The Rod and Greg Show: Trump Blocking Iranian Vessels; Dignidad Act Betrays GOP Voters; Red States Better to Chase American Dream

You can't question women against Republican Supreme Court nominees like Brett Kavanaugh. You know, all the things he said, what do they say? The chickens came home to worse. As a matter of fact, late news is he's resigning from Congress. I didn't think he really thought. Yeah, I didn't think he would. With that narrow majority of the Republicans, I didn't think the Democrats would do that because everyone's acts like this is new or sudden information. But if you listen to the media, they'll say, well, these rumors have been swirling for a long time. Well, no one did anything about it till. They saw that their primary, for governor in California, might have two Republicans in it. So they had to, you know, close ranks, thin the herd, gets one of the Democrats out. And all the regime, media and leftists said, Swawa, you're out of here. And he didn't want to go. So they booted him. Can you believe the choices they now have in California? Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Yeah, you know. The woman who hates everybody. The billionaire who hates anything that deals with the climate. Then they have two other guys who are these guys? I wish I filed in California and I would have said my name is none of the above. And I would have filed. And I would have won't. I would have won a landslide. if I was none of the above. Well, we've got a lot going on today, and we'll keep you up to date on the swallow oil thing. We've got a lot to say about that. We'll talk about the president's blockade of the strait of Hormuz, the Iranian ports. Yeah, apparently it may be working a little bit later on. We'll talk about this effort by Republicans to create yet another amnesty program in the country. And why are red states, like Utah, a better place to chase the American dream? Yeah, very good studies come out. And there's a lot, there's a good story behind how you would measure the American Dream or how you attain it. And it looks like Utah's doing pretty well. Yeah, we are. Well, we want to start off the show today because there's big news for the Hughes family over the weekend. There was. Would you like to share what happened to you and Queen Bee? Yeah. So as, you know, as parents of kids, you know, these kids, they impact your quality of life. You know, this really? It's immaterially, yes. These kids are going to impact your quality life. Do you know how much it cost to raise a child now in America? I might not want to know. $300,000. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't surprise me. I didn't mean to interrupt because you have big news. Kids are now in that, we're in that season of life where they're all young adults in their early 20s, you know, mid-year-old 20s. And Gregory Holden Hughes. Junior. He's, but he goes by Holden. Yeah, he's a junior. He didn't know that. But he didn't want to go by my name, so he goes by his middle name. Holden. But he's going to graduate from Utah State University. Congrats to my son and his fiance, Aubrey, he proposed this weekend. Wow. And so it looks like, and again, I go back to this quality of life. Man, he is punching above his way. I just told him, do not make this young lady mad because you are lucky. And I am so, so excited. And we haven't, this is a first for us. And given that these kids could make a nightmare choice. Yeah. And I'm thinking about me right now. How is this going to affect my holidays? How's this going to impact me? So it's like a kid with a, you know, a hammer pulled back on a gun waving it around. He could have done anything like crazy on this. He has done again. You're happy. Oh, he has, uh, punching above his weight. He's, I don't even, I'm not even asking Aubrey, but I'm like, this is pretty good. You just.

Don't mess it up, kid. Don't mess it up. Now, the key question, you know, the most important person in this new relationship. is queen b yes now does queen b approve overwhelmingly of her little boy's soon-to-be wife yes overwhelming because that's very important yeah you know it's it's a very exciting time and we're very proud of our son and i'm as the dad i'm just looking going yeah it's a you've done well kid but we are so excited to have a new addition to our family uh and it's a for like i said this is the first time uh for us we got three kids and uh So it's a new, new adventure. But we're so, we're super excited and it was a great weekend. Do you know how excited I am that somewhere down the road, I'm going to get to call you grandpa. I'm, I like, I like grandpap, but yeah, I like to be a pat. But no, yeah, I'm excited for all that. Like a while ago, I didn't see myself that way, but I think I'm ready to spoil. a grand kid to death i think i'm ready i'm ready to take that challenge i have a little one today my grandson deacon is turning 10 years old today as matter i can't believe he's only 10 because i've listened to the this this this partletic prowess this kid's crushing it in soccer and quarterback and he's only 10 i can't believe it because he's been doing this for a while yeah so okay now i'm perplexed by something and i know you have the answer to this because it really just irritated me today So I'm driving to work today, okay, coming off, getting off 89 in front of Lagoon, getting on southbound I-50. And all of a sudden, this UHP officer is zigzagging back and forth across all the lanes. I have seen, I've seen. And I go, why are they doing that? Are they doing that to slow traffic down, to teachers to slow down? Is there a problem of a head? Are they just doing it to show us that they can? I can't believe you're asking this question. Well, I don't know. Huh? Huh? You're right? What do you ready to say? I said, I can explain it. Okay. Usually they do that when there's something. further ahead on the freeway in the road that they cannot safely remove. They will put an officer on the road back and forth with his lights on to slow traffic so they get it and get it out of the road and then they'll continue on their way. But I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything. I think he would just do it by the time you get there. I think he did it just to tick us off. I know you think they do that just to show us that they can. So folks, ladies and gentlemen, this is what I want you to know about my good friend Rod Arquette. If a tree fell in the woods and he didn't hear it, it didn't fall. That's true. So if you don't, if you didn't see the debris on the road, you think they're just making you slow down because they can. They don't, they got things to do. They got a bucket. They got things that, they got a checklist. You know, slowing you down is not on their list unless it's to help you and keep you from wrecking over what's in the middle of the road. Well, I didn't see anything this morning. You may be absolutely right, but I didn't see anything this morning. I said, why are they doing this?

I am right. You guys are right. I don't think they do it just because they want to do it, but sometimes now I'm glad I was not in a hurry to get to work. Yeah. Because it just slowed me down. I'm going about 20 or 30 miles now. You still think this is about you. Well, about every other driver on the, we're all going, what's this all about? You know, if I'm not a UHP guy that slides, a simple thank you'd be nice. Well, thank you to the UHP for protecting us. Yes. But I don't think you're, I think you were just doing it. Prove you can. No. That's not how they roll. That's not how they roll. Nope. Oh. Sometimes if there's like a terrible accident, I can imagine that they would use that to kind of slow down this. Because I tried to look ahead. Try to look ahead. But I couldn't because there were 9 million cars in front of me. So wouldn't that also say that you, if there was something up above it, you wouldn't be able to see that either? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay. You be you. I don't know. I just, now I know. I think that's not like a Da Vinci Code moment for us. I think we all know where that, what was going on there. This has been done before. Yes. And I've always wondered why they do it. Now I know. It's not. It's not complicated. I think everybody listening knows exactly what's going on. I think you're the only one that was let that. You're the only one didn't get the memo. No, I didn't. I didn't know they sent out memos telling us we're going to slow down traffic. I don't know when I got mine, but it's not been a hard one to know. People are on the road right now listening to a guy. Arquette, you're such an idiot, which is true. No, I will. I just. But it's an interesting question is that if you don't know, you wonder why they do it. And I didn't know why they did it, but now ERAs explained it and you've explained it. Yes. Next time it happens to me, I'll know they aren't doing it just because they want to show us that they can't. Yeah, that's not in the decision tree on that traffic moment. No, it's not it. It's not it. All right, when we come back, we got a lot to get to today. Shall we take a moment or two to talk about our good friend Eric Swalwell? Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. Who announced just a short time ago. He, well, he stepped out of the race for governor a few days ago over the weekend. And then he just announced in the last half hour that he is going to leave Congress. That one, I'm surprised that. I thought he was stepping down or getting out. He didn't want to get out of the gubernatorial race. They asked him to go out. He wouldn't do it. So they pressured him out. But I thought, you know, he's going to stay right there in Congress. And. I guess it's, I think the momentum now has gotten so far out there that he can't, he can't sustain that either. Because remember, the Republicans have looked to potentially expel a member of their, their ranks as well. So there's a, there could be a vote coming in the House that takes two thirds where you would have a Republican and a Democrat member expelled. I think there are four they're taking a look at. Yeah. So, you know. To expel them.

It could be crazy. But he's out. We'll talk about that. What happened to the guy over the weekend? Wow, what a weekend. That was a lot to get to. So good to be with you on this Monday afternoon. It is The Rotting Greg Show on Utah's Talk Radio, 1059, KNRS. Big win for Rory McElroy at the Masters over the weekend. Yeah, love that tournament. Scottie Sheffler came real close, missed a couple of close pups. He could have won. A little mad today at the course. I guess course management. It was real happy with things. So, yeah. Usually, congrats to Rory. He won. There's only three golfers before that won the jacket, you know, won the turn, defended their championship from the year prior. And so he did that. It was Nicholas, Nick Fowdo, and Tiger Woods. He now becomes the fourth. But usually you see a charge. You see someone, and that could have been Scotty Sheffler. It could have been a lot of them. Nobody made that charge. And he just kind of backed in because he didn't. I don't think he played all that. He bogeed the last hole. You know, he's two strokes ahead in the last hole. He bogeed the last. But still, big win and doesn't happen. obviously doesn't have much so that's pretty good yeah yeah um someone who did not have a very good weekend was a california democratic congressman Eric Swalwell who announced just a short time ago then after allegations that he raped uh one or two women has decided he is going to step down from congress he dropped out of the california governor's race over the weekend and now as far as congress is concerned he's going see you bye well i'll tell you what i'm sure When this whole thing started, they thought that, because nobody has said a word about them, although everybody's now, all the regime media is saying all these were things that were, you know, we knew for a long time. Isn't that funny? They're all coming out saying, yeah, we heard this about a month ago, or we've heard this even longer than that? There was one report that said I've been following him since he was a city council member in California and his way up and, well, what? You're just saying it now? So, you know, everybody was giving this a blind eye. We saw what this guy was a long time ago, but isn't it amazing? that when the regime, media, and the leftists decide this guy's got to go. They can turn public opinion on a dime. They have on this. And I don't know that if it got away from him because maybe they thought he could stay in Congress. But this weekend, more and more people started coming out. There's like video, creepy videos coming out. I'm not, I'm not sure if they're all real or not. They're presented as if they are, and if they are, there are ladies of the night in these videos of which I don't think would be very congressional. You know, it's so hypocritical of this. The way he went after Brett Kavanaugh. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, going after him, you know, believe the ladies, believe the ladies, listen to what they have to say. And he's two-faced. Meanwhile, he's attacking interns and people who are working with his office. It's just, I don't know. Yeah, he's his finger wagging about believing women and how you should treat women and all that with.

what uh you know with with what happened with what he's being accused of right now and uh it's you know i'm not saying it's it's it's it's about it's on brand for him and for the democrats because they actually you know they don't care about any of these women you know that all of this is about that governor's race in california they can't bear the thought of losing power and letting a republican win that They did this that they called the jungle primary, meaning that it's the top two vote getters in a primary without regard to their party affiliation. That always gave them two Democrats to choose from in November. Because they are such a motley crew of Democrats nowadays, the top two vote getters right now out of a crowded field are Republicans. And now they need to shrink the number of candidates on the Democrat side to get their percentages up to get above those Republicans. It looked like Eric Swalwell was the low-hanging fruit in terms of vulnerability and everything else. He didn't want to leave, so they just decided they cared overnight and went after him for that. And all this is about is the power. Who's going to become governor of California? And it wasn't going to be him. but it could be a Republican, so they just called the wolves on him. Well, let's still CNN's Harry Anton, our good friend, the David Gruber, over there, as to how fast his support disappeared. Eric Swalwell's support basically disappeared overnight. I mean, you just take a look here. I mean, last week, the members of Congress who were endorsing Swolwold for governor was 21, was 21 members of Congress. But by Sunday, by the time he dropped out, again, it was already zero. Eric Swolew dropped out because he realized no matter how much he actually fought the allegations, there really was no base of support for this campaign. It evaporated overnight. It was done already by Saturday. And by Sunday, when he dropped out, he realized the writing was on the way. Yeah, he did today, too, because he resigned from Congress. And you're right, Greg. It's amazing how quickly the Democratic power machine. Once you're on the outside, once they no longer see you as being necessary, you're gone. But it leaves them with... Who do they vote for in California? Well, and this is the hypocrisy of... Katie Porter? Have you seen that lady? She screams at everyone. She's lean. She's... She's... She's scary. I mean, he's bad. Didn't she throw a bowl of mashed potatoes or her husband or something? Yeah, I think she's a domestic... I mean, she's a domestic abuser. She yells at her staff. They've all quit out of fear. You've seen the videos of her screen. Would you get out of my screenshots screaming at her staff? Because she's doing a Zoom and they can see the staff her behind. She's walking out of interviews. You got, you know, you got California media that I would imagine are pretty, you know, pretty fair with the Democrats, but this reporter's asking all the candidates, the same question of a different race. And she's like, you know what, I'm done with it. She's just outraged. She's being asked a question that she found to be too difficult. And she was stomping off.

And I don't know. I just think she, I don't know what the appeal of appeal she's going to have with voters are. But Dana Bash from CNN, when they were interviewing the Republican, what's the Republican's name that's the guy that's Steve Hilton? Steve Hilton, who's a frontrunner right now. As much as they turned on Swallow to get them out because they want someone else to beat Steve Hilton, they wouldn't let Steve Hilton. make a point about Eric Swalwell. They're saying, well, haven't heard anything about Donald Trump? Like, you know, there's no evidence. And have you condemned Donald? And she just can't. Even when the script says, get rid of Eric Swalwell, if she's sitting with a Republican, she's not going to let that person pile on to that Democrat. That's their person to, you know, politically get rid of. He can't do that. So it's a joke. If you watch it, you just shake your head. There's the moral relativism is. Unbelievable. Yeah. And they're just, you know, and now it's a real question. Is there somebody out there who they can? Rally around. Rally around and beat Steve Hilton. And who is it? The county sheriff. Chad Bianco? Is that his answer? I don't know. I think it might be his name. There's two. Hilton and the other Republicans, they're top two. Yeah. And it's the jungle primary. So they take the top two. And they could have two Republican candidates in November. And no Democrat on the ballot. It always served them right because they did that to just make sure Republicans don't have someone on the ticket in November. It would serve them right if it was two Republicans. I would laugh, laugh, laugh. Should we make a prediction? I think a Democrat will win. Yes, I actually. They'll do something. Something will happen. And the Democrats cannot let California fall into Republican hands when it comes to the governor's office, and they will do something. They'll cheat. I'm going to tell you right now, I cheat. That's the only way they got right now. You just care who votes. You just care who counts. And that right now, they got control of everybody who counts. And so, yeah, it's too bad for Hilton, too, because I think he has just run such a phenomenal campaign that you're seeing moves like this by the Democrats, which look desperate. And you wouldn't think you'd see that coming out of California as blue as it's been. But I think you're right. Whatever happens, you're going to miraculously see a joggernaut Democrat getting in that final. Probably two of them because they'll probably find ways to get rid of both Republicans. Yeah, probably so. Probably so. All right, more coming up. We're going to talk about the president's blockade of the Strader Hormuz coming up next on the Rod and Greg show and Utah's talk radio 105-9, KNRS. They met for 21 hours, and JD Vance came out and said, we have an agreement. And I don't know what we were expecting, Greg. As I thought about this. As you read as to how those negotiations win, I've read several articles on that today, the Iranians right now are convinced they're winning the war. Really? They are convinced that they're in fine shape, you know, they're winning the war, and why should they give in to anything that the U.S. is demanding? And so how do you negotiate with somebody who thinks they're actually winning?

We also don't know exactly how Iran will respond. Iran has threatened to carry out attacks on other ports on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz and other Gulf countries, and they've attacked other Gulf countries over the course of the war. And so that's one threat that Iranian military officials have made in response to the president's announcement. And so right now we're sort of in this. almost a holding pattern where we wait to see what will actually happen now that this is in place. You know, I... Mike, it makes sense. What you just laid out and blocking these ports makes all the sense in the world. It reminds me of JFK and what he was doing at the time, dealing with Russia and Cuba and all that. But we had a deadline. What was this? Last week, a big deadline. And it was basically it was an ultimatum. You're going to be an ashtray. If you don't, give us full access to the Strait of Hormuz, and you don't give in to our demands. And it was about as bright of a line as I think we've seen. from a president that I believe will carry it out. When it looked like there was an agreement, he stood down, America stood down. But subsequent from that, it looked like the agreement wasn't followed. You had the vice president that went to Pakistan to negotiate. That doesn't seem to have worked. Why are we not going back to, you're going to be an ashtray? Why are we going to the ports? Why aren't we coming back to the original position that was the ultimatum that started this conversation? So I think that's a question for the president himself to answer. Or you? I think you're smart. I can give you my own impression, which is from the officials and the experts that I've spoken to, it doesn't seem like, it seems like the president has the appetite for that sort of massive potential decapitation operation. But it doesn't seem like there's an eagerness there. And a big part of that, it seems like, is because. The U.S. has already lost 13 service members. There have been more than 300 service members who are injured over the course of the conflict, and any sort of major aggression or escalation could come with significant consequences that the U.S. may or may not be ready for. And so a famous war axiom or expression is the enemies or the adversaries have a say in how this plays out, too. And so when the president threatened to carry out those overwhelming attacks on Iran's power plants and infrastructure and railways, Iran threatened to target that same infrastructure of Gulf countries across the Middle East. And so the Iranians have already attacked Gulf countries but have not primarily gone after oil infrastructure. That seems to have been one of the few things. That was not a primary target from either U.S. forces into Iran or vice versa. And so it does seem like...

The president's blockade is an effort to try and take away the leverage. And it's really the one piece of leverage that Iran still has and continues to have in this conflict. Taking away that leverage is going to, it will cost the Iranian's law. I saw an analysis today, Mike. $276 million a day. $13 billion a month is what Iran could face. if this blockade goes into a full effect. So obviously, he's really looking at creating or implementing some real, more economic harm to the Iranian country already, is he not? That's exactly right. And so the Iranian military and the IRGC, the paramilitary organization, created to sort of buffer the regime. They can't fight with the U.S. military or even the Israeli military on a military footing or, you know, looking at capability and capability. But really, the one way in which Iran has really been able to hit the U.S. and Israel very hard has been through. the economic ramifications of shutting down the straight of four moves. And so you're exactly right. The one area in which Iran has used some, I would say, unconventional or non-kinetic options in this conflict have been the economic ramifications that we've seen at the pumps already across the United States and across the world as the price. of oil and gas have gone up. This is an opportunity that the president is taken to try and take away that economic leverage that they had found and have utilized to this point. Mike, real quick, you mentioned this at the beginning of our discussion. Red Sea, other part of, you know, this is another port, another gateway to the Red Sea. Iran has threatened that they are going to attack through their proxy forces in Yemen. The Houthis could attack U.S. and any ships going into the Red Sea. How serious do you take that threat? I think it is a serious threat in part because dating back since the October 7th, Hamas attack, October 7, 2023, Hamas attack in Israel, in the aftermath of that, the Houthis began targeting commercial shipping vessels going through the Red Sea, as you mentioned. And so that in itself... And this predates any direct conflict with either the U.S. or Israel and Iran, that shut down shipping and it forced shipping companies to actually try and take much more expensive and much longer routes around the entire African continent instead of using the Red Sea because of how concern they were about attacks from the Houthis. And so there is legitimate concern that the Houthis could restart those attacks. And with the price of oil already up significantly since before the war, there are concerns I've heard from people who deal with the economics of this conflict, who do express concern about the possibility that the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea could be shut down and that there could be significant.

spikes in the price of oil and gas if that were to happen. And so we've already seen the Houthis carry out a handful of strikes on Israel since this war began. But they really haven't done anything yet in the Red Sea. But one of the primary questions is, especially as the war continues, Could they start? And if they do, what are the implications of that? And so I do, uh, I think it's important that you highlighted it because it's one of the several unknowns. that I would say are still in the IRGC's tools that they could use if they choose to. He covers defense for the Washington Examiner, Mike Brest. Mike, thank you very much for joining us, giving us an update on the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz against the Iranian ports. More coming up on the Rod and Greg Show and Talk Radio 1059, KNRS. All right, when we come back, the controversy over the commencement speaker at UVU. is starting to get some national attention. Will it be enough to make some changes? We'll talk about that, plus some comments that Congressman Mike Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said over the weekend. I got some attention. We'll talk about that as well. All coming up, hour number two is on his way.

A swall well resigns from Congress, and now Congressman Gonzalez is also stepping down after it was learned that he had an affair with a member of his staff who then went on to die by suicide. And he's quitting. Do you suspect a multiplayer trade here? Do you think these teams, the Republicans, Democrats, said, look, we're going to jettison our guy, you jettison your guy, and we're coming together, we're going to go get our votes. I think maybe something like that happened. You may be under something. There's some baggage and some conduct there that I don't think either party wants to try and defend going into the midterms. So anyway, I think there might, I think, I don't think those things happened in a vacuum. You've been pointing out all day today. how swift the democratic machine can turn on you if you no longer become important to them. That's right. And valuable to them. 100%. This had nothing to do with the women that he's assaulted or is accused of assaulting. Those are by the media, regime media's own admission, these are things they were at least aware of or whispered about for years and years and years. It was. The gubernatorial race in California, the Democrats don't want to even come close to losing or being threatened at. And so he had to go. When he didn't agree quietly, they took him out publicly. Yeah, yeah. Well, I wonder how much he, who is it, Gallegos from Arizona, very, very good friend of Eric Swalwell, Sticking, Eric Swalwell, sticking to his side or standing by him. right up until the last minute. And he's taking a lot of heat. Because he's on that camel with his shirt off too. He's showing the, you know, the dad bod. It's disgusting. What, so disgusting about all of this is a lot of people knew this. They've known this for months that Eric Swalwell wasn't the most upstanding guy in the world. Nobody said anything. Why? Because he was important in that California governor's race. When it became apparent that he no longer was important. See you later. And in Congress, he had the biggest mouth. He would cry righteous indignation on cue. He would go after Brett Kavanaugh when he was going through his confirmation hearing and lecture him about trust. You have to trust women. He was an antagonist that we know about. He doesn't represent us here in Utah, and there's 435 members of Congress. We certainly don't know any, all of them by name or face. We know him because he has been obnoxious and he has been out there and he's been kind of a lightning rod. And that was useful for the leftists. Not anymore. But not anymore. No, not anymore. That's for sure. Well, finally, a story that we talked about last week. As a matter of fact, we made Utah aware what was going on about the dissatisfaction of students down at UVU on their selection of Sharon Linda McMahon to be the commencement speaker at UVU here in a few weeks. When is the commencement ceremony? I haven't even looked up that date, but it is coming up. Well, it's now getting national attention this morning on Fox and Friends, the Turning Point USA Chapter.

Uvigo, the president, his name is Caleb Jokut and Jason Chaffetz, who was there the day. He was there when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, very close. They went on Foxham friends today to discuss the school's selection, and finally, Greg, are drawing some national attention to this story, as it should be. Yes, this is something that I thought, you know, we were telling you folks that we were reporting something you're not hearing from our local media. And even when they did, they buried the lead on this, even when they tried to report it, we have one local TV channel that I thought did a good job. Channel 2, yeah, our news partner. But after that, everybody hit it. I mean, if they said that she was controversial, this commencement speaker who attacked Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated in same language in tone as the accused assassin. They never shared any of the details of that. What was actually controversial about, just saying that, just stating that among conservatives, she's controversial. And that's it. And so we, I think we had the most robust discussion, at least over the air, but there's been a lot of attention on social media. And I think this is so off-putting and so wrong. that it was inevitable that the national media would report on it. Yeah, well, Chilcutt was asked on the show this morning if he wants her to be removed. Listen to the response he gave to Fox and Friends this morning. Like I just said, like I don't care if they bring on anyone who was critical of him. This isn't cancel culture. It's a fact that they are paying the speaker to come and be, like Jason said, a partisan hack. on the exact same campus, on the exact same graduating year, that Charlie Kirk was assassinated on the same campus. They're bringing someone who was so critical of him moments after his death. What are the other kids on campus or the young adults are saying? Are they outraged by this? Yeah, I mean, campus is kind of split right now. Obviously, the conservatives on campus are as upset as I am and the millions of other Americans who have shed their outrage. But on the other hand, the more liberal people on campus are celebrating this fact that it's another slap in the face to conservatives who likes Charlie Kirk. Yeah, that's Caleb Chilkat, and he was on Fox and Friends this morning, stories getting national attention. And he said, look, you know, we don't want her kicked off, even though I suspect there's a lot of pressure to get rid of her. But they just think that the timing is so odd. Within a year, not even within a year of this, Charlie Kirk has assassinated on campus for commencement. They bring a speaker on who was critical of what Charlie Kirk was saying. And I was thinking in terms of years of months, but it is the same school year. It's the same school year. This is the same class of 26 that was on campus. That's the same class of 26. It's the largest UVU class in history graduating. It's the same group of kids. It begs the question. Can we, is there a speaker out there, a commencement speaker that could be there for the students? For the kids. For the students. That doesn't have all the other narratives, the side narratives, how upsetting, frustrating.

gross it could be to have someone that has been critical and mirrored the rhetoric of this accused assassin, you can't find another commencement speaker that will inspire this class of 26 and get and be the springboard into their lives, into their careers, and all that they're going to do. You can't do better than this? Yeah. How? How can you not? It should be absolutely focused around every single student and not half as was described by that, by the TPUSA representative, half like it, half don't. Get someone that every kid, every student can listen to and feel some inspiration as they live through that big day. He made an interesting point I didn't even think of, Greg. They're paying this woman. To come in and be the commencement fee. A speaker's fee, right? Yes. You're paying this woman to come in and to be critical of someone who came to campus in an effort to have a discussion. And that's what Charlie Kirk wanted. Like you have pointed out on numerous occasions, the people who disagreed with him, he wanted them to the front of the law. Front of the line. So he could talk to him and they could have a conversation about this, you know? And we're paying her to come on campus and criticize this guy? Give us a break. And if she didn't even mention it, it's too late. Yeah. What she said, I'll just play this way. If it was a left of center, popular, if there's such a thing, a speaker that was going on a campus tour and was assassinated at UVU, and you had a conservative commencement speaker that after that assassination said, well, you know, that person, where Saddie died, but, you know, he kind of deserved it. Whatever, you know, basically what was she said. If it was a leftist center person assassinated and a conservative speaker that did, that person would not be the commencement speaker. The nanosecond, they discovered the critical statements that she erased from social media but were still captured. It wouldn't even be, wouldn't be having this conversation. It just, it only applies one way. The leftists, it doesn't matter what they do. It doesn't matter what fear they foment or violence they promote. It is only one way. And if you just looked at it both ways and say, You know, would you like two-way street? Would you like what's happening if it were just, if the circumstances were reversed? The answer would be quickly, no. But they don't do that. And how does an institution of higher learning not think it through to that degree? I wonder, Greg, to be honest. You know, she was presented as this New York Times bestseller. You know, she's not, quote, nonpartisan. Mm-hmm. Sure. If the board members. didn't even think to ask some questions and didn't say, are we sure she's the right person? Yeah. I wonder if they even dug deep enough to find out who she is. Let's go to the phone, see what you think on this tonight. 888-5708010. We talked to Floyd in Lehigh tonight here on the Rotting Greg Show. Floyd, how are you? Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Well, thank you. But, yeah, I just, everything about this stinks. And we need to follow the money. Yeah. Somebody's getting paid. Somebody's, somebody's inside the system that is doing this on purpose. And it just, it just stinks to high heaven for me. And I, I, I just think.

this is why our schools are so corrupt yeah good a good point floyd and like i said someone's getting paid or there's some money going around somewhere follow the money we know she's getting paid i doubt i i highly doubt she's doing this for free no i don't that doesn't happen no and i just think that uv u which you when i was there was utah state uh utah valley state college ubsc um there's so many great graduates that have done great things gone on to do great things There's alumni that could speak. Why on earth would you pick this person and not someone from the school, from the campus that could inspire the kids? There's just so many options I think that a commencement speaker you could choose from that in the categories isn't disparaged the person assassinated on our campus in September. I just think you can find someone that doesn't have that part on the resume. Call me crazy, but I think it's possible. And you know what, Greg? We don't want our sports personalities talking about politics. We don't want our entertainers talking about politics. And I don't think we want our commencement speakers talking about politics. No. We want them to leave a... This is to address the kids. And those of you who have worked your tails off to get to this point, graduate. Good luck to you. Here's what you're facing in the world. Go get them. That's what I think people at a commencement want to hear. Maybe a few laughs here and there, sure. And sometimes I think the comedians are the best commencement speakers. I agree. And I guess the left always thinks that nonpartisan means everyone agrees with us. Yes. Honestly, like they keep touting her as nonpartisan. Read what she's written. It is not. It is not. Both nonpartisan. It is absolutely partisan. It's just that the partisan president or whoever's running that institution of higher learning, it matches their worldview of which they will call not partisan but nonpartisan because that's the only view they think should exist is theirs. Yeah. It's, it's, I'm telling you, I hope that the Utah Valley. I don't know how much they have in terms of time to change course, but this one, I think they'll feel it. I really do. I think this would be a massive mistake. All right, more to come. We're out and Greg with you on this Monday afternoon in Utah's talk radio, 1059 KNRS. Americans have tried to figure out exactly what Trump derangement syndrome is or how it got started. I think it's pretty easy to define anything Donald Trump does. You're against. Yeah, if he walks on water, he doesn't know how to swim. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's just, I mean, there's just no version of anything that he does that you immediately don't find a negative narrative to attach to it. Yeah, well, this statement just blew us away. You picked this up. This is Thomas Friedman, well-known author. New York Times columnist. New York Times wrote the book. The world is flat. Fascinating book. But what he said over the weekend is amazing about the war in Iran. And folks, since 1994 and 95, he's been the New York Times. uh foreign court like not correspondent but his editorials he has been narrating what's been going on around the world for the new york times on a weekly column since 1994 and 1995 you know he's a guy that had some good reputation at some point but wait till you hear this

I really want to see Iran defeated militarily because this regime is a terrible regime for its people in the region and nothing would improve the region more than the replacement of this regime with the regime in Iran that was focused on enabling its people to realize their full potential and integrating peacefully with other countries and stop occupying Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. So I'm all for that. The problem is I really don't want to see Benjamin Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings. They are both engaged in anti-democratic projects in their own countries. They're both alleged crooks. They are terrible, terrible people doing terrible things to America's standing in the world and Israel standing in the world. And so I really find myself torn. I want to see Iran militarily defeated, but I do not want to see these two. terrible people strengthened. What a statement that is. You know, I really want, I want the military to wipe out Iran. I want the regime. It's a horrible regime to go away. But I don't want to do so if, in fact, it may help B.Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. What kind of a statement is that? It's insane. It's insane. And part of that statement, he points to things that he says that Donald Trump, B.B. and Donald Trump are politically doing that. undermine or anti-democratic projects. I don't, I, the Democrats always say, you know, the threat to democracy, threat to democracy. Let me tell you what I'm looking at. And I would love Thomas Freeman to show me what he's talking about. It's equivalent. I'm watching the Democrats and maybe the swamp generally fund money. taxpayer money to non-government organizations NGOs. Yes. That has no place in a democratically elected republic. There's no version of a taxpayer money going to non-government organizations with no check, no balance, no understanding of where it goes and what it's spent on. That is anti-democratic. If you want to, that's what I would say it is. Let's talk election integrity. We want you to have an ID so that we know that not only are you eligible to vote, but that you, if you're not eligible to vote and do vote, you're not canceling out. the actual legal vote of somebody else. That is election and integrity. And I'm going to tell you that those oppose the Save America Act. That's anti-democratic, okay? Yeah. I would say that that is the greatest threat to a, you don't, because you don't care anymore who votes. You just care who counts the vote if you don't want to strengthen up your transparency, your chain of custody, those things. Those are my two examples of the anti-democratic efforts of the left. What is Thomas Freeman talking about that Trump's anti-democratic efforts or, you know, programs are in this country? They get to say it, but there's nothing behind it. And if this guy's been this thought leader, the world is flat as a book that I think to find the times that we were walking into in the age of the internet, what, so he's no dummy or wasn't, what is his equivalent of the, I gave two examples off the top of my head. I'd love Thomas Freeman to tell me what's so anti-democratic about Donald Trump. Has anyone ever asked Friedman or any of these liberals who out there and are saying all the time, well, he's anti-democratic? Okay, give me an example. Yeah, it's a nice saying. It's like with the border crossings, all right? We've got to let people in. How many? Yeah. They never have an answer. They don't have an answer. They can throw it out all the time, Greg. He's anti-democratic. He's ruining the country. He's going against the Constitution. Show me where. Yes. They never explain that.

They absolutely do not. They just say it. It's hyperbole. It sounds threatening. They love to foment fear. But you can't show me. I can show you. I can go. I could make that list longer of the things that the left is pursuing that is anti-democratic republic form of government. I could go on. But those are two right off the top NGOs and election integrity. Give me, let me hear what Democrats come back and tell me what you're seeing that you think is anti-democratic. How about this one? Letting non-citizens vote. Correct. That's election integrity. And that's what the Democrats want. All right. We've got more to say on this and a lot more. Coming up, it is The Rotten Greg Show on Utah's Talk Radio 1059, KNRS. We're going to talk about SB 153. And at that time, I didn't know what it was. Yeah. Dug into it a little bit, and it does raise some questions about the privacy of your voting. Because as he said to me, he said, I don't want people know who I voted for or what party I have. But legislature, yeah, the legislature passed Senate Bill 153. And there are some people who are very concerned about losing their privacy when it comes to voting and voter registration. You say it's necessary. Yes. Why? Why? Well, we need transparency in elections. What we need is if you have an election and you have a political party, Republicans and Democrats, and in the Republican Party, to participate in a Republican Party primary, you need to be a registered Republican. Yes. Those are the rules in the game. Yes. Then to vote in that party's primary, you need just be able to look up that individual who's showing up that wants to do it. And their party affiliation needs to be transparent. I would say not just for the person that you're counting the vote, but for the people, the candidates that want to reach out to those within the party, to campaign to them, for those that want to look at the votes in the Republican Party, do they match the voter record of how many affiliated members of a party we have? If the number of votes outweighs what you can find on the public record, because most people's party affiliation is public, but if there's this block, this mystery block of votes that you know nothing about, And we say, well, that's just the people that want their privacy. Well, is it? How do we know? The more bright lights you put on this process, this is why candidates have to disclose every dollar raised, every dollar spent. When we talked, we had a caller earlier in the show that said, follow the money. How do you follow money if you don't disclose? Who it is that's, Utah has a great state elections law that we don't put caps on money, which is, I think, silly. I think it limits free speech. But what it says is it's immediately transparent. You don't even have to wait to the date. You got to, when you go and you're collecting that money and you deposit it. You go online and you disclose it immediately. The more transparency to the election process, be it your campaigns financing, who gets to vote, if they're eligible to vote, all that needs to be open to scrutiny. And that's the part. And the way the lieutenant governor wrote the letter, it's framed as if the legislature wanted to strip away and take away all your privacy. And that's not true.

will they know who I voted for? No, of course not. They'll just know that what they will know is. What they will know, but they will know who I, they won't know who I voted for. They will never know who you voted for. But what you will know is, boy, this person is an active voter. They've shown up for elections off year and even years this meant, you know, in consecutive times. As a candidate, as a public servant and as candidate, if I saw high propensity voters, these are people that are getting involved. If you see someone that's registered to vote, but they haven't voted in 20 years. You can draw some conclusions from that. So if you have finite money and you want to really get to people that you know are going to vote either way, and you can see a trend on how often how they participate, that's who you want to make sure. You can assume that's an opinionlier or thoughtlier in their neighborhood. That's someone you want to reach out to. That process needs to be transparent. But at no point of that transparent process does anyone get to know what individual you voted for. They just know if you're registered Republican. or if you're registered Democrat, or if you're unaffiliated, and when you vote and how often, if you voted in consecutive elections? So you say Ditra Henderson, lieutenant governor who oversees elections here in the state of Utah, I don't think she should, my opinion, should be a different office completely. This is what she said on Facebook about this. So I'm starting to hear from a lot of you who got a letter from my office today talking about your voter registration privacy status. So I just want to. talk about this for a minute, tell you what this is, what it isn't. This is because of a law that was passed by the legislature, SB 153 during the last legislative session that just ended. And what this did is it changed the privacy protections for Utah voters, most Utah voters. Now, what does this mean? This is not, it's not the same thing as the private, personal, sensitive data that we've been protecting from the Department of Justice and others. This, this is different. This is normal public stuff that would be on any states and Utah's publicly available voter registration list. So your name, your address, an age range. We protect your full date of birth. Utah law protects that. There's no. Social Security number, driver's license number, that sort of thing is not publicly available. That's still protected for all voters. But your party affiliation, your voting history, like which elections you have voted in in the past, all of that sort of thing will be made available. Do you know who hates that? Dead people. The dead people that vote, they don't want you to know they voted. They'd love for you to not know they voted. The dead voting pool or demographic, the dead people that vote, they're very private people. They want to be private. They don't want you to know anything about them. They would be mortified if you knew they voted in the last five elections after they died. So I'm going to tell you that if you want election integrity and you want transparency and you want chain of custody. You don't buy the story that knowing someone's voter affiliation that allows them to participate in particular elections, primaries, political party primaries, and the frequency in which they vote, the individual, that is information that I think should be able to be scrutinized to ensure that everything's on the up and up. That's the question I have. The party affiliation, okay, I'm fine with Dunmer. Right. Why did somebody need to know if I've voted or not?

Because they... Isn't that, that's private. If I voted, why does somebody need to know that? Because... I understand party affiliation. You want to, you know, I get that. I don't get the reason why they need to know. You got, Rod Orquette got a got, I'll say you got 10,000 votes. Well, where'd you get them? Like, yeah, you won an election. You got 10,000 votes. Would you like to see how many people voted to see if only 9,000 voted? If only, or if 12,000 people vote, let's say between you and your opponent, you got 20,000 votes. And now you count there's 15,000 registered names that are on there. Or to your point, you don't know who it is. You see a number of people that voted and you don't know. who actually went to the polls. Everyone that's registered to vote doesn't vote. There are individuals that vote. If you see numbers of results, election results, you want to be able to make sure that it's matching up with the tallies that are being reported as votes that are counted. You want to see that there are actual people. And you want to see if that person actually lives in the district still, if they're legally eligible to vote, you want to know that information should be open to review and scrutiny. for anyone just to ensure that the confidence of our election cycle and of its integrity is high. So one of the most sacred things we have in this country is the right to vote. Correct. Okay. Does this threaten my ability to vote or the information about my vote? No. It doesn't, well, it doesn't threaten who you vote. Some people are going to read into this that it does. Well, I'm going to tell you, if you don't know who voted in any given election, then I don't know how you ever. ever check it to make sure that it was actually a valid number that you're getting back if you can't follow it back to people that actually voted i think that is that is election integrity what you don't want to know is who's people voted for but i think it's absolutely an important thing to know how if they vote and how often they vote sure sure i understand the party affiliation because we have closed primaries in this state yep you can't cross over and vote in one unless you're registered i get that How many times I've voted I'm not sure I'm comfortable with? That's just my opinion. Then how do they know the number of, if they have a tally of who voted and we don't know, because all that is, is I know you voted this year. Yeah. And it's a record. Then you voted then you voted next year and you voted then that's a record. If you don't want that to be a record, it sounds like you're saying you don't want people to know you voted. Is that what you're saying? Maybe I don't. Okay. You don't want people to know you voted. Then how do we ever know that the number of votes someone received, a can't receive, can match up with who actually voted if we don't know who, if they voted in the election at all? You are big into transparency. Yes. You are big into voter integrity. Yes. This does not threaten that in any way in your opinion. In fact, most of us without thought are are. transparent in our voter affiliation and our participation in election cycles it's it's what most of us do there is a there's a group that with this option noticed it took advantage of it no no there's no job i'm not being judgey but they got to be off the books off the book voters

And what it does is it creates confusion where you cannot count how many votes, a given race received with the number of voters that you know actually voted in that race. Those numbers become off. Okay. And you don't know if it's actually someone that's private or it's a vote otherwise. But this bill allows a certain group of people to opt out of this. Correct. Correct. Why can't individuals opt out of it as well? If they don't want that information, can I opt out of it? Well, no, if you have like a restraining word, there's circumstances where you want it. But I'm just a regular voter. Nothing against me. I just don't want that information out. No. You can't opt out of it. No. Your vote, there is no way to cross-check to see who if the vote, if the election cycle was done valid, if you don't know what made up the votes that they counted. If you don't know who they are that voted, then you have a big black, just a blank spot in how that happened. Because remember. This comes down to the precincts. Yes. You know by precincts how many votes are coming out of precinct in this state. If you don't know who's voting out of that precinct, how do you know there was actual votes and it wasn't someone that took someone's name and decided they were going to put it in? Because here's the thing. What if you didn't vote, but they put Rod Arquette's ballot in there? What if you're a guy that they knew doesn't ever participate, but I know I can put a ballot in there. Use your name. But if you saw, hey, Roderquette voted, I didn't vote. I never voted in that cycle. That is voter protection. Voter integrity. That kind of transparency, bright lights on the process is what makes sure that people aren't rigging it. I promise you. You want your transparency. You want it. All right. More your calls and comments. You don't sound persuaded, sir. No, I'm not persuaded. I am. I don't want any information out there. I know you do. Yeah. All right. Your calls and comments on this if you'd like to weigh in. 888-5701-10 on your cell phone, dial pound 250 or leave us a message on our talkback line. More of the Rod and Greg show coming up. Taking some of your comments on SB 153, there is concern that your voting privacy may be taken away by this. Mr. Hughes says no, that is not the case. Let's find out what you say. John and West Haven. John, how are you? Welcome to the Rod and Greg show. How you doing? Doing well. Thank you for asking. Good. Good. Hey, I got a comment or a question on this. I'm seeing Rod's point of view on this concern, and Greg being very transparent here. If we need to be so transparent, why are we exempting... officials and police from this. You don't know who they're voting for. And I understand some of the safety concerns, but why doesn't that extend to us? And but it does to them. You know, John, it's a great question. And I don't think that when they're using terms like public officials, I think an elected official, it's inherent at least that you have to, especially, well, if it's a partisan race, you've got to affiliate and people have to know that you're a Republican if you're voting in a partisan election. Even it, but even in the nonpartisan elections where it says, let's say it's a city council race. I think it's vitally important that you know in a nonpartisan race, if in fact those nonpartisan candidates, because it's not a race where you have to declare a party affiliation. It'll give you a better idea of where that candidate stands if you know where they are. And I do think that still applies.

What I think they meant by public official, but they wanted to be sensitive of the term, are ecclesiastical leaders that are well known publicly. I think they're talking about people that maybe lead flocks or congregations. And if they wanted to participate in a primary, their party affiliation may be, they think that may be a distraction to their congregation, something like that or something like it. As far as the police officers go. You know, I don't know what the law enforcement hook is there. And I represent sheriffs. Like, I love working with the sheriffs. And I love them. And that one I don't understand. I think they, they actually are. They do tell you what they are. They run in a primary Democrat, Republican. So they're. The sheriffs, your county elected sheriffs, you know their party affiliation. If I'm a bishop and LDS Ward, am I a public figure? You know, I'd like to look at. Can I exempt out of that? I need to read this bill and read its definition because that, I think that's who they're trying to, that privacy is what I think, and restraining orders, things like that. All right, more coming up. We'll try and get to more your calls when we come back. Hang on or call us back. Hour number three of the Rod and Greg show. I'm Roder Kett. I'm citizen Greg Hughes. Big weekend for the Hughes family. Yes, it was. We're very excited. Child number two? Yes, junior. Junior. Gregory Holden Hughes, Jr. Junior, but he doesn't go by Gregory. He doesn't go by Gregory. Why doesn't he don't want to be known? No, you know what? I might have besmirch the family name by Greg. No, I'm just kidding. No, he likes, he's holding. He goes by our middle name. But he is junior, but it's Holden Hughes, and he got engaged. Yeah, well, good for him. A great, great, great young lady. We're super, super happy. Happy, family's happy. The kid is punching. I'm just going to confess, I'll just come clean. My son is punching above his weight. He's marrying way up. Like you did. Yes, I did too. I did too. That's why we love Utah. It's a beautiful state. But I will say that my fatherly advice to my kid is don't mess it up. Okay. You just don't miss this up. Screw it up. You hit Peter here. You got it. You got yourself a fine. You just do right. Just don't mess it up. Would you like to know my, I told you earlier today, you explained, and I now understand about the zigzagging UHB, right? Yeah, you thought that was all about, yes, you just thought they singled you out. Yeah, they were. Can I tell you something else happened today? Oh, no, what? Pickle ball? Yeah? I got beat by a 14 and a 10-year-old. No. These kids were good. That is so funny. Do anyone take video of this? No. And ladies gentlemen, if anyone was at our court, pickleball court and has video videos, I would pay for that. These kids were good, I mean, but we were beating him, but then they came back and beat us. That's fun. And they're really, they're really good kids. Are they coming back for, you get rematch? I asked them, I said, how old are you? They go, I'm 14, I'm 10. I'm going to go, jeez. Okay, so. You're laughing at this. I know, I would actually go wherever this is and record this. This would be beautiful.

These little kids owning you on the courts. They didn't own me. It was a very close score. You pride yourself and being quite, you are a pickleball player. I mean, you come in here with your shoulders back. Not a very good. I don't know. That's all you tell me when we're off the air. But these two little guys now dominate the court at picks. I mean, they're beating everybody. Good for them. Good for them. Yeah, I'm proud of them. Don't they go to school? It's early enough. Well, I'm wondering if why I should have asked them that because it was probably. You're going to report. You're called truance officer, aren't you? You're tired of getting run, run around by these kids. You're going to gnarck them out. If they be being again, I'm getting rid of them. Yeah, you're going to go to the school. You're going to school. Whooping me. No, they're there. We have what is called open play, right? Where you go on dead in court and you just, you know. And these two kids and their paddle were up next. My paddle was up next with another guy. We played them. We were ahead of them. Then they came back and beat us. Was it like what was it? Did they have a certain strategy? Was there something about the youth? Yeah, they're younger and they're faster. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. There you go. I got to some that we norma, five, ten years ago, I may have gotten to the balls as well, but they did. See, you don't understand this game. I don't. I thought, you know, I thought there was a strategy. It's embarrassing to admit, but yeah, they're good little player. I love seeing young kids get involved. Yeah, because I thought pickleball, I thought that they would either play tennis or ping pong. But I didn't think they play pickleball until you got about 60. Well, you make fun because you think pickleball is an old person's sport. Well, I think the senior homes really have a lot of, they get really excited about this. You see you coming around and they just, you know, they start scoping you out. You go to the senior center. They're like, ooh, does he live here? Does he play? I wonder if he plays. Yeah, because, you know, they got a demo they look for. You'll be doing, well, I'm not 12 years old and 10-year-olds. Well, they're good. But they look at, they look at that. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's quite big of you to admit you got beat by a 10 year old and a 14 year old with your pal, whoever that, because you actually, folks, he tells me he rules the courts. I do not tell me. I never tell you that. I never tell you that. No, I went there. I never tell you that. I am a horrible pickleball player. I just like to play. Well, what does it mean when you say it's like shooting fish in a barrel? What does that mean? Well, I do you say that. That means. Why do you say that all the time? You're like. I do not say that. You said something like it's like they're coming to a gunfight with like plastic spoons. What does that mean if it doesn't mean you're winning? You know, I now understand why people didn't vote for you into elections. Oh, you go there. You go there. You know, not enough times passed. That's actually, actually hurt my feelings. They don't believe a thing you said. Not really. That's why. That's why they like now, they don't believe a thing you're saying. You come in here and you have descriptions of your morning pickleball that is not losing. What do I usually say to you? When you say, and I say, I sucked. And I'd say, did you win? Well, yeah, but, you know, I let them get a little too close. Yeah. Before I doused their hopes and dreams. That's what you say. You're so full of it. No, that's on a Monday. You're trying to, you're trying to, this is faux humility you're trying to show right. You think anyone cares about this conversation we're having? I have no idea. Probably don't. Shall we move on? Yes, please. We have an interview. Wait for us, I think. Yeah, I've been very patient. Yes. Republicans, very tight midterm elections, right? We don't know which way this is going.

Why do they blow it by introducing something like the Dignity Act or the Dignity Act? Amnesty. Why do they do that? They're afraid. It's fear. I don't know what it is. Well, he's been patient. He's waiting on our newsmaker line right now. We're talking about Mike Cowell, president of the Oversight Project. He wrote about Digidad and why the Republicans are behind this. Mike, what is it with Republicans' tight midterms coming up? And we're talking amnesty again? Yeah, well, I hate to be a nitpicker, but the title of the bill is not in English. It's Dignidad, okay? Okay. From there, and that tells you all you need to know. But yeah, there's a cohort of about 20 Republicans who have put their name to paper to co-sponsor a bill, which would be the biggest amnesty for illegal aliens in American history. It's led by a congresswoman from the Miami area called Maria Salazar, and it's basically a complete rejection of President Trump's mass deportation promise and flipping the whole thing on its head. They smell blood in the water, I suppose, and want to turn back the clock to Bush era days, and they're trying to wedge this right before midterms. You know, I've heard Republicans that gravitate to this kind of strategy. I've heard them called Panikins. If you're a fan of the Godfather movies and Brother Frato, I've heard them called Fredo cons. But honestly, acting out of, I've heard this rationale that, well, if we don't do something, the Democrats are just going to come up to something worse. Is there honestly a narrative out there or a belief that no matter what the Republicans do in the majority, whatever the Democrats do once they get the majority will pale in comparison to this and this isn't good, but they're not going to see this and check the box and go, okay, let's just move on. Am I seeing that wrong? Oh, no, you're exactly right. And in leaked audio, or I don't know if it was leaked, but it came back out. The congresswoman Salazar basically admits, like, yeah, even if we do this, they'll all get putting rights when Democrats take charge. And so that's kind of part of her sales pitch to the amnesty crowd, although she won't say that in front of Republicans. And so, of course, they will push for more being the Democrats, you know, when they get power. And the congresswoman who's pushing it, the Republican Salazar, admits so much that if she gets this many millions of illegal aliens into this Dignad program, then the next Democrat president will just come along and give them all voting rights. Mike, I've got to ask you this, Mike. We've got the midterm elections coming up. We all know it's going to be an extremely close race for the Republicans to be able to maintain control the House if they even can. Yet here you have a group of Republicans introducing legislation that they know is going to upset people within the Republican Party. What are they thinking? Well, there's two types of thinking. I would venture to argue.

The first is some of them just believe it in their core ideology. Like there are some Republicans who are just not of the stripe that we were sold on the campaign trail. And Maria Salazar, given that she's selling this in Spanish and kind of making an ethnic pitch to it, I would put in that category of true believers who are just opposite of the central thesis of President Trump. And then there's another contingent of people like Representative Mike Lawler from New York who's also... a chief sponsor of this. And he's in what we'll say is a close midterm race. And here's where things get interesting. Mass deportations are more popular than amnesty. But for donors and the people who donate to campaigns, they're not. And so if you're a tight race and you want to get those campaign coppers fat, you do something for special interests, like preserving their cheap illegal alien labor. That's how the sausage works in D.C. So this isn't just a bill being run. I've seen social media ads that are well produced. These are commercials. There's a PR effort behind this bill and this effort. Do you know who's paying for that? And I haven't seen the Save America Act with a cool commercial on social media. How is this? Who is pushing this and packaging it the way they are? Do you know? Yeah, well, with the dark money in our politics, it's tough to tell. I can venture a couple guesses, and it's the same groups that fund these things usually. Of course, you have ideological donors on the left who are, that pushes for decades. I mean, the Zuckerbergs were huge a few years back. They've since drawn their money back. George Soros funds a ton of the immigration left-wing stuff. But then there's also industry, you know, the restaurants, hospitality. and the places and types of businesses that employ illegal aliens and the Chamber of Commerce. I wouldn't be surprised if we ever came to learn who exactly was paying for it, that the answer is probably a mix of ideological donors on the left and then the business community on the other side. Has Trump said anything on this? Have you heard, Mike? He endorsed Maria Salazar, which is unfortunate. That kind of says, I mean, the reaction to this was very swift and very critical, Mike. Did they get the message that this idea may not go anywhere at all? I don't think Salazar and Co. will get the message until Trump pulls his support for them or denounces this effort. And if I had the president's ear, I would remind him that there's two main events that, you know, right before he came down that golden escalator and the rest of his history. One was Brexit, kind of this massive turnover in international populism. And the other was here in America where the gang of aid bill failed and Eric Cantor lost his surprise primary because voters... rejected amnesty and so like those things are the origin story of trump

And here, 10 plus years in, we're facing similar events. Mike, howell on our any hour newsmaker line. Mike, thanks for joining us in your patience, president of the Oversight Committee, talking about the amnesty plan introduced by some Republicans. More coming up, some of your thoughts on our talkback line. We'll share those with you coming up right here on the Rod and Greg show in Utah's Talk Radio 105.9, KNRS. I'm Citizen Hughes. And I'm Rod Arquette. You know, one of the great features that we have on the show is what we call our talkback line. This is a line. that if you download the iHeart radio app and you search for KNS and in the upper right hand corner you'll see a little red microphone there and if you tap on that you can leave us a 30 second comment maybe you didn't have a chance to call you haven't got time to wait for us to get you on the air you just want to leave a message that's why we always love hearing from our talkback listeners as well let's listen into a few of the comments that they've made today Hey Rod and Greg, Scott from American Fork. I wanted to comment on this voter privacy issue. It seems to me that my name, address, and party affiliation has been available online for some time, at least 10 or 12 years that I know of. The only new thing is whether or not I voted, as long as the ballot remains secret, I don't care who knows that I voted. Big deal. Big deal. And I think it's important that we know who voted because we want to make sure who voted was legally eligible to vote. And I think we've got an issue with that, at least perception issue with that. I think that the more transparency on that process, the more voter integrity you're going to arrive at. And I think we should be putting those bright lights of transparency through the whole thing. Say you. Listen to you. Let me ask you a question. What's the point of the Save America Act and... Someone's verifying. It's checking your citizenship in the United States. But that makes the point. It doesn't ask you if you're going to vote. It makes the point. It has to be transparent. If you have a block of votes that we don't know who they are or what party affiliation they have or if they voted yes or no if they voted. How do you verify that with the outcomes that you're seeing that are being counted by the clerk? If you don't know who voted or what election cycle they voted. It's my own business if I voted. It's not yours. I think it's, I think you're opening things to, there's blind spots in what you just said. We won't be able to verify that you're actually the one that voted. What if someone used your name? And you didn't vote, but there's a... How would they use my name and vote? How would they do that? They could... Voter fraud. No, you have... In this state, you have your ID. But what if you're not a voter? What if you... A lot of... Most people, I wish there was more, but we don't have... Every registered voter doesn't vote. Like 50% of registered voters vote. The other 50% don't. If you never voted and you never... And your name wasn't... You couldn't even scrutinize it. Someone could be using your name and using to vote and you wouldn't know because if it wasn't a publicly disclosed record, we wouldn't be able to say to you. Did you know that you voted? How could I vote? They can't use my name. How did they use my name? They went to your mailbox and they took your ballot.

They know, you know the days it's coming out. Yeah, so you think they do that. Absolutely. Well, let me just say this. We ought to have systems in place that would prevent that. So you don't know that, but you're just trying to institute a system to protect. Yes, trust, but verify. You have to verify, and this is a process to make sure that you're verifying that who's voting is who they say they are. Look, I had a member of the media once called me and say, hey, I just noticed that you didn't vote in the last election. Why? And I said, I didn't. They said, yeah. I said, well, that's funny because I did this vote by mail thing. And I put it in the mailbox. Are you telling me I didn't vote? And they said, oh, never mind. Because now it turned into a vote by mail criticism when they thought they had me at a why didn't you vote and, you know, express, you know, do your civic duty, representative Hughes. And I went, wait a minute, I did vote. So you're saying a candidate could come up to me and ask me why I didn't vote. They could ask me to be rude. They wouldn't get your vote if they asked that. But you know what they can do? What? When people reach out, they can spot by record who the highest propensity voters are and they got to make sure they make their case. And how great is that? The more civic participation you engage in, the higher by way of priority getting messages out to you, candidates have, to make sure that you hear it. You know, when you walk neighborhoods, you don't just take registered voters. You don't just go to the door without knowing which... who lives behind that door and just knock and hope that they're a Republican or hope that they're, you actually are taking your walking list and you're looking at those that by odds are going to vote, whether they meet you or not. And those are the ones you want to meet because you just don't have enough time to hit every home in your district. So this allows you to identify who voted in the party. Sure. And it shows who they are. And that's those are the doors you want to knock on. In the general election, don't you hit all? Well, if you have unlimited time and resources, you would. But if you have three hours a day and you want to hit a precinct a day, you're going to go to the ones that are the most likely to go vote. You're going to go make your case there. You're going to drop your leaflet off. You're going to go meet them if you can. But what I'm saying, that's a campaign election duty there. But when somebody has a question about if the voting is accurate, they want to be able to cross-reference how many votes came in. Who it was that said they voted and make sure that it's all lining up. That's the transparency that an election cycle out of have. I've never had this happen twice this year. I've been hit up, knock on the door to sign a petition to put someone name, someone's name on the ballot. I bet you're a high propensity voter. It's someone who pays attention. I do vote. Yeah, so they target people that get involved. They don't know who I am. Well, that's because their paid signature gatherers are a bunch of crooks. I'm not into the paid signature gathering. No, neither am I. It's ridiculous. Get volunteers. I'm with you. They should be banned. Yeah. I just, yeah. So I think that there are ways to make the election process transparent. And you think this will do it. And more so. Of course. More so. If you have a mystery block that never gets pulled, that never gets mailed, that never gets, because the talkback live, they said they just don't know how often I vote. There is a block of voters who have hidden their names and their party affiliations. And what if they wanted that way?

Why should they be forced? We don't know when you see the election. If you have a group of mystery voters that you don't know who, what, where, but you see their vote by way of tally, but you can't cross-reference it with someone who actually voted. therein lies the ambiguity you think there's and there and it opens the door for potential fraud potential i'm not saying it's all fraudulent this is why i get our lieutenant governor takes it so personal when we talk about transparency no one's saying she's a crook no one's saying she's doing it wrong if you think government does everything perfect then get offended, I guess. But everyone who knows anything about government and its processes knows there's always room for improvement. And the best way is to have it transparent so that everybody can just see, check your work. Check the work. That's it. I don't want to know who you voted for, but if you voted, I'd like to know that you voted. You're sure? Well, I already know who you vote for. You sure. I always know you vote for. All right. More coming up. How do you know? On the Rod and Greg show here on Utah's Talk Radio 105-9, KNRS. I love hearing stories like this, Greg, about how well states like Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, the Mountain West States, who I think basically are ignored by the legacy media, how well we're doing. And they seem to ignore us. They call us flyover states. Yeah. And they don't pay any attention. But a new study out shows that states revealed as the best to start a Fendi, a family amid cratering belief in the American dream, catering, I should say, number one is Utah. If you want to live the American dream or start living the American dream, it's the state of Utah. You know, Utah gets ranked in a lot of different ways by a lot of different measurements, but we've had upward mobility being the highest percentage or likelihood of upward mobility is the state of Utah. I find this index to be particularly interesting because it's structured all around the family. It's a family structure index. Yeah, and the study found that red states, including Utah, being number one, by the way, are better to chase the American dream. Well, joining us on our newsmaker line right now is David Mahan. He is policy director of the Center for Christian Virtue. David, thanks for joining us. Let's talk about this study. You've been digging into this. What are the numbers shown, and what's your analysis of it? Well, the family structure index is basically a composite measure that tracks. changing fortunes of our states across three critical areas. And so what we're doing is looking at

You know, across all the states, you know, what is the share of married adults, you know, prime age married adults, which is right around 25 to 54? What's the share of teens living in married parent with married parents? And what's the total fertility rate in these states? And we take all of those factors and we produce an index value of all the states to see what is the health of that state based on the family structure there. I love it. I think it all starts with the family, and that's not a trite saying. Maybe share with our listeners. You measured some of those statistics, but what do those statistics tell us on a deeper level? Well, when you look at states and crime, incarceration, academic achievement, all of these factors increase, right, are positive, the more that percentage of children being raised in a two-parent home increases. You know, every state, you know, you look at a state level, you look at, you know, federal government. We spend the bulk of... of our budgets in three key areas, right? Education, we educate, we medicate, and we incarcerate, and all of those three areas increase, those expenditures increase as the percentage of children in two parent homes decreases. And, you know, scripturally, you know, this is Center for Christian Virtue. It says if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? And that, that word foundations means. uh, uh, uh, you know, societal order, just our structure and every strong society is built on the backs of strong families, right? If the economy is strong, um, it's because we have strong families. If the education system is strong, we see, you know, because we have two current homes and strong families, uh, you know, and that's what we're seeing also in terms of red state versus, uh, blue states. The states that have the lowest index numbers are fleeing. People are fleeing those states to the states that have the higher family index. numbers. Surprise, surprise, right, David? Utah, I understand, comes out. Our state comes out number one. You've got other Rocky Mountain region states as well. Doing very, very well. What is it, do you think, David, about the Rocky Mountain region? Is it the water? Is it the water? What are we doing right, David? What are we doing right? I knew you guys would be gloating about that. You are number one, right? Thanks for noticing.

on the family structure index, just to kind of break it down, you all are about 66% in terms of prime age adults who are married, right? So you're doing well in that area. You're 77% in terms of teens with married parents, right? Kids growing up in two-parent homes. Phenomenal. But the third area. You are kind of struggling just like every other state in the union, and that is the fertility rate. Yeah, yeah. There's not a single state in the union that is producing enough children to reproduce itself. And what we're seeing there, while you've got some amazing things going on in Utah, more so than anybody else in the nation, you know, we're kind of seeing a problem with housing, right? So the cost of housing is a huge indicator. on the family structure index, especially as it pertains to fertility rate. Yeah, so looking forward because, you know, Utah loves being number one. But we know nothing is static. So, David, tell what are the things that our listeners? What should we be staring at? What do we have to stay on guard about? What should we be aspiring to do? You're right about the fertility rate. And we used to grow. We had more kids in education. Population growth internally has always been one of the big things about Utah. And we're now below that replacement rate. But outside of that. What are the swing thoughts? What are the things that listeners ought to be thinking about to keep the state of Utah strong and American Dream alive? Well, you know, folks are looking at a few areas, you know, when they're looking at where do I want to live and raise a family and pursue the American dream. One of those areas is affordability, right? So we were talking with the housing rate. We got to make sure that, um, that housing is affordable for, uh, young families that are just getting started off that the benefits clip, right? You know, if you've got two people who are. kind of struggling and they get married. Are they going to lose their benefits? That's a, that's a key area. Cultural supports. Um, you know, is, is, uh, am I moving to a place where my child is going to be indoctrinated, uh, you know, by the alphabet mafia, um, you know, am I going to be worried about my child, my daughter, um, having males walk into her, uh, restrooms and locker rooms, right? So the cultural areas and, and the foundation, um, you know, lower taxes, um, you know, a greater, a greater emphasis on, on, um, you know, not just.

funding schools, but funding successful schools. You know, so many blue states across the country and including red states like Ohio, um, you know, you have a lower and lower percentage of young people that can read proficiently by third grade and do math, uh, proficiently by, by third, fourth grade. Um, these are all factors that folks are looking at. We were, um, just in a hearing. And it was a gender-related issue a couple weeks ago. And they were, we had drag, literally, we had drag performers show up and threaten, you know, everybody that was in the hearing that folks were going to be leaving the state if we continue passing bills like, you know, the Safe Act that says, you know, you can't just transform boys to little girls and girls to little boys by cutting things off and injecting things. But what they didn't understand was is that most of the states that are doing those activities are at the bottom of the index, and those are at the states that are at the top where people are fleeing, so like New York and Illinois and California. They wanted to become more like that, but these are the top states that people are fleeing to your Florida's and some of your Utah's, right, and Texas. So as you look at all these numbers, I want to ask you about your organization, David, the Center for Christian Values, Christian Virtue. Are you optimistic about the future of the family after you look at all these numbers still? I am, you know, and I'm going to give you a couple, you know, if somebody was, you know, looking, you've got folks, you've got states that are struggling, right? Like South Carolina. South Carolina is lower on the index than Hawaii, right? I think Hawaii is ranked. 26, South Carolina is ranked 28. But if you look at the trends, I believe the bleeding has begun to stop. And, you know, now that we're seeing, you know, some of the red states getting a little bit more influence and power in the country in this particular season. But I think the bleeding has stopped. And we're starting to see trends going back in the other direction. And that is what we're seeing in states like South Carolina, who even though they're lower on the index in Hawaii, Hawaii is trending almost completely in all three categories, south, you know, down, whereas South Carolina is trending up. And so, yeah, I am encouraged, even by what I see in Ohio, you know, in terms of, you know, a return to sanity and people immigrating, voting with their feet as to the values that they hold true and dear. Joining us on our newsmaker line, David Mahan, he's policy director, the Center for Christian Virtue. And it's nice to hear, Greg, that Utah sits at number one for people who are hoping to chase the American dream. And they can do so here in the state of Utah. I think Idaho came in second. It did. Idaho came in second. And I think when you look at two parent homes, when you look at kids that are raised in homes that are more stable, there's just, there's just, really the income doesn't matter as much as the stability inside the home, which we know. I mean, I don't think this is, you know, this is, I think people want to. sometimes take shallow water, muddy it up and call deep. But I think the home, the family structure should be as intuitive as anything else in terms of young people's opportunities moving forward in life. And two parent homes are so important. And Meyer people who are able to raise.

children single parent homes i mean it's absolutely it's a real challenge and i know some people who've done an absolutely amazing job with her i'm gonna tell you i'm a i'm a i'm a two parent home but i was raised in a single parent home but my grandmother was a single mom as well so you know i've seen i've lived it both and i and i know the difference yeah you sure do all right more coming up final segment of the rod and gregg show right here on utahs talk radio 1059 knr s he doesn't get one uh nick shirley who we had on the show, what was it, Friday? Yes. Before he spoke up to the University of Utah for a big event up there. You got to love this. You know, he embarrassed California. He went in and, you know, did some investigation, found a lot of fraud there, exposed what's going on in California. People in California not too happy. Apparently, Greg, they're now trying to pass a bill. I love this one. That would criminalize investigative journalism. No. With misdemeanors of $10,000 fine imprisonment and content takedown. Let me tell you something. They don't want to make it illegal to do investigative journalism. They want to make attacking Republicans, conservatives, writer's center, even common sense. They want to be able to attack that every day. Anything on their side, the leftist, that's illegal. Don't look at them. They're protected. Well, under the bill, government-funded entities like the Somali Learning Daycare Centers or is a... wrote the leaning day care centers would be protected yeah would be protected from being exposed if they operated inside california so put nick out of business well there you go that's don't fix the problem get people quit talking about it we like our problems we like we like pilfering the public treasury we don't need anyone noticing yeah what are you talking about uh bruce springsteen who's been on a tour just bashing don't Well, his former drummer, uh, drummer, name of Vinnie Lopez. Okay. Vinny from New Jersey, of course, uh, is speaking out against the boss. Good. For slamming Donald Trump. He says, why don't you just respect the president of the United States? Is, is the, uh, the saxophone player? Is he still around? Is he still with us? I think he died. Yeah, I think he did too. But he's cool. I liked him. I bet you he wouldn't, you know, I'll admit. I saw Springsteen years ago. down in Vegas after 9-11 he had his album out yeah great concert was it i mean it was a super con no explosions no fireworks he just came out and played great music it was a it was a fun concert but he's just gotten yeah he's talking about trump derangement syndrome i was just gonna say that's what he's got too he can join thomas freeman and a bunch of loons well with that irrational Trump derangement syndrome. Ranting. Already looking ahead to tomorrow, Utah Senator Mike Lee is scheduled to join us, I believe. Nice, very nice. Congress, back in session tomorrow, we'll see where the SAVAC stands. And I can't wait to hear his opinion on what's going on at UVU.

That will be good. That will be interesting. I'm telling you, I say everybody, keep talking about it because I think there needs to be something done there. We'll see what happens. Head up, shoulders back. May God bless you and your family in this great country of ours. Thanks for joining us. We're back tomorrow and four. Have a good night.