The Rod and Greg Show: Trans Going About Acceptance the Wrong Way; How Biology Defines Women's Sports

You're listening to The Rod and Greg Show on Utah's Talk Radio 1059, KNRS, and everywhere on the IHeart Radio app. I'm Citizen Hughes. And I brought our account. We need to clarify, we're getting conflicting reports about the Indiana fever and their coach. There are some reports she was fired, but you're seeing other reports out there that she wasn't fired today. There's two X accounts that have said that she's been fired, but then the corrections or the comments underneath are saying that is fake news. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. I wish she was. Can I hope it into existence? I think it would be just desserts. I wish that was true. ESPN is not. So if ESPN is not reporting it. Pretty solid source on that too. All right. One can hope. We can dream. One can dream. Let's talk about the Democrats, a real struggle going on within the Democratic Party now as to who they are. Are they as far left as the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, would like them to be? Others are saying, eh, not so far. There's real fight going on, Greg. There is. Joining us on the program, Matt Whitlock, he has been a former staffer to Utah senators. He's a BYU grad. He's actually an opinion leader. He's got a show called The Ten Minute Drill. You can find it on the YouTube channel. You can find it on X. You can find on Instagram. Matt Whitlock is joining us. Matt, I got to ask you, you point out in today's edition of the Ten Minute rundown that there's some things going on that we should be paying very close attention to with these socialist candidates. who might not be running as socialists or Democrats, they're going by the term independent. Tell us about these candidates and where, what states is this happening in? Absolutely. I'm so glad that you guys are paying attention to this story because it's really, really important. The preface of it is, as you said, the Democrats know they have essentially a historic brand identity crisis where even their own party internal approval rating is the worst it's ever been. And a lot of it is left over from Biden and Harris and things they did in the past that left a sour taste in voters' mouths. But to try and combat that in a number of states, particularly in Senate races, they're having lifelong Democrats. Instead of running as Democrats, they're running as independents and trying to sort of distance themselves from the state party. And a lot of the consultants that are working around them are actually kind of saying the quiet part out loud there and acknowledging the fact that if they run as Democrats, they don't have a shot in the world. But if they run as independents, they might be able to paint themselves and fool voters in suggesting that they're kind of these maverick independent candidates. And we're seeing it in states like Idaho. Idaho has a big one of these. Been really interesting to watch because Jim Rish is the Republican senator there. He's done a lot of great things over time. And the Democrats have said, okay, we'd like to really put up a challenge to this guy, but we know a actual Democrat isn't going to go anywhere in the state of Idaho. So we're having a guy who served in office less than a year ago named Todd Achilles.

run as an independent. And you've got people like Andrew Yang, who you may remember ran for president in 2020. Not a very serious guy, but he's the primary booster for Todd Achilles. But you've got another one of these in Montana. Now, Montana's interesting because they have their filing deadline just yesterday. And documents were revealed, and we talked about this on 10-minute drill, but also Matthew Foldy and the Washington reporter did a really deep dive on this and found. documents highlighting a targeted harassment campaign orchestrated by national Democrats going after the family of the actual Democrat candidate in this race to try and pave the way for one of their fake independents to run with Chuck Schumer's money with the blessing of former Montana Democrat Senator John Tester. It's a really crazy thing. And fortunately, the Democrat in that race said... I'm not going to be bullied out of this. You can harass my family all you want, but I'm sticking in this. And it was great to see. And so that filing deadline passed last night, and she did not leave the race. And the Democrats are already saying, okay, it looks like we don't really have a race to run in Montana. But this pattern has gone on all over the country. Wow. So is it safe to say, Matt? that the word Democrat within the Democratic Party has now become a four-letter word for the party? Is that fair to say? Absolutely. That's absolutely fair to say. And it's fun of the reason that you're seeing the Democrat socialists in a lot of states, even like your neighbor in Colorado. actually fighting a foothold because they're not necessarily winning just on their ideas. We've seen in a lot of cases their ideas aren't really embraced by anybody, but the Democrat brand itself is tied to stale incumbency in a way that's giving radicals an opportunity to rise, but also giving Republicans a great opportunity to win in a few more seats because the Democrats are, for example, today, there's the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary and there's this candidate. Francesca Hong who wants to ban Thanksgiving and ban the police and everything else in the world, she's likely going to win that Democrat primary, which will mean the Republican candidate, Tom Tiffany, has a very good shot of becoming governor of Wisconsin in what would otherwise be a pretty tough cycle for Republicans across the country. Now, you have a national audience and stage. You talk about these national issues, but you have good Utah roots, and you've worked for our senators here in Utah. Tell me about this sounds a lot like the last reelection that Senator Lee went through. The Democrats looked around in Utah and said, wow, we don't have a candidate that can win statewide. So you saw Ben McAdams and others prop up Evan McMuffin, and they actually did not field a candidate. The Democrats didn't in the state of Utah. So is that similar to what we're seeing happen in this election cycle? That is exactly what we're seeing happen. And I had wondered at the time how Democrats would ever bounce back from such an embarrassing show. Someone like Ben McAdams, who wants to have a legacy in the state, bent over for Evan McMullen, who is one of the worst grifting politicians we have ever seen. When Evan McMullen ran for president in 2016, he has...

outstanding bills to vendors, including political operatives in Utah, who he just never paid about $700,000. And I think it's egregious that he's ever been allowed to run again. But it's even more embarrassing for the Utah Democrats that they thought this little tiny grifter is a good enough guy that we can subvert our entire process, throw out the entire sort of Democrat apparatus to nominate a candidate. and get behind this charlatan Evan McMullen. And, I mean, I think that voters stopped through it, which is why Mike Lee, you know, my former boss, our good friend, won by double digits because people looked at Evan McMuffin and said, I feel like I'm being conned by this, and I really don't like it. Well, by the way, Matt, we don't call McMillan. We just call him McMuffin. Muffin. You said it right. You just said it right. You hit it right now, right on the head. I want to ask you, Matt, as, you know, in the last few days, all of a sudden you see some of these socialist candidates backtracking on earlier rhetoric. I think it was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over the weekend said, woke one. Yeah, past rhetoric is not today's rhetoric. What do you make of all this and what you're seeing going on? Oh, man. What we're seeing right now is an effort to sort of a little like, you know how when you go on a trip and you put a cover over your car to make sure it doesn't get burned? Or you try and put it in a garage or it doesn't face weather damage? Democrats are trying to stow away their wokeest ideas because they know right now there's so much backlash towards them that their political weight and political vulnerabilities, but they're not actually distancing themselves from any of these ideas. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in that interview where she called it woke one also essentially took credit for some of the progress the woke movement had made in moving the ball forward on their most radical ideas. I think the counter to that is the fact that we've seen a larger woke backlash than you've ever seen in history. But what we've also seen just in the last couple months is, for example, Abdul El-Sayed, the radical candidate in Michigan, he was projected to win by 17 to 20 points and ended up squeaking out by about one point because in the last few weeks of his election, the Democrat voters in that primary got to know him a lot better and said, wait a sec, this guy is a lunatic. And so I think that... The DSA candidates are realizing that they're creating huge vulnerabilities for themselves. And it's funny, a lot of them, it's their own words, it's their own tweets that they kind of have to face the music on. But they're trying to sort of find a way to soften it, but there's no reason to believe they've actually changed any views or ideas. They simply want you to look past them for a short time until Democrats feel like they have enough power again to bring that sort of woke nonsense right back out of the garage. and try and ram it down our throats again. Matt, great thinking. Where can people find you with the podcast that you do? What is it, man? It's just 10-minute drill, the number 10. You can find it on YouTube. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. We have an Instagram channel that has a lot of good content all the time on X at 10-minute drill. You can just look me up, Matt Whitlock, and I'm on all those things. But it's a fun, just quick download to start your day of all the biggest political news stories going on at the time. We try and keep it around 10 minutes. That's why it's the 10-minute drill, even though there's so much crazy news in this era that sometimes it gets closer to...

15 minutes, but you know, we keep it short and fun. Matt Whitlock, 10-minute drill, host of that program. Folks, if you haven't seen it, look it up. It's good. And he has these, I love these Utah roots. I think I'd love to have them on more often. Okay, let's go. You're listening to Utah's Talk Radio 105-9, K&RS. If you can't beat them, join them, literally. And I think maybe that'll spark a different conversation. Theoretically, you have a lot of these WMBA players that say, I would have no problem with a man to advise as a Well, let's try that out. Yeah, yeah. Let's see how that works. See if they actually mean it. If an older person, someone over 18, they want to change. They want to believe they're a man, but they want to believe they're a woman or vice versa. I'm fine with that. That's fine. Yeah. Just accepting that for a lot of Americans is very, very difficult. Well, there's one thing to have your life, choose how you want to live your life. It's another thing to enter into competitive sports that are designed for women. Women's competitive sports. It's just not the place. where if someone does want to identify as a different gender, that they should be allowed to do so. It's going to harm women. Joining us on our newsmaker line right now is Kenan Spivak. He's an author, founder, chairman of the SMI group. He wrote about this today saying transgenderism, earning acceptance, requires a course change. Is it going to be difficult? And I think it already is in many ways, Kenham, for the American people to accept the idea of transgenderism in this country. Yes, it is. And to some degree, that's the fault of transgender activists. in trying to bully people into accepting a lie as well as the truth. As an alternative lifestyle, I think a lot of Americans would accept it. A lot of Americans accept a lot of alternative lifestyles. But when you start telling other people that even though I'm not really a woman, and by the way, this is really important, 40% of transgender women, they're really men, don't undergo hormone or surgeries. They really just change their dress and the way they live, and they want people to say they're really women. So when you make demands like that, you push people back. And I think if they stop doing that, when we're a little more relaxed about things, Not everyone would accept their lifestyle, but more people would. You know, it seems like the pendulum swung a little bit. It seemed that the normies, the normal people, everyday Americans, we're starting to get our sports back, men and women's sports. I mean, you've got the Olympics, you have the NCAA. You've got a lot of people that are saying, okay, we're going to, you've got to be an actual biological woman. I'm surprised that the WMBA is such a strong holdout. Are they?

Do you see them changing or do you see them holding out and we have to start accepting this at least in the WMBA, but maybe even more men playing in women's sports? The WNBA actually has a rule requiring that all players be women. And when the rule was put in their rule books, they meant biological women. It's the Players Association, which doesn't like that. And that's why this weekend, the WNBA commissioner, issued a statement saying that they promised to look at the situation. They want to be inclusive. They want to be sensitive to everyone. But what she was really saying is, we will look at whether we should now decide that the word women doesn't mean biological woman. But actually, as of now, the WNBA has no transgender women. The one transgender person in the WNBA is a biological woman who identifies as a man. Kenyon, you mentioned something interesting a moment ago that trans men. Do not want the physical changes they want just be able to dress up as a woman be accepted as that. Is it different with trans women and why? Okay, so trans, this is confusing. A trans woman is a biological man, and a trans man is a biological woman. So the answer to your question is, among both sides, about 40 percent, haven't undergone any procedures to actually transition. Let me tell you, more than that. The leading... Surgical procedures, not really surgery, the leading procedure that trans women undergo is just electrolysis. Only about 10% of all trans women have really done all the surgery, ranging from castration to hormones, everything they have to do to present as a woman on the female side. almost none of them have done the full reconstructive surgery, but the percent that have had hysterectomies or other invasive surgery is a little bit higher than on the side of the biological men. But either way, there is a lot of hormone use. I don't want your audience to think they're doing nothing. There is a lot of hormone use, but about 40 percent do nothing at all. You know, what do we say about the argument that they're saying, you're talking about a micro minority of the population. These are people that actually don't threaten women's sports or girl sports that there are so few and far between, you're just picking out a real subset, a small group of people and bullying them. And they talk in those terms. What would you say to people that, the one I accept transgender, men who believe they're women, because there's so few of them, it's decimal dust. It shouldn't even be worthy of our attention.

You know, it wouldn't be worthy of our attention, but for the fact that it only takes one man in women's sports for all the women to lose the chance to be number one or number two. I mean, a team may have 30 people on it. It then plays in competition round robin or otherwise. So it takes very few people to change the outcome for others. I do think that except for girls' sports and women's sports, Many people, I don't know if it's most, many people would say live and let live. If there was an insistence about pronouns, if there was an insistence about calling people the wrong sex, and if we didn't have this whole sports thing. But, Kenan, is the trans community willing to change course? Well, you know, not trans activists. We don't know how many in the trans community really are this angry and insistent. I mean, I know. some trans women who are much more reserved about all of this stuff, don't personally get involved in it and just live their lives. And so it's hard to know what percent of trans people like the activists' approach to this and what percent would prefer they cut it out. Interesting. Kenan, great insight. Appreciate a few of your thoughts today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. On our newsmaker line, that's Kevin Spivak. Interesting thoughts on the trans community changing course. I doubt if it will happen. No. Now with the activist. No. I think the gay community is getting ripped off, though. I mean, if you take trans to its logical conclusion, everything's hetero. You're just a female and it's trapped in a man's body. So there is no gay. There's just all heteros and you just, you're in the wrong body. More coming up on the Rod and Greg show in Utah's Talk Radio 1059, K&RS. Utah's Talk Radio, K&RS, live everywhere on the IHeart Radio app. It is the home of the Rod and Greg show. And we're with you every weekday afternoon from 4 to 7. I'm Rod Arquette. I'm Citizen Hughes. Cooler out there today. Has it been? I didn't know. I was in a bit of a rush getting here. Well, you had meetings all day today. I did. I did have meetings. You're, you're. The demands on your schedule are unbelievable. So I got this ring that's supposed to like tell me if I'm moving or not. I am stationary far too much. I sit all day long. How much do I walk around? It's shocking. Yeah, we sit down for three hours. Actually, if you think about it, I get here too. We actually have a couple hours. We're mostly sitting ahead of time. So, yeah, and now that I'm seeing it recorded, I get to see it in numbers, it is, it looks pathetic. I mean, my steps are lousy. I sit all day. I don't even know how hard.

Bad. Bad. Yeah. It's not good. Only when I'm asleep. I mean, you're a nice slender fellow. I'm a svelte. Is that what you're trying to say? I'm a fat guy. But you're nice and slender. No, I'm not slender. But I don't know that I want my vitals recorded to this degree because it's depressing to see. I wouldn't want to look every day. How bad you are. My sleep score stinks. That's another one I don't like. I saw this article or we did today. It's in The American Thinker. It's a terrific article. And it takes a look. Well, the title is The Stopwatch doesn't lie. Why Biology, Not Gender Identity, defines women's sports and some pretty amazing stories told in this article, Greg. It is. I'm really excited for our guest to share because I personally remember Flojo. I remember. Oh, yeah. I remember Florence Griffith Joyner and in 1988 Olympics, boy, she. She ran like the wind. Yeah. And I think it'll be interesting to hear. I think those are records that stand 40 years later of women in the 100 meter and 200 meter. But when you talk about genders, quite a difference. It is. It is very different. Joining us on our any hour newsmaker line to talk about it is our guest, Dr. Brian Junif. Dr. Junif, how are you? Welcome to the show. Thank you very much for joining us. Hey, good evening. Thanks for having me. This is an amazing article because you point out all these records, track records, swimming records that women have set. Yet on the male side, you know, high school kids are beating these female records. Why was that so important, in your opinion, to point out? Because there's a magical thinking going on amongst the left in this country that men can compete in women's sports and that it's somehow fair and equitable and tolerant and everything else. And it's not. We saw it with the University of Pennsylvania swimmer. Lila Thomas, I think her name was, that Riley Gaines was involved in that controversy. This was a mediocre men swimmer that decided to become a girl. and compete with the women and was winning NCAA championships. There is such a difference biologically that it's It's foolish. We've never had anything like this, and it's only in the past few years that that's happening. And I wanted to point out, Flojo is a good example. She has a record that stood the test of almost 40 years. And now high school boys routinely run faster than that. And if any of those boys decided, oh, I'm a girl, well, they'd have the world's women's record.

It's shocking. And I'll tell you that you saw for a while there, whether it was the Olympics or other competitive organizations, they were starting to maybe lean this way and say, well, if they just say they're a woman, I guess we're going to let them, you know, compete. It seems like there's been a lot of studies and they're pulling back from that in competitive sports for women. But you have the WNBA out there. What is the trend? I mean, the WMBA sounds like... You know, everyone else is wrong and they're right. Is the trend going to normalcy and really boys can't compete against girls and girls sports? Or is it still up in the air? How we move forward? Well, it's two parts to that. In the past, used testosterone levels. Well, once a boy has undergone puberty, as I wrote in my article, the engine's built, and you have a Lamborghini engine, and just because you lower testosterone levels, it's still a Lamborghini. You can put regular gas in a Lamborghini in Ferrari, and it's still going to go fast, right? Yes. It's not going to drive like Ford Pinto, if you remember those. Oh, yes. the engine is built and just artificially lowering testosterone levels, that doesn't change anything. To WNBA, they've tied themselves into pretzels now because they're all about tolerance and women can compete or men can compete as women. And a couple of former NBA players said, okay, fine, I identify as a woman and I'm going to enter the draft. And what are they going to do? They're perfectly legal to do it based on WNBA rules. And now the WNBA is holding meetings and committees, and they're going to finally define what a woman is. So calling them out on this, that's, as Rush Limbaugh said, you illustrate absurdity through absurdity. And when you have players like this, I'm waiting for some professional golfers to join the LPGA. Yeah. Why do you think you have women's teas that are? 75 yards further up the course. Yeah. And, you know, for them it's a par five and for us it's a par four. Things like that because men hit farther. That's just. biology. It's not discriminatory. It's not slighting anybody. It's not saying that women aren't great athletes. It's saying there's a biological difference, just like you have weight classes in boxing and wrestling because there are physiologic differences in different body types. Dr. The left, as you well know, have always said trust the science, believe the science. Well, as you point out, the science is pointing out that there really is a biological difference between a man and a woman or a boy and a girl. Why won't the left accept that?

Because the left is about identity politics, and it's what you identify as. It's not reality. If you identify as oppressed, then you're oppressed, even though you went to an Kay Ivey League school and you have a trust fund and you grew up in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. If you say you're oppressed and down for the struggle, you are. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grew up in the suburbs of Westchester County and she's down for the struggle. She's a Bronx girl. Well, actually, she isn't. So it's what people identify as. And if you say you're something, then you are. And you see that on the left all the time, the mayor of New York. And these are all rich, privileged kids. Nothing against that. But why are you running from that? Embrace that and say, that's what you come from. And this is how you feel now and explain it. But don't try to be, you know, Jenny from the block when you're not. Yeah, here's what I don't understand. If you wanted to make that, if the left wants to make that point and say all gender is fluid, it's whatever you say it is. I don't think sports is your strongest case to make for this. So you point out, you know, strength and power, it's not discriminatory. Stopwatches have no ideology. Either does the measuring tape. Squareboards have no political affiliation. I think if you believe in chromosomes and you believe X, X and Y, X, Y, X, Y, How doesn't sports, female sports, doesn't expose that they're wrong? I mean, isn't it the easiest way to show that they're wrong in this whole fluid gender argument that they're making? It is absolutely the easiest way. Instead of embracing, wow, there's a bunch of women in Congress and cabinet positions and several have run for president. You have women on the Supreme Court. You have women CEOs. They're, you know, the glass ceiling, I don't know if there's still a glass ceiling. Women are highly accomplished. in all sorts of endeavors where it's not dependent on physical or physiologic traits that limit it. And you're not going against science there. They picked a bad arena to fight this out. Doctor, is this an issue that we're going to be discussing even 10 years from now, do you think? Or is it slowly going to die down? I think this will die down, and this will be like they look back and say, how could people even be thinking about this? It's absolute absurdity. It's kind of like we look at bell Scott Bottoms and wide ties. It's like, wow, people actually wore that stuff. But who knows, maybe in future generations, someone will do something. I bet down the road we can fiddle with genes and those differences will go away. But for now, it's just, it's delusional thinking. It's psychotic, magical thinking.

Yeah. Avoid devoid of reality. Don't be knocking the bell Scott Bottoms and wide ties. I've still got some. I'm ready to bring them back. Rod has them on right now. You're waiting. He's wearing them right now. Everything goes back. It just got real awkward in here. Ask a 20-year-old now. Yeah, you're going to wear bell Scott Bottoms. A delightful conversation. Hope to have you back on again. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. On our newsmaker line, that's Dr. Brian Jundiff talking about the stopwatch. Now, when we come back, I'm going to read some of the records that he points out. It's just fascinating to see the difference between a biological male and a biological female, even if the female is older and has set a record, how a younger biological male. High school kids destroy that record. Destroy that record. We'll talk about that. Share that all with you when we come back here on the Rod and Greg show and Talk Radio 1059 KNRS. Final half hour, Rod and Greg with you here on Utah's Talk Radio, 1059 KNRS, live everywhere on the IHeart Radio app. I'm Rod Arquette. I'm Citizen Hughes. All right. Let's talk about the NBA. NBA, not the WNBA for a moment. Okay. Shall we do that? Let's just shift gears. I'm sure this is much better news, the NBA. Well, well, it doesn't affect this market. It doesn't affect the Utah Jazz. No. But it could affect the Portland Trailblazers. Portland, there you go. That's part of the problem. It's called Portland. Which used to, have you ever been to Portland? I've only been to once or once. I've only been once myself. I went back a while ago where you could start to see some of the homelessness and some of the drug culture rising, but it wasn't, you know, the walking dead yet. You weren't there. You were there before Antifa. Correct. Right? And they tried to take over the city. Capital Hill Autonomous zones and everything else they were calling it. Yeah. Before all those days. Well, apparently there is some tension. developing between the owners of the Portland Trailblazers, the owner, and the city. He wants to build the new arena. Which the arena is owned by the city, so I think if he owns a team and they're his landlord, he can say, hey, you know, the joint needs an upgrade. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But apparently this tension is the city not only does want to give them the money, which we understand he's kind of cheap to begin with, but he says the business climate. in Portland is partially to blame for this. Surprise, surprise. I know. This is my shocked face, folks. If you can see it on my face, I'm just aghast. Not really. Well, joining us on our Any Hour Newsmaker line to discuss this. He's been looking into this is Justin Haskins. He's president of Our Republic. Justin, thank you very much for joining us. Let's talk about this. What on earth is going on with Portland and its Trailblazers? Yeah, it's a really incredible story. So the Portland Trailblazers, who are very popular. team, the only major professional sports team in the city of Portland, in the state of Oregon, has a new owner named Tom Dundon, and he's been threatening to pull the team out of Oregon and move it to another place. He hasn't said where, but that's the obvious threat unless the city spends the city, the state, and the county spend hundreds of millions of dollars, somewhere around $600 million on a new city.

stadium. They want to renovate the modus center that's there in Portland. The city owns the stadium. So this is a publicly owned stadium. They want a lot more renovations to it. They say it's too old. And essentially what the team is saying is money itself. That's a requirement. They have to have it. Otherwise, the team's going to leave. But it needs to be more than that. The city's far left-wing policies, they didn't use that language, but that's what they mean. High taxes, high regulations, anti-business climate, is making things so uncomfortable in the city for business that they need to fix those things, too, if the team is going to stay. They even cited the political divisiveness in the city as a reason for why they might leave. So they want a complete overhaul of the policies in addition to taxpayers shelling out $600 million because the business climate is so bad in Portland now because of left-wing policies that you've got to pay people to stay. So here's my question. I mean, it doesn't surprise me that businesses in Portland, it's just it is. They've been taxed out or regulated out of existence there. But we kind of hear this with sports teams where they want, you know, cities, counties and states to pay for brand new stadiums. If the Portland Trailblazers were to leave to a safer city, somewhere different, would they not ask for money for an arena? Do you think that, in other words, there's good reasons and real reasons. Do you really think, I see what goes on in Portland, but do you think that that's... the linchpin in terms of their politics and their taxes and what they've done to businesses or is this an NBA owner that just wants a new arena? Oh, I think he wants both without question. I think he wants the money, and I think he's using this as an excuse, but frankly, he can get money in another city. A lot of cities will give a handout to a billionaire for a new sports team. If they're desperate enough, we've seen that over and over and over again. Las Vegas recently, for example, as at all sorts of sports teams by doing that. And so that's part of the equation. But what... What Dundon and the Blazers are saying is the money isn't enough. The money that you're asking for is not enough. You have to go even further than that because, look, we want to make more money. And the only way we can make more money is if there's a healthy business climate here. If you want to sell luxury boxes and you want to do partnerships with local businesses and things like that, there's a lot of money in that. But in Portland, those businesses are all leaving. And so the only way to fix the problem long term is to have a healthier business climate. And you can't have people doing open drug use downtown Portland homelessness, rampant, political divisiveness everywhere, protests constantly, high taxes, high regulations.

all sorts of bureaucracy that you have to go through to do a business and then also have a healthy business climate. And that's the argument they're making. And to my knowledge, just the only time a sports team has ever brought up some of these things when they're negotiating with the city. So you know it's bad. Justin, I don't know if it's the new owner or the old owner, but whichever owner it was, he was pretty cheap. I mean, he didn't pay the players a lot of money. They stayed in cheap hotels, a lot of issues. Is this new owner different, or is he the one everybody's been talking about about being cheap? Yeah, he's the one. The previous owner was Paul Allen, who was super wealthy. Yeah. And owns, I believe, the Seahawks as well is very successful. So, yeah, he's cheap. That's been the complaint about him. But I think the argument is, look, I'm saving money until I can get, until I know whether we're staying. And then I'm getting out of here. If I've got to build a new stadium somewhere else, I might need that money. So. I do think that's part of the story. So, Justin, what I just heard you say is you heard it here first, folks, the Portland Trailblazers are leaving Portland. I don't know that they have the political acumen to actually deregulate lower taxes. I don't know if that's a city that is interested in that. That brings me to this question. Chicago Bears leaving Chicago for Indiana. You have this situation happening here. Do you see a trend? Do you think that these blue cities and the way they strangle businesses? And in this case, you know, sports franchises with high taxes, regulations, all that they're doing. Plus, it's unsafe. The public safety aspect of it is a nightmare. Are you going to see more of these stories emerge in different professional sports? I think 100%. I think we've already started to see it. You brought up the Chicago Bears is a great example of that. Look, the sports teams are doing what regular people are doing. So is it really all that surprising? I mean, population growth in places like Texas and Arizona and other places that Florida has been off the charts. in recent decades. Why is that? Because regular people don't want to be overtaxed. They don't want high property taxes. They don't want expensive houses. They don't want to deal with all the regulations. They want to follow the jobs. So why would a sports team be any different? They're chasing the dollars and the better climate and the better weather and all of that stuff, too, if they can find it. You know, I heard someone say this was months ago. They were talking about Portland. It used to be called the City of Roses. Now it's called the City of Roses with a few thorns here and there. Apparently, that city is not up to par right now. Would you say that? You know, Portland is a beautiful, beautiful city that has been ruined by horrible policies. And I'd like to believe that someday...

the politicians will get the message and they'll turn things around. It has happened in other cities before in the past. I mean, we've seen cities ebb and flow through this New York City, for instance, in the 70s was not a good place, and then it got better, and now it's in decline again. And so these things have a tendency to ebb and flow. But sometimes you need to feel the pain before you get the message. And I think that's what's happening here in Portland. And make no mistake about it. Chicago Bears leaving Chicago is a huge deal, but where they're talking about moving in Indiana is close to Chicago. If the Portland Trailblazers leave, this is the only team in town, and they will not be moving nearby. They will be moving far, far, far away from here, and it will be crushing. for that city. Just absolutely crushing. And if they don't get the message after that, I don't know if they ever will. Yeah, be interesting to see what Portland does. Remember the years that Walton was there and the team? He won the NBA championship. Yes. One or two years and those were good times for Portland. I remember Clyde Drexler? Oh, Clyde the Glyde? Yeah. You know, they had some fun teams. I mean, jazz, they ward with the trailblazers in the 90s. Yeah. Those were fun times. But I tell you what, there has been talk, too, about Major League Baseball. Salt Lake City has been mentioned. Portland has been mentioned. I don't know about that. I can't see baseball going to Portland. I can't see baseball coming to Seoul Lake. Where do the Trailblazers go if they want to get out of Portland? What cities are looking for an NBA team? Maybe Vegas. Vegas, yeah. Another point. Maybe Seattle. Seattle lost. Vancouver is another one. Now, there are some places they could go. I go to Vegas because of the taxes. Well, yeah, and Seattle's just more of the same with Portland. I mean, they have the same politics. I can't imagine it's any more business-friendly in Seattle. In Vegas right now, you've got football. You've got baseball, which is coming. And you've got the NHL. So they need one more. NBA would be perfect down in Vegas. Yep. So, yeah, I think there's places for the Portland Trailways to go, and I'm sure there's someone willing to pony up the venue to make it happen. But Erie was telling us prior to this interview, the owner that they're talking about, we asked Justin, this guy is cheap. Well, you say Walton. How about the guy that owned the Walmart? He used to make all his employees, like bunk up in the same hotel room to save money. That's what this owner's doing. When they have a business trip, he makes them sleep in the same room, like two king beds or whatever. Yeah, they don't get nice meals. It's terrible. And there are some teams that are staying at the Ritz. They have like two assistant coaches instead of the squad you see with most of them? Have you noticed that over the years? The number of coaches they have on both professional and college basketball team? I mean, they got eight coaches for a team of what? 15 players. There's a lot of coaches now. A lot of them. Why? Because they look cool in their suits, you know, and walking around there like they know what they're doing. They know what's what they do. Keep in mind their NBA rosters are no longer 12 players. They're more like 20. Oh, are they? Because they've got taxi squads and they send guys up and down from the D League. That's true. That's true. That's true. But why so many coaches, E. Ray, why so many darn coaches? Because there's a lot more players. They need babysat. A lot more specialization now, too. That is true. That is true. All right. All right. How we know. Yeah.

All right, more coming up. Final segment of The Rod and Greg Show on Utah's Talk Radio, 1059, KNRS.