Hour 3: Lindsey Graham

Strong values, strong opinions, the Mike Broomhead show, KTAR News 923 and the KTAR News app. Obviously, the big news of the day is what's happening in the Middle East and the straight of Hormuz of fuel prices. I should say oil prices continue to rise. We'll see if it tapers off this afternoon. It was much higher earlier this morning. We'll talk a little bit about where it's at now and what's happening a little bit later. This morning I talked with Matt Salmon. Matt Salmon, if you don't know Matt, Matt was a member. the United States Congress, going back to 1994, Deal with America, Newt Gingrich, and he was in that freshman class in 1994. At the time, Lindsey Graham was a freshman house member as well. Him and Matt became colleagues, close confidants, and very good friends. So. I talked to Matt about him this morning, and he talked about the battle on the issues. One of the, the reputation of Lindsey Graham is he's a fierce competitor. If he believes in something, he stands up for it. If he believes in you, he stands up for it. But he also was very, very personable. So to get a little bit more of a personal look at Senator Graham, here is what Matt Salmon said. At the present time, they could have a phenomenal relationship, and I mean it, phenomenal relationship with Donald Trump and considered one of his strongest advocates. And also somebody, you look at the comments that are being made by the Democrats, they loved him too. I mean, he was a guy that was able to work with anybody, but he never backed down from the things that he truly believed. And I have a lot of respect for him. Patricia, I don't know if you remember this, if you were paying close attention at the time, but when Brett Kavanaugh, who we got to see in DC, you had to meet him, Brett Kavanaugh, how contentious and how horrible his confirmation hearing was. And I'm going to preface this because I want you to understand the anger you're about to hear that what you can do in the Senate Judiciary Committee when they are considering a candidate. They do background checks and all of it. It's a very extensive background check that is done. And generally speaking, what happens is if there are questions, serious questions about a candidate's competency or a candidate's qualifications or candidates conduct, they will have a closed door meeting with that candidate where either they will get an explanation that explains away the concern. They will get an explanation that's not sufficient and they will not pass that candidate through committee. Or the candidate can look at that and say, you know what? I'm just going to step aside because I don't want to have to deal with publicly with that issue. Those are the things that happened in those closed door meetings. Brett Kavanaugh, they didn't do that. What they did was they did it all publicly. And these were serious accusations that turned out to be completely false.

But they were so serious about sexual misconduct to a guy that was coaching girls softball, or basketball, girls basketball, and his daughters were in the room. It was just awful. So the idea of this character assassination, maybe you agree with the assassination, but many didn't. I want you to hear Senator Lindsey Graham. In defending Brett Kavanaugh and how he was going after the opposition to this, this gives you an idea of the first, the fierce defender that Lindsey Graham could be. If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open, and hope you went in 2020. You've said that, not me. You've got nothing to apologize for. When you say Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, tell him that Lindsay said, oh, because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you've done to this guy. This is the most unethical sham since I've been in politics. And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy. Are you a gang rapist? No. I cannot imagine what you and your family have gone through. Boy, y'all want power. God, I hope you never get it. That's just part of it. It goes on for another minute. Yeah, I was mesmerized watching him make his point. Yeah. Very strong. Yeah. Very strong point. I wasn't going to do this here, but I think we need to. Um. I don't, to be honest, I know who Margaret Cho is. She's an actress, right? A comedian, I believe. Well, yeah, she's done acting too. But I don't know anything she's been in, but I remember, I know who she is. Now, again, the fact that she's a stand-up comedian. Margaret Cho, obviously, is on the opposite side of the political aisle from me and from Lindsey Graham. Remember how upset everybody was, including myself, but how people got about the negative things that were said by the president about John McCain after John McCain's passing. Heartless, callous, all of those things. I want you to hear this now. Margaret Cho not only said this, Margaret Cho got on social media. set up her phone or whatever device to videotape herself and then post this for the world to see about the passing of Lindsey Graham. Bye Lindsay, by Lindsay, by Lindsey Graham. Um, From the closet to the coffin. Real seamless. Real seamless. Also, yeah, Mitch McConnell. So it's Mitch McConnell. Lindsey Graham does happen in threes. Hope. Glad Graham is dead. Hope's Mitch McConnell dies and hopes there's a third Republican that dies. Hilarious. I can see why she's a comedian.

Is that not disturbing? A little bit. I don't care who you are, I guess, on either side, but yeah, you don't wish anybody dead. That's awful. Yeah. That's a bad human being. And it's not even good for a stand-up comedy. It's not funny. No, and she wasn't trying to be funny there. That's the difference. If she was trying to be funny, if she cracked a joke and somebody said, hey, it's too soon. That's a matter of opinion. Right. That wasn't a joke. She was wishing Mitch McConnell to die next and it happens in threes, hoping that it was going to happen. Hope is what she ended that comment with. It just, it is mind boggling that you can have that level of hate in your heart. So that's. And by the way, then the accusations, which have been out there before, I don't know why they'd be accusations that it's anybody's business, but the, the, from the closet to the grave comment that he was closeted, that he was actually gay and wasn't saying so publicly, that if you are someone apparent, especially if you're on that side of the political aisle, why would you be concerned about sexuality? Why are you? Why would you make that a part of, why would you make that part of the eulogy? Why would you make that part of your comments? It's just the hypocrisy and the idiocy of some people. So I asked Matt an interesting question because the landscape, especially for someone like myself, I've watched the landscape in the United States Senate change over time. I remember when our two senators were John McCain and John Kyle, both of them very powerful, very prominent, very well-respected members of the United States Senate. So that has changed. We have Mark Kelly and we have Senator Gallego, whether there are different parties, obviously, but there's new faces there. But Senate leadership is about to change for the Republicans. The passing of Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell's health, and he's posted, by the way, Mitch McConnell is posted saying that he's in much better health. He had pneumonia. So trying to quell any suspicion of his well-being. But I asked Matt, what does the Senate look like moving forward? I think you're going to probably see people like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in Bolden probably a lot more than they've been in the past. I think you're going to see John Thune, who I actually served with John Thune in the House too, and know him well. He's a really, really great guy. I think he's going to really step up to the table.

And while a lot of people are speculating that the Republicans might lose the House, I think most responsible pundits believe that the Senate's going to stay in Republican hands. And by the way, you know, Mike Lee is a senator from Utah. Mike Lee is a senator from Utah, but I believe he was born here in Arizona. And then, of course, Ted Cruz from Texas, maybe moving into those leadership roles. I just thought it was a fascinating look at the life of Lindsey Graham. We'll talk more about this as the morning goes on very quickly. This Republican governor candidate, Andy Biggs, joined Jim Sharp for the easy political podcast. Campaign strategy, day one vision, reaching across the aisle, water power data centers. You can watch the entire podcast and all of his other podcasts, the KTR News app or KTR's YouTube channel. Coming up in just a moment, we're going to talk about things you pay for that you cannot believe you've paid for as a taxpayer. We'll get to it here in just one moment. This is Jim Sharp, and coming up on a Tech Tuesday on Arizona's morning news, will AI trading take over the markets? Plus, if you're willing to give up a year of your life to help astronauts get to Mars, we've got a job for you. Join Ladonna Harvey and me on KTAR's YouTube channel or 923FN. So we had a little fun earlier this morning talking about Valley Metro and the ridiculous orange trees that they've put down, and they're not real orange trees. It's a sculpture, mostly made of fiberglass, two of them. at central and baseline where the light rail is. They have faces on them too. You can't forget that part because that part creeped me out. I was going to say, you got creepy. They're so ugly. I don't know. I just don't like it. They make me feel uncomfortable. Do you in general, I'm torn sometimes because. When you go to other countries, Italy is an incredible place. And the beauty in those places when you go, there are why people, it's why it's the most revisited country on the planet. So they've spent huge amounts of money as a government on refurbishing an upkeep, you know, the Coliseum, obviously, and the forum, and that's just in Rome, but other places that you go, it's an incredible place. And so I also, I think, you know, we are, we are people of, we're a wealthy nation. We shouldn't be working in dilapidated conditions. But are we really spending the Valley Metro dollars wisely putting up two fiberglass. They do, I hope you look online and check these out because they look awful. Yeah, they're not that great. And then the artist, which, and I feel bad for the artist because you don't ever want to hurt somebody's feelings, but the artist is this is a representation of this and an homage to the past. But it doesn't say any of that. Maybe it'd be cool to have in like a museum or something or an art. But it doesn't say it anywhere. That's what I'm saying. And something like that in that situation, it can be explained better of what this piece means. And so, yeah. Years ago, there was a big, I'm trying to think about controversy.

Over? There, a Wesley Boland Plaza is where all the memorials for Arizona are down at the state capital. And after 9-11, they built a 9-11 memorial. And there was a lot, I was one of them that was outraged at this memorial. Why? It was, first of all, it looks like a big funyon. It's a big round, funnion looking thing. But. But let me tell you, explain that I wasn't the only one that was upset by what it looked like. The firefighters, retired firefighters association are a group from New York donated a piece of steel from Ground Zero to be a part of the memorial. They wanted their steel back. That's how ridiculous this thing is. So it is a big round thing that's kind of on a 45 degree angle. And it's set up and purposely that as the sun moves across the sky, it shines through the edges of the memorial and it puts shadows on the concrete underneath. And you can read on the concrete messages. Okay. One of the messages said, This is all in reflection of 9-11. One of them says grace makes children laugh again or school children laugh again. Who the heck is grace? And everybody thought at the time, if you remember, the Diamondbacks won the World Series that year in 2001, they thought maybe it was Mark Grace, the former Diamondback star. It was the teacher or something. So it was just my point is. I thought it was like Grace as an actual like. No, no, no, it was a person. Okay. But my point in this is not to go and rehash that whole thing. If you don't, you have context of your concept. I can see the confusion. But if you don't have context, you have no idea what the heck they're talking about. People see those trees out there. They're just like, what is that, thanky, weird art thing? Right. When you go to the USS, the Arizona Memorial, that makes sense. Because we all understand what happened at Pearl Harbor. And the memorial, that makes sense. When you go to the Fallen Officers Memorial, when you go to the Gold Star Family Memorial, which, you know, that's families that have lost troops in combat. It makes sense. It's self-explanatory. When you're trying to be overly creative with something and there's no context. I joke with my mom all the time about getting older because she's in very good. My mother really was diminishing. I don't think it would be funny. But my mother lets me in on conversations in her head halfway through them.

So she'll tell me something without context. And I'll say, what the heck are you talking about? And we'll both laugh. I think I've heard a conversation between you two on the phone before. Yes, you have. And so we have a conversation. And then I'll say, what are you talking about? And she'll laugh and realizing there was a whole thought in her head that she didn't tell me leading up to what she had to say. Oh, moms. Right. So we'll rehash that and then we laugh about it and we'll have the conversation. Well, that's what's happening with this thing. These trees make no sense. You know, if they would have put a realistic looking orange tree, it would have been a little bit more, I don't know, it would have been to make more sense. At first, even though people didn't know about it, they'd been like, oh, okay, it's an orange tree. Or if there was a plaque down there that said, you know, where you are used to be all orange groves. You know, if you go to Maryvale, the Maryvale part of town, that used to be almost all cotton fields. I had a family that moved, they moved way out to the West Valley. They built a home in that part of town. And they had pictures in their house that everything around them was cotton fields. This was rural Arizona. Rural Valley was where they lived. And then they lived there for years and years and years. And I think in the like 19, mid-1990s. they moved way out to Buckeye because they were people that love to be in the rural areas. They sold their home and they moved. Well, out of context, you know, if you just decided we're going to build something that looks like a cotton plant, it doesn't make any sense until you say to people, this is why. This is why. You know, that's what I'm saying. It probably would have made a little bit more sense if it looked like an actual real tree, provided real shade and like had, you know, it looked like a bronze, like a statue that way. In a plaque that said. that it was paying homage to the orange growers and yeah. So we spent, you and I, our tax dollars spent $350,000 for two fiberglass orange trees with faces on them. That's some expensive juice. Right. That's expensive and you don't even get any juice. Just a creepy face to look at you while you're driving by. Yeah. So just, I don't know. Maybe we're getting riled up over nothing, but it just doesn't make any sense. And I have to admit, a lot of this comes because I'm not a big fan of light rail to begin with. But it just doesn't make any sense to me that we're doing those things. All right, very quick. I want to talk about the Amazing Arizona's podcast. Resolution Copper is our title sponsor. They are such great people for helping us tell these great Arizona stories. We got a new season upcoming, but we've got some great stories from legendary people here in the state of Arizona. Please just check out a couple of the titles and let us know what you think. Available on the KTAR YouTube channel, the KTR News app, or anywhere you download podcast. Coming up in just one moment, we are going to talk about the Middle East. Tensions rise, oil prices going up.

up when will it subside next. The Mike Broomhead show, KTAR News, 923, and the KTAR News app. All right. Thank you so much. We appreciate you spending some time with the show, of course. Once again, all eyes back on the Middle East, all eyes on Iran and what's happening there. As the attacks continue, the Iranians refusing to back down. They're lobbying more. First they started lobbying in the most recent upheaval. And it depends on who you believe. If you don't believe anything that you're hearing from the Trump administration, there's really no conversation to be had. But if you do believe the U.S. over what we're hearing from them based on their behavior for the last 47 years, this is an old tactic that they are at the negotiating table. There will be a deal that is formed in principle. There will be a handshake deal, no nuclear weapons, all of these other things. And then the Iranians walk out of the room, say something different. One of the things the president talked about, was the deals that were being made through his negotiating team and how they would change their minds and then they started shooting its ships. And this is exactly what they've done. This, I believe, is going to be a turning point for the world, with one exception that I'll get to in a moment, that the world has for, I'm going to say the Western world, has for almost a half a century. thought of the Iranians as terrorists, not the people. I want to be very clear. The Ayatollahs, the regime, that they are fosters of terrorism around the world. And... That's what they've done. The Houthis, and I'm going in that direction from the Houthis to Hamas to Hezbollah and then others in the region, they have been fostering terrorism through munitions, through funding, through training. And the tactics have been employed by all of their proxies as well. So when this all started again and they started shooting its ships in the strait, and then the U.S. responded by hitting over 140 targets. And it was, and the response from the Iranians is self-explanatory. Do you think that if they, if the Iranians had a capability of taking out in large numbers, American troops, American military assets that they would do it? Of course they would. Of course they would. So they are indiscriminately lobbying missiles and drones and what they have left in the direction of their neighbors. And the neighbors are up. The neighbors have had it. The world is seeing what's happening. When they made a statement that the Strait of Hormuz is closed because of U.S. aggression, the United States turn around and said, it's not going to happen. So the president puts out a statement and says, straight's going to remain open and we're in control. We've blockaded the entrance or the exit for customers or Iranian ships, customers of the Iranians or Iranian ships. They will not be allowed to pass. And we are now going to guarantee we are going to protect the safe passage of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz. But in return for that, we are going to get 20% of the cargo, 20% fee on the cargo to pay for our operations. This is where I think it could go either way.

I think it's a horrible idea that the Americans should be getting our allies and the rest of the world who will benefit from the safe, secure Strait of Hormuz. It's my belief that they should be involved in paying for it. I argued this before. There's a lot of not much time to argue it again because I believe the Iranians would have shut down the Strait of Hormuz anyway. I think that was a part of their plan, that the bargaining chip for them was the garnering of a nuclear weapon. They had a missile program in which this ballistic missile program to deliver one. They were working toward trying to get one. They still have aspirations to get one. And once they got one, they wanted to make sure that they could not be attacked and have their capabilities taken out. I believe all of that to be true. So with that in mind, part of what they were going to do was shut down the Strait of Hormuz and hold it hostage and then be in a position of power with a nuclear weapon, with the ability to protect that nuclear weapon with drones and missiles. They were then going to force the world to negotiate with them on passage through the Strait of Hormuz. I believe that to be true. For that reason, I think it was necessary that we are there. And I think it's necessary for the rest of the world to stand up and say, we will not allow that to happen. So if the president's threat of charging a 20% fee to recover our military costs, the expense, and what that does is bring those nations to the table where they say instead of charging a fee, which international law says you can't. But instead of this fight amongst us, how about if we send minesweepers and we send assets to help protect like the rest of the world should be doing? We, the Western world will stand up and say, regardless of your efforts, regardless of the war, regardless of your excuses, you will not shut down passage in the straight of four moves. We won't allow it. Because. What's to stop other nations from doing it? What's to stop other nations? When you look at what the Houthis were doing in the Red Sea, when they were going after civilian cargo ships during the time when Hamas was being decimated by the Israelis, if another nation said, we are going to protect those ships and you're going to pay for it. We wouldn't stand for it. And so as much as I understand the premise of saying we should, and I agree with this, the United States should not be the world's police force, that we should not be spilling blood and spending treasure in protecting everybody else in the world. Our interests are being protected there. There's no doubt about it. We have interests there. But we don't get a lot of oil.

from that part of the world. We are a mass producer of it our own, and we import what we need in certain other grades of oil. But for the most part, we don't need a lot from them. But that doesn't mean that we aren't the world's leader. And trying to set a precedent by saying we are going to charge for passage sets the wrong precedent. Now, if this is a tactic for the Trump administration to get the allies, the NATO allies and the rest of the world to say, okay, we will join you in this, then it's a mission accomplished. But if it's going to be charging and prices are going to go up around the world and inflation is going to increase around the world, I just think it's going to be bad. And so we'll see. We'll see if this is one of the tactics the president uses. We bring down housing costs. How can we bring down the cost of building a home? When you hear the numbers of what's contributing to how high prices are, you're going to be a little surprised. We're going to get to that coming up here in just one moment. Happy Monday, and Megan McCain joins us at three as the on again, off again, Iran debate ranges on in D.C. She's plugged into that political machine in Washington, and we're going to talk to her. Today at three on Outspoken with Bruce and Gatos on air online and on the KTAR YouTube channel. All right, we are sprinting toward the final hour of the show. Let's talk very quickly. We mentioned this earlier. It was kind of a surprise to Patricia. The average in the U.S., of course, this is across the board, the average cost of government fees regulation adds up to about $132,000 on a building of a new home. Insane. That's a lot of money. That is a ton of money. So I've mentioned in the past that I would, I love the construction world I came from. I miss the work. I don't miss this part of the business. You know what I mean? I don't miss it. But I do miss the work. I miss building things. I miss being a part of building things. Being a part of a team that gets something done. I would love to get together with some people and build a triplex or a fourplex and see how it goes and maybe then kind of do multiply that, you know. But the idea of spending $132,000 on one house. Just on fees. Fees and regulation and all of. Now you know why it's so dang expensive. Yeah, that's...

That's incredibly expensive. I did not fathom that. So if we are going to, we talk about affordability, I believe a lot of it has to do with, you know, how much money you make, how do you afford this? But there's dual responsibilities in a lot of these things. And it depends on where you sit politically many times of how things get handled. When you look at, and I don't necessarily blame a city, when a city says our city planner, our job is to manifest growth, but responsible growth. And I'll tell you, you know, growing up where I did and then moving here, we have done a much better job overall in Maricopa. Let's just say Maricopa County. But I would think it would also include Padau County, you know, what they're doing out in Padau County. But in Maricopa County, our growth has been managed pretty well. Where I grew up, not so much. And when you talk about roads and where traffic lights are going to be and what's going to be built and zoning and all of those things, we have done a better job from the layout of the streets and the grid that we have and it's easy to navigate and the freeway system and the infrastructure. But where the problem lies is when let's say, let's just take Mesa and I love Mesa. I'm not picking on Mesa. But the city of Mesa says, you know, we do a much better as a city. with our property tax income and if homes are worth more money. So if we set a very high standard, then it's only a high standard of builder that goes in and a higher income groups that can buy there. And I don't know that Mesa does that. I'm just picking, I picked out a city. then they have no motivation for low income housing or moderate income housing. But when you are someone that's ever had to deal with a municipality, and I'm sure, do you have you ever had to deal with a government entity on anything? No, I don't think so. Not really. Things have changed. I told kind of a nightmare story about the city of Phoenix and dealing with permits. But for the most part in my world that I was in, it was an easy process. You know, if I had, I was getting a permit, a lighting permit because I was putting in part in which did happen, putting in parking lot lighting or lighting somewhere where you had to get a permit for it. Well, I guess I did. I'd done that before. I had to get a permit for something for a 5K that I put on. Okay. Okay. Okay. So when you do those things and you're dealing with. It was generally easy. Right. So when you're putting together cut sheets of light fixtures so that they know exactly what the fixtures are going to look like, I understand a city saying we can't just trust you. I get that. But when you make the process so difficult and redundant, and when you're saying that an average house, just pick an average house when you go through any of the home builders here in town, and the average price of the average house is 132,000 plus just in government costs and regulation. Now you know why those houses cost half a million dollars? And who can afford a half a million dollar home? That's why. So there's responsibility there.

Why aren't we, and to give credit like I like to do sometimes, look what Maricopa County's board of supervisors did last year. They cut out, I think it was 13 pages, 13 pages of building regulations for small developers. Make it easier. Make it easier. Make it less expensive. Entice investment. Years ago, well, COVID, during the time of COVID, we were such high rent. If you remember how expensive it was here. We had a lack of affordable housing. Well, the developers saw that and they were developing these apartment complexes. And now we've seen a big moderation because the investors see there's a market for this. Nothing wrong with capitalism and making money. We now know we're getting more and more of what we need because the need was there. And if you're going to share some of the expense, if the cities are going to say we are going to foster growth, it works. So for everybody out there that struggles and you think you want to blame the developers or you want to blame these big business or you don't have a workforce, so it costs more money, it's a premium for the workforce, and you have this overburdening regulation and fees. Who either. Everybody's going to want to do it. Either we know we can get the money we need to get our money back and make money, or we're going to put our money and do something else. That's it. If a single family home costs $132,000, imagine that average cost when you're putting in a neighborhood and you're building the streets and you're putting in the infrastructure and you're doing all of that. Not many people are going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They're going to only do it when they can make money. Just after 11 o'clock, we're going to revisit the death of Senator Lindsey Graham. We also have, did you hear this at 1120 update on the Middle East? We're going to have our story roundup. That's what we do in the final hour of the show. But I want to spend a few minutes talking about Senator Graham's life because... It is significant to many people that knew him. Matt Salmon joined us. We'll let you hear a little bit of what Matt had to say about his friend who passed away. But also, he played a big role in some of the most significant things that have happened in America in recent history. His sudden death has had people on both sides of the aisle complimenting him on being a tough negotiator, but someone that was a friend to everyone. Can we ever get that back where we can negotiate with people we disagree with? We'll talk about it. Next.