The Rod and Greg Show: Trump Rolling Dice on the Economy; Past Peak Pollution; Do Normal people listen to Dems?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
He's steering us right. You're the navigator.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm the navigator. I just fly the thing by the way, yes,
being navigator. Why you'll never be goose or should never
be goosed, is that you're not a very good navigator.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
Rod.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're in my ringman.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm trying to get out of the hockey game last night.
Don't I do this last night? Night before? And we
get through a light and I said, is that is
that another lane to the right? You said, yes, it was.
It wasn't even I think it was. Yes. I go in, Oh,
we're in a bike lane. We are to the right
of parked cars where you directed me.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
So hey, I saw stripes, right, I saw stripes. I
thought that meant we were okay.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
And I ate with you. I don't like when drivers
cut in line when there's traffic, and I was that
very mute, and I thought everybody's just giving me telling
me I'm number one finger and I deserve.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
All right, Sorry about that? How are you ever? Buddy?
We invite you to be a part of the show.
We're off to a good start, can't you tell? Eight
eight eight five seven eight zero one zero triple eight
five seven eight zero one zero or on your cell
phonele pound two fifty and say hey, Rod, here's what
we're talking about today. We're going to be talking about
President Trump. Is he being a little risky when it

(01:07):
comes to the tariffs and the economy. We'll get into that.
There is a report out that now says, guess what,
we are past peak pollution. That means pollution is on
its way down. We'll talk about that a little bit
later on. One of our faves, Kurt Schlickter, a columnist
at town Hall. He's an attorney, a veteran down in

(01:28):
the LA area. But we have Curt on the show
quite a bit. We're gonna ask him about what happened
a few weeks ago when he got kicked off a
British television show because he was simply stating the truth.
We'll get into that, and later on we'll have more
on the education cuts and what it means for education
in this country today. So we've got a lot to
get to today. But guess what the American people today,

(01:49):
Greg woke up to some pretty darn good news.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
And you know it's good news when CNN has to
reluctantly report it, and as a person you're hearing talking.
If you could just see the face of the person
that's them standing next to him, she looks just so
sad by this. But it's all good news, folks. Have
a listen.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
Finally we have some good news on the economy and
really the number one issue for many Americans the cost
of living. So we just learned that consumer prices in
February increased by two point eight percent year over year,
zero point two percent month of a month. Both of
these figures were a step in the right direction, and
both were better than expected. So this is definitely very

(02:28):
encouraging to see because it's going to, I think relieve
some fears that inflation was perhaps reaccelerating, because this actually
breaks a streak of four straight months where I think
you could see it on the chart all the way
to the right, where the inflation rate was going in
the wrong direction, right, it was going higher and higher.

Speaker 5 (02:46):
Finally we're seeing it dip up.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Just good news.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Four months going straight and you know what the difference
between the four months of going straight up in this
month where it comes down. This is Trump's first month
of Yeah, well yeah, here's what that first full month. Yeah,
it's the first full month Yeah, he came in on
twenty twentieth of January. We're not through March. That was
his first full month, and we saw dip. It's it's
in contrast to all the pearl clutching you see from

(03:11):
Democrats and neocon Republicans are saying all these tariffs are
going to destroy us, We're going to see all these
high prices. He's looking at a longer view. Admittedly, he said,
look to get to reset this economy and get it
the right way and get it on a strong foundation.
We've got to get off of the dependency of federal dollars.
There's some things we have to do, and it might
be a little bit of a bumpy ride. But already,
if you're seeing the inflation starting to drop like that

(03:32):
interesting stat it's the annual so what they call it.
The Biden's last inflation report, annualized meaning over the a
given year, was five point seven percent, and Trump's first
inflation report is annualized at two point four percent. So
I think it's going on in the right direction. I
don't think it is a case that it is, and

(03:53):
that's that that drop is bigger than larger than I expected.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Well, let me tell you this. Here's some things that
are dropp This is the story from gasbuddy dot com.
We've had Patrick de'han on the show before. From Gasbuddy
story out today. Here's the headline. Average US gas prices
fall to lowess March level since the pandemic. Yeah, since
the pandemic. The nation's average price of gasoline has fallen

(04:19):
for the third straight week, declining point six cents compared
to a week ago and stands at three dollars and
three cents per gallon, according to gasbuddy dot com, compiled
from more than twelve million individual price reports around the country.
But what a headline that is, greg, Average US gas
prices fall to lowest March level since the pandemic.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, and you know what's what's this is what I mean,
we just have to hang on. Everybody wants a chirp.
The man's just fairly been in office, and everybody wants
to read obituaries or say that everything's going wrong. You
gotta let this guy do his job. So I'll give
you an example. He announced that he's going to take
a twenty five percent tear on aluminum steel that comes

(05:02):
in from Canada in the United States and he's going
to make it fifty percent. Well, everybody's just talking about
how that's going to kill construction. It's going to do this,
it's going to do that. It was just so terrible
until the Ontario Prime minister, and I don't know why
he gets the gig to say it, but Ontario Premier,
not Prime minister, but Premier doug Ford said that they

(05:23):
were going to cancel they're twenty five percent tariff on electricity,
which they were threatening to do to and that the
electricity they send to Michigan, New York and Minnesota. And
when they did that, Trump said, well, I guess I
don't need to do fifty percent. I'll come back down.
You see that lever, you see how that works. They
got they got big in their bridges. Old Canada said,
you know what, we bring you electricity. We're just going

(05:44):
to put twenty five percent on that. Steele goes up
another twenty five percent. They say, okay, actually we were
at Kingsax. We were just kidding. That was just a joke.
He can't take a joke. We're not putting any tariff
on it. And he put it back down to the
twenty five percent it already was.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
What did Steve Moore say the other day? Don't mess
with Donald Trump? You know, warning the country. Don't go there, folks,
because he will stand up and he will fight you,
something we haven't had in the White House for a
very very long time. I want to get back to
the inflation thing. You know what else is dropping? What
price of eggs itin'? You're right that has been asue.
Figures released by the US Department of Agriculture show the

(06:21):
average cost of one dozen eggs is now significantly cheaper
than in recent days. The economic indicator website called Trading
Economics shows that a dozen eggs were at five point
fifty one on Tuesday, more than two dollars cheaper than
the all time high of eight seventeen in March of
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
You know the next step on the eggs On the
egg front, Queen v tails me. Every single carton's got
broken eggs in it, She says, they're all broke everyone.
It's not that everyone's picked out the good ones. They're
just shoving those eggs. They don't care what they look
like into these cartons, are thrilling them out. They're just
they're just in terrible shape. She's looking for eggs that
aren't all cracked hard to find. Huh, yeah, that's what
she says. So that's that's step number two, not cracked eggs.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Not cracked eggs. But you know, you got to look
at this. It's good news for the administration. And then
we had the jobs report last week where it indicated
more jobs are being created in the private sector than
in the government sector. Do you religned, Greg, During Biden's
four years in office, twenty five percent of the new

(07:25):
jobs that were created were for the federal government. Twenty
five percent of those jobs were created in the federal government.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
And let's combine headlines. Doge says, they're no show jobs. Yeah, yes, okay,
so we got a bunch of people working on the
books that we can't find. Yeah, they're not replying back,
they're not there. They're empty buildings. So they're yeah, they're
creating an expense for government taxpayer dollars of so called
new jobs. Dog is saying, I don't know, we're not
seeing a lot of people around here. We can't really

(07:53):
find a pulse. So you know, talk about a talk
about an artificial economic indicator.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Now, Greg, let me ask you this, how patient. Do
you think Donald Trump supporters are? How patient are they
right now with the President? I you know, I'm thinking, look, folks,
this is going to take a little bit of time.
I'm very patient. I understand what he's trying to do.
But in general, do you think Trump supporters will be patient?

Speaker 2 (08:17):
I think they will. I just don't think we've had
to be every time I see it, every time I
see him make a decision. He said, like I said yesterday,
if Zelensky can get out of his own way and
let Trump at Putin. I just saw a headline this morning.
He's already telling Vladimir Putin, the punishment that you will
receive will be unbelievable you don't start working with us.
He can finally put his put his focus on Putin

(08:39):
where we've wanted to do it for how long now
that Zelensky's finally.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Ought into it. Yes, all right, We got a lot
to get to here on the Rod and Greg Show
and wing Man Wednesday. Always great to be with you
if you want to be a part of the show again.
Eight eight eight five seven eight zero one zero. When
we come back, we'll talk about Trump's risky economic move
that's coming up.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Next, we have in our next guest, it's coming on
the program Jim Mantle. He's with the Washington Examiner editor
Politics editor, fascinating story called Trump rolling the dice on
the economy. Here to join us. As I said, Jim Mantle, Jim,
welcome to the program.

Speaker 5 (09:14):
Good to be here.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Thanks for having me so roll the dice. I know
that our president received incredible support. I think you broke
down in your articles. Some of the people that felt
that the economy needed was in dire need of some
repair supported President Trump. I know the stakes are high,
but tell me in your article on how you feel
is the president that he over promised? Is he going

(09:37):
to under deliver? What do you think the circumstances look
like right now?

Speaker 5 (09:41):
Well, I mean the big question concerns the tariffs. And
you know, in his first term he imposed some tariffs,
but inflation stayed low, unemployment stayed low, the economy kept growing,
stock market did pretty well, and all of that continued
really until the pandemic and anti cheating.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
All that.

Speaker 5 (10:04):
Trump is looking at imposing broader tariffs this time around,
and he has been more erratic in their implementations so far.
And what he's trying to do is lower trade barriers
to American goods, but more importantly, get more production and

(10:26):
jobs reshort back into the United States. But the markets
have reacted badly to the short term uncertainty, and then
the question will be how will the voters react to
short to medium.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Turn pain going to be interesting to follow, Jim. Of course,
the two key issues in the campaign last November was
the economy and immigration. Right now it appears that, you know,
Donald Trump is making huge headway, you know, big gains
on the fight against immigration. Do you get a sense
that the White House is down kind of pivoting, turning

(11:02):
this attention toward the economy and getting the economy in
better shape.

Speaker 5 (11:07):
Yeah, I think that's right. I think they inerted the
bad economy from President Biden, and a big part of
their mandate was to improve it. And so the question
is can the types of things that they need to
do to keep inflation which you know, we got good
inflation news today. We gas prices are also down, egg

(11:31):
prices have started to fall, so there is good economic news.
But the stock markets are very fixated on both the
fact of the tariffs and the uncertainty around how they'll
be implemented. So are the longer term economic goals that
Trump's pursuing something that within you know, political time horizons.

(11:54):
You know, you're going to have the midterm elections next year,
then after that people are going to quickly to the
twenty twenty eight presidential election. You know, can Trump get
the timing of all of this to work right for
both his own political prospects but also just the success
of what he's trying to accomplish here.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
So let me I want to throw out a concept
to you, because I think timing is everything on this
and I just don't think we've ever seen news cycles
that are actually going in maybe five hour increments, and
they're not even it's not even days, it's not even
day to day. It changes. So one of the things
that you pointed out again in your article that he
wants to draw or attract private investment into this country

(12:36):
to avoid terrorists if necessary. So you've got Apple saying
we're coming in with five hundred billion and twenty thousand
new jobs in four years. You got Honda saying we're
coming into Indiana. You got the Taiwanese semiconductor chip manufacturer
five new factories and four years one hundred billion bucks.
You've got Vietnam readegotiating their trade and energy deals. I
love this one, Jim, because this one is the one
where I would argue to the Wall Street you quit

(12:58):
being so jittery, because you just got to let this play.
He announces a steal an illumine of tariff of twenty
five more percent in Canada. Canada turns around and goes,
I guess we won't actually tear iff that electricity coming in,
and he pulls back the twenty five percent on steal
and aluminum. And so my question is does he just
need a little bit more runway to use tariffs as

(13:20):
as a lever and does Wall Street just need to
quit being so is so paranoid about it?

Speaker 5 (13:29):
Well, yeah, he may need more runway. There's just the
fact that these foreign countries, including particularly Canada and Mexico,
are just so much more dependent on access to American
markets and American consumers and their disposable income than we
are on theirs. So in theory, what Trump is trying

(13:50):
to do gives him a lot of leverage that these
other trees don't really have. And that's why you're seeing
some of these quick capitulars, and then it's if the
capitulations are fast enough, you don't really have the tariffs,
you don't really have the tariffs that long, and you
get to see some of this investment take place. It's

(14:11):
also possible that the jittery stock market will have the
Federal Reserve look more seriously about cutting interest at some point,
and that could also have a salutary effect on the economy.
And so there are a lot of things that I
just you know, that I think are in a state

(14:32):
of flux right now. Trus try to drive a hard
bargain and test his theories of how to bring a
lot of investment in jobs back in the United States,
and the question will be our voters and the market's patient.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Enough for that. Well, that's a key question. Jim. As
always love chatting with you, getting your insights. Appreciate a
few minutes of your time today.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
Jim, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Thanks a lot, all right. That's Jim Antle. He's politics
editor at the Washington Examiner. If you go back, If
you want to go back, Greg Reagan came into office
with a horrible economy very similar to what you know
Donald Trump is facing. It took Reagan two three four
years to get this thing turned around. Question is going
to be does Donald Trump feel he has enough time

(15:15):
to be able to do that. I don't know if
he does.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
If you look at it. I mean, the things that
I think are already progress, some of the things I
just rattled off. Reagan wasn't able to do that here
he was of his term. So I just think that
these these movements are happening so much faster now than
maybe back in Reagan's time. I think we don't even
have to be as patient as I think where I'm
prepared to be, at least because at least we're getting
an economy that's less dependent on federal money and back

(15:40):
to private investment, which is what we're supposed to be
as a country.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
When you see the ground being broken on all these
new factories and these companies moving back in, that will
excite the American absolutely. All right. More coming up on
the Wingman Wednesday edition of The Rod and Greg Show
and Talk Radio one oh five nine k NRS. Donald
Trump promised the American people that if he were elected,
which he was back in November, he would take a

(16:04):
dead aim at over regulation in this country. I mean
there's so many rules and regulations in this country anymore.
One area that is certainly affected is the Environmental Protection Agency. Well,
the new administrator, Leads Elden of that agency made this
big announcement today.

Speaker 6 (16:20):
Today, I'm pleased to make the largest de regulatory announcement
in US history. The Environmental Protection Agency is initiating thirty
one historic actions to fulfill President Trump's promise to unleash
American energy, revitalize our auto industry, restore the rule of law,

(16:42):
and give power back to the states.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
That may be the biggest announcement ever from the EPA.
He is going to wipe out almost every regulation.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
They have greg Yeah, and rightly, so they become an
entity under themselves on accountable. They're not Congress, they don't
have a legislative branch. They're just supposed to administer the
existing laws. But they've really taken that to the extreme.
I mean they've they've taken land use power away from
even local jurisdictions and private property owners. It's really really

(17:12):
gotten out of control. When you look at the rest
of the world, how they're able to build transportation, infrastructure, utilities,
you name it. We're getting out paced as we just
get bogged down in Army Corps of Engineer Studies and
environmental impact studies, and you just can't you can't catch
your way out of it because they have just really
shut down the process through regulation.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yes they have.

Speaker 7 (17:32):
Well.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Joining us on our Newsmaker line to talk about a
great story when it comes to the environment is Ward Clark,
who wrote an article in Red State Today about how
are we passed peak pollution? Ward, how are you welcome
to the Rod and Greg show?

Speaker 8 (17:46):
Hey, guys, it's great to be here.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
That is a great story. Ward. What exactly have we
done to get past peak pollution?

Speaker 7 (17:53):
Well?

Speaker 8 (17:54):
A lot of it. I have a saying I use
a lot, and that is that we solved to day's
problem with tomorrow's technology. And that's what we've done. We've
solved yesterday's problem with today's technology. I'm an old boomer.
If you're old enough, you remember, you know, small alerts
in our cities. I remember seeing television shows shot in

(18:16):
Los Angeles where the sky was brown and there was
a litter along the roadways. All that's changed, and it's
been technology. It hasn't been regulation, it's done it. It's
been technology. Better scrubbing of stacks, industrial stacks better, frankly
better automobiles. The automobiles were a huge contributor to those

(18:36):
brown clouds in the cities. Particulate everything else kicked out
of those exhaust pipes. You know, check a nineteen sixty
five automobile against a twenty twenty five automobile. In those
sixty years, the emissions have gone dwindled essentially to almost nothing.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
You know, in a city Utah, we actually worked as
our state state legislature put some money toward working with
our refineries to Sorrow and others to create a cleaner
fuel that really reduced here in Utah, the state of Utah,
and it's our valley that is wat sed front it's emissions.
And this was done through smart collaboration private and industry

(19:14):
and with government. But I can just hear someone saying, well,
if we've seen these numbers go down, then the Green
New Deals just worked wonderfully. That we just have to
keep doing what we were doing before. Maybe share some
examples where it's not what maybe Biden and the Left
have tried to compel through the Green New Deal that's
actually seen us go down from the peak pollution. But

(19:37):
really the private industry and it's smart practices. They're doing
this well.

Speaker 8 (19:42):
The problem is a lot of these things like sulfur
dioxide and nitrogen oxide started peaking in the eighties and nineties,
along before the Green New Deal was a thing. The
only carbon monoxide, I think it was nineteen seventy eight
or seventy nine, carbon minot oxide in our cities started
to peak black carbon, you know, which is mostly from

(20:04):
cardzos scheme a little later. The only of the major pollutants,
according to the EPA that is that has gone up
is ammonia, which is used in nitrate fertilizers, and it's
the only one of the major ones that's used in
agriculture a great deal other than fuels. And I'd like

(20:24):
to see any of the Green New Deal people explain
how we're going to feed three hundred and thirty million
people in this country without modern agriculture, which means fertilizers,
which means you know, nitrogen oxide, which is made with ammonia.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
You know, they are trying to kill it, isn't it interesting? Ward,
speaking of the environmentalists, did they accept what is taking place?
Are they saying it's not true? What kind of reaction
are they.

Speaker 8 (20:46):
Getting, Well, there's there's a fundamental law of the universe
rod that I identified some years ago, and I call
it the Clark's law of social issues absurdity. Every social
movement will, even after attaining success, continue on to the
point of becoming a caricature. The civil rights movement did it.

(21:10):
There is no legalized, enforced racial discrimination in the United
States anymore. But now they're going into all kinds of
other areas. Affirmative Action was to start reparations, which is ridiculous.
The environmental movement's doing the same thing now, things like
classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Well, it's not a pollutant.

(21:32):
We breathe it out, you know, every breath we take
and all the planet life around us kind of depends
on it. And if you look at geological time, our
CO two rates are actually rather low right now. If
you go back to the I'm going on memory here,
If you want to go back to the Cretaceous, the
CO two levels were noticeably higher than they are now.

(21:53):
To go back to the Jurassic, the oxygen levels were
quite a bit higher. Our atmosphere has changed a lot
through the planet's history.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Man, that's expected. Ward is always great chatting with you.
Thanks for a few minutes of your time today, Ward, Sure,
glad to do it all right from Red State. That's
Ward Clark talking about peak protection. By the way, can
I bring this up?

Speaker 5 (22:12):
Greg?

Speaker 1 (22:12):
Are you ready for this one? There's a big climate
summit coming up in Brazil. Guess what they're doing to
get ready for it. They're building a brand new four
lane highway right through the middle of the Amazon Foresty,
so much for saving the Amazon rainforest. So these greenies
can get to their summit by building a new new
road through the Amazon. It just crags me, so it

(22:37):
crags me up the rainforest.

Speaker 7 (22:39):
All right?

Speaker 1 (22:39):
More coming up on the Rod and Greg Show and
Talk Radio one oh five nine kN rs. It's Wednesday.
Today is March twelfth. It marks the fifth anniversary. So
we since this country went and the world really, Greg
went into COVID meltdown?

Speaker 7 (22:56):
Is yeah?

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Isn't that something?

Speaker 7 (22:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Five years ago today in world talk about that in
the five o'clock hour with you your memories of COVID.
What happened? I mean, it was just good happened. I
think people panic. I just think we we overreacted to that.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, I have some vivid memories of that time, and
I remember this very day and where I was and
when it all kind of everybody said, you know, we're
going to flatten the curve and all that other stuff.
I know exactly where I was.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
We'll get into that with you in the in the
five o'clock hour tonight and your thoughts on what happened.
And you know, I fear greg it may happen again
sometime because we let the federal government get away with it.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Well, I just hope we've learned, and I hope that
we're we would never be corralled. And they even they
knew at the time, and they just actually ignored it
that putting young people and old people together, you know,
quarantining them together where they had different levels of vulnerability
to the virus was just wrong. I mean it, there
is a herd mentality or a herd immunity that really

(23:57):
the Amish were able to survive through, and was really
the approach we should have used in has historically been
you can't. You can't create laws that stopped yandemics. It
just doesn't work that way.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
It didn't work. There's so much more to that matter
of fact. Next week. I believe you, Ray, And I
think next week we're gonna be talking with the authors
of a brand new book on COVID. Yeah, I think
that's Weesday. On Tuesday, we'll be talking to him about that.
So interesting. We'll get into a discussion with you about
that in the five o'clock Coward a couple of quick notes, Greg,
this is an amazing story. I have never seen this

(24:27):
taken place. Fox News, which is a cable news channel.
All right, they aren't on your regular television channels, right.
They have surpassed ABC, CBS, and NBC in their prime
time viewership during the first week of March. Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
I love it. I love it. I think it's I
think it's I think that President Trump's you know, returned
to office and all the things he's doing so quickly.
It is just drawing the p he brought the people
with him. They voted for him, and now they just
want to because it changes so fast. If you're not
watching Fox, you're not watching some news source, You're gonna
miss like four news cycles inside of an afternoon today.

(25:10):
You gotta like, you gotta keep on top of this.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Matter of fact, During the week of March third, Fox
News average to whopping four point eight million people, CBS
four point two, NBC three point four, and ABC two
point six. There is nothing anymore on network television worth watching.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
And I'll say, if you're listening to our program, The
Rod and Greg Show, just you know, welcome your new friends,
because this show too where we're seeing that people are really.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
They're responding to it a lot of fun with the want.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
To hear what's going on, and so we're seeing our
audience grow. So welcome. If you're new to the.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Program, welcome, And what are you? And E Ray and
myself we talk about new series that are streamed. That's right,
that's what we talk about. Have you seen it? By
the way, you recommended this to me? If you have Hulu?
Is it Hulu?

Speaker 2 (25:55):
That's Hula?

Speaker 7 (25:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Check out Paradise, Yeah, anything about it?

Speaker 2 (26:00):
So many twists and there's so many little it is
a plot twisters. I can't even tell you about it.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
It is a very very it is a weird one.
I fell in love with Silo a year ago, but
Silo this year, second season again kind of boring.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
No, this is and it's you know, it's got a
secret service agent. And a president that's not president anymore,
but he's still a young guy. And just anyway, you
it's eight episodes, but I don't think you would be
disappointed if you watch.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
It's called Paradise on Huli. Check it out. One other
quick note, the Philadelphia Eagles have accepted a White House
invitation to visit with the president. They'll be there on
April twenty eighth.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yep, I you know, I love the I mean I
I was thinking that the stigma was over. I thought
that would happen. It's nice to see that the other side.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
That is, when we come back COVID five years later,
your thoughts, your comments, your phone call, let's talk about
it with you. Coming up in an hour, number two, stay
with us. Apparently a storm's coming in. We could have
a snow on the ground here in the next couple
of hayes. It just drives you nuts.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
I'm just I don't like the cold weather. I don't
want to come back. It's just rude. We got your day,
you got your daylight savings. That's supposed to be.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Spring, right, yeah, yes, it is coming. I just don't
want to snow. Yeah, well we need the water.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, you know what I have water. Look, it's bottled.
It's right here. I got all the water I need
right here.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
It's been a bottle. Microplastics, by the way, you've seen
the new research on microplast.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
You know, there's nothing like there's something we can consume
anymore that's safe.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
All right, Today mark's the fifth anniversary of COVID nineteen
when everything got shut down, closed, You couldn't do a
darn thing. You couldn't even get near each other.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
So what was that? What was like the trigger for that?
Like I know exactly in my head, what was the
start of COVID lockdown? I have in my head what
it is. Actually two events that happened within hours of
each other that signaled it. Mine was I was walking
into I was running for governor, and I was in
southern Utah and I was walking into a town hall meetings.
I was walking in I heard a news thing that

(28:04):
said that Rudy Gobert had COVID.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Remember what he did? He touched all that everybody, They stopped.
They didn't even start the game, right.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
And then by the time I got out of that
that meeting on my way on my way out, we
heard that the NBA had canceled, had suspended the season,
and then it was just Dominoes after that. As soon
as they suspended that season, it just seemed to be like,
I don't know, by the time I was in Southern Utah.
By the time I arrived back to my home in Draper,

(28:35):
we were all stay inside. You know what's so funny
is that I ran in before I did that Southern
Utah trip town hall meetings. I ran too a good
friend of mine who's a who's a executive healthcare executive
but also a surgeon, and he was downtown. I ran
into him in downtown Salt Lake and he was kind
of stressed, and I said, what's going on? He said,

(28:55):
what's happening in Italy right now? With how much they've
got this COVID and and the people they just don't
It's not the COVID that's that's scaring them. It's the
people that are having other emergencies that they can't fit
in the mergency rooms because of COVID. Uh people with
COVID are just filling everything. It's really bad, he said.
He said, I would just tell you a load up
on food storage. He told me before it ever got big.

(29:16):
But it was like that day. It was actually earlier
that day. He says, I think something. I think something's
gonna happen here, so you might want to get ready.
I called him. Yeah, I called Queen Bee and I said,
you know, I don't know whether he's just being really
cautious or something crazy is gonna happen. But we'll get
that toilet paper, which is where everybody goes as soon
as soon as it hits the fan. What do we

(29:37):
all do? We go for the TP. We don't care
about anything else. You don't need food, you don't need hey,
you gotta have the toilet paper or else. Society breaks down.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
America was restricting the amount of toilet paper. Goodbye.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
That's why I call things get weird. If it gets
real out there, that's what we're not gonna be able
to get. So go get it.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
And do you know we still have tons of horror.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
We're all going to come when the apocalypse comes, They're
coming to the home for our TP.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Well, my question is, on this day, Greg, have we
become a nation of hypocondriacs?

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Oh so much so? Like I used to be able
to hack along, we have and nobody cared. I could
cough in my hand and shake a hand right after
now and cared.

Speaker 9 (30:20):
Now.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
We're all just like, if you hear someone even slightly,
they could choke on their drinking. All of a sudden,
we're looking at them like, well you have the bubona blake. Yeah, yeah, everyone,
oh yeah. Every time you come home from a trip,
it's like you're the super spreader. You got whatever you
picked up on your trip, You're bring into this window
lists no circulation studio, and you super spread it to me.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Well, there's a new poll out today showing that there
has been zero movement greg in this in the public's
belief that the pandemic is over. Forty percent of the
American people say it's not over. They said that on
the fortieth anniversary, and now we're in the fifth anniversary
they still say the pandemic is not over. It's a
gallup poll the American people.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah, I don't even think it was as big of
a deal as they said it was. I think you
just go watch the Amish. They had this thing figured
out from day one.

Speaker 9 (31:10):
There.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Sadly, they're elderly people, people that had comorbidit, people that
had other health issues were particularly vulnerable to this, especially
the early version of this virus, and it was really
sad and it was not good. But it wasn't every
single person, man, woman, and child in this world like
they tried to make it. And that's that's there in
lies our biggest problem.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Remember remember the circles we had to stand in so
we could do social distances.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Man, I just I'm just grateful that I did not.
I was living a life somehow where I wasn't forced
against my will or forced to keep a job by
having to have the vaccine. I didn't have to do it,
you know, if people had to, I understand it. My sister,
she's a smoker, so I thought she should take it
because I thought she had what you call if it's
a If it's a respiratory virus and you've been assaulting

(31:57):
your lungs for decades, you better go get something, you know,
for that. But but other than that, I didn't think
if you, if you're relatively healthy, I didn't think you
needed it. And I wasn't actually forced to take it,
so I don't. I never did, and my family didn't,
but but a lot did, and they didn't do it
because they want to. But it was really that if
they wanted to stay in their work, their employment, if
they had to. It was just a lot of a

(32:19):
lot of a lot of pressure. Did you wear a
mask only after I was absolutely required?

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah? Same here.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
So in Utah County you didn't have to.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Do this company. We could not come into this building
without a mask.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
So I I in Salt Lake County, if you want
to go into a building, you had to wear a mask.
If you went to Utah County, you didn't have to.
So I was just doing all my shop, anything I
had to do, I would go over to Utah County. Right,
I don't have to wear a mask because I couldn't
stand breathe in my own breath. I still I cannot
stand it a mask. Yeah, yeah, I've done like insulate
bats of insulation stuffhere. You're supposed to wear the mask
because you know it's like fiberglass. You don't want your lungs.

(32:51):
I cannot stand wearing those masks. I couldn't stand it.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah. Well, here's the question. This was part of the survey, Okay,
And I'd like to hear from our listeners tonight on
that I want you to think about your life before
COVID nineteen if you think about that, would you say
your life right now is completely back to normal, somewhat
back to normal, but not completely back to normal? And
yeat yet back to normal?

Speaker 2 (33:16):
I I my life is.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
It's back to normal.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Minds, back to normal personally. But the hours that built
that you know, retail was open. It used to be
twenty four hours all the time. You could go anywhere
twenty it's super Walmart, you go anywhere. It's always open.
The hours that that businesses are open now are so restricted.
That's really not come back movie theaters. I used to
go to the movies all the time. That's over. I
don't do that, and so I did. My life has

(33:40):
changed in some ways, but not health wise or anything
like that.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
In fact, I still I swear to you, if I
see someone in a car by themselves wearing a mask,
I just think, you know what, survive the fittest. This
is the weakest person I know. You know, I just
don't even anyway, It just I just can't. I can't
get overseeing people driving in cars with masks on by.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Themselves drives me nuts too.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
I'm just it's a sign of weakness that I can't get.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, I'm with you on that all right now, so
we want to open up the phones. It's five years
ago today, all of this started coming down. Things were
shut down. We were being told what to do. You
couldn't go to church, you couldn't do this, couldn't do that.
How had your life changed?

Speaker 2 (34:18):
You could go to a BLM riot, yeah, but you
can't go to church.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
You can't go to church, which was interesting as well.
But what do you remember most about? How about the
stupid things we did? I mean buying toilet paper, which
I still crack up on. I mean social distancing, wearing
a mask. There were so many ridiculous things that health
officials told us we had to do. And I can't
figure out what Greg why the American people said, okay,

(34:44):
we'll do what you want.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
You see the pictures of the school bands where they
put the hole in the masks so they could blow
the horns and everything, and they were like, oh, yeah,
that's totally normal.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
It was that stupid. So your thoughts tonight? Five years
ago today, COVID nineteen hit the America, hit hit the
world in the US. What do you remember most about it?
Eight eight eight five seven eight zero one zero eight
eight eight five seven eight zero one zero, or on
your cell phone dial pound two fifty and say hey Rod,
more coming up on the rodden Greg Show.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Clearly an indicator that you are a leader.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
A leader, that's for sure. All right, Welcome back to
the show. Now if you're just joining us, maybe getting
in your car on your way home from work tonight,
or going about the various errands that everybody seems to
have to do nowadays, going to soccer games and baseball games.
Pretty soon we're talking about COVID nineteen. It was March
twelfth where everything started shutting down. That was five years ago.

(35:38):
A new pull out found that forty percent of Americans
still fear COVID. So we're asking you tonight, as your
life back to normal, what do you remember about that
time period? Some of the silly things that we ended
up doing. Eighty eight eight five seven eight zero one
zero eight eight eight five seven eight zero one zero,
or on your cell phone dial pound two fifty and
say hey Rod.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Let's go to the phones and see what our listeners
have to say. Let's go to Chat and Eden Chad.
Welcome to the Ron and Greg Show.

Speaker 10 (36:06):
Than you're right, Greg ched Richard, how.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Are you good.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Good to hear from you.

Speaker 10 (36:12):
Thanks man. I just you know, I posted today about this.
You know, five years ago, our world changed and I
was in my restaurant, my little pizzeria, and uh, I
was waiting for We had just closed our Talian restaurant
or Regano Ti Kitchen if you remember, Greg, we were
we were remodeling and all my investors pulled out that

(36:33):
day and I lost everything that we had worked for for.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
The last five years.

Speaker 10 (36:38):
And you know, we had never we never recovered. We're
still hoping now. I'm talking to a space to try
and and reopen. But Greg will remember, you know, my
restaurant was a place where you know, the community met.
We have elected leaders come in and talked to talk
to officials. We did, I mean talked to the constituents.
We did, uh, you know, we did meet the it's there.

Speaker 11 (37:01):
Uh.

Speaker 10 (37:01):
And I just remember watching this happen and I turned
to my wife and I said, We're never going to
recover from this, you know. And you know, luckily I
was able to pivot and open my pizzeria in my space,
but it was never that. It's never been the same,
you know. Eventually I ended up selling my pizzerias and

(37:22):
things like that. But I just remember seeing this and
thinking this is going to fundamentally change the restaurant business.
You know, before before COVID gloves were you know, thirty
dollars a case, and I think at the high point
we were paying four hundred.

Speaker 12 (37:41):
I was buying them.

Speaker 10 (37:43):
I was buying them on the black market because I
couldn't and tell me where I got them. But I
was paying you know, one hundred and fifty dollars a case,
set of four hundred dollars a case. And I just
remember the ridiculous things that they were doing to try
and get us. You know, you can't have They wanted
us to make people pay over the phone, and how

(38:08):
does that making any sense?

Speaker 7 (38:09):
Like no cash.

Speaker 10 (38:10):
If someone's gonna bring in money, I'm gonna take it.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, you need your bills were still, dude, you know,
it was unbelievable. Thank you for calling here.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
For example, small business owner and he's basically run out
of business by the stupid rule.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
I'm telling you, and I know Chad, and it's been
a circuitous route for that poor guy. It's not been
an easy road he's gone. He's really had to do
a lot to keep his feet on it.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
I bet Greg there are a lot of small business
stories out there, just like Chad's.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah, it really is. I'm glad he called because I
remember all that he went through, and it's and I
think it's you're like you said, it's a lot of people.
Let's go, let's keep going. Let's go to Rachel and Farmington. Rachel,
welcome to the program.

Speaker 13 (38:51):
Hi, thank you so much for taking my call.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
So what, so, what are your memories of five years
ago today?

Speaker 13 (38:59):
Well, at the time, I was working at a grocery
store in Harmon' the very elite one and two weeks
after I took the one hundred dollars bribe in free
groceries and gave into the blackmail of permission to breathe
air in exchange for the JNJ poison, I got my
second period in a month. It was the most excruciating pain,

(39:20):
worse than labor. I've had two kids, and it was
worse than i've I passed one large, half dollar sized
clock in my deva daily for five days, and then
I ended up in the er. My scope revealed thirteen
millimeters of blood had coagulated on the lining of my
uterus and the recommendation was oral or IUD delivered hormones.

(39:41):
I still bled for four months straight. And so my
timeline is I got the J ANDJ poison May twenty twenty,
I got the IUD mid May, and then when I
finally stopped bleeding in August of twenty twenty, I could
get the IUD removed.

Speaker 7 (39:57):
Wow.

Speaker 9 (39:57):
But the doctor had.

Speaker 13 (39:59):
Had no answer when I told her that this had
never happened to me before. I'd never had cloths before,
I'd never had two periods in a month.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Before, she was like, oh, well.

Speaker 13 (40:08):
You're probably going to through early Perry menopause.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
And you know it was a vaccine. It was a vaccine. Wow,
thank you, Rachel. What a story that is to say
it was random.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, a lot of people that suffered from that, from
the from the vaccine itself. Let's go to David and
west Haven. David, welcome to the Running Greg Show.

Speaker 12 (40:32):
Oh hey, thanks guys for teting my call. Appreciate the show.
Four o'clock is my favorite time of today.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Hey, hey, thank you, David.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
It's my favorite too. So what do you remember?

Speaker 12 (40:43):
You have made me think when you're talking about well,
memorable moments. So The shutdown started in March and our
thirtieth anniversary was in April, and so we had to
spend it at home. We had some homemade decorps that
we had a vinyl table cloth that rounded up somewhere.
My wife had, I hate to say it, but a

(41:04):
horrible hair deer because she had to dye her hair
at home out of a box deal. And we gave
each other I think tole paper was our gift that year.
So instead of putting it in a nice restaurant with gifts, hey,
that's that was the ideal.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
That was a hot commodity. That wasn't That wasn't a
bad gift because that was hard to get TP. That
was I'm telling you. The run on TP was ridiculous.

Speaker 12 (41:32):
Oh it was. I actually had a lady at one
of the more prominent stories yell at me because I
went in and we usually buy on a normal basis,
we'll buy two, like full packs, and they had three.
So I just grabbed a whole cardboard so it looked
like I had a whole case and the little kurt

(41:52):
there she was matched. People are running inside of telet
paper by it, and I said, look, I buy two
and you had tree, and I helped you out by
taking your car.

Speaker 14 (42:00):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Wow, wow, David, A real quick question. Thank you, real
quick question, David. It's your thirtieth wedding anniversary. Ryan, did
you have the guts to tell your wife or hair
look bad?

Speaker 12 (42:13):
No? I did not, Man, So we're still married five
years later after that. Now I can say it.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Oh Man, good David. Okay, let's go to Brandy in
Brandy and Salt Lake City, Brandy. Welcome to the Rod
and Greg Show. What was that? What was that like
for you back five years ago?

Speaker 15 (42:37):
Hi, guys, So five years ago, my whole family got
COVID extended family at a wedding and my family we
were so sick.

Speaker 16 (42:50):
My husband and I ended up in the hospital. We
were about three doors down from each other. And yeah,
and my kids were home, my eight year old around
the house literally, and my twenty year old was there,
and I thought they'll be Okay. My twenty year old's
there and she probably should have gone to the hospital,
but my eight year old ran the house. And as
severe as it was, we got it technically four times,

(43:13):
and twice was not good. Once we didn't even know
we had it. The last time it was like a
cold But still what stands out to me more than
anything else is getting out on the freeway and no
one is there, Like it was totally apocalyptic. Like the
streets the freeway was empty, empty. We could have done
donuts and it wouldn't have mattered. It was just so weird,

(43:36):
you know, Just so that's what I will stick out
to me.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yeah, yeah, all right, all right, Brandy, thank you. I mean,
you're right driving down the freeway is just weird.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Yeah. I was still trying to do some business. I
could find a parking place in Salt Lake City is beautiful.
I could just pull right up to the curb. Nobody
was there.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
And we are not making light of this today. I
lost a couple of friends, some dear friends as a
result of COVID nineteen, so you know, it was sporadic.
I just I just think the Company of the Country
could have done a better job in handling this. One hundred.
That's that's hindsight. All right, more of your calls coming up.
It is the Wingman Wednesday edition of the Rod and

(44:15):
Greg Show. We're talking about COVID nineteen five years later
eight eight five seven oh eight zero one zero or
on your cell phone to I'll pound two to fifty
and say, hey, Rod, your calls and comments coming up.
Not even be able to go to a movie for
crying out loud. That's the world we lived in. Five
years ago today, I was.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
In a full fledged race for governor and all of
a sudden I get sent into my house. I'm like,
this is like a bad James Bond movie. I've been captured.
The only thing I like to do is be in crowds.
I like to be with people, and I've been just
forced against my will to be away from everything. Yeah, like, day,
what's going on? Why? How did this happen? Now? Yeah,
you're very bad timing.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Five years ago today it all started. We're talking about
COVID nineteen and we're getting your calls and comments as
to how your life was impacted and if your life
is returned to normal, Greg, I think you and I, yeah,
our lives have returned to normal.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
I just have little things. But I want to hear
from our listener's been very patient, Wayne, Now I know
it said you wait a long time. Thank you for holding,
and let's hear from Joe and Spanish Fork. Joe, thank
you for holding. Welcome to the Rod and Greg show.

Speaker 5 (45:13):
Thank you Rodin Greg.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
I love your show every day.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
Thank you, sir.

Speaker 7 (45:16):
Thank I.

Speaker 9 (45:19):
Retired from the funeral business a year ago. I was
in it for fifty years, and the funeral business really
had a lot of changes. We at our Martuary, we
did about seventy more funerals in the first year than
we would normally have done. Families, you can only have

(45:41):
ten people in a room at a time, couldn't do
funeral services. There were no public viewings or anything of
that nature. The sad part is when you had family
members that passed the COVID along to other family members
that I'd had one family that a young gal had

(46:03):
passed it along to her grandparents and two of her
uncles and all four.

Speaker 14 (46:09):
Of them died, and that was a very tragic thing.

Speaker 9 (46:14):
And anybody that that was the interesting thing. I'd have
people that would say, oh, COVID's not real. Well, you know,
I dealt with it every day. I never got it.
You never got it around it.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
I am.

Speaker 9 (46:27):
I am balm people. I met with families, you know,
but I never got it. I've never had it to
this day, thank heavens. But it really was a sad thing.
For family.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
I sure was too. Can you imagine that, Greg, a
funeral and only ten members of the family.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
If you utterly your grandparents, I mean you're the one
that gave it to them and they passed from right. Look,
I will say to that point. To's point is that
I do think there were clear indicators of who the
most vulnerable population was, and it was people that were
people that had If you'd had cancer and had had
where your immune system had been attacked through chemotherapy or radiation,

(47:07):
you were particularly vulnerable. There's just there. You could go
down the list. Obesity was that was a that was
a comorbidity. You could see why or it, but it
just wasn't for one hundred percent of everyone. Certainly wasn't
our children.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Well that's why you don't bring up greg Our children.
I mean, they were troopers in all of this, but
we corralled them, We made them wear a mask.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
We said you didn't want to go to school there.
Their academic progress was stunning.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Leave the children alone, and we didn't, and that caused
some problem. Let's go to Vince in Leighton tonight here
on the rodden Greg show, Vince, how are you? Thank
you very much? For joining us and waiting.

Speaker 17 (47:40):
Thank you, hey, thanks so much, and glad to be
on your grated show. It's it's it's the best best
show the other day.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
You sir, thank you, go ahead, Vince.

Speaker 17 (47:52):
Yeah, it was really interesting for me. I worked in
healthcare the entire time, and so it was both a
blessing and a curse at first because it's the very
thing that made me lose my job. But then I
also gained a job from it because I managed COVID
for the State of Utah during the entire time, and
it was it was it was pretty wild. I mean,

(48:14):
like that last caller said, you know, COVID was very real,
and it was frustrating to be on the healthcare side
to have people say, well, it's not a real thing,
or you know, it's causing all these problems. But at
the same time, on a lighter note, like there were
some really silly problems, like I couldn't even get toilet
paper in pasta, you know, for my family. The park

(48:40):
across it was weird. The park across the street for
the kids, it was all like taped off, and I
like it was like a COVID zone, and I'm like, really,
I think we can take that down. So anyways, it
was it was just a wild time, you know, at
home church, at home school, and trying me trying to
work from home. It was crazy.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
Yeah, it sure was, Vince, thank you very much. And
the one thing that surprised me more than anything the
closing down our churches. Why the religious community in this
country said absolutely not, we're allowing our people to come
to church. But they gave way as well well.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
And it wasn't just that you can go to church.
It was that they were allowing abortion clinics to be open,
liquor stores to be open, they were allowing a lot
of things to be open when you were at the
same time in closing down our churches.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
All Right, Jason, Brent, and Julie hang on the line.
We'll take a brief break and be right back with
more of your comments here on the Rotten Greg Show.
Are you still feeling it today about everything that's going on?
What are some of the ridiculous things we did, like
buying up toilet paper. There's an idea for you. Let's
go to Jason in Salt Lake City tonight. Jason, how
are you welcome to the show.

Speaker 11 (49:45):
I'm good gentlemen, I'm still above down. How are you, guys?

Speaker 1 (49:48):
That's good man. We're glad you're above ground.

Speaker 11 (49:53):
Hey, I just wanted to say COVID was great for
me and all my coworkers. We drive truck locally, double
sides and double bellies, and we had the freeway. All yeah, yes,
I love that.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
You are the only person I've talked to you. It
makes perfect sense.

Speaker 11 (50:15):
Yeah, I mean there was nobody out, so it was wonderful.
There was nobody cutting us off or checking us or
anything like that, so it was real good. But I
live up in Salt Lake, and if I walked into
a establishment and they told me to put a mask on,
I turned around and walked right back out there for you.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Good for you, Jason, that's the way to do it. Remember,
we were praising truckers, I mean out truckers. Where would
we have been during this? They were they were vital.
Back to the phones. Let's go to Brent in Sandy
tonight here on the rodden, great show, Brent, how are you?
Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 14 (50:47):
Well, I'm doing well, guys, I'm living somebody's dream.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Good for you. Go ahead, Brent.

Speaker 14 (50:55):
Well, my son was a senior in high school and
tried out for the base All those young men went
running around all these different businesses earning and collect enough
money to support the baseball team one hundred dollars, a
couple of hundred dollars for banners to hang around the
baseball field. They did their preseason game, and all of

(51:17):
a sudden, COVID canceled the baseball and baseball team shut
baseball down across the whole state. Looks still a little
curious as to what happened all that money they earned,
Ye're true, But then they then they had to follow
it up with drive by graduations.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
I did that. My son was a senior of the
same YEP had to do the drive by graduation is ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
What a stupid idea that was? All right, Brent, thank
you very much drive by graduation.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Dam we have time for more colors up. Let's go
to Julie and Nedvel have been patiently waiting. Julie, Welcome
to the Rod and Greg Show.

Speaker 17 (51:52):
Hi guys, how are you doing good?

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Well? Thank you.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
So my take. And I am actually on my way
to work right now. I'm a nurse and I told
your screener like I it's so fired up about this,
so I started screaming too loud off. So this is
what I remember, kind of hearing about it on the news,

(52:19):
watching a little bit, thinking well, that'll be interesting. When
they came out with the two weeks to slow the spread, I.

Speaker 17 (52:25):
Thought, that isn't gonna work.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
I mean, that's not how viruses work, you know. And
then they said we had to wear masks. And then
they said kids couldn't go to school, and I remember
hearing that on the news and thinking, this isn't my country,
This isn't my country.

Speaker 13 (52:44):
Is this is so wrong?

Speaker 3 (52:46):
And the lies that just continued and continued, and I
can remember hearing people and screaming at the radio literally
on my way into work because it was lies. And
we now know that it was live. But it was
so frustrating as a healthcare worker to be surrounded by
people saying wear a mask. Don't. I'm like, didn't you

(53:08):
take an imminology class? I had to take an immunology class.
Did you go to yours? Because that isn't how this works.
And so like it's very validating now to see what's
coming out, but just it just awakened me to a
sense of evil that exists in our country that I

(53:28):
was unaware of it, and it makes me sad now
to think that that's all our kids are ever going
to know.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
Yeah, you're right, Julie, good comment on that, And you're right.
I mean, think about the names Greg, Fauci, Burks, the
Scarf Queen. That's what Russia here in Utah Anita done
and just trying to scare the daylights out of the American.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Think if you were Julia as a as a nurse
and you know your stuff, you know, you know, you
know patently these talking heads on TV, everyone's talking. You
know it's not true. It's your profession, you know this,
and yet your your people or it would be incredibly
I knew doctors that were afraid that they couldn't They
were very concerned, but there was this pressure. They didn't
want to lose their practice. They don't want there was

(54:09):
the penalty still speaking up, and so they you know,
they could. It was a really really difficult time.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
I knew someone Greg, who worked with one of the
larger companies here in the state that they draw blood,
they collect blood and distribute blood. And it hits theory
on this this is nuts. What are we doing to ourselves.
I mean, you know, it was just crazy. You know,
we've got we've got so many calls on this. Weren't
ask people if they want to hang on? We do.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
I think these there are good memories to share with
each other. I think they're relevant.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
We will carry this over. Get to your calls when
we come back, stay on or give us call back
in a few minutes. It is the Rod and Greg Show.
Our number three is on his way March twelve, which
is today, by the way, five years ago, when it
all started happening, things were being closed. We were told
we couldn't do this, we couldn't do that, we couldn't
do this, we couldn't do that. But five years later,

(54:57):
what have we learned? How did it impact you? What
are your thoughts and what we all went through and
maybe some of the stupid things we're asked to do,
because there are a lot of them. Eight eight eight
five seven eight zero one zero, or on your cell phone,
doal pound two to fifty and say, hey, Ron.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Let's go to the phones. Let's go to Jonathan and Lehi. Jonathan,
thank you for holding, thank you for waiting. Welcome to
the Rod and Greg Show. What do you remember from
those days?

Speaker 18 (55:23):
Yeah, thank you, glad to talk to you guys. Yeah,
my wife and I have the opportunity to go up
to Yellowstone National Park during that time. And two main
things I remember for that trip. One was, you know,
the requirement to wear a mask out in the middle
of nowhere was that was the requirement to be in

(55:43):
the park. But two was it was you know, normally
you're fighting crowds just to see, you know, some of
the beautiful things are. And it was a ghost town
and so the only sounds you know, generally heard were
the bubbling of the pots and you know, the events
and things. That was pretty cool to be able to
have that.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Wow, that's kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
It would be you know, where all the crowds are
thinned out.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Would be good.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
But I knew people that a husband and a wife
who left their home together came to the beach and
were kicked off that beach because they couldn't be nice
to each other on a beach.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
That's right. Didn't they make them wear a mask on
a beach?

Speaker 2 (56:21):
They wanted you to wear a mask on a beach.
They didn't. Actually, I don't even know if this beach
they would even let you on the beach, even with
a mask on. They weren't letting you do it. And
they were married. It's like you, okay, well, I'm going
to go into this car. We're gonna drive home, but
I can't be on the beach. I mean it was
I'll tell you what. This is where elected county sheriff's
really started to shine because they were elected by the people.
And you saw even Los Angeles, which is no Republican

(56:43):
or conservative batch and they elected sheriff of Los Angeles
County said yeah, I'm not I'm not kicking moms out
of parks and their kids. I'm not doing it. And
then when they said you got to get all your
employees vaccinated to share sheriff. Our sheriff's in Utah. But
the a sheriff in the Los Angeles County, which you
would think, you know, they're Democrats, they're all, you know,
big government types. Now the sheriff and he's like, nope,
I'm not doing I can't. I can find nowhere in

(57:05):
the Constitution where I have to require them to do
all this.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
And yeah, so it was.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
It was. It was incredibly tough time.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
During this period of time. Greg and I can't remember
exactly when it was, but it was Beaver County, and
Beaver County said we aren't going along with any of this.
We had a commissioner from Beaver County on the show
at that time, Greg and had a conversation with him
and said, you know, we think we went through this
a couple of months ago. We had we think we
may have had COVID a couple of months ago. We're

(57:34):
all feeling good right now. Therefore, we aren't going to
shut this thing down. Yeah, and they didn't. They kept
Beaver County open as a county commissioner who called us
and we had a great chat with him. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Yeah, the funny listener just sent in a picture of
a supermarket that had you could go one way on
the aisle, so it says one way. It's a picture
of this one way. So many lies, not lives, lies
saved because of these signs.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
That's just cleeve.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
We would go the other way. She wasn't having it.
They judge her and look at her.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
Did you not wear a mask and have anyone look
at you go? You know you should be worn. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
I have people do that. I just I want to
tell them I'll tell you what I know, people who's
within their own families. It was a It was incredibly
contentious and wrong, and it was sad. It was sad
to see families even be ripped apart over the Some
were obsessed with wearing the mask or wouldn't want them
to come to dinner if they weren't willing to be
vaccinated and masked up in it. But they didn't want

(58:33):
to do that, and so it did. It had a
real turmoil in people's homes.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Back to the phones, we go. Let's go to West Valley.
Hear what Victoria has to say tonight here on the
Roden Greg Show.

Speaker 19 (58:42):
Hi Victoria, Hi, glad to talk to you. I lived
in Beaver County during COVID and I managed the Kowa there, okay,
and it wasn't so bad for business because camping was
one place people could come. They didn't have to socialize
with other people, but they could and then go out
on the blm lands and up to the lakes. And

(59:04):
so we did decline a little bit in business, but
not that badly. We worked out of a trader for
a few months, and then my daughter's company had built
a plexa glass for the inside to screen our counter off.
And like you talked about the county commissioner, the sheriff
booted the authorities out when they came to check for mandate.
But we did have a big truck come unload up

(59:26):
at the grocery store with a bunch of stuff from
Salt Lay.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Oh really really, I was cameraon Noell. That was Sheriff
Noel that she chased him out of town.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Good for him, Victoria, thank you very much. That's another thing.
I forgot to bring up. Plexa glass. There's plexa glass everywhere.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
I went back to the house and I went to
the House of Representatives and they had this plexa glass
around the each of the representive tables. And I looked
at it and I went, man, it might be good
that I'm not speaking now, because I would have done
none of this. We'd have been an Amish colony on
this floor. We would have all either got it and
got a mute, you know, the called herd immunity. But
I wouldn't have done it. I just I So it

(01:00:03):
probably was best I moved along because I wasn't gonna
I wasn't gonna here's such a rebel. I wouldn't have
been able to do it. It was just too ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Back to the phones if you want to join in
on the conversation right now eight eight eight five seven
zero eight zero one zero. Back to the phones, we go.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
Let's go down, Sorry, let's go David in West Valley, David,
thank you for holding. Welcome to Ronn and Greg Show.

Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
I remember hearing people on your competitors radio station commenting
on how they would do anything to keep their job
because people were getting fired for not taking the shot. Yeah,
and I remember thinking, well, you would do anything?

Speaker 19 (01:00:46):
Huh?

Speaker 7 (01:00:46):
Would you lie to the public to keep your job?
It was a great reminder, Yeah about all radio people.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Well, well, I know we weren't in that crowd, by
the way, maybe we were, who knows.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
I don't know. I was a candidate. I felt like
I again, I was in a bad James Bond movie.
I couldn't believe what was going on around me. It's
just none of it made any sense. We held rallies
down Southern Utah. You did still do Yeah. In fact,
I participated in the first concert in America that Yeah,
Iron County they had it, didn't there?

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Muso's put that together did?

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Yeah? And it was a big giant concert and amazing
how we survived. He got off the other side of that.
Nobody was made.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Okay, yeah, yeah, we just did so many crazy things
eight eight eight five seven eight year old one zero
triple eight five seven o eight zerold one zero. We're
asking you were to recall COVID five years ago. Today.
Back to the phones we go. Let's talk with Kelly,
who's in Lehigh tonight here on the Rod and Greg Show. Hi, Kelly,
how are you?

Speaker 12 (01:01:41):
Hello?

Speaker 20 (01:01:42):
Hello, guys, how are you?

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
We're doing great?

Speaker 17 (01:01:43):
Thank you good.

Speaker 15 (01:01:46):
Hey.

Speaker 20 (01:01:46):
I just thought i'd share something.

Speaker 21 (01:01:47):
I have a little bit of a different perspective from COVID.
I at that time, everyone had to work from home,
so I took the opportunity to drive from here to Arizona,
where my parents lived, to spend time with them. And
in the process I went to the Grand Canyon Park.
Wasn't supposed to you, so don't.

Speaker 20 (01:02:05):
Tell anybody I went through, and uh, it was a
really unique experience first time there, and it was just
me and the crows, and it was really kind of
kind of like spiritual almost, so wow, kind of one
of those things nobody can say that they've gone to
the Grand Canyon without anyone there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Yeah, that's for sure, that's for sure. Wow, we had
someone who went to Yellowstone.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
You went and took advantage of all the people traps
for the zillion people there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
And they Yeah, all right. Back to the phones. Let's
hear what Joe in West Jordan has to say? Did
I hear on the Rod and Greg show? Hi Joe,
how are you?

Speaker 13 (01:02:42):
Rod?

Speaker 7 (01:02:43):
Greg?

Speaker 12 (01:02:43):
Great to hear you guys every day.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Thank you for your show.

Speaker 22 (01:02:46):
Thank you glad to get in So back in the
days of COVID. As if it, you know, is over
for some people, mentally, it's not. I went to do
a grocery store I won't name the store. They had
a death set up with a young man with death
with masks and uh hand signer.

Speaker 12 (01:03:02):
Hand tantiser, you name it.

Speaker 22 (01:03:05):
Walk past the desk, grabbed my drink, went to self checkout.
As I proceeded to check out, another kid came up
stop the transaction, mandated that I put a mask on
before it continue. I mean, you're kidding, wow. So I
took the mask, put it over my ears, tucked it
under my chin, made the transaction, took it off, and

(01:03:29):
then tucked it into his folded arms.

Speaker 12 (01:03:31):
Here, I'm done with it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Good for you. Wow, Like I I will tell you, well,
you know what, Joe they I just thought people were
so unhinged in that time. It just seemed like nobody
was thinking clearly that it's the whole Emperor has no
clothes moment in our lives. And again that's not to
say that I'm not dismissing COVID nineteen is a serious,
you know virus. It was, but it was for certain

(01:03:56):
people that were vulnerable to it, highly vulnerable to it,
which wasn't most of us.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Well, I love, that's for sure. Let's go to Cindy
in Cadeville tonight here on the rod in Greg show. Hi, Cindy,
how are you?

Speaker 5 (01:04:07):
Hey?

Speaker 17 (01:04:07):
Rod?

Speaker 23 (01:04:08):
It's so good, so good to hear you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
And Greg, thank you, Thank you. Cindy, go ahead with
your thought.

Speaker 23 (01:04:14):
You know, COVID was a crazy time. My family, my
father and my aunt actually have not spoken to me
since twenty twenty because I would not get the COVID shot.
I had COVID, I had the auto.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
I had no idea you had the antibodies.

Speaker 23 (01:04:29):
I had the antibodies. But because I wouldn't get the
shots I was used to wear a mask. That's it.
They cut me off, right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Yeah. Have they talked to you since then? Or are
you still isolated?

Speaker 16 (01:04:40):
Nope?

Speaker 23 (01:04:40):
They I am still I am still cut off. In
five years, I have not heard from my dad.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Well, Cindy, here's what I want you to do. I
want you to make sure you listen to two next
Tuesday's episode or show, because we're going to have two
authors or one of the two authors on that have
done a really good study there. It's an academic study
of what happened in code and how the sign did
not correlate with what that we were being told as
a population. And it's not from it really is. Even

(01:05:06):
the Boston Globe gave it a very positive we'll creview.
So we're gonna have a very good author on to
talk about it, just the systemic failures on every front,
so that your family can listen to that and go ready,
get the book for him so they can read it
and go wow, Cindy was right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Yeah. And the name of the book I think is
called The Case against COVID, And like you said, Greg,
they lay it out and in plain facts about what
happened there and what mistakes that were made all right,
more more coming up it is the Rotten Gregg Show
right here on Utah's Talk Radio one oh five nine
k n rs.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Welcome back, so Wingman Wednesday on the Rott and Greg
Show on Talk Radio one oh five nine k n
rs everywhere on the iHeartRadio app Check us out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Check us out. I'm Rod our kit. Great to be
with you tonight on this Wingman Wednesday already headed into
the weekend. Love it now. Remember at the end of January,
we had that horleyble Air air collision between a incoming
flight at Reagae National Airport and a military helicopter. Sixty
seven people died. Well a few days later, of course,
everyone was talking about it. Donald Trump. You know, there

(01:06:12):
were some people who were blaming Donald Trump for the
accidentin though he had nothing to do with it. Well,
our next guest appeared on a British television show to
talk about this and listen to what happened to him.

Speaker 24 (01:06:24):
Do you think it's appropriate for the President of the
United States within twenty four hours when you have sixty
seven families grieving, Is it really appropriate to indulge in
this unevidenced speculation when surely what he should be doing
is encouraging the flight investigators to get to the truth.

Speaker 25 (01:06:45):
As for the timing, well, I'd like to see the
memo about when the timing's right. All I know is
every time some psychotic leftist murderer goes on a shooting spree,
within forty seconds, I get told I need to disarm
myself because being able to defend myself from criminals and tyrants,
along with tens of millions of other Americans, is the

(01:07:06):
cause of yet another crime.

Speaker 5 (01:07:08):
So I'm gonna need to know what the rule is.

Speaker 25 (01:07:11):
In the meantime, I'm gonna go with this one.

Speaker 24 (01:07:13):
Can you get this numb skull off our program?

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
Please?

Speaker 24 (01:07:16):
I'd never want to speak to him again. He is
the kind of person that makes America look ridiculous on
the world stage. Never invite him on again.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
Well, that numb skull is our next guest, Kurt Schlicktor,
who writes for town Hall. He's a columnist, an attorney,
a veteran as well. We haven't spoken to him since that. Kurt,
Welcome back to the show. What's up with that guy
who kicked you off his television show in Britain?

Speaker 5 (01:07:41):
Well, the British were.

Speaker 26 (01:07:43):
The British host was a little upset because he heard
something that he hadn't heard in a long time, which
is someone opposing the party line. As you know, in
Great Britain that used to be a beacon of freedom,
they now arrest people for saying things, if you can
believe it. So he was a little upset when I
started telling him that some of the things that he
was so certain about were actually not true at all.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
As far as I'm concerned, sir, you are a legend.
Nothing like watching a stuffy brit just lose his mind
and one should to leave a show. I just I
would encourage you to get on any of those programs
across the pond that you can get on, because they again,
you were just speaking common sense and they're just not
used to that.

Speaker 14 (01:08:25):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
It was a really good a really good interview. I
just we were excited to talk to you again. Let
me ask you this. It kind of goes along the
same lines as the the article you've recently written. Democrats
They're not that normal, are they?

Speaker 19 (01:08:41):
Man?

Speaker 26 (01:08:41):
They're going crazy, right, I I really don't understand it.
Donald Trump has this superpower and I read that in
town Hall on Thursday the thirteenth, that he can make
his enemies take the most ridiculous positions possible. I mean,
they come out against cutting cutting government, they come in

(01:09:03):
for men walking into women's restrooms, and now they finally
found some freedom of speech allegedly because they're very concerned
about that is a terrorist guy from some foreign hellhole
who literally advocates the murder of all the Jews, to
be followed by everybody else. It's remarkable, Kurt.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
What is it with the Democrats that they're so afraid
of making Donald Trump appear normal? What frightens about a
normal Donald Trump?

Speaker 26 (01:09:34):
Well, see, here's the problem. You can think what you
want about Donald Trump, but about forty nine point nine
percent of Americans voted for him. So what you're essentially
saying when you say that Donald Trump is beyond the
pale is half of America is beyond the pale, and
not only shouldn't be listened to, but is actively evil
and must be suppressed. And I don't know about you.

(01:09:56):
I was twenty seven years in the army. I'm kind
of attached to being a citizen and having all the
rights that entail A little I'm kind of picky about
it and insistent.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
So I don't understand the game plan. I mean, I've
heard it said a lot of times. They're taking the
twenty percent of favorability while Donald Trump is pursuing an
eighty percent super majority of people that agree with or
support his efforts. And so you'd think there'd be a pivot.
You'd think they'd say, yeah, we're against waste as well,
but they're not. It seems like they want you to

(01:10:29):
feel worse about a government employee, even with a no
show job, being demon eyed or harmed more so than
any of us were during COVID. They wanted to shut
down all of our businesses, all of our employment. They
didn't want us to go to work. There was just
such a callousness and a conformity that they pushed that
they are now trying to convince the same people they

(01:10:50):
did this to that the government workers, even though you
can't find, are worth caring about or fighting to protect.
Why are we not seeing that pivot?

Speaker 26 (01:11:02):
Well, look, I don't know, but I mean it's a
it's a terrible idea because people remember what they saw.
I think at some level they think normal Americans are
kind of dumb and need their guidance. But normal Americans
aren't dumb. Normal Americans are brilliant, and normal Americans can
see obvious stuck. Well, look, if I was a Democrat,
I would look at this situation. I'd try to look

(01:11:24):
objectively and I would say, hey, I've got to reach
out to normal people. And there have been some minor
attempts to do that. Betterman does it every once in
a while. Newsom's actually going on and having conservatives on
his podcast and saying, you know, maybe having a dude
with the whole package swinging around, ain't the guy to
have in your girl's locker room. You know, kind of

(01:11:45):
a very a very normal thing. But you've got to
remember a lot of these people have taken that space
inside every human being that should be filled with you know, family,
faith and the flag, and they created this kind of
weird secular pagan religion that is leptism, so that they

(01:12:06):
cannot conceive that anybody who disagrees with them is anything
but evil. And they live in bubbles so they never
have to defend themselves, like this British guy. You know
that the other person who was on with me with
some reporter based in Washington, d C. Now if you're
a reporter based in Washington, d C. Reporting to Britain

(01:12:27):
on America, do you think you're getting a balanced, nuanced view?

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 26 (01:12:36):
No, no, I mean, look, the best thing the Democrats
could do is realize, you know, maybe people disagree with us,
and maybe that's okay, and maybe I should convince them
instead of saying they're racist. I mean, look, I was
in the Cold War. I trained Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine. Okay,
I've got my take that Russia bona fides down.

Speaker 5 (01:13:00):
Yet every time I go, you know, you know, I
don't know.

Speaker 26 (01:13:02):
I'm just a war college graduate and old colonel that
I think Ukraine's gonna have trouble winning this war. Maybe
we ought to figure out a different way. I get
told that I love Putin, Okay, I demonstrably don't love Putin.
All right, there are no KGB guys that I love.

Speaker 5 (01:13:18):
But that's not an argument.

Speaker 26 (01:13:20):
That's just shut up. I'm sticking my fingers in my ears.

Speaker 5 (01:13:23):
And going la la la, la, la la la.

Speaker 9 (01:13:25):
I can't hear you.

Speaker 26 (01:13:26):
You know, they better hear us, or or we're gonna
make them hear us.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Yeah, Kurt, is the hate for Donald Trump so deep
in their very fiber that they can't even recognize the
ability to try and work with him or do something
that benefits the American people. Is the hate? Does the
hate run so deep?

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
Yes?

Speaker 26 (01:13:47):
But remember, like with all things leftists do, like Olenski said,
find a target, personalize it, and freeze it. They have
taken their hatred for normal Americans and put it on
Donald Trump, and they say, I hate Donald Trump. What
they hate is the soldier, the farmer, the guy who
goes to work at the insurance company, the mom who
stays home with their kids, the people who go to church,

(01:14:13):
the people who refuse to accept their bizarre communist ideology.
They hate normal Americans. And it reads like, well, we
hate Donald Trump. But if it was only Donald Trump,
it would have stopped during the four years of Biden.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
But it didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:14:33):
Kurtch Lickter, He's always fun to have on the air.
He's a good one. He is a blast, all right.
Mary coming up on the Roddin Greg Show and Talk
Radio one oh five nine.

Speaker 25 (01:14:40):
Knrs Meredith here, you deserve more than just a car.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
You deserve an experience.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
Big announcement coming last night from the new Education Secretary
Linda McMahon announcing that half the staff at the Department
of Education would be let go. Joining us on our
news maker line to talk about that right now is
Stephen Wilson's and your fellow at the Pioneer Institute. Stephen,
thanks for joining us tonight. What is your reaction to
what Linda mcmahonon out last night.

Speaker 9 (01:15:07):
Well, I think this is a bit of a red pairing.
I don't think that this is going to solve the
problems in American education. I think you would agree Rod
that what we really need to do is we have
to fix what is happening inside schools and inside classrooms.
So you know, we may move a bunch of functions
out of the US Frontment Education and close it down

(01:15:28):
and send them over to other departments of the federal government,
but that's not going to solve the real problem. And
you know you asked about where we are. So we
have just received some very bad news which you've probably
already covered, which is that American students are doing very poorly.
The number of students that are performing below basic on
the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is really the

(01:15:51):
gold standard, is about forty percent at below basic. So
we have an enormous problem. And at the beginning of
the day, we had a bunch of new urban schools,
charter schools that we're posting extraordinary results, and then we
turned away from their success. And that's the subject of
my new book.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
So I think that your analysis is exactly right, and
I think that the issue is with the money that
would otherwise go to a giant department of education that's
never really been able to show anything for all the
money they've received that we've not seen scores go up.
We've not seen anything. We've seen probably the opposite. You've
made the observation less educated, more vulnerable, more marginalized kids,

(01:16:36):
charter school model. I love it. Do you think the
block granting or the potential to block grant money that
you would otherwise send to a federal department of education
can be utilized more? And then I guess that's my
first question. The second one is, let's talk about a
liberal arts education. What that means? I mean, it doesn't
mean common cool. I know that. So if you could
just maybe share with our listeners, does block branding help?

(01:16:57):
I mean, we can't see the demise maybe of our
our you know, free and reduced lunches and our special
ed what's it mean to block cramp potentially? And then
what's a liberal arts education?

Speaker 9 (01:17:08):
Yeah, well, on the first point, it's really important to
remember that only about ten percent of public school fumbing
is coming from the FEDS to begin with, So you're
going to be operating largely in the noise band. Even
if you were to take the relatively tiny amount of
money that is going to the staff at USDAE as
opposed to already going out in Title I and special

(01:17:30):
AD in other programs to the schools, if you were
to take that little fliver rod and block right and out,
that's not going to make a big difference. Furthermore, let
me just remind everyone that America already still spends the
first or the second highest of all countries in the
world on education on a per student basis, So contrary

(01:17:52):
to popular conception, money isn't the main problem. I have
to caveat that by saying that, of course, there are
many just that are severely underfunded. But for example, here
in New York City, we spend close to forty thousand
dollars a student and we have atrocious results. Now, on
your question of a liberal education, this really just means

(01:18:14):
equipping all students with the education that the privilege have
long been afforded, a richly academic, vibrant education that really
empowers kids by giving them the skills and knowledge to
make their way in the world and to leave a mark.
And we haven't been doing that in the last five years.
Even in these high performing charters, there was a turn

(01:18:36):
away from this north star of great instruction, really making
sure the teaching was strong in every classroom, and instead
engaging in a program of what I call social justice education,
treating students as objects to be recruited into an eelogical cause,

(01:18:57):
to be indoctrinated, treating students says fragile and traumatized. This
is a huge misstep, and I think it's also very
condescending to students. It will leave them more marginalized and
more excluded. And so we need to get back on track,
return to what was working in these new schools, and

(01:19:17):
get back to great teaching.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
I was going to ask you, Steven, how do we
get that? As you said at the beginning, the real
issue here is what's going on in the classroom. So
how do we get these issues that you just brought
up steve into the classroom and to make sure that
they're being taught and it's working.

Speaker 12 (01:19:35):
That's right.

Speaker 9 (01:19:36):
Well, first of all, we do need to sustain testing
regiments that tell us whether it's working or not if
we spend those. So that's just a small point in passing.
But we need to have new schools that have at
the heart of their culture. Right, all organizations have a
culture that defines.

Speaker 8 (01:19:56):
What they care about.

Speaker 9 (01:19:57):
So the great thing about charters is they get the
aren't and new and to announce that, hey, within this building,
we care about great teaching. And that's what these new
schools did. That is not the culture of these immense
broken urban school systems. They're essentially institutions that regenerate poverty,

(01:20:21):
that have low expectations of what students can know and
do and frankly consign them to poverty. We need to
build new institutions outside of those majority systems, and they're
called charters that promote excellence, that believe in great teaching
and really has very high expectations of what every student

(01:20:43):
can know and do. And you know what it works.
You look at places like Success Academy in New York City,
which is the largest network of charters there eighty two
percent of students are found on grade level every year
in ELA and above ninety percent in math. It Basically,

(01:21:04):
we know how to do this. It's proven. We just
need to have the nerve to sustain it and expand it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
Greg, you have another question, Great, you have a question
for Steve.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
Steve real quickly, just so we had a big bill
passes this last yann. We just finished our stay, our
general session, the legislative general session, where collective bargaining for
public entities has now been banned. There's no more collective bargaining.
There's going to be a referendum. The Teachers Union of
public Employees, they're they're ramping up for a referendum to
go to the ballot on this issue. But being a

(01:21:35):
recovering public servant myself, having served on the Education Committee
as its chair, I've been involved for a while in
the state legislature, I can tell you that one of
the I think one of the important successes of a
charter school was that it was not a unionized workforce
of teachers that you could really reward for merit. There
was just a great way to have a great relationship
with your budget, your school budget and good teachers. Tell

(01:21:56):
me what you think about in our state where we
have this referendum about out teachers unions and their ability
to collective bargain. So they're looking at the bulk of people,
the quantity of people they're negotiating for, or not the
quality of teacher. What would you say to our listeners
about whether collective bargaining and teachers unions are they making
the classroom better or is this something that we should

(01:22:16):
stay away from it? That is that collective bargaining power?

Speaker 9 (01:22:20):
Oh, which went a little tricky. I believe that all
employees should have the right to unionize. The problem is
is that in public education, management has basically speeded its responsibilities.
It's given up and so you now have teacher contracts
that run hundreds of pages and completely tie the hands

(01:22:41):
of principles to be able to get the job done.
And you combine that with seniority based assignments and tenure,
and you're basically asking the chief executive of the school,
mainly the principal, to do a great job with his
hands tied behind his back. That doesn't work. We have
to fix that. And so you're a part of the
recent that charters are succeeding is because they don't have

(01:23:04):
those constraints. They're able to do all the things that
we can do in the private sector. They can hire
and fire, they can promote, they can write new job descriptions,
and after progressive displit, which is required by law in
any institution, they can let teachers go who aren't measuring up.
That's very important. So I completely agree with you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:25):
Steve Wilson from the Pioneer Institute. Mark coming up on
The Roden Gregg Show Wednesday, Wingman Wednesday, Jesse Kelly coming
your way at the top of the hour.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
I'm having a moral dilemma. I'm just realizing this right
now looking at the news. So have you seen the
stories about Rosi O'Donnell. She's moved to Ireland.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
Oh she hasna I'm gonna miss Rosie.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
So here's the deal. You know, I'm Irish. I mean,
I get my my the Hughes family, Potato famine came
over here. I have an affinity to Ireland. What do
I if they don't If they don't X get her
out of that, out of Ireland, I'm gonna lose your
expect for my motherland. Okay, I'm making her come on, Like,
what do we do on St. Patrick's Day if Rosie's
ruined Ireland?

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
Well, let me ask you this question. Do you think
anybody in America cares that Rosie O'Donnell is living in Ireland?

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
No, we all hope she's still. I just want to
go somewhere else, Like don't you know the Neighborhoodland? Yeah,
there goes the neighborhood Island, Ireland. I liked Ireland now.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
I've always wanted to visit Ireland. Now I'm not so sure.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
I know she's running around there. You know, she's just
gonna be opinionated and telling people what to do like
she did here.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
Good for you, Rosie, all right, that does live for
us tonight, Head up, shoulders back, May God bless you
and your family. Thanks for joining us tonight and we'll
be back tomorrow And for Jackie Kelly show is coming
your way next. Stay with us

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

The Rod & Greg Show News

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Rod and Greg Show: Trump Rolling Dice on the Economy; Past Peak Pollution; Do Normal people listen to Dems?

Episode Transcript

The Rod & Greg Show News .css-1q01m3q{margin:0 0 -2px 0;}

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes