The Rod and Greg Show: Australia's Ban on Social Media for Kids; Dem Policies and High Energy Costs

It is the Rod and Greg show on Utah's Talk Radio, 1059, KNRS, live everywhere on the IHeart Radio app. Hope your Thursday's been a good one, beautiful looking day on the outside again. Very warm. I'm Roder. I love it. You want to go golf today. Yes, I'm Citizen Hughes, pro climate change, if it's going to stay warm like this, and yes. I'm your host. Yeah, yeah. Citizen News. Good. All right. We've got a lot to get to today. Steve Moore will join us. He's got a lot of things to say about the nation's economy and what's going on. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about what. Australia is, they're up to their old tricks again. I mean, this is a government down there, Greg. They want to control everything. Now they want to control miners and their access to social media. I live there for a couple years. I loved Australia. I said this yesterday, but I'm not kidding. I think some of the COVID and forward, actually they're a little heavy-handed even way back. Remember, it was a prison. a penal colony, right? It was a bunch of criminals when they started. So they were inherently heavy-handed in some ways. Didn't the UK just kick them all out and say, yeah, go to the Australia. We're going to give you a life, but we don't want to put you to prison. We're going to take you this place that no one's going to ever see you again. You're going to go down there and live. It's really hot. There's not a lot going on. But no, since COVID on, they have, they make, and I'm not kidding you, they make China look like Liberty Land. I mean, they are, they would give you two hours to be out. I mean, I have friends in Australia. They would tell me how unbelievably oppressive it was and has become. And I think that this new law, as much as it's well-intentioned in terms of young people, 16 and younger, not using social media, what they are going to have to know about every Australian, adult or minor, to know when the minor might be using it and not supposed to, is draconian at the highest level. Yeah, yeah. Just crazy. I just don't understand Australia. It's not the no worries place it used to be. We're going to be talking about that a little bit later on. So we've got a lot to get to, and we invite you to be a part of the story or part of the show, we should say 888-570-80-10-10 on your cell phone, dial pound 250 and say, hey, Rod, or leave us a talkback message on our talkback line by downloading the new IHeart radio app. All right, well, the big story of the day, and Abby was talking about it. Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk, made his first court appearance today. Greg, up until this point, it's been... video, but today he was a, you know, he was in court. It's right. Yeah. Apparently a nice pair of slacks and a shirt and I think he was wearing a tie. Looked like it. And about a four-hour hearing on a number of interesting issues, Greg. Well, so here's what frustrates me. I get the whole conversation of, you know, prison jumpsuit and shackles versus, you know, being presumed innocent. So you look like you're, you know, you've been released and you're just a normal person. I get all that.

But I don't think right now in these preliminary hearings where there's no jury to observe this, they have to go to such great lengths to make them look like it. Innocentil proven guilty, when you're charged with murder, it doesn't mean that you have to make sure that their chair is comfortable and that they're feeling good. And it is just too much accommodation at this point in this preliminary hearing process. All the talk of the shackles and the security and everything else. He is, you know, Anyway, I just think that they're paying too much attention to these details in a time where you're just trying to procedurally get to a hearing. And you need to just get to that hearing. And if someone says, well, a juror may see him in that, a prospective juror might see that. If you haven't seen his face, if you haven't seen what he has been accused of, if it's a national story, if not global. If you haven't seen any of that, what he's wearing at that preliminary hearing isn't going to make a... isn't going to make a hill of beans difference yeah yeah i would agree with you greg and and you think the expense which you know that this whole trial is going to cost utah county an amazing amount of money i i know you work with the sheriffs you may have some sense of that it's going to cost a lot but there are questions about okay what about cameras in the courtroom yes I mean, as Erika Kirk had said, her husband's assassination was a public event. We all saw that video, or a lot of us, I saw once I said, I don't want to see it anymore, but we've all seen the video of him being killed in public. His killer, in my opinion, should be but on trial in public. We as a public have a right to see and hear the evidence, and then we can decide for ourselves where this is going to go. Yeah, well said, I don't know what to add. I don't know how to add to that. That's exactly right. I just think that the process needs to move on. They're going to bog this down in procedural motions and all of this, all these details. And, you know, right now there's somewhat drama that, you know, the judge had said that he doesn't want us, he doesn't want any images, media images of him in plain clothes, but in shackles. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's been violated. Apparently, there's some media image. Camera caught a picture of him in his shackles. And so now that's all the drama. Yeah. We're talking about a capital murder case here. Not an image of someone in shackles who's being charged with that crime. Again, I just think we're going to get this thing just bogged down in these procedural motions and... I just think it starts to distract from the job at hand. Yeah. I wonder today, Greg, because here Tyler Robinson is sitting at the defense table, right? And a couple of times he smiled. I think one time they caught him laughing. Someone said something, you know, jokingly a little bit, kind of a chuckle on his face. I wonder what I highly doubt she watched this. She may have. I don't know. She's forgiven the guy, you know, and wants to move on. But she wants just as carried out as well. But if friends of Charlie Kirk, his family saw this today and saw this guy sitting there and say, why is he sitting there? And Charlie isn't. It just is not fair. You know, and I've tried to look this up for our listeners. I just want to be, I just want to see the two most high profile murders that I can think of is the.

One is the health care executive. Yeah. Okay? That guy that Luigi, you know, has become some female. I am telling you, I've seen images of him in preliminary hearings that's in he's in an orange jumpsuit. Now, maybe he's dressed better now. Yeah, he is. He's now dressed better. But there was a number of hearings where you saw him in shackles and an orange jumpsuit. So those images are out there and there's quite a bit of them. The next one is the one that happened earlier than that, and that was that this psychopath in Idaho that killed all those college kids in that house. That guy, I've seen a zillion images of that guy in a jumpsuit and shackled. So why all of a sudden now we parachute into some, you know, pearl clutching moment that this guy is going to be seen in a jumpsuit and shackles is I don't understand. It's selective logic to me. It's selective outrage. I didn't even know it would be a thing. Yeah. So you've got that. You've also got the whole security apparatus because this is such a national story. There is more security there. There's some voices out there and some, I don't even know if it's a media, but they want to know what, what are those details? We the public need to know. Are you kidding me? That's exactly why you have those security details because you want to keep everybody safe. That's involved. You don't do that by telling people that might want to be violent. what those plans look like. Our good friend Brett Tolman, who we've had on the show before, former U.S. Attorney for Utah, now a Fox News contributor. I think he mentioned Debbie. Abby may have mentioned this in her newscast a moment ago. They may call as many as 2,000 people to the jury. Well. So they can find an impartial jury. Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see how that all breaks out, too, and that's months away. You know, here's my final thought on that. This guy turned himself in. This isn't some, you know, this isn't some serial killer that they've been tracking for years and he finally got some DNA and it pointed to a guy. This guy turned himself in. And I got to tell you that the family friend that was the deputy sheriff who brought him in, it seems like the red carpet has been rolled out for this young man. I have not seen anything but let's treat them fairly. Let's treat them. Can we stop? I just, I just, I think it's, I think it's an outlier. I just don't think I've seen people, especially those that turn themselves in and confess about what they've done. I've not seen this type of accommodation and all this fussing over the, over the process. The one thing I think they're trying to be doing, they're trying to do, Greg, in my opinion, especially the prosecution team. and the sheriff's down there, be extremely careful because they do not want anything that could come up, which would allow this trial to be called a mistrial or something. So, you know, it seems ridiculous, but I understand they're trying to take every precaution they can to make sure they don't have problems. Yep. Yeah, you know, that I can tell you is absolutely the case. They are really, really being careful with what they're saying and doing because they don't want any. Anyone to use it as an unnecessary defense. All right. We've got a lot to get to. Great to join you on this Thursday afternoon. It is the Rod and Greg Show on Talk Radio 1059, KNRS. This Somali thing, we will not blow this off like many people, like the Democrats hope. Yeah. And many Americans feel fatigue where they just can't feel urgency 24-7. So maybe this isn't, you don't feel the weight.

of the mass fraud that's happened, but we're going to keep covering this story. We sure are. Now, we've heard figures anywhere from $1 billion to $8 billion. Where has all that money gone and what kind of organizations took this? Apparently, Americans were paying Somalis not to assimilate. Let's find out what's going on in that story. Beth Brillia is joining us on our newsmaker line. She's with the Federalist. Always great to have Beth on the show. Beth, how are you? Welcome back to The Rod and Greg Show. great hey guys nice to be here beth you've been taking a look at where some of this money has been going the organizations who benefited from it what did you find out beth Well, what I found was, and this is, I thought about 30, let's see here, millions of like, $32 million that is not even included in the billions you just mentioned. This is studies and things like that that have helped Somalians get real comfortable in the United States, but not assimilate. You know, many of them came to Minnesota. In 1991, they're about. to escape famine in their own country. It was 34 years ago. So they've had time to settle, which they have, and time to assimilate, which they have not. And part of the reason they haven't assimilated is because we've got these researchers that are doing all kinds of studies on them and making their life easy. We're respecting their culture so much that they don't have to assimilate. It confuses me because we've had this discussion, but if I were just without politics, just common sense, if I were to move to a different country and they speak a different language and I want to be successful in that country, I would think I'd have to get with the program, meaning I'd have to understand the language to have a conversation, to get a job, to just be part of it. And I wouldn't find that to be oppressive. I moved there. to that whatever the country that would be. So I would imagine there's just some embedded duties to be, to have a life. Why, why is there, why, how can they even argue that assimilating into America doesn't give them, doesn't empower them or give them greater access to the American dream? Well, they don't seem to want the American dream on Americans' terms. They want to hang on to their language. They want to hang on to, like there's a lot of efforts in agriculture to get them culturally appropriate food, to teach them our farming methods so that they can grow food that they like. That's maybe not very marketable, but please use our farmland to grow stuff you like to eat. I think we all saw the video recently of the mayor of Minneapolis eating some really icky beans. That's true. That's true. I don't want to make your listeners sick, but there's female genital mutilation. 99% of girls in Somalia undergo this horrible religious ceremony. It's illegal in Pennsylvania. It's illegal in Minnesota.

Okay. But it happens anyway. They use crude, sharp devices to do yucky things to girls. So there was a study, a multimillion dollar study by the University of Minnesota, not an effort to make them stop doing that horrible barbaric procedure, but to study how to help women who are embarrassed by that procedure give themselves self-administered pap smears to, screen them for cervical cancer. Well, they're not getting cervical cancer screenings in their home country. Why don't we help them stop this disgusting practice and do something healthier with their bodies, you know, instead of putting money into that? We're paying. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, you talk to about some other programs. I mean, there's a program where I guess the Mayo Clinic got a grant of $3 million because apparently Somalis have a tough time sleeping. There's another one where they were paying money for beauty advice as to how Somali women could look more beautiful. I mean, how ridiculous is this money being spent, Beth? Well, the thing is, you know, like I said before, they've had 34 years to settle. So this has happened. Before I started this project, because the whole Somali corruption thing blew up, so I started looking at that. I was in the middle of research on just refugee settlements across the country and money that we've put into them in the last few years. And I was starting to see some... crazy spending happening there. So what I'm thinking is 34 years from now, if we don't do something, every place that there's currently a population like the Somali population where refugees have settled. We're going to have this problem in, you know, every place is going to be Minneapolis because we're not asking people to assimilate to American culture. American culture is so valuable. People want to come here. So here's my, yeah, Beth, here's my question. For every reason you just shared, if they have not assimilated, how on earth in 34 years are they able to commit such unprecedented billions of dollars in fraud? Minnesota now looks like Maine. Elect a member of Congress. Elect members of state legislatures. There's a woman in the Maine state legislature. There's nothing but vitriol to share about the United States. How has a community who's not been interested in assimilating? embedded themselves in fraud and in Congress and in state legislatures. How does that even happen?

Well, a lot of it goes back to the Democrat Socialists of America who have, you know, you look at these candidates and they're, if you see a hinky candidate that hates America, they're almost certainly part of the DSA. And there, which has totally overtaken the Democrat Party in Minnesota and looking to do the same thing. in New York, they're paying attention to the small town mayoral races, even smaller. Minneapolis is pretty big city, actually, but they're paying attention to borough council elections. They're growing candidates and getting them in place and putting them into bigger and bigger positions. So they know how it works. They know how to find them free money. They know how to get people. You know, it's our apathetic voters and real voter turnout is helping to also give these people a ramp onto changing our culture. Power. Beth has always great work again. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. My pleasure. Thank you. That's brilliant from the federalist talking about the American taxpayers paying for millions of dollars for the Somalis not to assimilate. All right. More coming up. It is The Rotter and Greg Show on Talk Radio 1059, KNS. I wish if they could have just talked to us. We'd say, you know, these Democrats aren't losing any sleep, just totally robbing this state of a seat. They're counting them up. They're just stacking them up large in California and here in Utah. The issues that confront Indiana, they certainly had every right to redistrict that state. And so you got a different set of rules for Republicans and Democrats in this country. Yeah, yeah. You know, earlier this week, we were talking about John Curtis saying that, you know, we need to hug an immigrant every day so that we can feel good. Yeah, yes. Now Spencer Cox, who was on CNN. Remember when he used to say, don't watch CNN or listen to Fox? He used to say that. Now he's on all the time. Well, he was on a town hall meeting last night there, and he says, I don't think Donald Trump wants to unite the country. Yeah, you know, he doesn't know. I think he tried to pivot to the right. The right didn't really welcome him with open arms. I think he's back to the left and trying to make the CNN crowd happy. Well, speaking to the president, some good economic news today, and the Dow took off record high again today. Interest rates were dropped yesterday. Joining us on our any hour newsmaker line right now is economist Steve Moore. Always great to have Steve on the show. Steve, a lot of economic news coming out. What do you make of all this? Well, you're right. A lot of new developments with the economy, one of the most important. ones is that the Fed cut their interest rate by quarter points. That's not a surprise. That's what everybody was expecting. And I think it was the right move. Look, I'm still worried a little bit about inflation. We're running at about tick 2.5 to 3% right now, which is a big improvement over what we had under Biden. But we want to get that rate down to the...

to the target rate, which is 2%. So still a little progress needs to be made. By the way, what do you guys pay in there in Salt Lake for gas these days? Well, you know what, Steve, Greg and I have really been on a tie rate over this because we hear prices around the country lower and they haven't dropped here. They are starting to drop here. We finally got under the $3 mark. Yeah, we're under the $3 mark. So we are starting to see it, but it's been pretty slow, Steve. Okay. So, you know, basically there are about 20 states that are less than $3 a gallon now, and there's, I think, three states that are below $2 a gallon, which is pretty amazing. So we're seeing improvement in the gas prices. By the way, we used to measure inflation by what's happening with gas prices, but now the gas prices are down, the media says, no, we're going to look at B prices. It's a moving target. Listen, the news has been good on the economy. And the really strange thing is maybe you fellows can explain this to me with all of this good news that's coming. And look, we've got all times highs on the stock market. We've got a good job situation. We've got incomes rising faster inflation. Why is it people are so somber? Why are they so glum? Because the polls show, you know, 57% of voters, this is a Fox poll, 57% disapproved with the way Trump is handling the economy, and only 37% approved. So it's a mystery to me. I can't quite figure it out, but I'm pretty bullish on where the economy is headed. into 2026. Well, let me ask you this, Steve. Have you talked to Mrs. Moore? Because we've talked to Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Arquette, and they tell us not at the grocery store. We don't see anything coming down, Steve. That's exactly right. People are angry when they come out of the grocery store because one of the biggest increases has been, as I mentioned before, is the price of hamburgers and steaks and, you know, that kind of thing, which, you know, used to be my wife said, I used to be able to buy a steak for $15. Now it's $25. You know, look, people don't like it when prices rise, but I believe we're in a lot better shape. Let's not forget that about, I said this on Sean Hannity show the other night, that, you know, 87% of the inflation that people are angry about happened under Biden. It didn't happen under Trump. All the price rises happened under the previous president. But look, that only takes you so far blaming the, you know, the past your predecessor. Yeah, so there's so much to talk about and you're the guru. I love, I am so bullish about, especially as you've pointed out, the tax relief that we see that when tax returns are submitted and rebates are brought back, I see everything that you're saying. I got a 20-something young man. He actually follows your newsletter and he wrote me and he said, this is the part I don't understand because you pointed out rightfully that the value of homes are going up so. Well, and we're seeing the trillions of dollars of assets that we Americans have in our homes, which we wouldn't want those prices to be devalued. But he's saying, Dad, also the stat is that I had to be 40 years old before I own a house. And Steve Moore said the only way I'm getting yours is I'm going to get your house is what he said. And so I've got to wait for you to die. Exactly.

No, that is the kind of dilemma here is that on the one hand, old folks like me, I'm 65, I'm a baby boomer. You know, my house is like tripled in value over the last 15 years, but the problem is my kids can't afford to buy it. Yes. You know, so that's true. And I... And look, I think what we need to do in this country is just build more affordable housing. And a lot of this is due to, I don't know about Salt Lake, but so many big blue cities have so many restrictions on building, you know, single family homes and affordable housing that it's really driven up the cost. So, but look. You know, we have, as Americans, $35 trillion of wealth in our homes, $35 trillion. So the fact that housing values go up shows that more and more people are buying up real estate in the United States because they believe in this country. And this happened and Reagan was president. We had the big boom. So I understand it's a double-edged sword on the one hand. But as I said in the hotline the other day, yeah. Young people complain about how much these cows cost. But guess what? When I die, I'm going to pass my... He loves showing me that, by the way. I know about that because my kids already licking his lips, okay? Thanks to you. He reads your newsletter. Yeah, thanks for wishing our death. I'm just worried that my kids are going to poison me. Exactly. You're setting us up, Steve. Steve, let's talk about Obama care for just a minute. The Senate rejected both proposals today, one from the Democrats. one from the Republicans looks like those subsidies are just going to go away at the end of the year, Steve. I hope so. I mean, look, Obamacare has been a fraud. It is a failure. It is driving up costs. We have the stupidest way of paying for health care ever. There are 21 states, by the way, that will not comply with President Trump's order that you must tell us if the people are signing up for food stamps and Medicaid are actually eligible for the program. Do they have a legitimate false security card? I mean, come on. How can you get these benefits? And look, I'm not against immigration. I think immigration is good. But, you know, what are we going to do? Provide free health care for everybody in the world. I mean, it's just, it's really outrageous how much this stuff costs. So I'm a big believer that we have to, you know, and by the way, the insurance companies, as I've mentioned many times on your show are the real villains here. There is the ones who want to keep jacking up all these subsidies. You know why? Because they're the ones who get rich off of it. They're making the money. They're making the money. That's exactly right. Steve, thanks for joining us. Steve Moore, top economist, former top economic advisor to President Trump as well. More coming up here on the Rod and Greg Show and talk radio, 1059, KNRS. It's time to get.

Super sure. All right, real quick, Greg. It was bound to happen. But I tell you what, CNN got put through the meat grinder today and the afternoon briefing, White House briefing with Karoline Leavitt. Caitlin Susan Collins, who tried to push. Karoline Leavitt to talk about the economy, talk about the numbers, claiming they were bad, and this is how Karoline Leavitt responded. My predecessor stood up at this podium, and she said inflation doesn't exist. She said the border was secure, and people like you just took her at her word, and those were two utter lies. Everything I'm telling you is the truth backed by real factual data, and you just don't want to report on it because you want to push untrue narratives about the president. I love it. Man, I love it. Ouch, out, out, out. Yeah. You don't want to report it. Yeah. You just want to keep pushing a false narrative. Good for her. Yeah. She's got a lot of Vim and bigger. Yeah, she does. She does not back down. There was a story a week ago, and I meant to bring it up on the show, Greg, during this time, but I think it was the former mayor of Heber City, I believe. Wrote an op-ed piece in the Desiread News calling for more electric school buses. Really? Okay. They only cost a zillion dollars a piece and don't last long. And they don't work. And, you know, he said they're safe, save the environment, protecting the kids, right? Guess what happened in California last night? What? One of the school buses caught fire. Yeah. That's like one of those eternal flames, you know, in Arlington. It'll just burn for the rest of time. Yeah. Well, those things are very difficult to put out. Yeah. Because of the lithium batteries and all that stuff. It's a chemical. It's a. They can't even get near it. They got to let it burn. It's a disaster. Yeah. It's a disaster. Well, the guy said, well, we maybe not. We shouldn't think of that. No. That makes sense to me. So, all right. Coming up. The governor, back in the spotlight today, a lot of social media about our dearly beloved governor, Governor Spencer Cox, on CNN, which he. Years ago told us we shouldn't pay any attention to, but apparently now we should. He says he does not think Donald Trump wants a united country. It's disappointing. I mean, he, he, I think that's his, but just so you know, I think that's the true sentiment of the governor. I mean, the governor has made many, has had many different opinions about the president over the years. Yes. And it's gone from one side of the other. And after Charlie Kirk's assassination, it looked like they were, you know, they were tied at the hip to some degree. I mean, there was a lot of, a lot of cohesiveness. And, and I think he took a lot of attacks from the left, certainly from CNN types. And then. But then he got on CNN today. This week. This week. And I think he was critical again. And that's kind of, I think that's more of who he is. I think he was trying very hard to, I think he heard the voters and he wanted to be appreciated by conservatives in Utah, but I don't know that he felt.

received by the conservatives. So I think he's going to say, well, what do I have to lose? I'm just going to say it how I feel. Yeah. Well, we'll let you hear what he did have to say and get some of your reaction to it. It's all coming up. Hour number two of the Rod and Greg Show on its way. Tyler Robinson, who's accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk back on 91 days ago. It was his 90th day yesterday. 91 days ago is when that took place. It did. Tyler Robinson turned himself in, by the way. This wasn't, you know, so if we're wondering if he's guilty or not, he is presumed innocent until proving guilty, but. He turned himself in. Yeah. So let's keep that in the equation. Yeah, a lot of maneuvering going on. Now, Greg and I earlier this week were talking about a comment that Utah sender John Curtis made. He was on CNN over the weekend. And he talked about, you know, what he does or what he wishes people would do each and every day, and including go hug an immigrant. Yeah, just think, wake up every day and think, how can I just love immigrants more? What can I do to help them? Because that's what this is all about. Everything, everything. Everything we're going through, the four years of madness that we live through in the Biden administration, it's just about hugging and loving. That's all. That's all as a serious senator, U.S. senator you have to talk about. Yeah. Is that we just have to love more. Okay. Yeah. I guess that will solve the problem. I guess that's all the problem is. We just haven't, you know. Everybody has not, has not started their day wondering what more can they do for every immigrant. Yeah. I just, if you just did that. We'd have no problems. Yeah, okay. Well, then comes along Spencer Cox. Yes, yes. Our governor, who has told us numerous times over the year that we need to disagree better. Yes. And that the only way to do so would be to watch or stop watching Fox News and CNN in MSNBC, because that will just further divide us. He has said that. But he's kind of become a regular on CNN and MSNBC anymore. And he was there Monday night. They were doing a town hall meeting with Governor Josh Shapiro. Is it Josh? Yeah, Josh Shapiro. Yes. The governor of Pennsylvania. Yes. About, you know, two governors, how they get along and, you know, getting along and how that will change the country. You know, turn down the heat on political violence. Well, he was also asked about Donald Trump. And he basically said that the president does not want a United States of America. Here's what he said. I know that the president disagrees with me. He and I've had these conversations. I have to say during the Charlie Kirk shooting in the conversations we had, he talked to me about nonviolence and trying to be a voice for that. I understand he's not interested in uniting the country. And he would tell you that, I think, if he were sitting here with us tonight.

But I would also say that it's not going to be a president who fixes this. It's not going to be two governors who fix this. It really has to be all of us. The politicians that we elect are a reflection of we, the people. This is kind of what we want today. And I think both parties are guilty of it. And so I'm going to do my part. I appreciate Governor Josh Shapiro doing his part to tone down that rhetoric. Let's have the debate. Let's fight about the ideas. Let's fight about the issues. we're supposed to do and i believe that the best uh that the best ideas are going to win and uh and and that's that's fair game but i i i truly i truly don't like the personalization of these attacks now Josh Shapiro his name has come up quite often his name was mentioned possibly to take Joe Biden's place. Yes. But, you know, that didn't have... And in a vice presidential candidate potentially instead of walls. His name is still being kicked around, and Governor Cox would ask if he would, in fact, vote for Josh Shapiro if he was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in 2028. Do you think he would be a good president? Yeah, I do. I have to tell you, I think... I'm very biased towards governors. I think governors make the best presidents. I just do. I think for this very reason, we always say that potholes aren't partisan. As governors, we actually have to accomplish stuff. And our system was set up for the states to be laboratories of democracy so that we could learn from each other and steal ideas. And that people vote with their feet now. If your state isn't performing, they will move to another state. And so I've been very impressed with what he's been able to do on the economy, with permitting reform, cutting regulations. That sounded like red state stuff, and he's doing it. And that's impressive to me. And so, yeah, yeah, I think there are a lot of governors in this country who would make great presidents, and I think he would be one of them. It is so funny to watch you. You are just chomping at the bit with a few comments on this. I have a few as well, but I'll let you go first when it comes to what the governor said. Yeah, first off, I have to start with this one. I cannot. Folks, if you hear people say that it is Republicans and Democrats alike who are contributing to this negative tone and to this that we're going through, the violence in politics or whatever it may be. This is not. You cannot spread this across Republicans and Democrats. It's not an equal problem. It lets these violent leftists off the hook when you say it's everyone because it fundamentally is not. It is not. It is not. When he says that the president would tell you himself that he has no interest in uniting this country. I think that is misrepresented. I think he understands his critics out there. He understands there's not anything he can do to persuade them otherwise. Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing. Yes, it is. Acknowledging that doesn't mean he doesn't want to unite this country because I believe that the things that he works on and prioritizes are uniting issues of whether it's fair trade deals around the world, closing the border, public safety.

affordability. He is lowering the interest, the inflation and seeing interest rates lowered. These are uniting principles. You wouldn't know it from the media that covers him. But that, again, is not him wanting a divided country, him pursuing a divided country. And it certainly isn't some problem we have about tone that we all equally share as Republicans and Democrats. If you can't see a Tesla takedown, if you can't see what the Democrats have done and provoked. across this country of everyday Americans, then you're not paying attention. I just think it's such a cop out to say, we're all to blame. Yeah, well, at that point has been made, you know, I think the Democrats are out there saying, well, all of you folks on the right who are promoting violence, you want political violence, that's what they, and people like Spencer Cox, you would think. He would understand that's not the case. He should defend the fact that it is not. It is not. I want you to listen to this thing. This is Jasmine Crockett, okay, talking about Democrats in Violence, and listen to this montage of Democratic leaders who are calling for violence. I challenge somebody to go and find a clip of a Democrat invoking violence. Let's extinguish him for good. I will go and take Trump out tonight. We're going to fight it in the courts. We're going to fight it in the streets. When they go low, we're going to bury them below the Capitol. That's what we're going to do. We take them to the mud and choke them out. You know, there needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives. I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all of the country, and maybe there will be. We're walking down a damn different path. We're fighting fire with fire. We're going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth. By taking behind the gym and beat the hell out of them. Fight back, punch back, and make sure that they stay down. And you know what? Kick them when they're down. Every one of those comments are from a Democratic leader in this country. And we're being accused, those of us on the right being accused of promoting political violence? Well, show me the Republican equivalent. Show it to me. Even in our state of Utah, show me the equivalent of a no king's rally where someone shot and killed. Okay. Show me its equivalent in the state of Utah on the right, right of center. I don't know of one. If I'm wrong, you know, someone correct me. But I am telling you that they have used fear to foment. You know, the foment fear to compel behavior, and it is a tool in the toolshed. This is a daily practice with him. I mean, calling Trump a fascist, a Nazi, you just can't find, you even have Senator John Fetterman who will say different than Governor Cox that you've got to quit attacking Erika Kirk, who's lost her husband and has children. And this is not a decent thing to do. He calls out members of his own party. of his own party why why we can't have where that's common sense why can't we have people that would do the same in terms of pointing to the ones that are the root of the cause forget that it sounds so nice to say we're all to blame you know we all have to just take a good look at ourselves this is the this is what they say on on you know on dr phil okay this isn't what you say as a serious adult leader paul you know elected official

Call the balls and strikes and call what's going on in this country for what it is. Yeah, well, first, the attacks on Erika Kirk, and there have been many lately, are despicable. I'm sorry, folks, but this, this is a woman whose husband was killed in front of. millions of eyes, right, looking this. She has, what, two young children to raise without their father, and she's being attacked, and her husband is being attacked. So let's talk about political violence. Now, when we come back, Greg, because we need to take a break, I've got a thought on what I don't think people like Spencer Cox understand about the Democrats. I'll share that when we come back. It is the Rod and Greg Show right here on Utah's Talk Radio 1059, KNRS. Spencer Cox, who wants to have a conversation, you know, sit down, which I think you and I would agree with. Sure, we can have that, right? That's what we'd like to have. I love conversations. But what they do not understand, and I think what people like Spencer Cox and Josh Shapiro and maybe other public, maybe John Curtis in this state, the Democratic base is not in the mood to compromise. They are not. They do not want to compromise. I don't believe they have to. Yeah, they don't believe they have to. I mean, you know this guy who's running against Jasmine Crockett for the Senate down there in Texas? He put out a on his website, here's what it says. Vote for me. It's time to start flipping tables. Yeah, there you go. Now, does that sound like somebody who wants to sit down and have a conversation about solving the nation's problems? No, they, I think they picked up what Donald Trump did the day he was nearly assassinated. Fight, fight, fight. And that's all they want to do. For all the wrong things. Yeah, for all the wrong thing. So, so, so Governor Cox can call for a, let's have a lotty law, kissy face time. They do not, the real active wing of the Democratic Party. And I think you'll see that in this new district, if in fact it flies here in the state of Utah. At first, I thought Ben McAdams is in. He's in. He's got it. Yeah, you did. But now, I mean, your thoughts on this. I think you have to buy me dinner for lunch for like weeks. I made that out. But I don't know if even a Ben McAdams, who you would think maybe is. kind of a moderate, even though he's not, if you really know where he stands on things, if he doesn't go real far left and say, fight, fight, fight, we don't want to compromise. He's not going to win that district. So some of this is politics. This is campaigns and elections, and campaign elections, sadly, sometimes doesn't even resemble public service and public policy. But what campaigns and elections typically have been in the past is... You got to, if you're a Democrat, you got to run to the left to make your base happy. Yes. Okay. And then as soon as you get the nomination, you've got to sprint back to the middle. Yeah. And be there for the general election. And we've seen that the distance that you would have to run left and the distance you'd have to come to the center wasn't as far. It wasn't, it wasn't planetary. It wasn't like solar system, you know, size or distance. And now I think that it's gotten so strident. And I'm going to say.

This is not an unfair statement. This isn't me being selfish or myopic. I am going to tell you that the tactics of the left. is violence. It is fear. They believe they can get you to act out of fear as your prime motivator, where I do not see that as the number one, number two, three, any of the tactics on the right. If we do anything, we want to talk, we want to hug it out, we want to, we want to get you on facts and math and all this. They want emotion. They want you scared. They don't want you, they don't want you aspirational. They don't want you excited. They want you terrified. It's why it's the only thing they can bring up is Donald Trump. And the only thing they can say about him is he's a monster. Yeah. Because they want you afraid. And if you're afraid, you'll give up a lot. You'll give up your liberties. You'll give up common sense things that are in your best interest. And what a democratically elected republic always assumed the electorate would vote in their best interest. Yes. The Democrats want your best interest to be. Forget. the fraud, the billions of dollars of fraud and the taxpayer money being stolen. Forget a health care system that doesn't work unless you keep funneling, you know, shoveling money at it while they tell you it fails in real time. They want you afraid of what the consequence if you don't comply will be. And I think Josh Shapiro knows that. And if Spencer Cox doesn't understand that, I don't know what. I don't think he does. I do not. think he understands that the democratic base is not in the mood of compromise they simply do not want it great how many years what is it 40 50 years in this country until the republicans got control of the house it took them a long time with newt gingrich but did we try and compromise and when we compromised Did conservatives ever come out or get what they really wanted? I would say no. You know, and it was funny because when I was a public servant, I understood that you had to find common ground. Everything is math. If you're in a committee hearing and you're trying to get your bill out, you can't be a caucus of one and say it's my way or the highway. You've got to get votes to get a bill out of committee. You've got to have a majority on the floor. Everything is about math, and that math is addition. It has to be addition. So I used to get confused sometimes when they say, don't compromise, don't give an inch. I say, you know, if you even look at our, you know, our form of government, you look at a Senate and a house. This was, you know, population versus equal representation. And that's why we have this, you know, bicameral legislative body. Well, so I'd say, you know, you've got to kind of give. What I think people mean and what I mean today about the compromise problem is that Democrats believe compromising is do I get. 100% of what I want or 99% of what I want. Yeah, yeah. They are, they have no interest in common ground. They have no interest in, in, in actually finding that common common common ground for them is you waking up not being so racist, morally failed or stupid and getting on board with what everything they want. What they want. That's what their compromise looks like. That's what it is. You give. Yeah. Not us. Yeah. And when you hear people, Republican leaders, senators and governors pay lip service to that mentality.

It doesn't help us. It doesn't get the job done. And that's why Trump, that's what scares the daylights out of the Democrats out of Trump is that he gets, he knows what they're doing. And when the governor says that the president has no interest in uniting the country, he has every interest in uniting the company. What country, what he will tell you, though, is he knows there are people out there that want nothing to do with him. And he's not fooling himself to think that they do. He knows they're out there. He wants to unite the country by making the country number one. Correct. Putting America first. He knows there are a lot of people out there, mostly in the Democratic Party, who could care less. Yep. All right, we want to get your reaction to our discussion on this. 888-570801010. On your cell phone, dial pound 250 and say, hey, Rod, or leave us a message on our talkback line. Is it worth even compromising with those on the left anymore? Your calls and comments coming up next. On a CNN town hall meeting, basically saying that Donald Trump does not want to unite the country. And he talked about the talk about political violence, always kind of, I think, leaning or looking to the right to control themselves. Well, we find out that it's the left that needs to control themselves. And I have said, I just don't think, you know, people like John Curtis, maybe Spencer Cox for sure, don't understand that the Democratic base not interested in compromise. Yet they say we need to compromise with the left. It's frustrating. I just don't see the – I just don't see the Tesla take down equivalent on the right. I don't see what they're talking about. And I know that every time the Democrats are able to get away with the violence that they – that they – display and the fear they foment and all we can ever say is well you know those republicans they are a fault too it gives them permission to keep doing what they do because no one's noticing nobody's drawing a line to say you're not actually it's not actually everyone it's actually you yeah so i i think that's a strategy and i think anyone that wants to spread the blame across and you know individuals and parties that don't engage in it. They're just, they're playing into the other side's hands. They are. Let's go to, let's go to our, uh, let's go to our, uh, let's go to our listeners waiting on the line. Which one first? Let's go to Tom and Gransville. Okay, let's go to Tom. Tom, welcome to the Ron and Greg show. Hey, thanks for having me. I just wanted to point something out, you know, it seems like there's confusion about Spencer Cox and. There was over 4,000 delegates in the Republican Party in Utah last year that voted 68% for Phil Lyman versus 32% for Spencer Cox. He almost got booed out of there, and I think that everybody there understood that he's not a real Republican or a conservative Republican. He's a rhino. And that's why he acts the way he does. He's more of a Democrat. Yeah, you know what? Those are, that's verifiable facts, what Tom just described in terms of the, the caucus convention cycle. And, you know, I've said that the caucus convention cycle, you get neighborhoods elect their delegates, they elect people they know, they come in, they have the unique opportunity to really ask candidates questions, deeper questions, even statewide, that you don't get, and usually get just carpet bombed with mail.

TV billboards, TV ads. This is, it's a little more substantive than that. And so, you know, not doing well in the caucus convention cycle is, well, let's just say this, it certainly doesn't play well to the base. I'll just, I'll just say that. No, it does not. All right, back to the phones. Let's talk with Janet, who's in Highland tonight, listening to The Rod and Greg Show. Janet, how are you? Thanks for joining us. Oh, hi there. Hey, I just wanted to remind everybody that prior to Orrin Hatch, the Democrats kept saying, so the Republicans, you have to work with us. Yeah. And being the good old boys, Orrin Hatch got, you know, he started working with Ted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on health care. And ever since then, we have had years and years of the Democrats telling Republicans, you have to work with us. So that is where their mindset is at, that we have to work with them. But it is time for them to start working with the Republicans. Here, here. Amen to that, Janet. You make a very good point. I mean, why can't they come to the Republican Party and say, okay, you know, they won't admit this, but in reality of slapping them in the face, Obamacare is not working. It is not working. So, you know, why not work with the Republicans can come up to the plan to either. I think we should just get ready to start all over again. Do you know how I know Obamacare doesn't work? Why? The Democrats wanted to pass a temporary COVID, billions and billions of dollars, temporary assistance, because people were forced out of their jobs, weren't allowed to work, stay at home. And now they're telling you that all of those emergency temporary dollars are necessary for the program to exist. in any way another three years as a matter of fact well it's not covid anymore it's not an emergency anymore people are not stuck or sequestered in their homes anymore but you still need all that money then something's wrong and when you're in a hole you don't just keep digging yeah their admission that it's apocalyptic if you don't keep the emergency funds permanent says that their program isn't working as designed It says that it's failing. It's failing in real time. So if you want to do something, what we should be doing is talking about health care and delivery of health care, empowering the patients, those savings accounts, health care savings accounts. There's a way to address it. It's not throwing good money after a bad cause as Obamacare has proven to be. It's a, the math doesn't show anything but failure. It really doesn't. Yeah. And the education department has been around for what? 41 years, something like that now. Has an education improved in this country? Literacy rates are worse than we've ever counted. Maybe actually, maybe it was in the, and maybe Neanderthals didn't have as high of the literacy rate as we have now. But I would say in modern history, it's got to be the worst. And I think some people probably say, you know, if Donald Trump wasn't there. It would be, you know, the Republicans would be willing to compromise with the Democrats. But it's all because of Donald Trump. I don't believe that in the first. No, you know, at all. If I were to go back, one of the things, so 1992 is a long time ago. I get it. But for me, it wasn't all that long ago. In 1994, when Republicans won majority in the House of Representatives in Congress, it was the first time in 40 years. Newt Gingrich. So let's go back to the 90s. If it was.

ever said by Democrats, Republicans, you better learn how to work with Democrats. It might be during that 40-year time horizon when the Democrats controlled the House. But when they didn't control the House, how that narrative kept going that you still have to work with us, whether we're in the minority or majority, you still have to work with us. That's where I think Janet pointed out, we've been under this mindset for quite some time. And it is how the Democrats see it. Compromise is. doing what we say. Exactly. All right, we've got more to say on this, and we'll get to more of your phone calls. It is the Rod and Greg Show 888-570-70-cell phone, dial pound 250 and say, hey, Rod, or leave us a message on our talkback line by simply downloading the IHeart Radio app and look for KNS. More coming up. If you're just joining us now, driving home tonight, the governor the other night on his town hall meeting with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who was a CNN town hall meeting hosted by Dana Bash, said a couple of interesting things that we've been talking about. One of them is that he does not believe that Donald Trump wants to unite the country, which I totally disagree with. Donald Trump does want. to make America better and bigger than it ever has been. And he believes in that. And he's trying to do whatever he can out there to do that. And the governor also, you know, talked about we've got to overcome this political violence. We've got to tone everything down. Well, let me tell you what, Governor, the Democrats, the base of the Democratic Party, does not want to tone anything down. They want to fight, fight, fight, and this this insinuation that both sides, the right and the left. are responsible for political violence in this country. We, or I do, and I know Greg does, totally disagree with that. It's all coming from the left. Yeah, and I said this earlier in this hour, but I think it's worth, it bears repeating, and that's this. When Pennsylvania's Senator, Democrat Senator John Fetterman, defends Erika Kirk, and says, stop attacking this widow. Stop it. She has children. What you're doing is wrong. When Governor Cox in Utah, given that this horrific assassination took place here in this state, and he was part of the investigation and the immense manpower and work to try and find the assailant, he should take the attacks on Erika Kirk as personally as Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania does. And in that moment, when he's with the governor from Pennsylvania, he should be pointing out tone. and what has happened to her in the months since her husband was assassinated and the horrific commentary about her husband. And that is not, it has no equal. I'm sorry, you cannot find it. It is not both sidesism when you talk about the way that Charlie Kirk, he's been treated post-mortem and what has happened to his wife and what people say about her. And he should be sticking up for her in that moment with that CNN deal with the Pennsylvania governor.

as much as the Pennsylvania senator sticks up for Erika Kirk. Good point, yeah. And I didn't hear it. Yeah, near did I. I mean, he should have looked right at Dana Bash and said, you know what needs to stop right now? The bashing of Erika Kirk. That's a classic example of this political violence that you're talking about, but nobody is defending her. Her husband was killed in my state. You know, we have done everything we can to investigate this and bring this to a conclusion, you know, and to bring justice to the man who's accused of doing so. So stop it. Leave that poor young family alone. That's right. And those on the left won't. I mean, you had this woman who they're now classifying as the Democratic response to Joe Rogan. She is despicable with what the thing she has to say. She's so performative. She's trying to be, she's purposely trying to be controversial. Joe Rogan actually is inquisitive. He's actually asking hard questions, having tough conversations. She's trying to be, she's just a showboat. She doesn't mean it. She's trying to be, she's trying to incite emotion, violent emotion, really. And look, if you want to, someone wants to say, well, you know, there's conservatives that have gone after, you know, the. saying that Charlie Kirk's assassination was a conspiracy. It is not part of the normal Americans lexicon what you're talking about with those right wings. I'm talking that the left broadly, the regime media, have attacked Charlie Kirk. They continue to do it. They attack his wife. And it is not the same. There is no equivalent on the right. I don't care who they find or what they find. I keep hearing about all these Republican sources I'd never met, never saw, never heard. It's as if they're as common as the day is long. They're not. There is no equivalent. We're going to lead off the 6 o'clock hour with the discussion about what Australia is doing and banning team social media. That's coming up next. Australia will enforce a total ban on social media for everyone under the age of 16 starting next week. Let's dig into this. Joining us on our newsmaker line is Ian Howarth. Ian is an author, political commentator. Ian, you've dug into this. What do you make of it? Yeah, well, as a British person, it's always fun to get a chance to have a little bit of a pop at the Australian. So that was my main motivation in calling them out. But in all seriousness, the big concern here is like Australia has become kind of a beacon in a lot of ways of like the Western world taking a very anti-Western authoritarian bent. We saw it during COVID. We've seen it. during their kind of rallying against free speech we've seen it with migration issues and now we're seeing it with the issue of social media where they've just announced the enforcement of a new legislation that essentially banned social media for anyone under 16 with pretty large financial fines for any of the 10 big tech companies that don't comply it looks like they're all going to comply i think for me the concern kind of goes beyond the arguments behind whether or not social media is good or not. It's obviously bad for young people. I don't think that's really the debate. The point of the article that I was trying to make is that is this actually solving a problem of a society that is better equipped to deal with the world?

in which social media exists whether you like it or not. And I really don't think banning children from accessing social media, from learning how to engage with it, with learning the tools to navigate the lies and the manipulation and things like that. I think just banning it kind of kicks the can down the road until they're adults and then suddenly they just can use all these platforms and they have no idea. what to do or how to do it. Kind of the attitude I have to some extent is a little different, but my attitude is similar to the drinking age of being 21 in the U.S. where it's 18 and younger in other countries. It's like you're not delaying drinking. What you're doing is you're making sure that people are drinking when they're not at home, they're not in a safe environment, and things tend to go wrong. So I kind of have the same attitude when it comes to social media. You know, I think the argument you just made is solid, but I expected you to say that the compliance that is required is a fan. that enforcing this law would be virtually impossible. You mentioned that the large companies and social media platforms are going to comply, but how? Do you have to, how do you even begin to do this? Well, I think there's two different routes, right? There's one where everyone acts in good faith and it doesn't really happen because the government doesn't crack down and they kind of look the other way. Similar to what happened in Australia when they banned a ton of guns, there are a lot of people in more rural areas that just kind of said, no, no thank you and kept their guns and the government couldn't do much about it. But I think a lot of this is kind of indicative of the COVID-era authoritarianism, where this law will now be used as a justification for more of a police state online. It will be a justification for the government to have an eye on your personal devices, to have an eye on your internet usage, things like that. And so I think, obviously, people will get around it if they want to. You can use virtual networks and things like that. You can fake your age. You can get all kinds of different ways around it. But I think often that, again, misses the point in that. the powers that will be taken by the government in order to justify and try and enforce this. Those powers don't go away. Those powers don't get diluted over time. They only increase. And Australia has a short but very dangerous history of authoritarianism that I think is just continuing right now. Yeah, I would agree with you on that one. Ian, if governments want to do something, what do you recommend they do in trying to deal with the influence of social media on our children today? What do you recommend they should be looking at? Well, I think one thing is going to be banning social media platforms from being available that have... deep links to countries that are our enemies. So, for example, I'm talking about TikTok in this case. Yeah. The fact that Congress voted to ban TikTok and the executive branches just ignored it and opened their own TikTok account, I think is a huge problem. And so for me, that's one part is that a lot of the dangers we see ideologically are coming from TikTok and massive levels of Chinese propaganda coming our way. But then if we're going to look at the...

So a more domestic issue of things like the impact of Instagram on teenagers and specifically teenage girls and their mental health and things like that. I think that speaks to just a broader problem of the internet in our lives and the fact that as a society, I feel like we are always behind the technology that is hitting us. And it takes a generation or two to really learn how to navigate that. And I think a lot of this has to be solved by... trying to understand how this stuff works. I think it will take research. I think it will take good faith, non-political research into understanding how this stuff actually affects children. And then trying to equip children with tools so that it doesn't impact them in the way it clearly is. It's like the idea that we can get rid of bullying. No, we will never get rid of bullying, but we can try and... enable children to actually not be impacted by it to have self-esteem to have a level of not caring what bullies think and say and so i think we can kind of have the same attitude there but first we need to understand the problem and i think we simply don't because in the grand scheme of things we know we're at the forefront of this wild west of the internet still and no one has a good answer except for just banning things and finding companies and trying to make money What about just good old fashioned accountability? There's some, Congress passed a law a long time ago that said, look, these social media platforms are platforms, are not publishers. And so it would be like a criminal using the phone to coordinate a crime. We're not going to charge the phone company. But now that we know that algorithms exist, now that we know that they can tailor messages to the receiver that they do have some grasp around what content is shared, are there, is there some? at least in the United States, some action in the United States should take where we pull back some of these exemptions that we've allowed for social media platforms and have them be accountable for what they let out and let people see, be it a minor or an adult. Yeah, I think I've been an advocate for quite a few years. I used to work in big tech. I actually worked for Facebook for quite a few years. And so this has been something I've been speaking about for a while of trying to tweak what we know is Section 230, which is the rule that a lot of these companies use, as you say, to kind of masquerade as platforms when in many ways they're publishers. I think the problem there is it's kind of a nuanced, blurry line that's really hard to define of what content. should be free from from responsibility for the platform and what shouldn't and i think as you say the issue is when they put their thumb on the scale the problem there is it's really hard to know when a company has actually put their thumb on a scale because these algorithms are massively complicated i'm talking about billions of lines of code that very few people could understand alone if you just got that plonk down on your desk trying to read through it be impossible to understand and so i think for me a lot of it has to come through an encouragement of transparency so that we actually understand how these algorithms work, why they are feeding us, what they are feeding, and where this content comes from. I mean, for example, in the world of paid content where advertisers are paying for you to see things or influencers are saying things because someone in another country is paying them to, I think we need a level of transparency so that at least we can have some level of critical reasoning on what we're seeing and why we're seeing it.

I think the problem is that when we start suing software companies for this kind of stuff, the result of that is just the internet is going to go away in a lot of ways. And the free speech impacts there, yeah, it's great because we've kind of taken big tech down a peg. the broader sense is that the internet is a massive win for Western values, for free speech, for liberty, for individualism. And so you start suing people for what is on a platform, you lose a lot of that too. So that's why I'm usually very open to saying we need to tweak something like Section 230, but I'm not one of these people screaming to the skies that we need to ban it because the consequences of that, I think it's going to be really bad too. You know what, Greg, thank you, Ian, for joining us on our newsmaker line. I think tweaking. the current rules on the internet would help but we can't do away with the 230 now well i i well i think that well we could tweak it Yeah, I think the immunity, when their algorithms are so powerful and they have such a better handle on what's being shown, I think there should be some culpability on their side. But how about kiddie porn? Can we start there? I mean, can we just, like, can they just be responsible and liable if they let any kiddie? Can we all just say that's universally something that should never be, you should be shielded from liability from? Can we take that one and take that one and say, okay, you're legally liable if that, it shows up on any of your platforms, boom. I mean, come on. That's easy. There's a bunch of, I can think of a bunch that should be universally a no deal. Yeah. All right. We've got more coming up here on the Thursday edition of the Rodin Greg Show and talk radio 1059 can't. I'm citizen Greg Hughes. And I'm Rod Arquette. You know, the affordability issue, you know, the president, his team, they're doing all they can to convince the American people. It's not as bad. You know, they were handed the worst. economy ever thanks to joe biden and it's going to take a while to dig out of it and progress is being made gas prices are coming down egg prices are coming down but when you come to issues like health insurance not coming down at all and and uh that's why they're trying to deal with it but one you know in blue states it costs more to live i mean let's be honest yes and electricity rates are crazy Yes, they are. Yes, there's been a recent study that actually takes what we suspected to be the case, and that is irresponsible blue states don't know what they're doing, so of course it would be more expensive. Well, it turns out that the study bears that out proves it is the case. It is that energy costs are more expensive in blue states. with California leading the way. Well, let's find out why. Joining us on our newsmaker line now is Isaac Gore, co-founder, Vice President of Research at Always on Energy Research. Let's check it out. Isaac, what's going on in these blue states? Yeah, absolutely. So what we found is that blue states generally have much higher electricity prices than red states, and that's because blue states find new and creative ways to charge their citizens more for the same commodity that...

you know is sold to people in red states at a much lower price so you know if we're going to talk about you know public enemy number one when it comes to affordability just look at california they charge twice as much as the national average and that's because they add a whole bunch of policies to the electricity prices like They tax people for the CO2 emissions that it's emitted when they generate power. They have all of these renewable energy mandates. They don't have proper forest management. So when they do have a fire, it causes a lot of damage that results in a lot of liability payments. So you name a bad policy in terms of energy that's going to make things more expensive and less reliable. California's done it. So let me ask you this. This mismanagement, what environment, they hang their hat on all of this is to be good stewards of the environment. But it sounds like, as you've just described, the lack of management of forest and wild lands, what's the environmental impact of the mismanagement of your energy policy? Well, I mean, everything becomes a tinderbox. You have to have active forest management. You have to let the logging industry go in and reduce the fuel load. That's, you know, that's basically... basic forestry science and california's been unable to do that because you know their courts have stopped a lot of logging i mean logging has basically been illegal in the state since 1990 as far as i'm concerned so there's been a lot of problems in california that have just you know made it unworkable in a whole bunch of different aspects you see that with the high speed rail that they were supposed to have built it's just california's governance is is a mess and it's reflected in almost every facet of what it tries to do Isaac, has anybody in California who at one time was behind all of this but are now starting to realize, folks, this isn't working? Has anyone said anything like that or we need to re-examine our plan? Are they to that point yet? Oddly enough, I saw this clip on, I forget what it was, but it was Theo Vaughn talking to Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arnold was the governor when they signed the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2000, or the executive order, rather. He was at the forefront of signing executive orders to mandate renewable energy and do a lot of kind of the... you know, anti-growth policies that the left has come to embrace. And, you know, Arnold was talking about the fact that we've, California has grown its population since, you know, the 70s, but they haven't added more lanes to the roads. And they haven't added enough housing. And you could argue they haven't added enough reliable power plants to keep the lights on. They had that blackout in 2020. So, you know,

It seems like Arnold might be coming around, but that's a little too little too late. Yeah. So it's interesting, California being the case study of what not to do. They have refineries. They are the state with the third most refined oil refineries in America. But they've let those refineries wear down, break down. They've shut down refineries. So now they find themselves. in a deficit. And they also don't want coal-fired power plants. They used to buy a lot of coal-fired power from Utah. They didn't want that any longer. So they're shutting down energy generation. They're shutting down the ability to refine fuel, which they extract or have extracted in California. The renewables don't replace that. So what is California's a state doing with its population as its energy resources continue to shrink? Well, I guess they're driving people out in order to reduce demand for energy. If we want to be chippy about it, if we want to be a little saucy. But, I mean, they're importing power or gasoline from India right now that was made with Russian crude. I mean, those are the types of lengths that... California has had to resort to because they've made their state so hostile to the reliable, affordable energy sources that power our daily lives. And, you know, ultimately, I feel bad for the people in Arizona that are reliant upon those refineries in California because the people in Arizona didn't do anything wrong. I guess they just depended on California for their source of fuel. And I guess, you know, maybe they should reconsider that. California, I like to joke that the problem with California's energy policy is you eventually run out of somebody else's electricity. And when California decided that they weren't going to keep investing in the coal plants in Arizona or Utah, they started a trend of those plants shutting down that is now... um you know regrettable considering all the demand that we're going to have online for data centers i do think that there is going to be a significant you know growth in the power consumption moving forward would have been really nice to have those coal plants online instead of prematurely shutting them down to meet environmental uh well i guess unreasonable environmental regulations on co2 emissions so You know, California, the best thing to do is try just not to let it drag the rest of the West down with it. Yeah. I think, you know, there's a discussion right now. This could be one of the issues in the upcoming mid-year elections, mid-term elections, of course, is affordability. Do people understand when they talk about affordability, it could be because of higher health care rates or higher electricity rates. And one of the reasons those rates are higher is because the blue, the mandates that they have in some of these blue states. Do people realize that, do you think, Isaac? Probably not. You know, honestly, I think.

No, I mean, I don't blame them, right? I think that, you know, when egg prices were high, everyone was upset about that. They were mad at President Biden for that, but President Biden didn't release the bird flu that hit the poultry flock in this country. So when prices are high, people are upset. And I think they have a right to be. But, you know, electricity is unique in that the price of electricity is... heavily regulated by the states and influenced by the policies that they pass. And that's why we saw such a huge distinction between the blue states that, you know, deny pipelines or new natural gas pipelines that mandate all kinds of unreliable energy sources on their grid. And the ones that are pro pipeline, the ones that are pro coal, natural gas, nuclear. And, you know, they'll add wind and solar if it's subsidized and the prices are low. But as soon as the numbers don't add up, they're not mandating extra wind and solar on their grids in order to reduce the emissions of it. They're actually looking at it from a dollars and cents perspective and trying to make the best decisions they can. So, you know, it's just the ideology of reducing emissions at any cost has come at a cost for blue states. I think he is right, Isaac is right. California is running out of somebody else's electricity. That's 100% of the case. And it's actually contributing to the higher cost of gas here in Utah compared to nationally, too, is what's going wrong in California. It has a ripple effect in the western states. Well, there's a lot going wrong in California, but I'll say. All right, we've got more to come. Final half hour, the Rod and Greg Show with you on this Thursday and Utah's Talk Radio 1059, KNRS. Yeah, we would not have been able to have guests. We wouldn't have been able to take calls. Yeah. Pretty much a show killer. Yeah. But, you know, I did a lot to save the day. Yes, you did. I sat right here. You solved the problem and did nothing. I had a lot of commentary to provide for everybody else who was trying to get this thing done. Yeah. Everything that guy just says bullshit. Thank you. I gave a lot of advice. All right, this time, we always have the war on Christmas. Stories about the war on Christmas. People trying to stop Christmas debates over lights. Tara Gray, our producer. You know, he's trying to stop Christmas. No, he's not trying to stop Christmas. Actively. He's trying to stop it. No, he's not trying to stop it. He actually tried to tell us it wasn't happening this year. He did. No, he did not. He did. He said no Christmas songs, nothing. No, it doesn't happen. He didn't say that. Okay. But there is the story in Massachusetts where I tell you what, where this pastor of this Catholic. church in massachusetts yes tried to compare the holy family to illegal immigrants nativity scene yeah nativity seem stuff there's there is no connection whatsoever the stories do not match up in any way shape or form ice and so the pictures folks was

You know, the manger, little house, you know, it's empty. It's empty. It says ice was here. Yeah. Come on. Yeah, really? Well, let's dig into the story. Joining us on our newsmaker line right now is Macy Jefferson, senior editor of the Federalist. Macy, thanks for joining us. Give us some background on this story, and what exactly happened here? Last week, a Catholic church in Dedham, Massachusetts, which is a suburb outside of Boston, made headlines for its nativity display, which featured an empty manger in the center. Mary and Joseph were also missing from the scene, and their place was, in their place was a big sign that read ICE was here. And underneath was another smaller sign saying, quote unquote, the Holy Family is safe inside the sanctuary of our church. And then it listed contact info for a group that monitors ice activity in the area. So the assumption, of course, is that baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph were either detained or are in hiding from federal immigration enforcement agents. So. Obviously, the goal of the display is the fearmonger and make the statement that in a modern day context, the Holy Family would be considered migrants, perhaps a family of refugees crossing the border, only to be nabbed by Trump amid his illegal immigration crackdown. And the implication is that Christians should just automatically oppose anything ICE does. So maybe I've just, maybe I've just not been a very good Christian and read the Bible very well because I just don't remember them being on the lamb running from the law, the whole, you know, the whole story. I think I, I thought they were, there's taxes to be paid and people to count, but maybe share with our listeners. What would be the actual account of the little town in Bethlehem? Absolutely. So that was the larger reason that I wrote this piece is because it's not the first time that we've seen a church sort of hijacked the story of Christ's birth to politically manipulate Christians and essentially justify unvetted mass illegal immigration and demonized law enforcement. But first of all, Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem. Um, not because they were trying to break the law or evade it, but in fact, in accordance with the law, to be counted as part of a census that was decreed by Caesar Augustus. Um, and Jesus was born in a stable, of course, not because the home, holy family was homeless or displaced, but because as scripture tells us, there was no room for them in the end where they were staying on their census trip. Um, and now many might point to the fact that. The Holy Family later fled from Bethlehem to Egypt to protect Jesus from a murderous maniac king who is seeking to basically kill Jesus. But even invoking that event doesn't justify the nativity display because

Both Bethlehem and Egypt were actually under Roman control in the first century. So it's just totally misleading to suggest that Mary and Joseph were modern-day asylum seekers or something of the like, fleeing from one country to another. Magi, what is the pastor behind this? I mean, what is he saying? How is he defending this? And how about the community itself? How are they reacting to it? Yeah, for sure. For the pastor's part, he actually came out last night and essentially defended the display on Friday. The archdiocese of Boston basically said this display is politicized, it needs to come down. And last night, Father Josima, who's the pastor of this church in Dedim. He came out and said, yeah, we're actually going to keep it up for now until we have a chance to, quote, unquote, dialogue with the archbishop. And he defended it basically saying, oh, it's in line with Catholic thought. It's in line with the stance of the church on. being kind of against Trump's immigration efforts. But nonetheless, he's still defying the orders of his authority. And how are people in the area reacting? How are his parishioners reacting to this? From my understanding, a lot of the parishioners are standing behind him and supporting him. In fact, it seems as though the display was a... an effort on behalf of the church's peace and justice group. So it seems like there are more people behind this display than just the pastor. Of course, there have been people in the community who have opposed it, which is how this controversy has sort of sparked. So my mind's going, this is, you know, what other biblical stories are we going to just twist around and make it a story? I guess maybe the flood, Noah, this is all the environmental problem. Maybe Noah was just a, you know, maybe there was a carbon footprint that just got too big. And we had a flood. Maybe that's what happened. I mean, well, how many biblical stories can we twist into political, leftist political narratives? I mean, why does Christmas become the sole target for all this? Well, that's the interesting thing about this church, actually, is they, every, for the past few years, in my research, I found that they have put up multiple, like, year after year, multiple nativity scenes that have a political message. I think there was one for, um, you know, concerned about gun control, one concerned about climate change where there was, there seemed to be some flooding in the nativity scene last in 2018, they made a similar, uh, refugee statement putting, uh, Jesus in a cage basically saying, this is what's happening to immigrants at the border. Um,

And so there's definitely no shortage of this church specifically wanting to hijack the biblical narrative. And I'm sure it doesn't just stop with Christ's birth. Maisie Jefferson, from the Federalist, by the way, Maisie, she may not have heard this. This came across just a short time ago. The diocese appealed to the pastor to put the nativity seat back, right? Yeah. He said no. Well, I'm waiting for him to declare that Goliath turns out to be the victim. Yeah. You know, David was very insensitive. David did not have the Goliath well-being in mind. When he hit him in the head with the rock. Yes. And so Goliath is now the victim. Yeah. And David is the villain. Yeah. According to that pastor, I'm sure he's probably just as outraged. And Noah's Ark was all about climate change. Yeah, that's a carbon footprint gone too big. You have the whole world flooded. Way to go, everybody. It just polluted the earth and now we got a flood. All right. More coming up. Final thoughts here on the Rod and Greg Show and Talk Radio 105.9, KNRS. This makeshift is coming. It's time to get. Super sure. Not kind of sure. Not pretty. With the discovery of a critical minerals mine up there, I believe it's up near Sheridan. And they say it's one of the largest. Well, there was a story today in the Wall Street Journal, Greg, about a trove of critical minerals has been uncovered in the Utah Desert. That's right. A record. I mean, made national news. Made national news. As a matter of fact, the company is called Ionic mineral technologies mining the clay in Utah when it chanced upon what could be the critical mineral equivalent of a gold mine. Nice. Wow. We need it. Probably on land that we don't have access to. Yeah, no, if they're rummaging around, it's probably at least state land, I hope. But yeah, and if it's federal land. You better get with that Trump administration, ASAP. I had this idea, Rod. You know, you've got these, you know, you've got J.B. Pritzker in Illinois. You got all these blue state governors that want to create these state laws that tell the federal government, tell ICE what they can and can't do. I say the state of Utah review every one of these blue state laws where it directs or tells the federal tells ICE what they can or can't do. And Utah drafts the exact same bill telling the Bureau of Land Management. what they can and can't do use the same language and just say look if it's good for your you want to say you want to play that way with ice we want to play that way with the bureau of land management yeah they uh this company that discovered it says it was fairly easy for the company to secure the minerals from the earth uh think of it like a lake bed that dried out millions of year ago years ago it's very soft clay and we're mining from the surface Wow. Good. Rock and roll. Get going. You know, we just made a deal with. What country did we make a deal with the United States did? And Vice President JD Vance said it's to diversify so that you're never overly dependent on any trade with any certain country. There's no leverage that any country could, you know, put upon the United States because of a dependency on rare minerals.

Well, the more we find domestically, that improves our prospects even more. Well, think about that. You've got the big one up in Sheridan. You may have a large one here in the state of Utah. Just means jobs, a lot of revenue coming here. Sure does. Sure does. We'll take that any time, won't we? This will surprise absolutely no one, Greg. Surprising the fact that it was in the New York Times, apparently a study has been done, and it found that COVID lockdowns hurt kids far more than the officials are willing to admit. Yes. I think in real time we were warning everyone that this was the case. Yeah, we were. We're saying leave the kids alone. The kids weren't being affected by this. It's going to have a negative impact on this. Randy Weingartner or whatever, as the teachers boss here, they said, well, you know, we made some mistakes. Really? Yeah. Yeah, and that was the safest population. If you had to be around anyone, you had supermarkets open. Amazingly, that could happen. But you couldn't open the schools where the young kids were the safest and most immune from COVID. And yet they shut it down and took away any kind of educational progress, proficiency away from these kids for years. And social interaction. Fourth grade to what, seventh grade? Yeah. Really? Yeah. I mean, before things got normal. Wow. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. It was kind of crazy. All right. Well, that does it for us tonight. As we say, each and every night, head up, shoulders back. May God bless you and your family. That's great country of ours. We'll be back tomorrow. Will we? Yes. Friday tomorrow. It's Friday. It all starts at 4. We'll talk to you back.