The Joyce Kaufman Show 2/26/26 -

Ready, set, summer with the Honda Summer event, with available features like all-terrain tires and off-road tuned suspension, the rugged Honda pilot, bridgeline, CRV, and passport. Have all you need to get summer ready with the most fuel-efficient full-line automaker in America. Visit your local Honda dealer today. See dealer for financing details. Based on EPA estimate of 2024 large full-line automaker fleet wide fuel economy. EPA automotive trends report 2025. This is the Joyce Kaufman podcast, honest, straight, and unapologelic with your host, Joyce Kaufman. I received a lot of feedback about yesterday's program. I'm always grateful. You know, you guys have to understand that I can only be as good as you think I am. My opinion about my show is the least important. It's your opinion that matters, which doesn't mean that I let people dictate just how much work I put into this and how much talent is involved for anybody. Nobody can, you know, master a task or a career. and hold on to it for 36 years, unless, you know, they were blessed. I don't pretend for a moment that somehow you could learn this in school. I don't believe that. You can get some skills through school, but it has to start with some sort of inherent ability. So I heard a lot from people yesterday about how they were really, I guess, enjoyed the fact that I just told you what I thought about the State of the Union address. And apparently a lot of people thought the same thing. But you would never know that if the only thing you listened to was, you know, CBS and CNN or whatever the station du jour is that people end up receiving information from. It was the time we only had like a couple of stations when I was growing up. You know, you either watched ABC or CBS or NBC. And then along came PBS or NPR, whatever it was, the public broadcasting network. And then it was a long time before there was anything like cable. So it's fascinating to me that with all the choices that people have available to them, they will settle into a place where they feel as though it's not just honest, but it's It's somewhat predictable that the person is going to cover the news, not just the news that everybody else is covering, because, you know, I don't like to do that. I really don't. I find it tedious to listen to show after show, and they're talking to whoever it may be, you know, this time last year. I was looking at my notes from one year ago. Everybody was talking about Tulsi Gabbard. I don't even remember what was going on. These people were probably going through confirmation hearings or I think she was one of the last confirmation hearings. So everybody was talking about it. And in my notes, I had made a note to myself, like talk about anything other than Tulsi Gabbard. And I realized that most people appreciate that. That when I speak, you might hear something that you're not hearing everywhere else.

And you don't have to just believe it because I say it. I generally give you a pretty good idea of what I use as sources for my research. And you're all invited. Welcome. There's such a plethora of great information out there. You just have to have a discerning mind. You can't believe everything you read, but you should stop reading the same thing that everybody else is reading because you won't get anything novel from that. So I was really fascinated by a story that I was reading, I was following it, I think, in the New York Sun, or maybe the New York Post, one of the sort of offshoot New York publications, is not the New York Times, I assure you. But it was a story about this professor who is at Hunter College, which happens to be my alma mater for one of my graduate. Studies, my master's, was from Hunter. And I look at, you know, the story with a very sort of prejudicial eye, right? You never want to think that the school you went to. Would hire somebody who was a racist or not smart enough to be in the position they were in? You always want to think there's something good or something great left about your alma mater. Although my kids don't have that luxury because Hunter and Columbia and Yale and Stanford where they went, not much credibility. But that's my opinion, they think. They still think that those schools have some credibility. But Hunter placed a professor on leaves because she spoke in front of a, I don't even know what it was. It was a virtual meeting. And she was making some comments. And she's a biology professor, an associate biology professor at Hunter. And she was caught inadvertently interrupting a black eighth grade student's concerns about the potential shutdown of the Upper West Side Public School during a community education council meeting on February 10th. She wrote, I write to share an update about actions that Hunter College is taking as a result of the incident. Okay, this is coming from Nancy Cantor, who is the college president. Now, this is not the college president that I knew because Michael Godwin's wife was the college president for many, many years, and I really thought she still was, but apparently not. So this Nancy Cantor makes this statement in which she says that abhorrent remarks were heard coming from a district parent who also is a Hunter employee. So apparently this woman whose name is Allison Friedman, the associate biology professor at Hunter, was at this meeting not in a professional capacity but as a parent.

And that doesn't excuse any comments, by the way. You know, this is my opinion, but I'm telling you. Apparently, the remarks that they overheard... were despicable. You know, the universities exploring it or investigating it, whatever it is that they do, they have to go through a particular procedure. You can't just assume that because someone reported it, it's accurate, or even that it's, you know, punishable by anything, you know, censure, firing, any of that stuff. She said, pending the outcome of our investigation, the employee has been placed on leave. And without, there's no, I looked at a couple of different varieties of reports on this. It doesn't say whether she's being paid or not. But the. CUNY School previously said that it was reviewing. See, because I have a long history with the City University of New York, undergrad and grad. So I know what CUNY's policies have been since the many decades ago that I graduated from, and they stink. But the comment that she was heard saying was, they're too dumb. to know they're in a bad school, that she was on a mic that was unknowingly unmuted. And she was attending just as a parent. And then she went on to say, if you train a black person well enough, they'll know how to use the back and you don't have to tell them anymore. And she seemed to be referring to a comment that was made by Reginald Higgins, who's the school district's interim acting superintendent, who spoke about Carter G. Woodson, the father of black history earlier in the meeting. So if you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you don't have to order him to the back door. He'll go without being told. And that's what Carl Woodson had written in his book, which, you know, his book was written in 1933, okay? And it was called the Miseducation of the Negro. And two other adults in the virtual meeting quickly called out the professor. The others all just sat there shocked with their hands over their mouths. You know, like they never heard anything like that before. And the whole meeting went dead for about 10 seconds before the moderators apologized to the student and urged her to continue.

And Friedman has said that she was explaining systematic racism to her own child by referencing an example of an obviously racist trope, adding that her full remarks weren't completely audible because of the microphone mistake. My complete comments make clear those abhorrent views are not my own, nor were they directed at any student or group. Okay. So she's already condemned. She's already going to be punished. Manhattan Borough President Brad Siegel called the comments outrageous. And nobody cares if it really happened or didn't happen or anything else. She still isn't fired? You know, that's from the Queensboro president. There's never any room for an investigation to take place unless, of course, this was going in the other direction. Yeah. Trust me. If a conservative. had said some, well, I'm preaching to the choir, but I'd like to hear the whole story before decisions get made. Apparently, you and me are the only ones. Anyway, don't forget to download that 850 app. You can put it on your laptop, your cell phone, anywhere you want it, and that way you can listen to the podcast as soon as they're uploaded, downloaded, whatever it is we do with them. You can also participate in our contest. You can get breaking news. It's a great app or just visit our website, 850WFTL.com. Let me take a time out right here. You please stay right where you are. I'll be right back. All right, so a lot of stuff going on. And I was really contemplating just how crazy this Guthrie investigation has gone. And you all know, I don't spend a lot of time discussing it because it doesn't seem as though any news has been forthcoming until yesterday when all of a sudden they were talking about all this activity at Nancy Guthrie's house and that they were seeking more DNA evidence. And I'm thinking to myself, here we are a month out. First and foremost, wouldn't a lot of evidence be seriously degraded? And second, why, you know, I guess I'm confused. Why? They would not have kept that place shut down under lock and key if they felt they had not gotten every bit of evidence that there was available out of it. There's just a lot of strangeness about the way this investigation is going. Now, granted, it's also under a microscope. We don't usually get to see an investigation into a kidnapping or into an abduction.

done with this much seriousness, right? We just don't. Those things are taking place in the highest echelons of law enforcement, whether it's the state police or the local sheriff's department or the FBI. It's not something that they splash all over the front page of the newspapers because they're really trying to... lure, I guess, is the right word, the perpetrators out or lure out anyone who may have information that could be valuable to them. So, you know, to see yesterday every news channel talking about this resurgence of activity at the house, I had to think to myself that this is being done deliberately. They're saying all this and putting it on the various news stations for a reason. And I watch a lot of criminal shows, you know, criminal intent and SVU and law and order and all that stuff. But none of it lines up or makes sense to me in this particular case. Like, they really just seem to be doing everything half-heartedly. I don't know if that's the right expression, and I don't want to condemn the Sheriff's Department or the FBI or anyone else. But really, to have so little information on a high-profile kidnapping a month after it takes place, just doesn't seem impossible to me.

I would like to know how it is that today we get a news headline. I guess you could call it that. You get this headline about people at the FBI being fired. And they are people who were somehow involved at Moralago. Again, how does a story like that leak out? You know, the one thing we saw a lot of during the Biden administration, during the Obama administration, and to be frank, during the George W. Bush administration was a lot of leaking, you know, from very highly placed sources in agencies where it really matters. You don't want to tip your hand. And yet, All of a sudden, you know, I'm looking with a very different eye at the way these stories are being released. Or are they being released? You know, or is this something that has always happened and we just weren't paying attention? I don't believe that. Let me give you a great example. Today, one of the big headline stories is that there was a... an American speedboat, and the people who were in it were actually murdered, is the only way you could, you know, say it. And, okay, what are we going to do about it? You know, everybody's asking the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, what does this mean? You know, are we going to respond? And if so, what's the appropriate response? And that should be a headline news story, at least in my opinion. But instead, I'm looking at them releasing half the story about the new activity at the... Guthrie House, you know, not that anybody is saying anything substantial, or at least I haven't heard anything, and I look through the news probably more than most people, you know, but I just don't see it. And if you see it, then, you know, help me out here. What am I missing? What am I missing? Because it would seem to me that that's a big deal. Now you have, you know, a headline story in most of the publications today about how once upon a time Hillary Clinton thought that Donald Trump should be put under oath about Epstein, you know, that we should be investigating Elon Musk. And... There they are in D.C. right now, the Clintons, the former president and the former Secretary of State. And you would think that celebrities had come into D.C. The headline in, I think it was a drudge report, it was in one of the aggregate news sites that you can't trust. It said something like, Clintons take D.C. by storm. What does that even mean? Oh, God.

Help me out here. Because I don't get it. I don't get a headline that says, you know, Kash Patel fires at least 10 FBI agents that were tied to the search at Mar-a-Lago. That would seem to me to be a pretty substantial story. And some of those FBI employees, they were people who got to handle the classified documents that caused all the hullabaloo in the first place. So at least 10 FBI employees who worked for the special counsel, Jack Smith's investigation into whether President Trump retained classified records after he left the White House in 2021 were all fired yesterday. I mean, that seems like a very lengthy period of time. The firings came after Reuters reported that the FBI had subpoenaed records of phone calls that were made by FBI Director Kash Patel and White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, when they were still both private citizens as part of Smith's probe into Donald Trump. The Reuters article quoted Kash Patel, who alleged that the FBI had secretly subpoenaed his phone records using flimsy pretext and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade any oversight, all oversight. And the Reuters article added that it had not independently verified any of Kash Patel's claims. So, apparently, he didn't provide any evidence of wrongdoing by the staff who he fired. Ten people. Special counsel, Jack Smith, oversaw two federal probes. Let's not forget. into President Trump, now President Trump. One case alleged that he unlawfully tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, while the other case focused on whether or not he had retained these classified documents and whether or not there were efforts on his part or on his staffs. part to obstruct the Department of Justice when it asked him to return the files. Now, all of the agents and all of the analysts who got fired yesterday were involved with this case. And CBS News confirmed were a source that was absolutely familiar privy to this story.

that Susie Wiles' records were reviewed as part of the documents case, but was unable to verify whether Kash Patel's were. In the case involving the 2020 election, which of course we now know that investigation was Arctic Frost was the name, that Kash Patel's records were not subpoenaed. We do know that. And so now, you know, the news agencies want to know what's going on here. They're reaching out to the FBI because Kash Patel is the leader of the FBI now. You know, the news agencies want to know. What's going on here? They're reaching out to the FBI because Kash Patel is the leader of the FBI now. And the FBI Agents Association, which represents current and former agents, came out immediately condemning the firings in a statement saying that they violate FBI employee's due process rights. These actions weaken the Bureau by stripping away critical expertise and destabilizing the workforce, undermining trust in leadership, and jeopardizing the Bureau's ability to meet its recruitment goals, ultimately putting the nation at greater risk. This is according to to the FBI agents association. We have no other association that we could go to for this kind of information or for this kind of, what's the right word, analysis. You know, counsel, Smith, he had two investigations into Mr. Trump, which led to the first federal criminal indictment against a former president in the whole history of America. The classified document charges actually were dismissed by a federal judge in Florida. Back in 2024, on the grounds that special counsel Smith wasn't even legally, lawfully appointed to that position. And he dropped the 2020 election charges after the president won the race, after Mr. Trump became President Trump again. And since then, the story is, and I think it's a fair analysis, even though I'm a big supporter, I think the story is that this has to be examined. You cannot have this kind of suspicion of retribution going on at the highest levels of law enforcement in the Department of Justice and in these agencies that are under the direct, the person in charge of Kash Patel's FBI is Pam Bondi. So imagine when half of the country, and I suspect it's more than half of the country, is trying to figure out whether or not the government is overstepping its bounds right now.

But apparently, the woman that Ilhan Omar, the representative from Minnesota, the guest that she brought to the state of the union address, was actually arrested afterwards and needed hospitalization or some kind of hospital treatment after she was arrested during the speech. She stood up during the president's speech in which he called on Democrats to restore funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and the people around her remained seated. So when the U.S. Capitol Police approached and asked her to sit down, she refused. And during her conversation with Capitol Police officers, the crowd that was seated around her were given her like a standing ovation. which she tried to explain to the officers was a reason that she shouldn't be forced to leave. And then the Capitol Police took her. She was walking without the help of a crutch, and they started pulling her towards the exit, a move that faced protest from one of the other guests in the gallery who called on the police to be a little less aggressive with her. I had no idea all this was going on. She, by the way, had a face mask on. She said in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that she was in the custody of Capitol Police and then in the hospital until just before 4 a.m. I was not just removed and arrested. I was arrested so physically that two other attendees upstairs attempted to intervene in officers pulling on my shoulders after I told them I have a torn rotator cuff tendon and multiple cartilage tears in both of my shoulders, she said. She told Goodman that the house sergeant at arms told her she was arrested because she was standing up, silently. No buttons, no facial expressions, no gestures, no signs, not one sound, just standing up. There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union, and they are sit down and stand up. All kinds of people were standing up all night. and sitting down. She said in an interview that she has a torn rotator cuff and cartilage tears after federal agents in Minnesota dragged her out of her car last month when she drove down a street where an anti-immigration protest was happening. Rahman said she had been trying to get to a doctor's appointment. Capitol Police said that Rahman was arrested on the charge of unlawful conduct and disruption of Congress. All State of the Union tickets clearly explain that demonstrating is prohibited. I wouldn't know because I still haven't gotten a chance to go to a State of the Union address, but Congressman Mass promised me next year. So we're holding them to that. But it's written on the ticket.

The guest was told to sit down, refused to obey the lawful order. It's illegal to disrupt the Congress. And of course, Elon Musk Omar blasted the arrest, calling for a full explanation of why this arrest occurred. There will be one. It'll be a day in court. The heavy-handed response to a peaceful guest sends a chilling message about the state of our democracy. This from a woman who comes from a country. where she is forced to cover her arms, face, everything, just to walk outside. But she's a little disturbed that in America, you are asked not to behave badly in a joint session of Congress. She was apparently taken to George Washington University Hospital for Treatment and then booked at the Capitol Police headquarters. And according to a description that's being provided by Ilhan Omar's office, that should be a fair and balanced report, she is a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury from Minneapolis. Now let me ask you a question. Why was Ilhan Omar subjecting a person who has diagnosed, apparently, although we don't know because apparently everybody in Minnesota had autism because they could get a check? But let's say that you legitimately understand that this is a disabled person who's been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and autism. And you choose to put her in the position she was placed in at the State of the Union address? I mean, let's face it. Minneapolis was at the center of this immigration crackdown in the last couple of months, in the, what do they call it, Operation Metro Surge? Yeah. And during the operation, federal agents actually shot some people. They killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. So Democrats in Congress are now demanding that the Department of Homeland Security change its immigration enforcement tactics. They won't even vote for a bill that would fund the department. And they're driving this government into a partial shutdown. And this is the person that Ilhan Omar chose to take. The Democrats were all bringing like war veterans who deserved medals and the winning hockey team from the Olympics. But this Somali American, as she refers to herself, that's not me. Elon Musk Omar brings a disabled woman to the State of the Union and she gets subjected to arrest. I don't find there anything heroic about what Representative Ilhan Omar did. Do you? You know, why did she set that all in motion? Because she wanted this. She wanted a pathetic showing. She wanted somebody.

who probably, if it's accurate, if she is autistic, she probably didn't even know what was going on throughout this whole thing. I mean, there are degrees, varying degrees, of autism. But I listened to some of the questions that she asked, Amy Goodman asked her, and her answers sounded pretty sophisticated. You know, Elon Musk is autistic too. Lots of very smart people are. But would you really subject them to the emotional conflict that could arise at an event like this, which is highly politicized? I wouldn't. You know, it's not more important to make my point than it is to safeguard my constituents, which, of course, Elon Musk Omar feels this woman is her constituent. She's not a citizen. She's not in this country legally, but she's worried about her rights. Except, of course, when it comes to being able to play out a scene like apparently took place on Tuesday night. Her rights end where Ilhan Omar's show, you know, spectacle begin. Don't forget coming up after me is Guy Benson, followed by Will Kane, and then it'll be Joe Pags, the Lars Larson Show. All the overnight guys come, and then at 6 a.m., Jennifer Ross and Stephen Deiner, I'll be back with the South Florida Morning Show. At 9 o'clock, it's Brian Kilmeade, and at noon it's Eric Erickson, and then I get to come back for the 3 o'clock. segment. And by the way, my son, Derek, will be appearing tomorrow at 3 o'clock. And with all this, you know, all this conversation about new evidence or something going on at the Guthrie residents, hopefully he'll be able to answer some of our questions. So we've got a lot to look forward tomorrow. But I still have a segment left in today's program. So please stay right where you are. So apparently the Dan Bongino has got his feisty fighting spirit back, and he retired as the deputy director of the FBI within a year, the first year, and he's in a nasty arguing on the Internet, because I think he does his show on Rumble, and he got into a... What do you call it, I guess, a nasty online spat with Bucky Tucker Carlson? And you ask yourself, who is Bucky Tucker Carlson? Well, apparently, that's the brother of Tucker Carlson. And the exchange kicked off after Bucky Tucker Carlson shared a post from an avowed white supremacist and an anti-Semite by the name of Stu Peters, just slamming Dan Bongino's criticism of Candace Owens. Dan Bongino went scorched earth on Owens after these latest attacks on Erika Kirk, calling Candace Owens a...

evil and a cancer that must be excised from the right. And so the brother of Tucker Carlson said he's trying to get Candace Owens killed. He's still on the payroll, just reassigned, sent back into the podcast world to activate a killer. This is what Bucky Tucker Carlson wrote in a post that then Tucker Carlson shared all over the place. And Dan Bongino, he hit back at the younger Tucker Carlson brother saying, just curious, when did you, no, I can't even read this. There's words in it. I'm not allowed to say, but he went on to say, were you sober when you tweeted this? How does it feel to be known only by your last name, but never your first? How does it feel to be born with a silver spoon and then choke on it? And here is the audience that you speak of, you absolute buffoon. Sounds like Dan is back to being Dan. And then Tucker Carlson later replied, run for elective office for the fourth time, Dan, and you'll discover how deep is your support and how resonant is the law and order message coming from a total... Cuck Nancy, who out of cowardice and or greed, absolutely abdicated his authority when it mattered. Keeping, beating that waxed chest and sleep well. And then he used an undignified term. Now you changed your argument after getting humiliated by actual numbers. Put the bottle down, you trust-fund baby horror story and get a job. I can't read any of this. Why is everybody feel so free using language that we can't even say on the air? Tucker Carlson replied, you didn't do your job when you had one, you total, and then he used another one of these words. You went AWOL, and then instead of slinking off into oblivion quietly, you return and screech at all those who are rightly shocked and outraged by your dereliction of duty. To compound the offense, you constantly whine about just how hard you worked. vomitous BS beneath any self-respecting man, obviously. I mean, this is two grown men, men who people took rather seriously in multiple positions and jobs. And now, Bucky Tucker Carlson got some headlines in the last couple of months because of some of his political takes. You know, he compared the United States to North Korea, arguing that the U.S. government lies to the public in the exact same scale as North Korea lies to its public.

And then, of course, Dan Bongino went back to his podcast after he left the FBI and has made clear his desire to fight back against the, you know, these, what does he call them, the black pillars like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes, who are known for particularly hateful rhetoric. And they got all kinds of conspiracy theories. They just spin them wildly. You know, this is amazing to me, how this is the best that we can do. I'm just so frustrated. And some of these are people that I had a modicum of respect for. Once upon a time, I had a ton of respect for both Tucker Carlson and Dan Bongino. And to be frank, both of them have disappointed me in a mighty way. Definitely, Tucker Carlson is now relegated to irrelevant in my book, you know. And Dan is going to have to come a long way back from where he ended. You know, I don't understand why he went if he didn't intend to do this job like it needed to be done. I just don't understand that. I would not take a position in government. just because it was offered to me, I would seriously have to contemplate what does this say? How much of my life am I willing to give up? And is there no one else who can do this? Because I think that's the real issue with a lot of people who take these jobs is that they really think there aren't others who can do it. And that somehow it'll give them another, you know, book title. I don't know. I really don't. But why would you walk away from what was an amazing radio career in full bloom to take a job that you, A, never expressed any desire for, and then ultimately walked away from after one year? You know, to me, that's... That's not the sign of a thoughtful process. It's just not. And I like Dan as a person, always did. But that made no sense to me. It still makes no sense to me. Nothing that politicians, and that's what he ended up showing, that he's still a politician at heart. Might not be running for office anymore, but trust me, he will again. Now, because there are a lot of people that they think that nobody else can do it. Not me. I hope everybody else can do it. I don't want it at all. So thank you for your time this time until next time. My plan is to be back here tomorrow at 3. If it be his will and he delays his coming, what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are, as tiny matters compared to what lies within us. So wherever you are, just be yourself. Everybody else is taken. And then may God bless you. May God bless Israel. And may God bless the United States of America. Stay strong. Stay focused. I'll see you all tomorrow. This has been the Joyce Kaufman podcast. Available everywhere you get your podcasts.