The Vicki McKenna Show (WIBA)February 25, 20261h 48m

Vicki McKenna Show - One of the Most Historic State of the Union Speeches

Showing mention at 17:59 — highlighted below

Transcript

281 segments
0:00

Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just $10.00. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. Trade screen time for race time at Virginia International Raceway. August 21st through 23rd, IMSA's Michelin GT Challenge brings some of the coolest cars to VIR for an unforgettable family weekend. Explore, meet drivers, see race cars up close, and experience the thrill of racing from every corner of the track. It's more than a race. It's a memory waiting to be made. Kids 12 and under get in free. Get your tickets at VIRFam.com. That's VIRFAM.com. L-B-T-E-N-V-Z. Your night in just got legendary. Get ready to chase the rush, spin, win, and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at Legendswithazee.com. With free-to-play slots, blackjack, quino, roulette, and more. Experience all the thrills of Vegas without leaving your couch. Legends has it all. Legends is a free-to-play social casino void for prohibitive. Must be 18-plus play responsibly visit Legends.com for full details. Get in the game now and score a 100% match on your first purchase only at Legends withazee.com. The best skaters, BMX riders and moto athletes in the world don't compete in leagues. Until now. The X-Games League Championship is live from New Orleans, July 24th through 26th. Three days of elite action sports, plus performances from Metro Boomin, J-I-D, Subtronics, and Bunt. Watch on ABC, ESPN and ESPN 2. Stream on the ESPN app, Roku, Kick, Amazon, and X-Games YouTube. The inaugural champion gets crowned this July. These days it's getting harder and harder to trust what you're seeing. Who made it? Is it real? But with iHeart, everything you hear is guaranteed human. That's why 78% of listeners trust their favorite radio hosts product recommendations. And if you own or manage a business here or need to drive sales, that trust goes a long way in creating your future customers. Make iHeartMedia a part of your 2026 plan today. Visit iHeartadvertising.com. Again, that's iHeartadvertising.com. Good morning and welcome to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. Well, what a night last night. If you were one of the people who skipped the state of the union, you missed an historic speech. You missed a tour de force.

2:48

For one of the, if you were out there saying, well, it was going to be one of the longest speeches ever, and it was, and if you missed it because you were too lazy to turn on a television and plop your butt on a couch and watch it because it might have been too long, you missed one of the, if not the most historic state of the union speeches ever delivered. A state of the union speech delivered as a state of the union speech the way it was supposed to be intended. So go find it and watch it. It was actually astonishing. It was the most robust, invigorating, masculine, unrelentingly patriotic. address I've ever heard. It was utterly, utterly, utterly, enervating to all of the Democrats in attendance. It wiped them out. They were at a loss for how to react. President Trump had them in the proverbial Chinese finger puzzle. You know those woven puzzles. The only way you can get out is if you push forward, they wouldn't do it. They kept resisting. And they ended up looking like bitter, angry, unpatriotic, un-American, miserable communists. And it was extraordinary to see. We're going to get to more on this coming up, but I've got just a couple of pieces of audio. This was not your typical state of the union speech. President Trump did call out the honorees, which the Democrats described as, quote, a circus. You know, people like George Taggart. A 100-year-old World War II veteran. That guy, just a circus. The mother of Irina Zarutska, who was the young Ukrainian girl who was murdered on a bus in North Carolina. by a man who had a long felony record over 47 violent felony charges, and he was able to sit behind her and slit her throat. Her mom was in the audience, circus. Amazing. You have to watch it. It wasn't just political, but it was political.

5:44

And it utterly deflated the Democrats. 70 of the Democrats went out and had some anti-state of the Union party where they had people in blow-up animal costumes. And I'm not kidding. Screaming on stage, people dressed as frogs and giraffes. For real. That was the Democrats' response if they weren't in the audience sitting down for everything. There were Democrats who were even sitting down when the U.S. men's hockey team came in. Not all of them, but some of the Democrats were angry at the U.S. men's hockey team. But it was when President, and I think we've got the audio here, it's about two minutes. It was when President Trump laid down a challenge in the speech. That was the most revealing moment for anyone watching. The most revealing moment that sharply defined the Democrats. Do we have it? I want you to play the sanctuary immigration audio portion. Brandon, I don't know what you labeled it, but I don't want to hear the other stuff. Okay. Here it is. Join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. All the Democrats sat.

7:56

and ashamed. You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself. That is why I'm also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens. In many cases, drug lords, murderers all over our country, they're blocking the removal of these people out of our country. And you should be ashamed of yourself. They sat and the response was to heckle the state of the union and the president. He laid down a marker. Can you stand up and say that the rights of American citizens are more important? And that is what we are sworn to protect. And he got heckled and screamed at. And that went on. We cut about a minute and a half out of the audio. That went on. with Democrats sitting there, scowling, barking, seething, screaming, but never standing. And that was in the first 10 minutes of the state of the union speech. We are going to take a break. We'll come back and talk more about this. That set the tone. That set the pace. That set the tempo. for the next hour and 35 minutes. So if you missed that, it never relented. President Trump's speech never relented. It was serious. It was substantive. It was patriotic. It was invigorating. It was American. And very few Democrats have veiled themselves of the moment. We'll take a quick break. And we are back. Welcome back to the program. Brandon, are you ready with another piece of audio? Do we have the voter ID audio? Okay. So before we get to Jim Paff from the Conservative Caucus, there is another moment that was absolutely stunning. I mean, this was an hour and 45 minutes worth of moments like this. So I can only, we don't have that much time. We play the whole thing. I encourage you to watch it if you missed it because you thought it was going to be boring because it was not boring. But when President Trump called out the Democrats on voter ID, I was off my couch practically storming my living room. In glee, here it is. Why would anybody not one voter ID? One reason, because they want to cheat. There's only one reason. They make up all excuses. They say it's racist. They come up with things. You almost say, what imagination they have. They want to cheat. They have cheated. And their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. And we're going to stop it. We have to stop it, John.

11:12

Oh, yes. I want that on single-track shuffle. It's going to get me through, assuming the Republicans can get the Save Act over the finish line. Jim Paff, conservative caucus, you and I were texting. Neither one of us expected anything to be as remarkable as it was last night, although we expected a good speech. But holy cats, Jim, that laid down several markers, and the Democrats did not avail themselves well. Well, I think you expressed the best when you texted me. We're 90 minutes in, and I'm not at all bored. You know, because it is that way with these. You get through these, you have these speeches go on and they start out okay. And it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, got it. Okay, yeah, yeah. Dan, no, it was like a full crescendo all the way to the final statement that was excellent that peed off Democrats. And, you know, but I will tell you this. Here in... uh the swamp or i'm near at least um political magazine which is just a typical political rag they they go through and analyze a lot through the speech and they do the grudging positives then you know but this is really a problem you know all that kind of bullcraft that they do then at the very end of their analysis they start this paragraph off in bold letters it says, but the best part was, and then they talk about Abigail Spanberger's speech for one paragraph. Like this is how twisted Washington is when they think about these things. I saw a Scripps Howard poll. I was looking at it this morning, and it was made before the speech, and 66% of Americans in that poll had said that this is going to be one of the most important state of the union speeches. that they ever saw. Well, if that played out into the kind of viewership and the continued replay of these things along the way, then this was a huge winner for Donald Trump. And I'm like you, if Republicans can actually follow through on anything, then they can take a big advantage of this. I mean, Donald Trump wins. Republicans, well, they're still at the start, finish line. We'll see if they're willing to do what they ought to do. And if they do, then it's a big election. So this is the thing. It did a bunch of things. Number one, it was, as I said at the top of the show, it was robustly masculine. So it rejected the pursed lips, you know, wine wives gynocracy that has been hectoring men. That was one of the best visuals was to see this contrast, to see Mark Kelly. emasculated. I mean, self, he created, he self-emasculated. It was unbelievable to see a man who, you know, had a storied career just sit there and act like he was taking his, his marching orders from the gyno psycho contingent that runs his party. It was the huge. T, full, to see those contrast. And to have the Democrats sit on their hands when Anna Zarutka, whose arena Zarutka's mother, was sobbing in the crowd being called out from the podium by President Trump. Wow. They didn't stand. When President Trump, the very beginning of the speech, said, I'm going to ask all of you to stand if you agree that American citizens are who are here to protect. Wow. So that set the tone.

14:42

for these upcoming midterms. And I hope it not only lit a fire under the standard order GOP, but reinvigorated the MAGA base. Without a doubt, I mean, it should reinvigorate the base. And keep in mind, the post-fold analysis that has been done seems to indicate initially that that group of people that have been straying from Donald Trump, the coalition that got him elected so overwhelmingly in 2024. They were beginning to stray because they were getting a little bit frustrated and they seemed to have been brought back in. And that certainly should be the case because everything that Donald Trump did and said and emphasized and the manner in which he emphasized it should energize that base that has been like what's going on here a little bit. And so, and I think there are reasons for that. But still, he's Donald Trump's performing well. The numbers are good. everything he was he very faithfully laid out what he's been able to accomplish and what he's doing and you know and obviously some bravado a little bit and some of it but roughly everything was right on target and accurate and it's what the american people did want from him so i think it's a it's a winner and i like the fact that you talk about masculine You know, we do need men to be masculine in this country. And Americans do like that. Cuban nature, frankly, likes that, notwithstanding the desire of Democrats to feminize this country. Listen, we need the feminine, you know, but we need the masculine, too. And people appreciate leadership. In fact, They want a bit of masculine in their female leaders whenever they're elected to be candid because they want people who understand what's at stake, focus on what needs to be done, and then it takes real action rather than talking about what they're doing. Exactly. Nailed it in every way that. Absolutely. Not a bunch of carping harpies because that's what we had. You have Rashida Tlaib and Elon Musk Omar, you know, the Hamas contingent sitting there yelling and hectoring President Trump when he says, stand up if you're for American citizens. My gosh, when he called out the Somali pirates, I thought I was going to fall over and inhale my drink. I'm not kidding. The stuff that was had, go ahead, please. I was going to say, it's amazing to me that Ilhan Omar there is doing what she was doing, pushing back to him, that this is a woman who has been enriched massively by her position in Congress, taking advantage of the system, possibly some of that enrichment is related to the Somali fraud. I don't know that for sure, but it might be, but whatever it's related to. She was worth zero when she walked in. She's worth $30 million now, mostly from an investment in a winery that doesn't exist. Like, she intimizes the problem, and she has the ball to push back against Donald Trump. But what this speech highlighted, one of the big takeaways from last night, is that Democrats...

17:57

more firmly solidified, other than John Fetterman, by the way, who from time to time stood up and also shook the president's hand, but Democrats more fully solidified the fact that they are an un-American party that seeks to destroy the and undermine the American Republican every way possible for the sheer purpose of power and money. That is all that they are about. They are not about the American ideal and the American dream. And we can point out some negatives on certain Republicans, and they're worthy to be pointed out. But the reality is that right now, Donald Trump, as head of the Republican Party, is promoting the American ideal that was on full display last night. And the degree to which this, what happened then is repeated, is going to be in a net positive as we go into November. American exceptionalism would have been the overarching theme of this entire speech. Absolutely. But, you know, going back to the masculine nature of the speech, and I don't mean that macho nature. I mean masculine nature. It was firm. It was robust. It was invigorating. It was tough. I'm watching it on Fox News. I'm not sure what CNN did. They cut to Sarah McBride, the dude in a dress, sitting there, pursed lips, stone face, trying to, trying to, you know, do his best RBF. And it could not have, again, it couldn't have been more of a perfect contrast. What do you want for this country? When Trump is talking about the unbelievably courageous chief warrant officer who, after getting his leg blown by three bullets at least, three rifle rounds. lands a plane to get the team to get Maduro. Oh my gosh. I mean, inject it into my veins. And there the man stands, you know, polite and respectful and patriotic and everything we love about our military and humbly accepts an incredible award of valor. So. And, you know, that's the contrast with a purse-lipped dude and a dress and a wig sitting there upset that President Trump called anyone who thinks you should take children away from their parents and then turn them into mutilated, you know, gender freaks is crazy. And we've seen the numbers recently, tens of thousands of kids who have been thrown in to an experiment, unable to decide whether they want to do it or not. And this McBride dude is sitting there pretending to be a woman. And it epitomizes what the Democrat Party is. Everything they do is a pretense.

20:47

to something that they don't want to tell you. To be a Democrat is to be an equivocation. And by the way, when you equivocate in speech, you change the meaning of the terms in the middle of the debate to give people the impression that the term you're using is what you mean. But it's not what you mean. I mean, that epitomizes what the Democrat Party is. They are an equivocation of reality. They give you, they attempt to make statements that mean something, and they mean not only the exact opposite of it, but they're going to continue to lie and use that false terminology to try to get you to come to their side because they have nothing to offer. And the concerns about our elections and whether they're fraudulent or not. You know, the reality is that the only, and Donald Trump pointed this out last night, too, the only way Democrats to win elections is the lie. Not just in their words, but lie in terms of how their elections are run. We have got Democrats and even some Republicans all around the country resisting transparency in their election processes and in their past election efforts. But if you don't have transparency in that area, if you don't have forthrightness in that area, and create them honestly and impartially. then you do not have a country. That is the one, this Save America Act is, we can survive a lot of political problems in this country. We cannot survive in this country if the Save America Act doesn't pass and is rightfully and fully enforced. Because if we cannot have elections where the American people can decide what way they want to go, then we don't even have a country. We definitely don't have an American Republic. Absolutely true. And we're going to close out on that. And I will just say there was tons of policy in that speech, too. We're not focusing on the policy. This speech is going to be picked apart for a couple of days here. But Jim, I do appreciate the time, the conservative caucus.com. Check it out. Thank you very much. Jim Paff. Thank you. Good to talk to you. Good to have you on the show. And we'll take a quick break. See, if we're, if Jim and I are still jacked about this speech, 12 hours later. And you missed it. You need to go find the video. I think whitehouse.gov has it posted. Settle in. Enjoy. It will make you want to hug yourself. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. So there was a lot in the speech last night about. immigration, illegal immigration, whether it was President Trump's references to the Save America Act or the Save Act for short, whether it was him calling out Democrats for their maniacal and deadly sanctuary cities policies, whether it was some of their refusal to stand up and honor the pain and grief of a mother who lost her daughter.

23:56

because of their attack on police and the judicial system and the idea that we don't punish criminals, I mean, which also worked into the illegal alien situation or the refusal to stand up and honor a father whose daughter was nearly killed by a drunk driving illegal alien with a CDL. That is, it was such a perfect visual capture. of the culture we're in right now. You have half the political body that is disinterested entirely in standing up for American citizens and protecting the people who pay the taxes, who support them. And the other half is interested in doing the exact opposite. But let's just sort of with regard to anyone who would not stand up, but the idea that America exists to protect the rights of citizens. That was pretty shocking. There was a time not long ago when maybe Joe Biden or Barack Obama would have uttered those exact same words in the entire chamber would have stood. Ira Melman from Federation for American Immigration Reform is on the program. Not that we didn't kind of know, but now we know, no, as they say, Ira, that when asked to declare a marker, plant a flag on who you're there for. A whole bunch of people decided they could not stand up for American citizens, and that's pretty troubling. It is. And, you know, probably the biggest reason is because if they did, they'd probably get primaried. You know, that is where the Democratic Party has moved. You know, if you take a stand for just basic common sense, if you make the assertion that the country exists to protect the interest and rights of its citizens. That makes you suspect in that party, and you're probably going to get a challenger from the left. They seem to be really well organized. I mean, we just look at what's been happening in various places around the country where you have these insurgencies. So, you know, these guys are scared. But, you know, they're also putting, I guess, their own political careers over the interest and safety of the American people. And it's kind of sad. You know, at some point, you've got to draw a line in the sand and say, you know, primary me. I don't care if I lose an election, I lose an election, but I'm going to go down with some principle. Yeah, I'm going to go down on behalf of the survival of this nation and not the destruction of this nation so that I can keep my $174,000 a year job and my retirement plan from Congress because that's what they're trading it. I mean, I remember back in the day when Aldrich Ames, I don't remember people remember this guy, he sold out America for $2.6 million. He sold out and committed an act of treason for $2.6 million. You've got people who are essentially selling out America. for $174,000 a year plus benefits. That's shocking, Ira. I mean, you know, people were mad in the 1980s when Aldred James, who was a spy, by the way, sold us out for $2.3 million. We're like for only $2.3 million. And in 1980s money, that was actually better. And these folks are doing it for a whole lot less.

27:16

Yeah, it's, I mean, it is that, I mean, this should be some basic things that we can agree upon in this country, you know, that we want to protect the interests of people, just, you know, being able to go about their daily business to take their kids driving on the highway without worrying. You know, the state of California has decided it's more important to give a, you know, put an 80,000 pound tractor trailer in the hands with somebody who doesn't know how to operate it. uh... because you know we feel badly for him because he's in the legal alien and that these you know it just shows where we are as a country and you know the american public uh... if they were watching at all at this spectacle you know it's got to decide you know it's enough with these politicians and I'm not being partisan here. It's both parties engaged in this kind of pettiness. But at some point, the American public have to say, we need leaders who are actually prepared to lead to act in the interest of the American public. Yeah, I mean, we may have differences on policy issues, but there should be certain basic principles that we're going to adhere to. Yeah, and by the way, as I'm listening and I watched the whole thing and I enjoyed every second of it, no one's harmed. No one's harmed by any of the ideas or any of the policies because what that speech was was quite literally just aggressively American. It was it was supremely patriotic. Nobody in America. is harmed by patriotism. Nobody in America is harmed by an American first policy. No one's harmed. The only people who you could potentially define as being harmed are people whose power depends on ruining this nation. So, you know, we were talking about the insurgencies that are very well organized, and we should point out very well funded as well. The Democrats had an alternative state of the union where they had all of these people in animal costumes on the stage. And I don't think people understood what that was representing. They thought it was silly or maybe crazy. Those animal costumes are what Antifa uses to dress, to conceal their identity and attack ice. They dress in these blow-up animal costumes so that if you get a video of it, it looks absurd. Or you get a still shot of it if it looks absurd. It looks like just this light-hearted person walking around in a dinosaur costume is getting attacked by these thug ice agents. They actually put Antifa on stage at their Alt SOTU last night, and darn near no one except the inside leftist caught the joke. Yeah, I didn't watch that. You know, after an hour and 48 minutes, it was enough. But, yeah, I mean, and at the same time, they're trying to prevent ICE agents from concealing their identities because they're under attack by some of these people. It just shows where we are as a nation politically. I mean, we're engaging in ridiculous kinds of theater like this rather than addressing the real problems and the real concerns of the American people.

30:19

And, you know, it should not be a partisan issue whether, you know, we should be getting foreign criminals off the streets of the United States, that that seems to be, that should be, an absolute no-brainer. And yet it is somehow a controversial issue. And you've got, as you pointed out, all these well-organized groups and funding sources that are out there telling people exactly what you need to be outraged about today. And, you know, you can just sort of trace it back over the past 10, 12 years or so. Time after time, something will happen. And the next thing you know, you've got all these people out there on the streets with signs and protesting. This is not happening spontaneously. We are being manipulated. These people are being manipulated. Many of them may be well-meaning people. But nevertheless, they are being manipulated by people who have intentions that not necessarily the best for the country. and they are out there in force supporting them without really even realizing what they're being used for. Yes, not even thinking through because this is a giant sciop. These people have gone through the struggle session and came out the other side completely, you know, willing to sacrifice their free will and free thought and critical thinking. I want to get to Mexico here for a second. As President Trump is talking about what ICE is doing, so what is ICE doing? First thing before anything happened in Mexico to take out El Muncho. We had 92 cartel leaders that were arrested and sell leaders in the United States that were picked up. So the cartels, which are terrorist organizations, because they're not just running dope. They are running influence from our enemies into our nation. So they use dope. They use sex trafficking. They use labor trafficking. They use crime to destabilize us. So you've got a situation in Mexico right now, which is, you know, it's a Tinderbox. It's dicey in Mexico. Who's going to eventually come out the other side victorious? Is it going to be the terrorists or is it going to be a stable Mexican government that can be an ally with us to secure the Western Hemisphere and stop the incursion of the influence of China or Russia, etc? The Democrats are defunding DHS. They are cheering on the attacks on ICE agents. The people who are taking these guys out who needed to take 92 of them out, both in Mexico and the United States, before any operation to get El Mentiono could take place, are being attacked by the same people who sat on their hands and refused to stand when asked if they believe the American citizens come first. Right. You know, these people apparently would rather have these 92 drug kingpins running loose in this country, you know, then... you know, the risk that somebody who is just in the country illegally gets picked up and removed. And by the way, I mean, all you have to do is be in the country illegally. You are subject to removal at that point. But ICE is out there doing a very important job. It's not just the 92 drug kingpins. It is people who have committed all sorts of crimes who are here in the United States illegally. And, you know... What you're seeing in Mexico is this gang warfare. Each one of these gangs has operatives here in the United States. They have been running drugs into this country for years and years. They've established distribution systems here in the United States. You have a lot of people who are associated with those very gangs that are shooting up Mexico right now. So it's in the interest of the American public to get these people out. It's in the interest of the American public for...

33:51

our government to help the government of Mexico defeat these drug gangs and also to secure our borders. You know, if we didn't have secure borders today, if we were back in a situation where we were a year and a half ago, this drug war would be spilling across the border into the United States. You know, having a secure border. We can now look and see what the importance of that accomplishment was because... Right now, it's not coming across the border. And that's why we have these agencies, why we have the border patrol. It's why we have ICE out there looking for the people who are already here. They do pose a significant danger to the country. And we as citizens have a right to expect that our government is going to do something about it. Meanwhile, in order to, again, gin up, the SIOP, the Democrats are looking to now eliminate DHS, the intelligence service for immigration. These are the people who track the drug kingpins and their cells. These are the people who track foreign terrorist organizations and their cells. These are the people who bust those plots before they ever make it to execution. And they want to defund that. Right now, it is functionally defunded. by the Democrats, although some people are still getting paid, simply because Trump is repurposing some revenue for that particular purpose, I believe, tariff revenue. So again, going back to the State of the Union, watching all of those Democrats sit on their hands, not put their head in their hands. There's images of people who are looking angry at the idea that we come first and that we matter. And all of this with the backdrop, again, of Mexico, which the media doesn't even want to cover. Because if they cover it, Ira, then it makes the case, right? Holy cats, there's a drug war going, a cartel war going on in Mexico. And the war is the government versus the cartels. So Columbia 2.0, right south of us, but we rely on as a trade partner. And it's in the United States. What are we doing? It doesn't, I mean, it really does not play well into the let's defund ICE political mantra that the Democrats have seemed to hitch their wagons to. So I think this could, I don't know, if it's a game changer, I certainly hope it's enough to get people. to wake up a little bit or at least get activated a little bit to start realizing that there are people who are getting paid and people who are enthusiastically working nonstop 24-7 to undermine this nation inside this country. And if we don't do something pretty soon to stop it, it could be all over soon. Yeah, and as we spoke about last time, you know, we didn't even mention now the Iran situation. They have sleeper cells here. You know, if ever there was a time we needed top-notch intelligence work being done here in the United States to find people before something goes boom. This is it. There is so much that needs to be done. There are so many ways that we are vulnerable right now.

36:50

And we need a dedicated force to go out there and to protect us from getting blown up. You know, that's literally what the stakes are right now. You've got drug gangs who have shown that they will do anything. They will commit any kind of heinous crime. We've got potential terrorist threats against the United States right now. And we have a Department of Homeland Security that's kind of running on four cylinders rather than on a light. Correct. And DHS is supposed to be sort of the first intel contact, you know, the first people who get the first whiff of something that might be a plot. By the way, before we close out, because this is important and it had nothing to do with the State of the Union, but it just flew under the radar screen was barely reported. Tom Homan reported that of the 350,000, 350-odd thousand children that went missing under Joe Biden, 125,000 of them have been located. No one was even looking for these people until President Trump was elected. And I think that is someone, I mean, that's a story to do. 125,000 kids that were abandoned to whatever the whims of whatever nefarious organizations wanted to use them have been rescued from that hell with another 200,000 to go. But again, Ira, if we talk about that, we're also going to highlight one of the problems of unrestrained illegal immigration. Yeah. I mean, it turns out that they don't even really care about the illegal aliens. What they care about is the political advantage that they're going to get of having open borders. So, you know, if you actually cared about the illegal aliens, you would really care about these 325,000 kids who are being traffic, being, you know, God knows what's happening to them. But apparently not. Of 125,000 kids, that's like three times the size of Beloit, Wisconsin. You know, it's almost the size of, you know, almost Madison. It's about three quarters of the size of Madison. 125,000 kids. Wow. Thank you. Of 325,000, so 200,000 of them are still missing. Ira, thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you. Ira Melman, who is with Federation for American Immigration Reform, and we're going to take a break in the Vicki McKenna Show. All right. We've only got about 30 seconds here. So we're going to take a break on the Vicki McKenna show for hour number two. And we're going to dive into some of the policy that was in the speech. I'm not spending so far, not a ton of time on the policy. But again, more on the themes because it was, and what did I say yesterday on the show three or four times? The famous Andrew Breitbart quote, politics is downstream of culture. President Trump's speech last night was trying to catch up the GOP. He knows that. I think he knows that very acutely. So part of what he was doing last night was also trying to catch the GOP up on the fact that they're way downstream of where the people are. And certainly the Democrats are, I mean, they're just not even in the boat. We'll take a quick break on the Vicki McKenna show.

39:57

And welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. A quick programming note coming up a little bit later on in the program. Remember, the show is three hours long. We're going to talk about the teachers' union lawsuit that means to break Wisconsin taxpayers' backs. We're not spending enough in education. We need to spend more than $20,000 per student to get substandard reading and math proficiency. That's what we need. I mean, this. This is pretty bad. This is what's in store for Wisconsin if we're going to sleep through the April 7th Supreme Court election or the upcoming midterm elections. Okay. But back to the State of the Union. There is, and let me just play it because it's fun. I don't know how much time can you spend on this? It was just too good not to share before we get to Duke Pesta, who's standing by. President Trump in one of the moments of his speech said he is going to ban insider trading by members of Congress. Do you have the audio, Brandon? I'll just let you enjoy this cold if you missed it. Here it is. As we ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market, let's also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information.

41:39

They stood up for that, I can't believe. I can't believe it. Did Nancy Pelosi stand up if she's here? I doubt it. Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay. Oh, that was great. Just fabulous. And she was there. She was there with her face looking like a melted wax statue from Madame Tussauds. But she was there. So just enjoy that one. That was right after he was talking about creating the same kind of retirement accounts for people that Congress has and seating those accounts with $1,000 in government match. He decided to riff. Duke Pest is standing by on the program. I mean, what can you say about that? That was just funny and awesome simultaneously. But I, Duke, I noticed a theme and I'm on this theme. I've referenced it already on the program about the fantastic contrast. Not just the political contrast, not just the American contrast, but the contrast between the reestablishment of a masculine vision for America versus the... example of what the feminine version for America has already brought to us. So that is, I mean, maybe this will tick people off. Don't say it. But that's what I noticed in that speech. It was the very first adjective that jumped to my mind was that this was a difference between, you know, an invigorated, robust, masculine vision of what America should and can be and was versus. what the gynocracy has done to us over the last 60 years. I agree with you, and I think you certainly could phrase it that way. That's the meta version. But I think the more broad way of looking at is civilization versus the nanny state. So what you got is the masculine, yep, it's bold, it's civilizational, it's creative, it is rolling up your sleeves and attacking problems rather than shrugging and pretending, okay, this is the way it is, there's nothing we can do about that. So yeah, is that masculine? Yes. Is it civilizational? Yes. Is it the business model, right? If something's broken, fix it. Yes. On the other side, what you have is turpitude. You have malaise. You have not boldness. You have hyper security and comfort, right? The idea that in a dangerous world with shifting values and

44:38

technology completely writing everything what the left wants to do is create a cocoon right where Individual rights are taken away in the name of the collective where what our job is to wrap everybody in silk cocoons, pay for everything, give them everything, expect nothing from them, take away risk and ambition. And those are the two visions. And I think you're exactly right. Given the way that offals the... white liberal women who are destroying this country. That's what they want. And then you have this other vision. And Donald Trump, you can dislike his affect, but he's exactly right about this, right? It's a civilization. Do what you've got to do. And what we saw in the... the speech yesterday. The one thing that I really loved is how he came out with that attitude. We can do. Remember how often the feminine Barack Obama kept saying, yes, we can. Yes, we can. But everything Obama did. was not what we can. It's what we could avoid. And here's a guy who says we can, we can, and English, how refreshing, and actually tries to do it. That's the difference. Yeah, Trump was the penguin in the meme, marching off to the mountain. He had America as the proverb, as he's representing America. America is the proverb proverbial penguin that is marching off into the mountain, marching off into the unknown. For those of you who don't know that meme, go find that meme. It went viral about a month ago. The Penguin meme. If you need it to explain to you, feel free to email me and I will explain why people are still on that meme. But that was what it represented. It's this, it's not risk averse. It's risk embracing because that's how we became the nation we became, which is why he highlighted people at the speech last night, like the chief warrant officer who. flew the Chinook on the Maduro mission. Oh, this guy's story is absolutely unbelievable. And I'm getting his name. His name is Slover. His last name is Slover. I'm trying to get his first name here as I, as I'm struggling. He gets shot three times. He lands the Chinook. The team gets off. They're still taking machine gun fire. Other members of the team get shot. They prevail. They get Maduro. He finally passes out. Co-Pilot takes over. The team loads onto the Chinook and they're gone.

47:14

And it worked at high risk, high reward. And so highlighting people like that, highlighting people like the helicopter pilot was, I think, a National Guardsman who saved all those kids from that flood. highlighting Royce Williams, who is the 100-year-old Navy vet, who shot down four Russian planes before he ran out of ammo and somehow still miraculously survived that incursion during World War II. Man, I mean, it's just like, you just, you, you, you, it's hard to explain unless it's in your, your, your American DNA. How invigorating and, you know, totally life-affirming that kind of... a recommitment is. Well, yes, it's masculine, by the way. Well, think about Zohran Mamdani, right? The warm embrace of collectivism. Collectivism is taking away all initiative to the individual and allowing bureaucratic red tape to take over. When you do that, when you embrace the collective, everybody realizes, hey, I'm not an individual. We are all belong to the collective. And so let the collective fix it. And the problem is, is when you have a collective, no individuals pull because they don't have to. Exactly. The problem of socialism. This is the problem of New York City right now with garbage piling up 10 feet high, lining the streets, dog poop all over the sidewalks, snow that cannot be cleared. Because when you rely on the collective, there's an old, there's an old cliche. Nobody washes the rental car. That's the collective. When it's not yours, when you don't have a stake in it. I got to, I got to, you know, correct myself. Royce Williams was a Korean War vet. My apologies. And Eric Slover, Chief Warren Officer 5, Eric Slover is that unbelievable hero who managed through three rifle blast to his leg still get the job done on a do-or-dye mission. Wow. I mean, those are the kinds of stories you can't tell. in the collectivism, in the warmth of collectivism, because you don't get those stories. They disappear. The greatness is subsumed by mediocrity, which is eventually completely subsumed by failure. Yeah, my analogy is you're driving down the highway and you got to go to the bathroom. On the right side is a public toilet. On the other is a hotel room that has a bathroom. You're going to go to the hotel. You're going to go to the place where it's privately owned because it's going to be a clean toilet. Good luck going to the bathroom in a public.

50:10

highway bathroom. It is a disaster because nobody has to care for it. And this is it. And you know, what, what again, everything that Donald Trump did, even more than his speech, you know what spoke loudest, the people he introduced. That was even more powerful. than his speech because these were the ones who are doing it. They are finding the fix. They are rejecting government and picking up their own bootstraps. That's what America is. And I have to believe that it's still in the DNA in most Americans. With every generation, it gets watered down. But there's enough of us to make it work. What did he feature? He featured the mother, the grieving mother of Irina Zarutka. She was a Ukrainian immigrant. He also used immigrants to tell this story, by the way, legal immigrants. He used Enrique Gonzalez, who is the great dissident from Venezuela, that was reunited with his niece, which was an incredible moment, by the way. And so you're right. He's talking about the helicopter pilot in the floods, in the Texas floods that saved all those girls. He's talking about great war heroes. It was another 100-year-old vet that was there. Never mind, just the U.S. men's hockey team, you know, coming out and, you know, making us believe the country is capable of greatness again. For the whole world to see. Because some of these other stories are not digested broadly because the media won't tell their stories. But could you be mad of the U.S. men's hockey team? Somehow some Democrats managed to be mad and manage to keep in their seats during that moment as well. Well, it's also telling that the Democrats brought illegal aliens. Yes. To the outside building, right? So this is your gambit. You will not stand up. for the idea that government should protect the American people. You won't stand up. Meanwhile, you have illegal aliens who have no legal right to be here, who have no real constitutional benefits because they're not citizens. And that's what you, you are standing by them at the expense of us. Yes. And that's a bad look. They're not the people who are dropping down in the middle of a howling, uh, deluge to rescue, however, 137, 145 girls from a, from a camp trapped. By the way, I looked up his name as well. He deserves special attention. Uh, his name is petty officer second class. Scott Ruskin, a coast guard again. one of the most underappreciated and badass military agencies we have. And Vicki. And all those girls. And don't forget, 3,500 kids who were lost because of illegal immigration, people, coyotes, traffickers, crossing the southern board. In Minneapolis, 3,500 were found by doers. And it was the bad aspect of the...

53:21

invading illegals. Those are the ones who separated those kids from their families. And they were found by these men. And then that's the thing. That's the difference right there. No one wants to talk about the human toll of illegal immigrants. Immigration. Yeah, I get it. Some of them live good lives. They want opportunity. But the gross thing that Biden did to simply open the borders. It created every single problem. that the left is now crying about because they support the invaders. Yes, the debt, the housing crisis, all of the constraints on jobs. You're right, 3,500 kids that were being, that, that you had wine wives and estro-nazis and the gino-psychos and Antifa dressed in blow-up animal suits trying to prevent the police from rescuing. 3,500 kids, howling in their faces, agitating them nonstop, putting their brains in a place where they were on constant, high alert, and stress, and then weaponizing that stress for when things got to the point of use of deadly force. And all to stop those officers from arresting the people who took those 3,500 kids. Unbelievable. It really is. This speech last night, if you watched it, made that point. I want to get to real quickly the response by the Democrats. 70 of them did not attend. They were at an alternative event that had blow-up animal costumes, people in blow-up animal costumes on stage. It looked ridiculous. But Duke, those blow-up animal costumes are what Antifa uses to create propaganda imagery. So when an ICE officer has to deal with someone who's attacking him in a blow-up dinosaur costume, it looks absurd to someone who's not paying attention. That's what they did. They chose Antifa on stage over America. Yeah. And of course, wearing masks is bad if you're ice. But if you're thug Antifa, it's okay. And if you're throwing bricks at cops, that's okay. Right. And so that's it. One vision of civilization is... like you said, rescuing. The other one is nothing more than entitlement, right? And that's the difference. And again, from what I've heard, the numbers of people who showed up at that alternative.

56:03

event were very few and mostly journalists, right? So it's not like there were huge crowds out there, you know, chanting on for revolution with these Antifa frogs and toad in their costumes. It was a, it was because you know as well as I do. If this was a, if they had huge numbers, you would be seen at all of the media, media didn't happen. What was happening was happening in the building. And even the way that, um, uh what's his name showed up with his ape uh sign from the beginning right This tells you what it is, that they have decided the Democrats, that there is absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, that they will go along with in this government. They are only here to resist. And that's a problem, too, right? If all you can do is resist, that means you are, for all time, you are on your back heels, right? You're playing defense. What the world needs and what America needs is initiative ideas, bold ideas. And the bravery, brave men and women are not brave enough to go ahead and implement that. All they do are basically putting their fingers in their ears and going, nah, nah, nah, nah, I'm not going to participate in any of this. They should be. Like brady, like brady little girls. Like spoiled, rotten little girls who can't have their ponies. They are infantile. It is Alvin Louis, who I love from the organization Courage as a Habit says, you make courage a habit. Do not make cowardice a habit. And President Trump was trying to get the Republicans and the rest of the country watching to do exactly that. Duke, thank you for jumping on the program today. I appreciate it. Thanks, Vicki. And we'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna show. And we are back on the Vicki McKenna show. Still ahead, as I said, the Teachers Union and other left-wing political groups are looking to sue Wisconsin into unsustainability regarding education funding. It is, it's just one after the other after the other. And if our media was doing any kind of job. it would be presenting what all of these different acts of lawfare are going to do to the state of Wisconsin. But they won't do that because they want the Republicans to lose. They want the Democrats to win. They do not care the damage that is going to be wrought. Think Minnesota. Think Illinois. Anyway, that's coming up. But JD Vance, our vice president. is going to be in Wisconsin tomorrow. We'll talk a bit more about some of the stuff in the state of the union. But this was announced earlier this morning, confirmed that JD Vance, the vice president, will be in Plover, Wisconsin. Brian Schimming, the chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. I assume you're going to be there. At least I hope you are.

59:10

I will be, I'll be welcoming him there and opening up the event. It's sort of private business in Plover, which, for those not familiar, is essentially the south side of Stevens Point. So it's in Derrick Van Orden's district, the congressman from Western Wisconsin, whose district extends over to Stevens Point. So the vice president often does this in, you know, in the shadow of the president's big speech. There's a lot to talk about. The administration understands the importance of Wisconsin and talking to everyday Americans. And there are a lot of them in central Wisconsin. And that's why JD Vance is going there. Well, and Derrick Van Orden's the target. Derrick Van Orden is target number one for the Democrats. There is a, again, lawfare that is continuing to move through Wisconsin, looking to redraw Derrick Van Orden's district so that... a Democrat can win. So draw Democrat excess capacity into Derrick Van Orden's district to make that district so that Republicans have a hard time winning. So there's another reason. It's a good reason why JD Vance would come to Plover as well. Yeah, it sure is. And with respect to the court action, the congressional maps, the only reason. The only reason the Democrats picked up seats in the legislature in the election two years ago was not because they're any more popular. It's because they got a map redrawn for them and a map that was essentially forced on the legislature. And so the only reason they picked up the seats in the Senate and the Assembly is not because they're any more popular. The problem for the Democrats in Wisconsin, they deny it. But the real problem for the Democrats in Wisconsin is that about 37% of their statewide vote is one of two places, in Milwaukee or in Madison. That's it. That's their problem. They can't. So the only way they can pick up seats is to redraw legislative seats. And to your case, a congressional seat, and they want to redraw Derek Van Norton out of his seat. Right, which is what they did. That's how I ended up getting represented. I live in Jefferson County. I ended up getting represented because by Dane County, because Dane County's excess Democrat capacity was drawn into my district. The lines of my district changed. I left Dane County to get away from the, you know, the welfare mentality, the nonstop leftist anti-American mentality and governance. And it came for me because of... the Democrats forcing map changes, which is what they want to do. It's what they've got left because they can't convince people. You can't convince people all those Democrats sitting on their hands when President Trump asked everybody last night to stand up if you believed that America was for Americans to protect Americans, not illegal aliens.

1:02:21

you're not going to convince America that the right position is to sit on your hands and not defend the citizens of this country, right? That's why they need these shenanigans. They do need these shenanigans. And Derek Van Horton is one of the top targets in the country. The Trump administration and the vice president have a good record to talk about to everyday Americans. Look, last night, the Democrats refused to applaud, you know, reaffirming the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens, which I thought, frankly, was kind of one of the bigger moments. of the night. I mean, the president, I thought, was masterful. I mean, really good. They forgot, they refused to applaud, you know, grieving families of innocent American women and children murdered by criminal aliens. They refused to applaud securing our homeland and finally ending the invasion of criminal illegal aliens. They refused to applaud unifying against political violence. They refused to applaud inflation finally subsidizing after years of Democrat-driven prices. They refused to applaud keeping violent criminals locked up over and over and over. And by the way, you know, these were on things that were easy for them to applaud, and they still didn't. do it. So what does that tell you? When you didn't stand up for Irina Zarutzka's mother, who was weeping in the crowd, when you didn't do that, when you couldn't stand up for, as you say, in the very first 10 minutes of the speech, for America over our enemies. But look at, now look at the, in Wisconsin. You've got Francesca Hong, Sarah Gonzalez, David Crowley, and the lesser Mandela Barnes. They're all committed. to sitting down at every single one of those moments. They're pro-illegal alien. They're pro-welfare state for illegal alien. They're anti-cop, anti-ice, pro-crime, you know, pro-destruction of the education system, pro-lopping sex parts off kids and calling them the opposite gender. They're pro all of that. They don't want to have to be pro all of that because they know America watching says, ick. That's just ick. No, we're going to go with the guys who want to protect us rather than the people who want us to see us destroyed by chaos. And so that's Wisconsin right now. It is a matter of whether we can get anyone to understand to connect President Trump's state of the union with those four candidates. And I think he gave them enough. You know, the down-ticket, downstream Republicans enough to work with last night, by golly. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, when they sit on their hands, when the president's talking about protecting minor children from irreversible sex changes.

1:05:30

from low gas prices, from the lower crime, through all of that. I mean, when they're willing to sit on their hands for anything, I mean, you don't need a poll to figure out the American people are with us on those issues. This is not some head scratcher going, well, you know, where's my neighbor on that? Where am I on that? These are real obvious, and I think that was part of the beauty of the president's speech. He frankly called him out. He did it pretty masterfully. He called him out on things that they just couldn't bring themselves to stand up for, including the horror, you know, that example that you named of that woman who started. I mean, horrible, horrible, horrible. Could they stand up for a grieving mother and a family? No. No, but they couldn't stand up for seniors either. They can't stand up for wait staff and hospitality workers and people who are tipped employees or folks who work overtime-based jobs because we can't seem to get the tax relief at the state level, you know, simply because the Democrats will not do anything the Republicans want them to do. So we can't get a no-tax on tips, no tax on overtime. They want to scare senior citizens. So every, you know, even those scholarships, those tax-exempt contributions you could have made. made to help kids catch up with either tutors or other types of assistance. Tony Evers would not allow that. That's the kind of thing that the Democrats have to defend if they're forced to defend. And I think Trump served it up with enough ammunition for the Republicans to put the Democrats on the defense here in Wisconsin. So there was a, there was, you know, the America message from the state of the union. Then there was, you know, the sort of instructional blocking and tackling political message that I think Trump was trying to send to some of those shaky Republicans out there who just don't like to ruffle feathers. Well, and as I said to a group, I've been, as you know, I've been running around the state the last month. I think I've hit 12 cities in the last eight or nine days, and I'm on the road. I'm heading to Milwaukee to speak at an event at our Hispanic center on the south side of Milwaukee this afternoon. Then I'm in Ashkosh and then Stevens point for the vice president tomorrow. But I'm telling Republicans all across the state, it's not enough to just... say what we're for. We need to do that and you need to do it coherently so people understand what the party's for. But frankly, you need to call the Democrats out too. And they've given us to your point all the ammunition we need because they voted against tax cuts. They voted against tips for tax off tips. They voted, frankly, against every tax cut proposal that we put out there. They voted against all these different things. We ought to call them out on it. Yes, all the time. All the time. I say to people, I said for all the campaigns that I've run, I said, when people understand the difference between us and them, we win. When they don't understand, they win. So we have to call them out.

1:08:43

Yeah, and again, that's campaigns have to call them out because the media is not going to do that for us because the media will not understanding people don't like it. How come there isn't, you know, just front page screaming analysis? Where is the, you know, the vaunted Dan Bice column reminding everybody that Mandela Barnes posed in the shirt that said defund ICE? How about the fact that Sarah Gonzalez potentially has a problem with sheltering an illegal alien? How about David Crowley, who decided to lay down his marker and get some attention by attacking the U.S. men's hockey team? I mean, Francesca Hong hates women so much, loves trans so much. I mean, you've got Democrats who are there. This is what they're for. They're for transing kids. Therefore, taking rights away from parents. Therefore, insanely high taxes. They're for disarming people. Talked about that about a week and a half ago, the obliteration of the concealed carry law. Therefore, exploding education costs while requiring exactly zero proficiency. Therefore, you know, budgets out the ears. Therefore, obliterating property tax caps. I mean, we could go on and on. Therefore, the complete, you know, submission under the... boot of progressivism here in Wisconsin. And yeah, I mean, this is Trump, you know, I think Trump gets the old Andrew Breitbart quote. Politics is downstream of culture. I think Trump was trying to catch up a whole bunch of people with his speech last night and showing that the Democrats aren't even on the flip and canoe yet. Well, and that's why I'm glad that, I mean, the president has been in Iowa. He's been in Ohio. He's been in Pennsylvania. The day I was with him in Washington a month ago, that was the same day, actually, that he was fine to Pennsylvania to do the rally there. So I think Vice President JD Vance's visit here up by Stevens Point tomorrow where I'll be with him. is going to be the first of more than one by himself and by the president. I mean, there's a reason we won Wisconsin. And I think when voters here were clear whether they wanted Donald Trump and what they knew of Donald Trump versus four more years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, they knew how to vote. We've had 13 races in 26 years in this state, decided by less than 30,000 votes. So I just say to people, I said, you know, I was saying this in Milwaukee the other day, I'm like, if you think you did your job by voting for Donald Trump in 2024, yes, you did, but we saved the country then. Wisconsin literally put Donald Trump over the 270 votes he needed in the electoral college. Now we have to save Wisconsin and the country, because the plain truth of the matter, to your point is, if they figure out a way to beat Derek Madnorton out of his congressional seat, out in western and west central, Wisconsin, the Republicans are going to lose the House of Representatives.

1:11:50

And then we know what's going to happen for sure if the Democrats take the majority. Right on. I couldn't. I totally agree. It's never not do or die and that sucks. But that's how they live. Right. I mean, you have to, I think, maybe slowly dawning on people that activism is every day. You have to be out there every day. Whatever little thing you can do, you have to be out there every day doing it because they are. Right now, as we're sitting here talking, there is some group somewhere that is plotting some kind of incursion to try to get a photo op, a media op, to try to prove Brian Schimming and Vicki McKenna hate puppies and are fascists or something like that. Obviously, they'd be targeting Derrick Van Orden and Tom Tiffany. But that's what they're doing right now. As we speak, someone's doing that. And in Wisconsin, I'm not sure we've got anybody doing that at this very moment. So Brian Schimming, thanks for my. Go ahead. All right. Thanks for having me. All right. Good to have you. Chairman of the Republican Party, Wisconsin, Brian Schimming. Again, JD Vance is going to be in Wisconsin tomorrow, just outside Stevens Point and Plover, Wisconsin. So we'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show, and I'll be right back. And welcome back to the program. We're going to get into this a little bit more on tomorrow's program. But I mentioned this. earlier in the week. And that was the Democrat's sudden criticism of AI. Well, here's what's going on because the Democrats who are criticizing AI are the same ones who have sold their states to data centers. Okay? So Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker, Tony Evers, they've sold their states to data centers. And we're going to get more deeper into data centers today on the program a little bit later on. And it's kind of a head scratcher. Did they finally figure out that people are upset about this? Well, yes, asterisk. People are worried, as am I, that the rapid deployment of AI will wipe out a significant number of jobs. So capitalizing on that fear is where this comes from. Here's their plan. It was just released. Basically, they released their plan. This is how they're going to address the concerns that so many people have over the displacement, the wild displacement of jobs, energy costs, et cetera. By the way, they've already delivered the body blow of the energy increases to their people. President Trump's declaration in the state of the union that all the AI data centers are going to have to have their own power sources. That is far, that's in the future. It's already happening where people are seeing 27, 37, 50% increases in their utility bills for these data centers. Okay, here's what the Democrats plan to do. After they've already given the farm away to the tech companies, scare people, and use it to argue for universal basic income. 100% that is the beginning, the middle, and the end of their plan.

1:15:09

After we've deployed this technology, now we're going to scare people about what that technology can do, and we're going to use that to push socialism. 100%. That's their plan. It's not, I know what we can do. We can work with members of Congress, and we can come up with a regulatory framework that can assure safety and mitigate job displacement. No. We're not going to say, let's stop building these damn data centers. No. That's not what they're doing. They're not joining with President Trump in his call to have the tech companies fund their own energy, create your own utility plant. Don't, you know, don't use our grid. It's already destabilized as it is, as he said, Trump said explicitly last night. Our grid's not strong enough to handle it. No. Not what they're doing. Everyone's afraid of it. Let's freak him out some more. And then we'll use it to pivot to universal basic income where the government assures you a universal basic income. But I got news for you. It ain't for everybody. And it has already failed in experiments.

1:16:33

Universal basic income trials in places like California, in Washington State have failed. But that's their plan. More socialism. Aha. We can scare people. We will do nothing whatsoever to actually mitigate impacts, create a proper regulatory framework, work with President Trump to make sure that the energy costs are not going to be borne by the rate payer on their average utility bill. Nope. socialism. Maybe we can use this to promote socialism. Anyway, I'm out of time. Have a great lunch. We'll be back here to talk about that big teachers union lawsuit that's going to make all of us want to move to Iowa. Have a great lunch. This is the Vicki McKenna Show. Good afternoon. Welcome to the program. It is the Vicki McKenna Show. You know, let's see how far away. Let's see, 9 o'clock. Somewhere around 18 hours post State of the Union speech, and I'm still pretty jacked up about it. I said this at the top of the show. I'm on, remember from 9 to 11, in addition to this hour, 2 to 3. And if you'd like to hear the 9 to 11 portion of my program where I spent a lot of time talking about the State of the Union, you just go to the IHeart Radio app. and find my podcast there. It's very easy. But I was very excited at 9 o'clock when I hit the air, and I'm still pretty jacked about that State of the Union speech because of what it was. And it was much more than a speech. Okay. More on this. As I have had time to even further dig in and digest what's going on, the responses. Suffice it to say, the Democrats' response to this speech, which even had CNN viewers rate positively by a two-to-one margin can only be compared. to the Canadians coping after losing to the United States in hockey. Because their response is just fifth grade level silly. What do I mean? So the Canadians whined when they lost to the United States. We played a better game. They weren't really the better team. It's the equivalent of the fourth grade kid on the playground going, me, you. No lie. So the Democrats response to this speech, summed up by the Washington Post, saying that asking everyone in that chamber to stand up. If they agreed the government's primary responsibility is to protect Americans rather than illegal aliens, that's a quote, was just so dark, just so negative, just so exclusionary. What do you? Not a single Democrat stood up by now, you know that. Not a single Democrat stood up. And the response?

1:20:00

from the media is racist. No, really, it was. It's so dark. It's so divisive. Divisive. Remember, Joe Biden went out and gave the black mass satanic version of the state of the union and called half the country enemies of the state. But no, Trump asking Americans who represent Americans, except for Elon Musk Omar, to stand up. To defend America's duty to protect Americans was just so divisive and racist. The Democrats' response was to say it's racist. The Democrats' response was to say it's divisive. The Democrats who have been attacking police officers, seizing control of cities, burning things to the ground, and letting career felons into the street to murder people. It's so racist. Chuck Schumer's response, you ready for this? We need instant amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens. Because it's racist. Because Trump is racist. Now, we've got the audio of this moment. Many of you may have already heard it, but come on. It's like injecting pure patriotism into your veins. Brandon, do you have that audio of Trump talking about citizens? All right, let's play. It's only a minute or two. I'm inviting every legislature to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.

1:22:15

and ashamed. You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself. That is why I'm also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens. In many cases, drug lords, murderers all over our country, they're blocking the removal of these people out of our country. And you should be ashamed of you saying. And there was, so you're that screaming up for that's Elon Musk Omar, Democrats hectoring the president. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. There were several Democrats who brought illegal aliens to the state of the union speech. Their response, it's racist. America's response to that speech was, yes. Give me some more of that raw American patriotism and I'm going to chug it. Give me more of the heroes that were introduced by President Trump into my veins. It was so invigorating. It was so positive. It was the unbelievable political contrast that was able to be drawn. Not because President Trump was so adept at doing it, but because the Democrats. act like fourth grade brats throwing tantrums on the playground. Their only response to being told they're being naughty is to throw a temper tantrum, which is exactly what they did for the whole world to see prior to the midterms, teeing up advertisements out the ears for any Republican who's not too stupid to use it. video, audio clips demonstrating that the Democrats are nothing more than a bunch of American hating traitors and they put it on display last night. So more on this. We're going to talk more about the State of the Union, more about the... political shakeout of this speech because it's going to be great if we don't screw it up. But first, I want to talk about this insane lawsuit that has been filed in Wisconsin. It's important. We cannot, you know, just simply have fun basking in the afterglow of an amazing speech. We're going to talk about serious moves in Wisconsin. This one by the Teachers Union to make the amount of money for education funding in Wisconsin infinity. We'll be right back. All right. We are going to go back to the fun of the State of the Union speech, but this is alarming. The news of a lawsuit that has been filed that will, by the way I read it, detonate the school funding formula in Wisconsin, making the amount of money set aside for education infinite.

1:25:23

Rick Essenberg from Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is joining me on the program to talk about this. We have the teachers union, some parent groups, which are probably tied to the teachers union, other left-wing claiming that Wisconsin has underfunded education, despite the fact we spend over $18,000 on average in some school districts, including school districts in this lawsuit. $20,000 to educate students. That's underfunding education, and now they want what, specifically? They want more. How much more? Who knows? That's why, you know, you're not wrong in suggesting that. I mean, maybe the amount they want is not infinite, but it certainly is without limits, right? The idea here is goes back to some, you know, basically a case in the late 90s that said, when four justices said, well, you know, the state has an obligation to provide an adequate public education and you could sue if you're not getting it. But nothing happened in that case because a majority of the justices looked at Wisconsin's school funding system and concluded that it does provide its adequate education. Now, since that time, the amount spent per pupil by public schools in the state of Wisconsin has exceeded the rate of inflation. But apparently, this is not enough, or only 45% comes from the state, and it used to be 53%, and this somehow justifies blowing up the whole system and ultimately placing it in the hands of the judiciary. And so this is why I suggest. that this case is really an assault on our Democratic Republic. Our Constitution says that political decisions, legislative decisions, like how much to spend on schools and how much to tax people and who to tax are things that are to be made by the legislative branch with the participation of the government as the Constitution provides. It's not a job for judges. But this is what this lawsuit is about. It's about convincing four lawyers, trying to convince four lawyers that they should raise your taxes and destroy the school choice program. It is about nothing else. Yes. It's an assault on what our elected representatives have chosen to do. There's no use in sugarcoating us. This is a very, very dangerous undertaking. So when you say the four lawyers, we're talking about four women, three of whom ran.

1:28:37

on criticizing school choice and thinking school choice was somehow fundamentally, you know, an abomination, which school choice, incidentally, has been upheld over and over and over at the U.S. Supreme Court. It has been upheld over and over. They don't care. This really is about totally destroying school choice. It has nothing to do with adequate education. If you can't get an adequate education on $20,000 a year, then you need to look at why. And it's not because kids can't, you know, be educated on $20,000 a year because they're educating kids on $14,000 a year in Mississippi. And there's more poor kids there than there are in Wisconsin. So if they can do it in Mississippi, if a school voucher can do it for around $10,000, $12,000 and take kids that are struggling and behind in reading and make them perform better than it isn't about money, is it? No, I mean, look, you know, I was a high school debater. And as you might imagine, that was quite a long time ago. And the topic, one of the years that I debated, had to do with education reform. And it was quite clear at that time from some of the studies that have done is that within the range that we're talking about in the United States, in the large one of circumstances, how much money you spend per pupil really doesn't have much to do with achievement. And that finding has been replicated over and over and over again in the last, over the last 50 years, except in very targeted, limited circumstances. There's just no correlation between spending and achievement. But yet this is, I think, an underlying assumption of the fact that the level of funding somehow defines whether or not education is adequate. I mean, it certainly would if, you know, we were spending $500 per pupil or some ridiculously moral amount like that. But that, as you pointed out in the intro, that's not the case at all in the state of Wisconsin. We spend quite a bit and adjusted for inflation. It's been more than we spent. 26 years ago. Right. So, and we have fewer students. We have more administrators. We have layers and layers and layers of white collar BS. Fewer students and somehow it's just never enough. Tony Evers just signed or just vetoed. into existence, a $325 per pupil per year, accumulating tax increase authority for local school districts, and somehow knowing that that is already hammered property taxpayers, 8%, on average, 17% in my case, it's not enough. Fewer kids, I guess we need another building. Fewer kids, more administrators. Fewer kids. We got to obliterate school choice, even though they get better outcomes and it's cheaper to do it. See, this is so nakedly partisan. It's so nakedly political.

1:31:48

that, you know, one wonders how this isn't already just being laughed out of any serious consideration in a court. Well, I mean, again, I don't think it's unfair to say that all this is being done at the behest of the Teachers Union and the educational establishment. Very powerful political interest in this state. But they haven't been able to get everything they want. And in fact, law forward, I think one of their tweets last night, you know, said that, well, you know, it quoted some of the parents that are the plaintiffs in this case as saying, well, you know, we wanted more money from the state for our schools, but the legislators did not heed our request. Something to that effect. Well, you know what? That's called democracy. That's called politics. Sometimes your side doesn't win. And what you do when that happens is you pick yourself up to the ground and do try again. Or you try to elect a legislature that would be more accommodating to what you want. You don't run to court to court and ask judges. to be legislators. But Law Forward does because they're a lawfare organization. Law Forward is a, you talk about naked but naked law fair organization. They're not there to respect the rules of the court or the ethics of the judiciary. They are there to find judicial ethics, people with judicial ethics that are flexible. That's what that organization's all about. So big middle finger to them because they don't exist to actually defend the rule of law or really to defend the interests of parents or students. I'm told, Rick, they cited the crummy proficiency numbers. The proficiency numbers, which have been horrible forever and now have been papered over by Department of Public Instruction, that they're citing the failure of teachers to teach proficiency. as a reason why there needs to be more money, even though there are fewer kids. Yeah. I mean, the general trend in public education over a very long period of time, you know, and you can cherry pick a number. You can take a number that was, you know, right after, right before Act 10, which... did result in a decline in spending per pupil, but also resulted in the decline in the cost of providing education by placing restrictions on collective bargaining. So, you know, the thing that people don't understand about Act 10 is, you know, it arose at a time when everybody assumed that the choice was either to dramatically cut education spending or to dramatically increase taxes. Governor Walker found a way out of that dilemma. He said, look, we can reduce expenses, and yet we can continue, you know, to provide an adequate amount of funding to kids, and that's what he did. And, you know, got a lot of grief for his, yeah, a lot of grief for what was, yeah, a lot of grief for, I mean, what was a pretty neat solution at a very difficult point in time.

1:35:08

So, you know, you're right. I mean, the thing of it is is how much you spend on education, how much you tax people, who you tax. This is not the type of thing that is resolved by judicially discernible, what we call judicially discernible principles. It's not, you don't find rules of law that will tell you what to do. It is. a political decision that involves the kind of political give and take, bargaining, compromise, what have you, that, you know, characterizes the legislative process. And that's where our Constitution placed that in the legislature. That's not what the Democrats believe anymore. They believe that those four women in black robes that were, that promised outcomes on cases when they ran. are going to be there to deliver them the policy solutions that they cannot get by campaigning for seats in the legislature. So the whole concept of democracy has been, you know, jettisoned by the left. They're done. The Democrats are not interested in democracy because they can't campaign on killing school choice and jacking our taxes and making a crappy education system more expensive for worse results. That's just, it doesn't sell when you're running in a district. It doesn't sell in an assembly race. Maybe it sells in Madison. You don't have to talk about it. You just say, I want to kill babies and you're good to go. So the Democrats have decided that those four women are going to be the ticket to the policy they can't get democratically. What happens if this plus the Act 10 case hit simultaneously? Plus on top of that, the Wisconsin Supreme Court's rubber stamping of Tony Evers $325 cumulative per pupil increase. I mean, what kind of fiscal nightmare are we going to be living in? A big one. A big one, and one that, frankly, may be made worse by moving bands on the way down to Florida with the furniture of, you know, people who are most able to, you know, foot the bill for that type of thing. So, you know, this is just, and I understand, believe me, I understand the view of the law and the Constitution that taken by organizations. like walk forward. I fundamentally and strenuously disagree with it. And, you know, we and I hope most of the people in your audience, Vicky, and certainly I know you, it's our job to oppose this and to oppose it vigorously. Aggressively, vigorously, publicly. and call it what it is. It is an assault on the concept of democracy and the rule of law itself. And here we are again. And it's not just going to be Florida. I mean, maybe for younger people, Iowa, that tax environment in Iowa is looking pretty fine. So if you like those four seasons, Iowa is starting to look pretty agreeable. And it's just over the border. You can just pop over the border to Iowa and, you know, live the good life and still visit your family.

1:38:31

in southern Wisconsin without too much of a drive. Rick Aspenberg, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Thank you. Take care. You as well from Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, and we will take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. So back to the State of the Union we go. Gosh, there's so many themes you can pull out of this, but let's start with the theme, the overarching theme of the speech, and that was patriotism. America in all her glory. Heroism was a big theme in this speech. And if you have not seen this speech, you had other things to do, you have not seen it. I mean, seen it. You maybe listen to it on the radio. You need to sit down and watch it. And yes, it is long, but it does not drag. It is invigorating to the very last moment of the speech. Because this speech was mainlining American heroism and patriotism in massive doses, in doses that made people proud and elated and excited. That's what it did. And it did it to not just conservatives and MAGA people. It did it to anyone with an open mind or an open heart or anyone who still just loved this country, like Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat. Even he stood up, got off his feet and cheered at the many, many moments of heroism. And here's why heroism is important. Donald Trump knew that our heroes. in America have been recast as villains by the American media being the sock puppets of the American Democratic Party. And the American Democratic Party hijacked long ago by American hating communists and globalists. Trump knew that. Trump understands Andrew Breitbart's old saying, politics is downstream of culture. Trump's trying to get the politics upstream of it a little bit, trying to get the Republicans to catch up and the American people to understand that government at this moment must be responsive to what is going on at this moment. The problems must be solved at this moment. He's trying to drag the GOP along with him on this. But he understands that the Democrats have recast our heroes as villains. The cops are villains. The military, villains. Our founding fathers, villains. The rule of law, villains. Patriotic Americans, villains. Anyone who flies the flag of villain. And he made them see the heroes. He introduced hero after hero after hero. I don't even think I'm going to be able to get through the list. in the amount of time. It starts with the U.S. men's hockey team, which someone pointed out as an aside. The U.S. men's hockey team beat Canada on George Washington's birthday. And they weren't supposed to beat Canada. They were supposed to lose to Canada. And the U.S. men's hockey team beat Russia in 1980 on Washington's birthday. He just points out. He says, you know,

1:42:06

George Washington is widely considered to have been one of our forefathers guided by divine intervention. A hero of America, one of the very first heroes of America guided by divine intervention had been shot at dozens and dozens and dozens of times hit, never killed. There's a famous story a lot of you maybe know about a Native American warrior who couldn't kill him, couldn't kill Washington. And after the war was over, sought out George Washington to meet the man that was protected by God. Anyway, that's an aside. But that was the first group of people who were introduced were the U.S. men's hockey team. Then we go through the rest of the heroes. We've got George Taggart, the 100-year-old World War II veteran, honored for his service being wounded but liberating an internment camp anyway, earning a Purple Heart and Bronze Star during World War II, 100 years old. You had petty officer second class, Scott Ruskin. This is the guy who went and rescued like 140 kids. From the raging floods in Texas, 140 girls at a Christian camp, the wind is howling, the rain is coming, and the waters are rising. And this guy over and over and over again gets child after child after child. Talk about being guided by divine intervention. U.S. Coast Guard hero right there. So it goes on like this. You've got the dissident from Venezuela who is thrown into a political prison, who is freed by the United States, by the United States military, reunited with his niece last night, heroes. Heroes for truth, heroes for justice, heroes for righteousness, heroes for the cause. One of the most amazing... stories of the night was Eric Slover, Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover, go look this guy up, S-L-O-V-E-R. He gets, this is the guy who is the leader of the Maduro raid team. Chinook pilot gets blasted by machine gun fire three times in the leg, is bleeding out in a river of blood. and manages to land the Chinook, get the team out. They're taking fire, shooting back. Our guys take out Maduro's team because this guy manages to maneuver the helicopter to put guns on them. It's just amazing. And then somehow it doesn't pass out before the team gets Maduro, gets their job done, and gets back on the Chinook, and they can leave. Heroes. That was the theme of last night's speech. And Trump made the Democrats marinate in it because they hate this country. They proved it. They proved it.

1:45:33

when they let in 16 million unvetted criminals, ne'er-do-wells, to overtake this country, to obliterate our social service system so that American citizens couldn't use it, to overwhelm housing demand, to just dissipate violence, crime, gang activity, terrorist activity into American cities and up end. Peace and order entirely while attacking the cops, while attacking the Department of Homeland Security and the ICE agents over and over and over again. They have proved they hate this country. They griped when the U.S. men won hockey gold. If you can't even find a way to cheer hockey gold, you hate America, but they've already proven that over and over again. The reaction to President Trump saying, stand up, if you believe the first duty of the American government is to protect U.S. citizens, not illegal aliens, and they couldn't make themselves do it because they hate this country. They brought illegal aliens, not citizens, to the state of the union address. They didn't bring. a constituent citizen to enjoy an historic moment. No, they brought illegal aliens at an alternative event that 73 Democrats attended, who chose not to attend the State of the Union. They put Antifa organizers on stage. Antifa was on stage, dressed in weird animal costumes because they hate this country. So that's the main takeaway. There's one takeaway is that heroism is back. We have heroes. They're not villains. He called out the National Guardsmen who were defending D.C. during the surge, the law enforcement and ICE surge in D.C., who were shot dead in the head. One of them was shot dead in the head. He honored those people. He honored the suffering survivors. of criminal violence unleashed on this country by a party that craved power so badly and hated this country enough that they undermined the rule of law to turn our cities inside out. Democrats could not stand for Anna Zarutka, who is Irina Zerutska's mother. She was the woman who was sitting on a bus in North Carolina who had her throat slit. by a man who had been arrested 47 times and was in this country illegally. They couldn't stand. And the reaction to the end of the speech? It's racist. What Trump did that was so brilliant was he made them show the world. The media could not hide this. They couldn't hide the bitterness. They couldn't hide the snark from Elon Musk Omar, who is currently under investigation for fraud, for shoveling campaign money and other dollars into a fraudulent, non-existent company, who's already said to her constituent she doesn't represent the United States, she represents Somalia. Everyone got to see it last night.

1:48:59

That's what Trump did. It was a beautiful speech. It had a lot of great policy in it. We'll pick through the policy over the next couple of weeks. It was a beautiful speech. It was a soaring speech at the end to honor another 100-year-old veteran who single-handedly flying alone took out four enemy planes during the Korean War until he ran out of ammo and somehow survived. That, you know, what you could not hide from, the Democrats, were there, was their loathing for everything good about this country. We have already. exposed our wounds and our sins of history to salt being rubbed into them for the last 60 years. Trump says it's time for us to talk about the good stuff and why we're awesome and we're going to be again. We'll take a quick break. All right, folks. We're going to send you home. Well. Some of you can't go home because it's only 3 o'clock. But let's send you on to your afternoon. Coming up on tomorrow's program, we'll check in with Tom Tiffany and with Derrick Van Orden. Both of them are going to be in Plover, Wisconsin because Vice President JD Vance is in Plover, Wisconsin tomorrow. So just next door to Stevens Point. That's Derrick Van Orden's district. The Democrats are targeting that seat for elimination. in a lawsuit challenging the congressional map. So we'll check in with both of those guys on tomorrow's show. Everybody have a great afternoon. Oh, I've had no luck lately. Wait, lady luck? Brett Ski, I got you. I've had so much luck on SpinQuest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack craps, and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just $10 bucks. $10 for 30. I'm headed over to SpinQuest.com right now. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit spendquest.com for more details. Got plans this summer? A brewery crawl? Another lake trip? The same festival you've been to three times already? Do something different. This August, Virginia International Raceway becomes the ultimate summer destination. Watch Inns's Michelin GT Challenge at VIR. August 21 through 23rd brings some of the fastest sports cars to battle through VIR's legendary corners. Camp with friends. Enjoy live music and experience a weekend you'll actually be talking about afterward. Start planning now at govir.net. Looking for a little Hollywood-style fun? Check out Ryan Seacrest 10K ways exclusively at Chumba Casino. There's 10,000 ways to play. Get spinning for free at chumpacasino.com. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. CTs and Cs 21 plus sponsored by Chumba Casino.

1:51:55

The best skaters, BMX riders, and moto athletes in the world don't compete in leagues. Until now. The X-Games League Championship is live from New Orleans, July 24th through 26th. Three days of elite action sports, plus performances from Metro Boomin, J-I-D, Subtronics, and Bunt. Watch on ABC, ESPN and ESPN 2. Stream on the ESPN app, Roku, Kick, Amazon, and X-Games YouTube. The inaugural champion gets crowned this July. These days it's getting harder and harder to trust what you're seeing. Who made it? Is it real? But with iHeart, everything you hear is guaranteed human. That's why 78% of listeners trust their favorite radio hosts product recommendations. And if you own or manage a business here or need to drive sales, that trust goes a long way in creating your future customers. Make iHeart media a part of your 2026 plan today. Call 844-844-I-Hart. Again, that's 844-844-I-Hart.