All Episodes

December 10, 2025 22 mins

A fifteen-year-old girl gets raped in the U.K. Minnesota taxpayers get fleeced by a valuable voting bloc. And Randi Weingarten is at it again. It's Wildcard Wednesday.

Michele Tafoya is a four-time Emmy award-winning sportscaster turned political and cultural commentator.

Record-setting, four-time Sports Emmy Award winner Michele Tafoya worked her final NBC Sunday Night Football game at Super Bowl LVI on February 13, 2022, her fifth Super Bowl. She retired from sportscasting the following day. In total, she covered 327 games — the most national primetime TV games (regular + postseason) for an NFL sideline reporter.

Learn More about “The Michele Tafoya Podcast” here: https://linktr.ee/micheletafoya

Subscribe to “The Michele Tafoya Podcast” here: https://apple.co/3nPW221

Follow Michele on twitter: https://twitter.com/Michele_Tafoya

Follow Michele on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realmicheletafoya/

Learn more about the Salem Podcast network: https://salempodcastnetwork.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to a brand new episode of them Sheeltzvoy podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I have a.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Favor Just hit subscribe wherever you're watching or listening. It
does not cost you a penny to subscribe, so why
wouldn't you. We've got great content, including today it's a
Wildcard Wednesday, which means we go a little bit wild
on the internet. We kind of look around at what's trending,
what's going on, and we bring it to you for
your perusal. So, without further ado, now I will admit

(00:35):
to you that I am recording this on the Tuesday
before the Wednesday, and on this Tuesday, the President Trump
is in Pennsylvania given a big rally. I don't have
sound of that for you, sorry, But I've got lots
of other really interesting stuff, including this. I don't know
if you've heard about this case out of the United Kingdom,
where to like seventeen year old Afghan asylum seekers were

(00:59):
they and raped a fifteen year old girl and it's horrific.
And the lawyer for one of the young men said, look,
they just didn't know any better, and so you should
really just forgive them and let them go. They come
from a totally different society. Well, listen to Nigel Farage

(01:20):
and what he had to say about that.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Let's roll it and I'm sorry, but if you was
a country allow young men who come from countries in
which women aren't even classed as second class citizens, and
you put them up enforced our hotels, allow them to
work illegally, their attitude towards women is completely different to ours.

(01:45):
So the social effects of this are appalling as well.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
So here's the thing. Ultimately, both the young men were sentenced.
One has a detainer order as well, so there was
justice in this case considering how you measure out justice.
But look, here's something essential about illegal migration, illegal immigration

(02:11):
wherever it is. If these two young men came from
a society that's completely different, with completely different values from
the UK, now you hope and you expect that they'll
learn the laws, they learn to assimilate socially and in
terms of what they're expected to do and how they're
expected to act. Apparently these two weren't, or even if

(02:34):
they were, they decided to break the law anyway and
rape a young girl. Okay, So this is one of
the things about all of this. Not every country shares
the other country's values and in this case the UK
and Afghanistan, we had people from two very different kinds

(02:57):
of societies where men do not look at in the
same way and so look at them as objects. And
that is a thing, and it is real, and so
I don't think it's wrong or xenophobic for a country
that's in existence to expect others who come to their
country to obey the law, speak the language after a

(03:19):
period of time, even if it takes some time, and
play by the same rules as everyone else who's a
citizen of that country, and it has established. I don't
think it's that tough. Every country has a unique set
of values, and in this case, these two guys really
didn't assimilate at all. And now they're in jail and

(03:42):
I think one is being deported. I wanted to get
that in because that was a really big case out
in the UK, and it's really important to note. If
you bring people in and you let them work illegally,
and again you house them and you give them all
the benefits your country has to offer and you don't
expect them to follow the rules, that's a recipe for
social disaster, all right. Speaking of social disaster, Randy Weingarten

(04:06):
she's back on a podcast, and here she is talking
about she's answering a question about all the chaos during COVID,
and I want to remind you that the teachers' unions
were especially prickly about keeping kids home, out of school
and away from spreading their germs to teachers and other students.

(04:28):
Let's this is now here we are twenty twenty five.
Here's Randy Winingarten roll it.

Speaker 4 (04:32):
I do wonder what you think, like looking back to
that tumultuous period of time, do you think that teacher
unions and Democrats have done enough self examination in the
role they played in pandemic school closures? Like were their
mistakes made?

Speaker 5 (04:47):
Yeah, of course there were, and there were mistakes made
by everyone. There was huge mistakes made by the Trump
administration to not be clear, to not focus on safety
as they were focusing on reopening it. Reopening became political,
not became something that we all should have prioritized.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Okay, Hello, you know what, when you don't have an
answer for your own problems, when you can't come up
with an excuse or you can't just own it, take
responsibility for the mikestakes you make, just point at Trump
and that White House just pointed the whole Trump administration.

(05:28):
There's your out, and a lot of people will just
accept that, Yeah, we did things wrong, but so did everybody.
So did everybody? Not everybody, I mean, I think Florida
did some really right things. I think there were other
countries that never took kids out of school and everyone
survived to tell So just own the mistakes. Randy quit

(05:50):
point in the finger, all right. Erica Kirk is making
the television rounds because her late husband, Charlie Kirk, has
one last Bookook that is now being brought out for publication.
It's I think it's available now, and Erica, as his widow,
is promoting it now. I don't know if you've ever

(06:12):
had your husband assassinated at the ripe old age of
thirty two, but I'm guessing you haven't, and so you
don't know what that's like, and you don't know what
it's like behind closed doors versus what you have to
do to present yourself in public, because now Erica Kirk
is a public figure. You know, It's amazing. The day

(06:36):
he was shot, I think she had like three hundred
and fifty thousand followers on Instagram. By the next morning
she had five million. I saw that for myself so instantly.
She became this representative of him, his family, and of
turning Point USA. But people whenever she smiles suggest, wow,

(06:59):
she's not grieving at all. Well, there's a commentator, a
political commentator named Mary Catherine Ham, who was seven months
pregnant when her husband was killed. I believe he was
hit by a car and died, and she has a
little sympathy for Erica Kirk Rollett.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (07:19):
I think it's really fitting that Charlie's message that he
left behind is not bare knuckle politics or even ideology,
but pointing people toward God and toward a practical way
of practicing their faith. I think that's what he was
very much into, particularly at the end of his life,
and Erica is stepping into those shoes to communicate that
as well. When she notes that people don't know you,

(07:40):
people don't know what's going on behind the scenes, I
just want to note when she takes incoming and takes
criticism about how she's living her life because she is
out there and she is a public figure. She's a
public figure now because her husband was murdered in cold blood,
and because she believes in his legacy, and because she
wants to speak about it, because she smiles or speaks well, well,

(08:00):
that means she's powerful. She's a powerful woman of faith,
and she is being given power to do this from
a God who loves her. And people don't understand that
many the life she lives behind the scenes, she's probably
shielding us from a lot of her innermost feelings. And
I really, as somebody who was widowed myself with two
young children, I admire the strength she's showing and the

(08:21):
way that she's had to step into these shoes and
to do this, and I'm frankly to do a battle
against darker forces who are trying to speak about Charlie's
legacy themselves. She's the person to do it, and she's
doing a great job.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
It really is amazing to think about what that would
do to your life and how you have to present
one face in public. You don't have to, but she
chooses to, because she's choosing to be strong in the
face of all this horror in her life. That are

(08:57):
two young kids will probably never remember that dat at
a certain point, except through pictures and videos and the rest.
And she's lost her husband in a brutal, unnecessary, targeted,
evil attack, an assassination. So for those who see her

(09:18):
smiling on a stage and say, oh gee, there's grief
for you, shut up, sit it out, because I bet
you've never been through what she's going through. All Right,
you've heard about fraud in Minnesota. This is where I live,
so this is particularly important, but we're hearing about it
in Maine as well, and it's probably coming to a

(09:39):
state near you, so be prepared. But really, what's going
on in Minnesota. I found a few videos that really
explain it for people who aren't totally clear on how
out of hand this is and what's going on. I
want to start with this reporter, a local reporter, and
then we'll get to some national stuff. But this local
reporter from the ABC affiliate k STP here in the

(10:01):
Twin Cities put together this little piece. I want to
roll it for you, Okay.

Speaker 7 (10:07):
I just want to get this all out while it's
still freshened my head.

Speaker 8 (10:10):
That's me.

Speaker 7 (10:11):
Investigative reporter Eric Rasmussen with five Eyewitness News. I recently
checked on this house in Burnsville, Minnesota, looking for info
about a man named obde kerm Eley do you know
where he is? He fled the country in twenty twenty two,
right before being indicted for fraud along with his boss
and forty five others linked to feeding our future. Investigators say,

(10:34):
stolen taxpayer money paid for this house, and the FEDS
filed paperwork to take it through forfeiture. Do you know
if the government is trying to take this house? That's
the voice of his ex wife, according to a young
woman who also spoke to me through the door, ex husband.

(10:56):
She says a couple of years ago, the government came
and she says they worked it all out. The question
in all of this is abd kerm Dlay is still
listed as the owner of this house here, and obviously
neighbors around here have questions about what's going on with
the efforts to recover the proceeds of all the fraud.

(11:16):
So we'll keep asking questions.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well, thank you for doing your job, and I hope
more do because immediately now again, this fraud is so
enormous and so broad in its reach, but people want
to start pointing the finger at others, not the people

(11:40):
who committed the fraud, but at others. Why why do
we do this?

Speaker 9 (11:47):
So?

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Why when we find an illegal immigrant in another state
and he gets arrested and sent to Venezuela, and we
take his side instead of the side of the people
he victimized. Why why do we do that? Why do
we take the side of men who want to compete

(12:08):
against women instead of the side of women who are
being treated unfairly in that whole mess. So I don't
know why, but let's go on to the next one.
I thought Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, even though he's
way down in Louisiana, he's in DC and he understands
what's going on here. I love listening to this man.

(12:28):
He's been on our podcast. You should look it up
and listen to that one here he talks about it
and enjoy.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Feeding our futures.

Speaker 10 (12:37):
Went to the state and said, have you stop giving
us this money. We're going to call you racist and
we're going to sue you, and you don't want to
be in the news. Now here's what. And you said, well,
why didn't the employees do something?

Speaker 2 (12:56):
They did.

Speaker 10 (12:58):
They told the people up, the people with the flags
in their office, and you know what, they did nothing.
You know why, Well, here's what the legislative auditor in
Minnesota said. He said that the threat of litigation and
the negative press affected how the state politicians used their

(13:22):
regulatory power. And here's what a fraud investigator in the
Attorney General's office said. She said, there is a perception
that I'm quoting now that forcefully tackling tackling this issue
would cause political backlash from the Somali community, which is

(13:44):
a core voting block.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
For Democrats. And in fact, one of one of the
other wits in the.

Speaker 10 (14:00):
Fraud investigation said, look, total prosecutors, let me just give
you a cold dish of truth. The eighty thousand voting
block of folks with Somali ancestry. You got to have
their votes to win in Minneapolis, and if you're a Democrat,

(14:21):
you can't win Minneapolis, you can't win in state. So
the politicians did nothing.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
I hope you followed all of that. But basically, here
in Minnesota, we have a very large Somali population, and
it seems that the politicians curry favor with them to
keep them as a voting block. Not very different from
what they do with let's say, the teachers' unions or
other unions. It's kind of like almost like an unspoken union.

(14:50):
I'm not saying every single member of that community votes
one way or the other, but they were treated like
that by the Governor Walls, by his Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan,
by the Attorney General Keith Ellison, and potentially ilan Omer
could be implicated here as well. I'm gonna let the

(15:11):
facts come in, but she certainly was rubbing elbows with
some of the people who've been thrown in jail over this.
So this isn't over and it's despicable. And again, if
people were going to blow the whistle on these groups,
they would be called racist.

Speaker 7 (15:33):
It was bad.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
It is bad. We'll see just how far it reaches.
It wasn't just feeding our future. There was an autism
case as well. Now over the weekend you may not
have seen it on face the nation, but Treasury Secretary
Scott Bennett Bessent excuse me, Scott Bessant was on and
he was asked about this particular fraud.

Speaker 11 (15:54):
Let's hear what he had to say.

Speaker 12 (15:55):
That money has gone overseas and we are cracked that
they both to the Middle East and Somalia to see
what the uses of that have been.

Speaker 11 (16:06):
Okay, but you have no evidence of that money being
used to fuel terrorism. Well that's what point, which is
what some conservative writers are.

Speaker 12 (16:13):
That's why it's an investigation. We started it last week.
We'll see where it goes. But I can tell you that,
you know, it's terrible. You know, the representative Omar tried
to downplay it, said, oh, it was very it was
very tough to know how this money should should be used.
You know, she was gaslighting the American people to her. Yeah,

(16:36):
but you know, when you come to this country, you
got to learn which side of the road to drive on,
you got to learn to stop the stop signs, and
you got to learn the not to defraud the American people.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, that'd be nice. I noticed that she said conservative
writers have suggested that money was going to al Shabab
in Somalia, a terrorist terrorist group. I think that that
is why conservative writers, so is what she's saying then,

(17:06):
that liberal writers aren't looking into that because anytime money
goes into Somalia, it's usually picked through by al Shabab,
which is a terrorist group. So that seems to be
the common knowledge among people who understand that. We'll see,
I'm going to let the facts come out. But she
had to say some conservative writers. Okay, then she had

(17:31):
on ilhan Omar. So let's roll that.

Speaker 11 (17:33):
I want to pick up on where the Treasury Secretary
just left off. He alleged that people who were tied
to you or your campaign were involved in this broad,
brazen scheme to rip off the Minnesota state welfare system.
Do you want to respond to that? Do you know
what he is referring to?

Speaker 8 (17:52):
I really don't, and I don't think of the Secretary
of himself understands what he's referring to. We obviously had
people who were able to donate to our campaign that
were involved. We send that money back a couple of
years ago. And actually I was one of the first
members of Congress to send a letter to the Secretary

(18:14):
of Egg asking them to look into what I thought
was a reprehensible fraud that was occurring within the program.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Well listen, I'm gonna I think the Secretary knew exactly
what he's talking about. I think ilhan Omar is doing
everything in her power to distance herself from this, including maybe, yes,
she did write a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture,
maybe that's true, But did she write it when she

(18:45):
saw the writing on the wall that this was all
coming to pieces. I don't know. I don't know, So
time will tell, won't it. Let's keep asking the questions
because certain people committed crimes here and it was highly
disproportionately the Somali community. So does that make every Somali bad? No?

(19:11):
I don't paint with those kinds of broad brushes. But
this was certainly coordinated and it originated with a very
particular constituency of Minnesota. All right, let's leave with one
to make you smile. We talk a lot about illegal immigration,
and one of the reasons I get so tickled with
a video like this is that, you know, my ancestors

(19:35):
came here legally and became part of the fabric of America.
And my dad was incredibly proud to be an American.
And he always told me he won the lottery by
being born here, and you're in the greatest country on earth.
And I still believe that to this day. So here

(19:57):
is a guy who is so happy and proud and
excited because he did it the right way. Take a look.

Speaker 9 (20:06):
I found out this morning that June ninth will be
the day my wife and I will finally become American citizens.
It's hard to express how grateful I am for the
privilege to call myself American and to place my hand
on my heart to pledge allegiance for flag that has
been a symbol of freedom and opportunity for me these
past eighteen years. One question I've been repeatedly asked as
an immigrant is to explain the difference between America and

(20:29):
my home country. My answer has always been simple. In
my home country, I woke up every day bring in
with ideas, inventions, and dreams. The problem was, my ideas
stayed ideas, and my dreams stayed dreams, and eventually I
became tired of limiting my ambition to the socioeconomic standing
of my country. In America, I can do. I can
wake up with an idea and build a prototype by sundown.

(20:51):
In America, I don't ever have to worry that my
dreams are too ambitious to become reality. That is why
I came here and the reason I feel privileged to become.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
A Fellows love it. And you know, I've heard that
a lot about some of these societies where people are
coming from, that they just feel so limited that they
can't do the things they want to do because the
governments don't allow it, governments don't want free enterprise, whatever
the case may be. But that is here. It always
has been, it always will be. And you will hear,

(21:21):
if you're in college right now or headed there even
maybe before that, how bad this country is, how bad
our history is. And it's just so shortsighted and destructive
and counterproductive to overlook all of the good that has

(21:44):
come out of this country, all of the change, the evolution,
the improvement, the growth, all of it. It couldn't happen
but for our constitution, our declaration of independence, our civil war,
all of those things that has made this country what
it is. So is there room for improvement always? Always,

(22:09):
But I wouldn't take any other place. And with that,
I'm going to say, be brave, do good, and we
will see you next time. You can keep up with

(22:41):
the Trump administration when you subscribe to the Trump Report.
It's an email that brings you daily highlights from the
Oval Office right to your inbox, five days a week.
Subscribe today at salempodcastnetwork dot com slash Trump
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
The Joe Rogan Experience

The Joe Rogan Experience

The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.

Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics

Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics

Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2026 iHeartMedia, Inc.