bear personally. Motorists don't have to bear personally.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
I'm with you on that one. Hopefully lawmakers will do
something about it, like we said in January, all right,
more they're Rod and Greg show coming up right here
on Utah's Talk radio one O five nine. Okay, nrs
or weekends to shop for the holidays.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
Plenty of time, folks, you're swimming in time. Don't stress.
You don't have to be like Rod and get all
done so early. Then you got to hide it all somewhere.
So just just.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Wait, called the trunk of my car.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Just wait.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
It all gets easier, it's less crowded, cheaper now.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
There's nothing left. The shores are, the shelves are bare.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Yeah. You know, the thing that's really working against me
is I'm not much. If you're an online shopper, then
you have to really plan ahead because they got to
deliver it. So then guys like me have to go
back to the old school scavenger hunt style and go
try to find something in a building somewhere.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
You know.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
See, you you need to learn one thing. What all right,
let me give you a little advice here, right, you're ready? Yes,
you have a daughter. I do, Yes, she knows her mother.
She does very well, Yes she does. Have you thought
about working together to keake Caro of.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
Well, that sounds revolutionary. Do you know what my daughter does?
What she buys me a gift card. I'm not good
at gift cards.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
I am not a gift card fan.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
Well, she gets me a gift card, and then I
don't I don't use gift cards. I really don't know
even I'm out. So do you know what she does?
She knows that I put it in this little cubby
in the in the kitchen. She regifts it and every
year I think it's a new gift card. And she
only broke it to me like five years into the
same gift card that she's been regifting me, the same
gift card. Unbeknownst to me. I didn't even know. I

(51:43):
just felt so guilty. She give me another one. I'm like,
I didn't even use last year's. I'm like, oh, thank you.
So she kept giving me the same just giving me
the same same one. She gives me the same gift card,
and I'm act, I act so happy because it's my daughter.
She's thinking of me, and I'm thinking, where are all
these gift card? I keep kidding, I don't remember. It's
the same one, same one. It's the same one.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
See if you went to your daughter and say, so,
let's you and I go shopping, you would be done
probably in a couple of hours.

Speaker 10 (52:10):
You know.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
That's you know you.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
They just need to learn very smart, you know, because
I guess the transition from your kids becoming adults, and
she's been an adult for a while. I don't know
why I've never thought of this.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
This is new me. Now I have new news for me.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
I have three sons. I don't use the sons. Yeah,
that would be I use their wives.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Nice.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
See See it's a technique. That's a life hack. Thank
you very much. I like that life hack. I'm not
called so all right? Eight eight eight five seven eight
zero one zero on your cell phone dial pound two
fifty and say hey, Rod, don't forget I are iHeart
radio app as well to the phones.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
We go Greg.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Yeah, let's go to Kyle and orum Kyle, thank you
for holding and welcome to the Rotting Greg Show.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
Well, thank you very much.

Speaker 14 (52:50):
And your daughter is brilliant.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Smart. Huh. I never knew.

Speaker 7 (52:56):
I was.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
Always I was feeling guilty as I kept getting regifted.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
I did know I was getting regifted.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to find these things.
What am I going to do? Yeah, she's very smart.
I don't even know why she broke the news to me.

Speaker 14 (53:07):
Yeah, well, now you know, I know one of the
questions I have. One of the question I have. I'm
hoping that somebody who's more intelligent than I am.

Speaker 7 (53:19):
And I.

Speaker 14 (53:22):
Have a lot of construction equipment that we burn off
road diesel in right, and here in Utah they take
twenty cents a gallon off of the text of that.
But if I go over to Colorado don't and do
work over there. They take entire texts off the gallon of.

Speaker 8 (53:40):
Diesel off road diesel.

Speaker 14 (53:43):
And I'm just wondering why Utah doesn't do that.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
And so, yeah, Kyle, Kyle, educate us a little bit
again about what off road diesel is. Is it different
from regular diesel? What's the difference between the two.

Speaker 14 (53:57):
It's died diesel, So you can't use it in your
in your truck that you're driving on the road because
it's not tax so the road tax is supposedly taken
off of that, whereas with in construction off road diesel,
you're not using it on the road, and you know,
farm equipment uses it, you know, because they're not on

(54:19):
the road, so they're supposed to get a tax break
from that. So but you can buy off road diesel
pumps as long as you don't put in your pickup
right to get caught with that.

Speaker 8 (54:29):
It's kind of expensive to get that.

Speaker 14 (54:31):
But anyway, I.

Speaker 10 (54:32):
Just was curious.

Speaker 14 (54:33):
And then the other question I had is, you know,
I traveled down between here and mo App quite a
bit and we get into Price and Green River, and
their fuel is a lot less expensive there than it
is here on the Wahsatch front until you.

Speaker 4 (54:48):
Get to Moapp.

Speaker 14 (54:49):
Then you better not buy fuel and.

Speaker 8 (54:51):
Moab because you'll pay fifty six cents to.

Speaker 6 (54:53):
Get on more.

Speaker 14 (54:55):
But anyway, I just was I don't understand that.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Either, So yeah, you know what, I.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
Love the questions he hoped to find someone that would know.
I fascinatly. I don't know on the diesel, but I'll
tell you that early the fuel taxes for the maintenance opera,
you know, in repair of roads. It's it's to help
with the capital expansion or pay for the bonds to
do it. So it makes sense that you should see
a severe discount or have it like Colorado does take
it off because the offer that what you use it

(55:24):
for for construction equipment doesn't touch the roads that they
look to repair with that tax. So that's why they
would sideline. It should be it should be more than
twenty cents. It should be just like Colorado. And why
is Colorado are you know, beating us on tax policy?

Speaker 1 (55:38):
I mean liberal Colorado?

Speaker 2 (55:41):
That is crazy.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
To add that to my my rant, I'm going to
add that to my rant. Now I'll tell you why
Green River and why those areas are cheaper for gas.
Why because they're applying more of a free market appeal.
So here's what I'm going to tell you. This is
what I worry is happening with this once very strong
agreement between the state of Utah and it's refineries and

(56:04):
it's and it's it's you know, retail outlets all this.
We used to have this agreement that we would have
the supply chain infrastructure here in our state, with the
trucks on the roads, with the refineries going with the wells,
with the pipelines, and that because we had that, we
would enjoy the cheaper prices of gasoline. But if you're
in Utah or if you're along the Watatch Front, it's
one of the more urban states because such a high

(56:27):
percentage of our state lives within one hundred, one hundred
and thirty miles of the Wasatch Front. The four counties
the Utah County, Slate County, Davis County, Weaver County, and
then you have the off Wastatch Front counties. But it's
so compressed in terms of a population. You have that
captured market. My fear is the reason we see such
high gas prices is it's a captured market. And if

(56:49):
everybody sees where the price is and you the one
unique company is Maverick that that for you know, pipes,
sends in pipelines, refines and bring brings in their own
gasoline to their own stations. There's not very many companies
that do that. There's usually brokers and middlemen along the way.
They have the most efficient delivery of oil to refine

(57:09):
gasoline to consumer gas pump. If they're at a certain price,
why does it?

Speaker 2 (57:14):
Why would it?

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Why would you ever not go near that price or
hit that higher price. I'm afraid that's what's happening here.
But when you get into areas that are more rural,
where there's more competition, and then they start to compete
against each other the way gasoline stations do nationally.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
All right, So that's my answer for that. All right,
more coming up on the Rod and Gregg Show. We'll
get a news update from Abby and then back to
your phone calls right here on the Rotten Gregg Show,
the phones we go. Let's go to Joseph, who's southbound
of Cottonwood. Joseph, how are you welcome to the Rod
and Gregg Show.

Speaker 13 (57:46):
Hi.

Speaker 8 (57:47):
I appreciate your your show and what you bring to
the public. I'm I'm just curious talking today about see
the gas I do a lot of holing uh here
in Utah, so I can see attention to it. I'm
just curious. I know that surrounding states here in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Arizona,

(58:12):
they use the lottery to fund education. I know that
brought up today. I'm just curious, would that help in
bringing down on a little bit of the costs for
for gas. Here in Utahs we do something like that.
I know most half of the population are going to
those honor states to buy lottery tickets and stuff.

Speaker 4 (58:34):
But I'm just curious, and thank you, Joseph.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
From what I understand, in most states, does most of
the money from lotteries go to education.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
Yeah, they always go to the public social services and causes.
So it's if it's not public education, there's other services
that it goes to. Here's the I love the question
because it's actually very interesting.

Speaker 12 (58:57):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
There are only two states in the United States that
ban all forms of gambling entirely. Utah is one, Hawaii
is the other. Every other state forty eight other states
have some form of gambling like like jose just said that,
like lotteries or even more. But here is the challenge.
If you have a state that has reservations Native American reservations,

(59:18):
the federal law is if that reservation is inside of
a state that doesn't have any form of gambling, then
they can't have casinos or any form of gambling on
their reservation. But if you have any form of gambling
in your state is as innocent as the scratch off
cards that you buy, you know, to match up a lottery,
then the casino, then the reservations can have casinos. And

(59:41):
the thought with casinos has been that that can be
a strain on your social services the people that would go.
So it's a bigger you bite off, a bigger bite
even with a lottery with casinos in the state of Utah,
if you were to make that legal.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Let's see if we can get one more call out.
Let's go Steve and West Valley. Steve, go ahead with
your comment.

Speaker 13 (01:00:00):
Hi guys, Hi Suitzan Greg, Hello, sir, so, I notice
in my industry that there is a big guy.

Speaker 9 (01:00:16):
That's uh, can I call names out?

Speaker 7 (01:00:20):
You already get Maverick?

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Okay, the maverick okay, you said, okay.

Speaker 9 (01:00:25):
So, so there's a competitor that I see their gas
trucks that have their name on it, and it's the
competitor and their delivering gas.

Speaker 6 (01:00:38):
Two the other one.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Gee, you know, I don't know how all that works,
you know, because you'll see different trucks with different names
on Maverick.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
Has got a one stop shop.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
They got they have the whole supply phone owned and
they're one of the few companies in in America that
does it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Good observation, Steve, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Another hour of the rodin Greg Show that's coming up
to stay with us. Well, I hope you've had a
good week. You're wrapping up your Friday. If you aren't aware,
Abby mentioned that in our newscast a moment ago. Big
news today Kyle Whittingham stepping down as head coach up
at the University of Utah. Great record, not a big surprise.
Morgan Scalley steps in now and takes over new era

(01:01:16):
for Utah football and with this head fun thing going
on it that's going to be interesting as well.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Yeah, I will tell you this about count Winningham. I
thought urban Meyer he came and I think he really
changed the culture of the program. I think he won
he won the Fiesta Bowl back in two thousand and
what four, five or five, And anyway, you wondered when
urban Meyer left because he went on to win multiple
national championships with Florida and with Ohio State, you wondered

(01:01:42):
if that standard could be Captain Kyle Winningham didn't blink.
I think that that program did so well in the
Pac twelve. It was always a question can you be
a mid conference team? You don't even get the same
payout when you first start. They didn't blink. They were
competitive the day they got in that conference. And I
attribute that to the coach winning him.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
One Sugar Bowl win, two visits to the Rose Bull
quite a record. He certainly is a lot of fun,
all right. The American people aren't stupid, and they realized
that federal spending is kind of like out of whack.
And the amount of money that the federal government now
spends on all of us is truly truly amazing. I mean,
it is just out of control, Greg, and nobody seems
to want to do anything about it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
One of our callers this week point out that you
can't just stay in crisis mode all the time, so
you just start has a numbing effect what you're hearing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah, Well, a new report came out this week and
basically said, get ready, folks, because the amount of money
that the federal government now stands on every American is scary.
John Hart from openthbooks dot com, he's the CEO of
Open the Books, is joining us on our Newsmaker line. John,
you went way way back to look at the amount
of money the federal government spends on Americans. What did

(01:02:46):
you find?

Speaker 6 (01:02:47):
Yeah, like, this is an extraordinary report. So we went
back all the way to nineteen thirteen, and just to
put these numbers in context, is, you know, the federal
government has been growing massively and the numbers get so
big it's mind numbing. But what we did is we
looked at spending. You know, roughly the past one hundred years.
In nineteen twenty five, the federal government was spending, adjusted

(01:03:11):
for inflation, about four hundred and eighty four dollars per person,
and twenty twenty five that number is more than twenty
thousand dollars. In fact, twenty thousand, four hundred and seventy four,
so almost twenty thousand dollars more per person. Now, when
you think about per person is almost misleading because then
when you think about it for a family, that's eighty

(01:03:32):
thousand dollars. So the average American family is spending about,
you know, eighty thousand dollars just on the federal government,
and you have to ask yourself, is are you getting
that much benefit back? And I think the answer the question, well,
I'll let people judge to themselves whether they're getting a
great deal from you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
You did notice, John right, we're laughing, said it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Was a punch line.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
It wasn't even a question, it was a It was
an So let me ask you this. If I were
to try and find something from nineteen sixteen, would I
find that literacy rates are better now? Would I find
that more people are sheltered, they have warm houses to
live in, more clothes on their back. Is there any
indicator that this ballooning, Not that it's it's been worth it,
but at ten thousand percent, do we have any measurables

(01:04:19):
that would say things are better now than before?

Speaker 13 (01:04:22):
Sure?

Speaker 6 (01:04:22):
Well, I think I think you that that gets at
the heart of the questions you have to You have
to ask where are we better off? And what was
the cause of us being better off? Is really the question?
So clearly, you know, standards of living or higher literacy.
You know, I'd have to go back and look at
the numbers, but I can tell you from from studying
the Department of Education you know, we wont two world

(01:04:44):
wars and put a man on the moon without having
a federal Department of education. So the US Department of
Education itself is one of the great, you know, classic
case studies of government not doing anything terribly terribly effective. Now,
you know, standards of living have gone up, but that's
that is because of the genius of I call it
the invisible but compassionate hand of the market, where free

(01:05:07):
market competition, capitalism, American innovation, and ingenuity really had been
the cause. And that was the other I testified this
week before the Senate Small Business Committee, you know, and
I went through some of these numbers, but I also
made the argument that the best way to make something
expensive is for government to make it affordable. But the
corollary is also true, and so I walk through when

(01:05:30):
you look at the areas of the economy that have
been the most heavily subsidized, where the federal government has
gotten very involved, and it's the reason why it's twenty
thousand dollars per person. The two areas that have been
the most heavily subsidized are healthcare and education, and the
inflation and cost and both of those have skyrocketed and

(01:05:51):
then conversely, if you think about things like electronics, the
cost and the affordability have gone way down, so those
products get better, and government funded things tend to get worse.
And so you know, in small businesses and normal Americans,
we have to do less with more. You know often

(01:06:13):
over year, government however, does more or does less. Sorry,
government does less with more, We do more with less.
That's the difference.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
You know, it's such a change in paradigm.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
You know, Robert F. Kennedy or John F. Kennedy said
that's not what you what your country can do for you,
but what you can do for your country, saying, look,
we're we're in this together. I think the two areas
that does there's no fiscal note that I'm aware of,
is freedom of self determination and a free market that
lifts more people out of poverty than any government program
ever has or will. When did that shift? When did

(01:06:48):
When did? When did we decide as a nation and
in taxpayers that it must be government that's going to
provide all those things, not free markets, not free minds.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
What when did that happen?

Speaker 15 (01:06:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:06:58):
You know, that's that's a data is a great I'll
give you the I'll give you. I'll try to give
you the quick, profound historical answer is the norm in
human history has been for authoritarian, top down governments to
harass and cajole course individual people. In our American our
American experiment is the exception. So for most of human

(01:07:21):
history people have suffered under tyrannical rule, and then for
for for moments in history, we've been able to escape that,
I think from from our founding. You know, up until
really the early twentieth century. Obviously we had the Civil War,
there were major, major upheoples. It's not it's not a
straight line, but there was a very concerted effort in

(01:07:43):
the early twentieth century that the quote modern progressive movement
started in you know, a guy named Herbert Crowley who
influenced Woodrow Wilson. He described individual Americans as unregenerate citizens.
That was the first articulation of the quote the play Horribles,
and that they needed an administrative state to tell them

(01:08:04):
what to do and keep them in line. And that's
that's really been the cause of our modern of our
modern suffering. And that's what the number show is. That
is that when that idea took route, you saw a
government start to grow massively, become less less and less efficient,
take more and more freedom and resources away from individuals,

(01:08:25):
and the market has succeeded in spite of.

Speaker 7 (01:08:27):
That, not because of it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Yeah, John, you mentioned I want to go back to
the figure you mentioned that you know, the federal government
is spending what about twenty four hundred and seventy four
dollars on every American out there? Isn't that just an
indication as to how intrusive government has come and has become,
and how intrusive it is in our own lives anymore?

Speaker 6 (01:08:44):
John, That's right, that's right.

Speaker 4 (01:08:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:08:47):
Look, I made the argument in the testimony that you know,
Secretary McMahon has, very wisely Secretary of Education is trying
to return education to the States because it never The
Founders wrote the Constitution very intentionally to limit the size
and scope of the federal government. And as I asked,
is you know how we have four hundred agents, more

(01:09:08):
than four hundred agencies and subagencies in the government, and
how many how many do small businesses need to succeed?
Do they need one hundred, two hundred, three hundred or
maybe maybe the four that's the Founders authorized in the Constitution,
Departments of Justice, state trying to take that offense.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
Yeah, can we can we vote in favor.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
I'm voting for the four. I'm just putting my hand
up right now.

Speaker 15 (01:09:30):
So you know.

Speaker 6 (01:09:31):
It's a very it's a very modern, and I'm willing
to compromise and say instead of four, we can have
five Department of Commerce. So see, I'm a good faith
moderate in that sense.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
On our Newsmaker line, John Hart, CEO of Opened the
Books talking about that twenty thousand, four hundred and seventy
four dollars spent on every American by the federal government. Greg, Yeah,
it's pretty crazy, pretty crazy, it is.

Speaker 3 (01:09:54):
It is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
Oh, just a bit, just a bit, all right. More
coming up on the Routing Greg Show on this Friday
in Utah's Talk radio one oh five nine can ars.
This is a headline on a story that NBC News
aired about what's going on in Minnesota. Somali immigrants are
revitalizing main street America.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
Yeahs off media says, billions of dollars of fraudballs simple,
thank you would be nice.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
What's wrong with you? Get with the program.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
It has been amazing how the regime media this week
has basically tried to point out that Somalis and other
Muslim immigrants to this country are kind of transforming Middle America. Okay,
on the backs of the American taxpayer. I think joining
us on our Newsmaker line to talk more about that
is Daniel Greenfield. He is a journalism fellow at the
David Horowitz Freedom Foundation. Daniel, thank you very much for

(01:10:43):
joining us. What do you make of those headlines and
what the regime media says the Somalis are doing to
the American people and what they've done to Minnesota.

Speaker 15 (01:10:51):
Oh, they've always see some incredible numbers. They paid the
Samalwis pay sixty seven million dollars in taxes, which sounds
like a lot of to you. I should see a
government budget. There's about an estimated one hundred thousand Somalis
in Minnesota. That comes out to about six hundred and
seventy dollars per person. The average tax burd in Minnesota
is eight thousand dollars. These six hundred and seventy dollars

(01:11:13):
would pay for about two weeks worth of food stamps
or you know, a few weeks worth of school. Considering
the size of the population there. The you know, forty
percent of them are below the poverty line. So all
these people are on Medicaid, they're on every welfare and
social program. You can imagine, sixty seven minus are dropping

(01:11:35):
the bucket when you consider we're talking about one point
five billion in fraud, you know, sixty seven million, you
wouldn't even notice it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
You know, the meat Like Rod pointed out, the regime media,
they want to make the victims the Somalis amazingly enough,
and they're saying that, you know, you're just too you're
broad brushing in an entire community.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
It's really unfair.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
But you point on some statistics in terms of the
percentage that are receiving well for benefits, even the disturbing
data that's coming back that the Somali autism centers increase
from a six billion dollar, six million dollar program to
over one hundred million, seven hundred percent increase, which couldn't
be from autism itself. Plenty of red flags of fraud

(01:12:17):
going on. But this retort that we're hearing in the
media that if you have anything negative to say about Samalies,
well then you're just basically a racist and that you
shouldn't be saying anything at all. Is so my question
is how broad of a brush is this really? Is
this just a narrow bunch you know that are making
the Somali refugees look bad, or is there something going

(01:12:38):
on here that's a lot bigger by way of the
refugees that live in Minnesota and even other states.

Speaker 15 (01:12:45):
Looking at one point five billion on fraud, it wasn't
just a few dozen guys doing this. He needed major
community buying. He needed community groups to do this. He
needed members of the community to participate on a large scale.
For example, the autism fraud, which is approaching a billion hours,
depended on getting parents, paying the parents in many cases
to have their kids taken to the center, diagnose them

(01:13:06):
as autistic, and collect the money. So you have huge
numbers of members of this community that were participating in
it one way or another. Now they can claim in
a sense, they can claim that they did not know
what they were doing. Likewise, the food fraud Feeding our Future,
which claims to be feeding over one hundred thousand kids,
which is you know, far more Somali kids than there

(01:13:28):
actually are in Minnesota. Again, you needed a whole lot
of different organizations. You needed community groups to be able
to come and say to the Minnesota Department of Health
and the Apartment of Agriculture that you're racist for now
wanting to fund our programs. Then afterwards, you can't just
go away and claim that it's these fifty sixty seventy
hundred guys. You had broad community by it. You had

(01:13:49):
people like Ilan Omar, presentative of Ilhan Omar, who was
connected to some of these very same people. And you know,
Milan Omar is in Congress because Samali's vote for her.

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):
You know, I was blown away on a comment I
heard last night on CNN where the commentator, I think
it was Abby Phillips, who talked about the debate over
welfare and says, you know, we don't complain about giving
welfare to people in Appalachia, so why are we comparing
about giving welfare to Somalia and people in the United
States from Somalia. That blew me away when I heard
that last night. Daniel, what were your thoughts, any thoughts

(01:14:21):
on that?

Speaker 15 (01:14:22):
First of all, we have some obligation to Americans. Do
we have an obligation to just provide welfare to anybody
who comes here? Not so much. Second, do you actually
look at the social welfare spending in Appalachia, and you
look at the social welfare spending in LA and Minneapolis
and New York City and any major liberal city, and

(01:14:43):
it completely blows it away. The people in appo eacha
getting pennies on a dollar compared to the tens and
tens of thousands of dollars per person and welfare spending
you get in major cities. Minneapolis has I think thirty
five thousand per person welfare spending, and the Somalis are
a big part of that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
And can't we all say that if we heard numbers
in the billions of welfare fraud, it really wouldn't matter
who was receiving that or who was defrauding the taxpayers.
It would be a pretty upsetting news story, without regard
to whether it's from Appalachia or from Minnesota. Can't we
as Americans and as taxpayers be outraged at that kind

(01:15:23):
of I just think unprecedented fraud that's being uncovered in
real time.

Speaker 15 (01:15:29):
Any normal person would be absolutely outraged. One point five
billion fraud. You know, it's your normal person, You pay taxes,
That is your money that is being stolen. So the
real question is why weren't people in the Somali community
Why weren't the good people there actually coming out reporting
this warning about this All this money is being stolen,
yet we heard nothing about it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:49):
I want to move on to another topic if I
could for just a second. Daniel, you have another piece
today on front page talking about why oil tankers are
so important to Venzuela and what the president is trying
to do there. Why are they so vital to Venzuela
At this.

Speaker 15 (01:16:02):
Point, the bottom line is in on the past, we've
done these regime change nation building things where we go
in and they try to introduce democracy, and President Trump
is actually hitting them where it really hurts because Venezuela
has got two things going for it. They've got two
things left in their economy after decades of socialism. They've
got drugs, which is why we're worried about them. They

(01:16:23):
are exporting drugs to the United States, and too, they've
got oil. They nationalized and e wrecked most of their
domestic oil industry, but they're shipping well, and they're mostly
shipping it to communist Cuba and communist China. So President
Trump is going ahead and seizing the oil tankers, cutting
off the supply to our enemies and we're making money.

Speaker 6 (01:16:40):
In the process.

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
Does China get does China's being the recipient of much
of that oil? Does that make it a tougher situation?
Is China flexing its muscles? Is it trying to? I mean,
are they going to have an undue influence? And how
we deal with Venezuela.

Speaker 15 (01:16:55):
We've had this issue before with Iran in fee. We
have sanctions on Iran to Iran against to ship all
the oil that it wants to China, which is a
pretty good deal for rand and for China, and the
past administrations were very wary of doing anything about it
because people are scared of China. In this case, President Trump,
I'm not sure exactly the destination of the old tanker

(01:17:15):
that he sees, but he's demonstrating that he's going to
actually show some American muscle here and that China, Cuba,
and Venezuela, which is run by a cartel known as Cartestuosaulus,
which obstructs the United States, should not expect a free ride.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Daniel Greenfield joining us from the David Horowidz Freedom Center,
talking about facetiously this headline what Somalays have done for
Minnesota not a whole lot.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
Now, and I think it's very important that he showed that.
He just demonstrated this is a broad, very broad problem.
You can't narrow it down to a few dozen people
that are the culprits of this. This is a systemic
and a broad problem, and it's going to be It's
not just Minnesota, it's going down the state's main Now
we're starting to hear about Ohio.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
I think there'll be more stories to come.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
All right, another half hour coming your way our listen
back Friday. Half hour coming up next on the Rod
and Greg Show and Talk Radio one oh five nine
kN rs. People are making the news each and every day.
We know you can't list everything, and we always like
to select a couple during the week that we talked
about Greg and play him back for people.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):
And you've got a great ear for that. You've been
in the business about two hundred years, so you can
really hear news and when we have some good, good interviews.
You always bought the great ones to listen back on Fridays,
as I personally enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
Radio has not been around for two hundred years, but
you have Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Okay, I'm kidding, sorry, Rodeo Queen.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
Well, you know, we wonder sometimes and we've talked about
this earlier this week, Greg and Kurt Schlickter wrote about this,
why is it the Democrats opost everything that honest Americans
are in a favor of?

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
And why doesn't that go over worse with people? Because
it really goes over bad with me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Yeah. Well, we had a chance to talk with Zachary Faria,
he is a commentary fellow at the Washington Examiner, about that.
He wrote about how Democrats treat illegal immigrants. Asked them
give us some examples of this.

Speaker 10 (01:19:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:19:02):
The two big ones are the California commercial driver's license issue,
where California is issuing commercial driver's license to illegal immigrants
to drive semi trucks without doing any verification really of
if they're even allowed to have them. And you see,
obviously we've had several high profile cases of those truck
drivers then killing drivers in illegal maneuvers on the roads.

(01:19:25):
And then you have in Rikers Island in New York City.
New York is refusing to honor ice detainers for violent
criminal illegal immigrants who are in Rikers Island who are
then released out under the streets.

Speaker 3 (01:19:37):
So let me ask you, is this Trump drange derangement
syndrome where anything that Trump advocates for, be it secure borders,
public safety, the Democrats have to recoil and be opposed
to it. Or are these deeper than that? Are these
just these agenda? Is this a leftist agenda, that's just
we're seeing better today than we've seen in the past.

Speaker 16 (01:20:01):
I'm definitely inclined to think it's more of Trump derangement
and Republican derangement syndrome where Democrats can't just come out
and say, hey, we have some law abiding illegal immigrants who, yeah,
they came here illegally, but they're just trying to make
a better life for themselves and for their families. Instead,
they have to go one hundred percent in the opposite
direction and say, we oppose deporting anybody. So you know,

(01:20:22):
you can't take an illegal immigrant criminal from Rikers Island
and then deport him when a sentence is over, We're
going to block that deportation. Really, it's just completely the
other way. California, for example, passing numerous giveaways for illegal immigrants,
including phone bill subsidies on the California taxpayer dime. They
can't just say, hey, there's some illegal immigrants who maybe
we want to try and get to stay here long term.

(01:20:44):
It's we have to give them all this stuff. We
have to protect them from being deported no matter what
they do.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
Zachary. What is it someone wrote the other day raising
this question about Democrats is they seem to be opposed
to everything that fair minded, common sense Americans believe in.
What is it with Democrats when they wanted to support
everything that most Americans say, Wait a minute, that's going
a little too far.

Speaker 16 (01:21:07):
Part of it is just they have no opposition coming
at them from anyone in their own circle. You know,
Liberal media never pushes them on any of this stuff,
so they inoculate themselves in this bubble and they think
everyone supports it. It's what you saw with the Biden
administration thinking that no one's going to really care that
the border's wide open. That was the big New York
Times piece that came out five years too late, was

(01:21:28):
that the Biden administration thought this wasn't going to be
a big political issue, and it turned out to be one.
Because Democrats don't have that sort of introspection coming at
them because everyone in their circle agrees with them.

Speaker 3 (01:21:38):
So so where does it go from here? I mean,
we have just more to more than two years left
of Trump's term. He's had just a little over a
year in office. Are we just going to see, you know,
these narco terrorists become the darlings of the Democrat Party
and the Maryland man who's the human and drug trafficker,
you know that's here illegally with the trende ur Aguay

(01:22:01):
gang member. Are they just going to continue to be
their poster children and who they bleed their hearts bleed
for going forward the rest of his term? Or does
anything change before the midterms are after?

Speaker 16 (01:22:16):
I don't think there's gonna be much change. What you're
gonna see is kind of the same as the lead
up to twenty twenty where Joe Biden presented himself as
this more moderate voice. He's just coming in to lower
the temperature and he's not gonna do anything crazy, and
then he gets in office and all the idea logs
in his administration start doing everything crazy. I think it's
going to be a very similar playbook in twenty twenty eight.
You're gonna see Democrats running around kind of like how

(01:22:37):
Gavin Newsom's running around trying to downplay transgender issues at everything.
They're gonna be doing the same thing on immigration. They're
going to say that we have to protect American citizens
and all this stuff, and we have to moderate a little,
and then when they get into office, they're just going
to do the exact same thing that Biden did. So
I think Democrats are kind of stuck in this holding
pattern where they pretend to be moderate, they win an election,
they get too radical, they lose an election, and it

(01:22:59):
just keeps going on.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
But if someone like Gavin Newsom steps up and tries
to portray himself as zero point ol Zachary, a moderate,
can he even win the party's nomination now, knowing how
far to the left is drifted.

Speaker 16 (01:23:13):
I think so, because Gavin Newsom specifically has built himself
sort of a reputation as the progressive warrior.

Speaker 8 (01:23:19):
The problem he's.

Speaker 16 (01:23:20):
Going to run into is the same problem Kamala Harris
ran into last year, which is that Kamala was so
radical in her twenty twenty run for president that it
followed her into twenty twenty four, and voters didn't buy
when she was trying to put on this moderate facade.
So that's kind of going to be the thing that's
going to have to break Democrats if someone like Gavin
Newsom tries the same thing and it breaks him the
same way, because voters already see how Gavin Newsom runs

(01:23:42):
California and they don't buy that it's going to be
a more moderate presidential administration.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
As part of our List Back Friday presentation, Zachary Faria
from The Washington Examiner right here on the rowden Greg
Joe Moore coming up at the end of the current
term of the Supreme Court that would come in in June.
There could be a big, big win for the president.
It comes to the issue of can the president fire
heads of federal agencies? And by the sense of things

(01:24:09):
the Supreme Court, the questions they asked today, indications are
they're probably going to rule in favor of President Trump.

Speaker 10 (01:24:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:15):
I think it's an antiquated ruling from way way back,
what ninety years ago. Nowadays, bureaucrats are Democrats, whether there's
a democratic administration or not. So when you get a
Republican administration, it's like you got a fourth branch of government,
and it really does work very hard to slow down
someone like President Trump and his administration. And I think
what the Supreme Court was getting out of. Many of

(01:24:36):
their questions were aimed at as if the people voted
for a president, doesn't that president have the right to
really exercise those powers in the executive branch and get
things done. Part of that would be to be able
to hire your own people.

Speaker 1 (01:24:47):
Earlier this week from the Manhattan Institute, we spoke with
Ilio Shapiro about this, and I asked Ilio right off
the top, if the president is finally going to get
a chance to look at some of these federal agencies
and their bosses and say you're fired.

Speaker 10 (01:25:00):
Yeah, I think that's what they're going to do, based
on yesterday's argument and based on where they've been going
for the last fifteen years, and in a series of
cases there have been enhancing the president's ability to appoint
and remove and have control over these so called independent agencies,
and the whole idea of an independent agency as a

(01:25:20):
constitutional malaprophism. We only have three branches, so you've got
to belong to one of them if it's the executive branch,
and the president has to be able to control who's
in charge to be able to enforce his policies.

Speaker 3 (01:25:33):
You know, a sword can cut both ways. You have
a Democrat elected president, will they will take these agencies
and fire them all and put their own people in.
But I suspect it's kind of the bureaucracy kind of
leans that way anyway. I don't know that it's as
much of a double edged sword as some might describe.

Speaker 10 (01:25:52):
Well, it's true. I mean you're enhancing presidential authority regardless
of who's in the White House obviously, and there will
be Democrats and the White House again, there will be
non Trump Republicans. You know that that's the way the
wheel turns. But the issue of the bureaucracy is slightly different,
and there has been there's still ongoing litigation about what

(01:26:13):
a president can do with respect to non political appointees
that's so called the career staff, which are subject to
civil service protections of various kinds. That's sort of what's
sometimes called the deep state. Is a slightly different issue
than control over these political appointees and the ones who
are actually running the agencies.

Speaker 3 (01:26:34):
Ya.

Speaker 1 (01:26:34):
You know, if the court rules in favor of the
president in his argument, and it appears they may be
as a result of the questions that we're asked yesterday
and the comments being made. What are some of the
broad implications of this If in fact they rule in
favor of what the president wants to.

Speaker 10 (01:26:49):
Do, well, it means that the agencies will be part
more directed than that of executive branch decision making. Just
like the Education Department or the Energy Department does what
the president wants is a part of one unified administration.
So will the FCC, the FTC, all of these alphabet

(01:27:13):
agencies which you know, whoever's in the majority, because they're
all structured so that there's you know, three to two
Republicans versus Democrats, what have you, And they kind of
shift their powers as new president's form and new appointments
are made. But now there will be more directly part
of the administration, and so who's headed to to direct

(01:27:37):
them will be just as important and just as political
as the nomination of cabinet secretaries.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
So why did so?

Speaker 3 (01:27:45):
This is a ninety year standing Supreme Court ruling that's
being looked at now. Why hasn't it caught the attention
of any administration or the Supreme Court up until now?
Is it just been abused to a new level? Is
this something that's long overdue that should have been addressed.

Speaker 10 (01:28:00):
Why now, I think it is long overdue. That ninety
year old President's called Humphreys Executor came in the context
of the Federal Trade Commission, the same agency, the FPC
that's that issue now, that was under FDR, and that
agency and other agencies were very different animals at that

(01:28:22):
time that they were not necessarily exercising executive power. They
were legislating. They were acting as judges, which is the
reason why the Supreme Court back then said that the
executive can't have full control, they're exercising quasi legislative power.
Things like that. The administrative state, the big bureaucracy, has

(01:28:43):
grown into a much different animal than it was back then.
And so it's just come to a point where, as
part of a broader series of rulings to push back
on the administrative state, we had the overturning of Chevron deference,
for exampleference that judges used to pay to the interpretations
of agency heads of their operative statutes. And this is

(01:29:07):
part and parcel of that that the Court wants to
the originalists, the justices that care about the original meaning
of constitutional provisions, want to rebalance and reinforce separation of
power so that there's accountability.

Speaker 1 (01:29:21):
Oh yeah, any guests as to what Donald Trump and
future presidents may do if they have this rually know
in their hip pocket. What do you see happening down
the road here?

Speaker 10 (01:29:32):
Well, every president will replace the heads of these agencies,
this Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board,
all of these things, so they'll be, as I said,
more directly connected to presidential agenda making. And just as
Trump has done this term. He didn't do it as

(01:29:54):
much his first term, but replacing people who are on
political appointees who were there before with his own, more
loyal appointees. And so we'll have shifts in those agencies
at the leadership level, just as we've had shit, just
as we have shifts every four years of the political

(01:30:16):
appointees in the cabinet departments.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
So I think four years goes fast. We're looking we've
already passed a year in the president's first this second administration,
and we have midterms coming up. Decision will come. I
guess what does it come.

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
In May or June?

Speaker 3 (01:30:29):
And then how long do you think until the president
is able to implement if it? Assuming I don't want
to count my eggs chickens before their hash. But if
he were to see a ruling go his way on this,
how long till he can implement that and still have
a term left to serve?

Speaker 10 (01:30:45):
Well, he already has been in a sense, you know,
he's the procedural posture of this particular case, the removal
of this FTC commissioner, and there are others with other agencies.
The litigation is sort of paused in the President's favor
at the moment. So assuming this goes as it's predicted

(01:31:06):
to go, as we've just been discussing the president's way,
then those people that he's fired will remain fired. I
don't know if he has anybody else on the chopping
block that he hasn't gotten to yet, So might not
directly affect, you know what, what what he's doing, because he's
been doing it. It's just that he's the one that's
now that this has gotten to the Supreme Court. Other
presidents in recent terms probably decided they didn't want the

(01:31:31):
legal or the political fight, but but Trump has taken
it on.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
On our Newsmaker Line part of our Listen Back Friday segment,
Ilio Shapiro, director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute
weekend coming up.

Speaker 2 (01:31:42):
Yeah no, it's gonna be a good weekend.

Speaker 1 (01:31:44):
And then laid back weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
Yeah yeah, lots of sports. Yeah, and yeah hang out.
I love I love the veg if you did all right?

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
That does it for us tonight. As we say each
and every night, head up, shoulders back, May God bless
you and your family. That's great. Jan Three of ours
will be back Monday at four. Enjoyed the weekend. Everybody
beat safe out there.