The Rod and Greg Show: White House Smithsonian Report; Should ICE Wear Body Cameras; Who is Nikki Floris?

We have got a lot to get to today. We're going to be talking about, you know, the debate over why don't ICE agents, Greg, have body camps? I mean, doesn't every police officer in America now they almost have body camps? I, they do. I think most of them do, don't they do? And I think I've watched where there was a lot of hesitation from law enforcement. It seemed like a gotcha thing. You know, I mean, let's put body cams on our judges. Let's put body cams on our teachers. Let's put body cams. We can take that argument out and stretch it out and good information could come from it. I think that was kind of the recoil. What I think is happening is law enforcement has discovered that body cams are probably their best. resource. That's defense. Yes, you can write a probable cause statement, and you will. That's the process. But the video that accompanies, it usually makes the case much stronger than what you would put in print. So I think law enforcement actually identified body cams is a great way for them in their profession to make sure that those that act in a way that deserves being arrested, detained, whatever it may be. It's pretty much for all to see. through the cameras. Yeah, yeah. So we'll talk about that. We'll talk about, he didn't mention her name. But her name did come up in documents that he released last Thursday talking about election fraud. And we're talking about Nikki Flores. Well, who exactly is this woman? And why does her name keep coming up, Greg, about running a shadow government? This is a part. Everyone wants to talk about the Chinese hacking our election databases, which is serious, absolutely serious. The idea that our intelligence community and the FBI... I wanted to slow roll that so that then President Trump before the, you know, the 20 election would not get it, would not get that information in its entirety, how they, they pushed that out so that he wouldn't know. And this, this FBI agent, and they, he provided a clip of, of this statement from her from an email where she describes her job as running a, across the FBI, a shadow government. Yeah, yeah. I have not seen that get the kind of attention or commentary that it deserves because it is striking. It is draconian. It's traitorous, I would think. And I would think that there would have already been indictments for that kind of talking about what she did. And we know that she did hold. They took a report and cut it into 13 separate ones and just milked it till they could get to the Biden administration. They had it in November and they went through January 20th of the following year. because they were trying to keep it from the president. I think those things are as bad as the president conveyed on Thursday night. Well, we're on talking about those stories. We've got others lined up, but I want to start off. It is kind of entertaining you right now, Greg, to see the Democratic Party starting to punch each other. Yeah, well, it's about, well.

The talking point is that it's not communism and socialism. Okay, I've read the quotes from the DSA platform from their own mouths. Don't tell me I'm not seeing what I am seeing. And DSA, again, they say things like, you know, take over of key industries, government. That's communism. Bill Maher says he'd lean for JD Vance. In 2020. Over the loans. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have, do you have a former governor Andrew Cuomo? Do you have his quit? Yep. So he was on mornings with Maria on Fox Business Channel today. And he was asked about socialism within the Democratic Party. Socialism has not worked anywhere on the globe, Maria. Yeah. Promises of free lunch, free buses, free rent, free everything. There was no such thing that's free. Someone always pays. This is a dream. This is Nirvana. This is utopia. Yeah. And they're selling to young people who are buying it. But it's not going to work. And the socialist movement is the best thing the Republicans have going for them. That is the crux of it right there. The reason that you're seeing this, and it's amazing, the media works and even the talking heads in the Democrat Party. They work in such coordination. One day, you wouldn't know that anyone isn't subscribed to the far left's agenda. And then you wake up another day and the media has turned against them. The Andrew Cuomo's and the Van Jay Jones and the Bill Mars are all speaking out. It's because it is the best thing the Republicans have going for them. And they're like, if we ever lost the midterms, which the party out of power usually wins the midterms, this is how we're going to do it. We're going to sign up to Kuku for Cocoa Pops over here. the socialist slash communists, that's what the American people won't want. And they're right. They're right. I mean, there were 77 million people that voted for Trump. And that's high watermark in terms of voter participation. The midterms won't have that high of a voter turnout as the presidential year does. But man, you're not getting Trump-sized voters going for socialism and communism in America right now. You're not. Hopefully we never do. But. I think those socialists, I think they're more interested in commandeering their political party than they are winning the midterms. You may be right because they think the next step would be winning the presidency in 2028. I think any Republican congressional candidate who has an opponent on the Democratic side this fall just needs to grab the platform from the Democratic Socialist of America and read it to his audience. And I would like to share with you what my opponent stands for. No prisons. No police, you know, just lay that out. And the American people aren't going to buy this. No, you know, Judge Gibson here in Utah, she drew a district that maybe that district would agree with that platform. And then Ben McAdams will have to own it. But I think you force and put on the record every Democrat candidate. Do you support this Democrat Socialist of America platform? Yeah. And I make them say yes or no. Yep, they won't. All right, more coming up here on the Rotting Greg show in Utah's Talk Radio 1059, KNRS. So now they're talking about body cams. Tom Homan, who is the, Holman, who, yeah, sorry, is the border czar, basically came out and said, hey, I like body cams. I don't have any problem with that. When Democrats shut the government down, I was the part of that negotiation deep up on the hell.

They kept saying they kept going to Minnesota. All the mistakes they say happen in Minnesota. I don't think there's, you know, there's a lot of the mistakes. They claim in Minnesota, a lot of them were, I don't think mistakes. But one thing they asked, we want body cameras. I said, well, there's money, $120 million in the bill. You're holding up for me to bite the body cameras. So the reason there's not body cambers nationwide right now because they shut the government down. And anybody doesn't believe that? Look it up. Now that we have the funding, body cameras have been purchased. On our newsmaker line right now to talk more about this is Logan Seacrest. He's a resident fellow at the Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties at the R Street Institute. Logan, thanks for joining us this afternoon. Give us your take on this debate going on right now over body cams. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I think we've had, you know, two fatal shootings within the last couple of weeks. We had the fatal shootings earlier this year. And none of them have body camera footage because most of the agents weren't wearing body cameras. You know, the, the recent shooting in Maine, investigators are basically relying on grainy, distant security cam footage. And it's kind of an absurd situation considering that... Body cameras are now standard issue equipment for most American police. You know, more than 90% of departments in large cities have body camera programs. About four out of five U.S. police officers wear them regularly. You know, many states mandates statewide body cam adoption. And almost every state has adopted some kind of regulations around their use. So, you know, setting aside the broader immigration debate for a moment, you know, I don't think this is really a question of. enforcement policy or tactics or anything like that. It's just a question of whether armed federal agents should have access to the same technology and follow the same rules that the average county sheriff or beat cop does. But an agent uses deadly force on behalf of the government, the public deserves an objective record of what happened. And I just make the other point that body cameras aren't just a tool to kind of go after police. federal officers I talk to want body cameras because they increasingly view them as a form of protection. You know, I think body cameras can protect officers from false allegations at least as often as they expose any kind of misconduct. Um, so, you know, if the recent shootings in, and Texas and Maine were justified, justified the footage would just, would just serve to prove that. So, um, yeah, I think, uh, It's just a basic tool at this point. It's a basic standard issue tool policing that the federal government should adopt. I think you're exactly right. I think that what you described has played out as well. I think the original body cams for law enforcement, there was some hesitation from law enforcement. But I think if you were to ask them now, it is a form of protection. It is a form of, you know, where they get to. state their case and be able to, I mean, hearing a probable cause, reading a probable cause statement versus seeing the video is a whole different world. And I think that local law enforcement understands that. I've heard though, and I read that there's money available to do this, but we're not, and there's even some political will verbally to do it. But you point out that they're not spending the resources they have for body cams. I think there's a statement from Tom Homan, where he says that there's been line items for these body cams.

for this express purpose. They support it. They want it, but they're not able to get it passed in Congress. What's the gap here? They're saying they want it, but they're not getting funded. You're pointing out that the funding they've received should be able to accommodate it. Where are these ships passing in the night not seeing the same point? Yeah, I think you just had an uneven execution at the federal level on this. You know, the Biden administration and directed agents to body cameras. President Trump came in. He revoked some of those Biden executive orders, you know, after Minneapolis, the Trump administration kind of reversed course. Then the secretary known pledged nationwide rollout, quote, as funding becomes available. And then Congress did appropriate, you know, earmarked 20 million for body cameras specifically and outpassed a further $70 billion package with enough flexible funding in there to outfit every federal agent many times over. Yet, you know, as you say, only about half of field offices so far have cameras, at least ICE field offices. You know, Department of Homeland Security have promised that the rest are on the way. But even then, the stated goal is only one camera per team, not per agent, which is... progress, of course, but it's still kind of insufficient to tell the whole story of some of these situations. So, you know, why is this happening? I think there has been a worry in the past that ICE agents are kind of would be doxed or threatened if some of this video emerged. And just video documentation puts them at greater risk. And I think, you know, these concerns are legitimate. But they're exactly why states and localities have written governing policies about how footage released, what's redacted, and that kind of thing. You know, these rules exist precisely to maintain officer privacy while providing the public an objective record of events. You know, I think right now we can have the worst of both worlds. We have... little documentation of these lethal incidents and no rules governing what happens when the footage does exist, you know. And I think the other issue is that federal acquisition is kind of slow by design, you know, contracts of the size go through a competitive bidding and security review that local police department just buying a few dozen cameras doesn't have to do, you know. So, like I say, DHS has plans to purchase these cameras. using this 20 million that Congress provided. And I think over time, those cameras, it'll be, it'll be money well spent. You know, cameras tend to pay for themselves over time by reducing for those litigation, resolving officer complaints more efficiently. It's pretty interesting. You know, departments that use body cameras have seen many fewer complaints against officers because that, as we said, that video routinely exonerates them from being falsely accused. So, yeah, I think it's just been a matter of uneven kind of federal orders, and I think we'll get there eventually, but it has been frustratingly slow. Logan Cicrest from R Street Initiative. Thanks, Logan, for joining us, talking about body cams on ice agents. More of the Rotting Greg show coming your way on this Monday afternoon right here on Utah's Talk Radio 1059, KNRS.

President's news conference or speech to the nation on Thursday where he raised the issue of election integrity in this country, pointing out several issues that I think he feels need to be addressed. Yes, I'm glad, I mean, while we didn't see as much coverage of it from the regime media and the traditional networks. Yeah, well, they allowed this to go on under the nose, so they're embarrassed about it, I guess, at best. But I do think when you hear a quote that an FBI, high-ranking FBI agent was running a shadow government, it's surprising that person hasn't already been indicted. But that was one of the things that was shared by the president that caught my interest. And there's a lot to that story. Yeah, well, he didn't name her. But in the documents that he released, her name's all over him. It is. And she openly talks about a shadow government. Well, who is Nikki Flores? Joining us on our any hour newsmaker line right now is Caitlin Deeds. Kaylin is a Justice Department reporter at the Washington Examiner. All right. The question is, Kaylin, who in fact is Nikki Flores? Well, Nikki Flores is no stranger to controversy, actually, when it comes to some of the things that we've seen over the last several years in Washington and some of the bureaucratic nonsense that we see happening behind the scenes. And Nikki Flores, I would say, of notable acclaim, some people might remember that she had a hand in trying to downplay some of the materials that we saw leaked out of Hunter Biden's laptop. led to a swarm of controversy right before the 2020 election with different outlets and different social media companies trying to even suppress that information. And, you know, she was in the FBI at that time as well. So Nikki Flores came up in recent days because what we saw on Thursday was the President Donald Trump. Talk about how there was an FBI official who said inside an internal communication with one of her subordinates. quote, I'm basically running a shadow government across the FBI at this point. Now, Trump didn't say the full quote, and he didn't name, but just going through the information that his administration released for the public to see, it is clear as day that the reference is pointing toward what she said in this discourse. It was an odd clip, but it took the top of that email. And if you look at the very top of it, and I missed it the first time I looked at it, you see her name. You see Flores, comma, Nikki, and it shows her position at the FBI, and it takes that sentence. My question is, and I found that about 30 minutes after the address, because I found that quote to be so disturbing. I was disappointed. A name wasn't attached to it. My question is, what would you have to say, if not I'm running a shadow government across the FBI to raise the ire or see? prosecutions or indictments already happening. I mean, this seems to be as draconian as you get, but yet we're, it feels like we're just at the starting point.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of questions really right now about what can be done about this. I mean, I think the first point, I think some people want to know what was the full context or the relationship that Flores had with her colleague and what she was saying was it in any way a sarcastic kind of know. I mean, that's not something that you would want to say even in a sarcastic context to somebody who you're communicating with about official business. And this was about suppressing. information that the FBI had about China's interference or attempts to interfere in our 2020 elections. So that's not something to really joke about whenever you're talking about information relating to that. And she was also on note in a separate piece of information that the White House released last week, downplaying other parts of China's interference campaign. There was one part where she thought there was a baseless allegation about there being organized protests that some people in China were. trying to essentially galvanize protests in the US. And she threw cold water on that report. But this was also trying to throw cold water on the fact that there was a plan to manufacture fake licenses so that Chinese individuals or people over here in the US could take on some of these fake licenses, try to be registered to vote or get registered to vote illegally. And so that was something that, you know, across the board, she was down playing these reports in some ways. It seemed like she was trying to keep her former boss, FBI director Ray, from having any embarrassing moments because he had previously testified that China wasn't a major issue when it came to looking into foreign interference. So that was part of the calculus as well in making this. And we learned even last July, July 1st, 2025, Chuck Grassley first gave all of us the information that we were. that we previously didn't know about these efforts by the FBI to suppress plans for China to interfere. So that dates back to back then, but we're also getting this new information now about additional levels of Chinese interference that were suppressed. Kalin, how did she gain so much power? I mean, obviously very powerful within the intelligence community. How did she attain that power? Well, it was in 2022, Ray named Flores to be the intelligence analyst in charge of the Washington field office's intelligence division. And so that was whenever she really started to be very powerful, I would say, in the Bureau's role of overseeing elections and things to that extent. She also previously served under two prior officials in the FBI who have since been removed as well. some of which are individuals that were part of broader investigations into January 6 types of cases and handling. So obviously she kind of stems from this leftovers side of the FBI that current director Kash Patel was tasked to be removing. And he did remove for us as well of. as well as dozens of other people in the FBI since then. So I think that in terms of what's going to come further about this, does Flores have any sort of additional potential investigations into her? I cannot say at this time, but I have reached out to her current employer at Microsoft to see if they would have any comment about her current role there as a risk management analyst in the company. I have not heard back from Microsoft.

You know, a lot of people get frustrated. We see Anthony Fauci lying under oath or you'll see examples of this happening. And people say, well, what can be done about it? I think just us knowing broadly about is better than we were from the start. But I got to believe what the president addressed this nation about could not just be more fodder. It has to have some more substance to it. You know, we've seen that when 50,000 voter files from the UK were. hacked by China. There was a lot of stories in what I call the regime media about it. We got, what, 250,000 individuals, voter information that were hacked by China. Look at your crystal ball. Tell me that something actionable is going to happen over the type of information we're now privy to. I'm really glad you asked about that because I do look at the address last Thursday from President Trump as pretextual in nature as a sort of way of getting out the information that the country has needed for a long time about what types of different various acts took place in 2020 that might have moved the needle or caused our election systems to be less secure than we thought they were. We all knew that there was something there. But we all knew that there was efforts in place to diminish or downplay some of the areas in which our foreign adversaries might have tried to intervene. For example, we see all of this effort since 2016 by the left to elevate the terms in which Russia allegedly sought to intervene. But we never hear anything else about any other countries, at least from the left's perspective, when it comes to election interference other than Russia. And there are far more bad actors at play here. But I'll tell you this one, there was a grand jury that we saw. You've probably done some reporting on it yourself and coverage about the grand jury that was assembled in South Florida. looking into different actors such as the former CIA director John Brennan, looking into former FBI director James Comey. That is a grand jury that was entangled for the sole purpose of looking into whether there was potentially, as we know it, from different sources, a potential conspiracy against rights against President Trump, against the rights of him to run for president again because there was. You know, there was cases that were filed against him back whenever Biden was still president. There was the effort to try to undermine him when he was president in his first term. I strongly believe that there are these subpoena efforts that we've seen taking place in that case down there because this administration, but more so the Justice Department, wants to get accountability for all the people that had tried to stop President Trump, even when he was president the first time and even when he was on the campaign trail again. back in 2024 and 2023. So I do think that this is a serious front. I do think that there could be some announcements hereforth in the next few months because I do think that time is of the essence to get a case like this, especially one that could be alleging a grand conspiracy off the ground. Well, I hope, Greg, I'm with you. I hope somebody in this, whatever you want to call it, is going to be held accountable for what was done.

It's true. I mean, I know it frustrates people. I think knowing is most of the, I mean, knowing is better than not knowing. I think our eyes are being open to the insidious nature of all of it. But. Americans are getting tried for things of this nature and probably less every day. And to think that we're privy to such crimes and no one's going to be accountable. That's going to be hard to digest. It is. All right. More coming up. Rod and Greg with you on this Monday afternoon and talk radio, 1059, KNRS. New week coming up 24th of July, the end of this week. Wow. Big parade. Everything downtown. Yeah, it is. We all agree that California is a bit goofy. Yeah, that's one way to put it. Is that an understatement? Yeah, cuckoo for cocoa pops, off the rails. Yeah, crazy train. Well, how about this story coming out? I think it's San Jose. A video posted by an influencer. His name is Tom Bartelson. He goes by the online name of Meat Dad, okay, showed packages of rib-eye steaks and ground beef. with wired security devices secured to them at a Walmart in San Jose. Yeah, because they don't want them shoplifted. They don't want them. Is that the goofiest thing you've ever heard? You should have seen me trying to get a Red Bull in a New York City, downtown New York City convenience store. They had it all locked. You had to press a button for someone to come. No one came. I was just snaking my arm in the adjacent cooler, trying to get my arm, stretch my arm over to get a Red Bull. I felt like I was like a jewel thief. It was insane. The three-pound package of Ground Beef wrapped with a security lock that would typically be used for more high-value products. It's a package of ground beef, and they're now having to secure it to make sure it doesn't give. Well, at least ground beef costs more than a Red Bull. It should have seen what. I mean, it is. And it's because of lawlessness, and no one's doing anything about it. Nope. You know, they have just normalized criminal behavior to the point where you're going to get more of it. Yeah, yeah. Kind of great. All right, second hour of the routing great shows on its place right here on Utah's Talk Radio 105.9, KNRS.

There's no salary cap. You probably pay judge more than our whole lineup on the Pirates. He's not even playing. He's injured. He could be out for another of the 30 days. And you don't even see our best pitcher skeins. You know, the lineup is just the rotation's wrong. Who's that guy Milwaukee that throws at 105 miles an hour? Mizorowski. Yeah. Doesn't that hurt your arm? I'll tell you what, Major League Baseball, I don't think they don't have the staying power or something. I think that you throw that hard, you're not throwing that hard for long. Well, I think in Major League Baseball, if you don't throw a ball 100 miles an hour, you aren't cutting the muster. Yeah, that used to be a phenomenal moment when they clocked it at 100. Was it Eraldus Chapman who threw the first 100 mile per hour? I don't know. I thought it was Chapman. Maybe not. Maybe it was someone else. I don't know. I don't know. But what you think? I think you're Yankees. Well, you guys are. 11 games over 500. We're four games above 500, and we're playing in your stupid Yankee Stadium. Oh, that's right. I forgot about Nolan Ryan. Yeah, he could chuck it. A long time ago. I'm still looking at this game. I, you know, I'm just going to just, I'm just going to temper my expectations now. Because I think that everything that's wrong about baseball is you can see in the, in the Yankees and the Dodgers, just everything that's wrong with it. And Dodgers are trying to get that pitcher out of Detroit. There's just no, there's no end to the All-Star teams that you guys try to put together. And then the small market teams, they don't, they don't mind. Their fans might mind, but the owners don't because they get what's called a luxury tax. They get paid well. for being the Meyer League team, the stepping stones for the Blue Bloods and baseball. That's why I don't understand why Utah would ever want a Major League Baseball team under the current financial arrangement of salaries. I don't get it either. You are guaranteed to be a bottom feeder under this system right here. Now, maybe this area is bigger than I think because we only see, well, you see more of it because you go. back and forth on the south end of the valley i'm from up north you know it doesn't seem that big someone once described salt lake city as a small town with big buildings oh i'm no i think it's i think that but it's changed that was years ago yeah i think the wasatch frontway so when you include all four counties you know weber davis salt lake county uh utah county that is a major metropolitan area I will tell you, though, that I think that Utah sports fans like winners were at least a chance to win. Yeah. And you see that in the jazz when the jazz were playing bad this year. I don't think their attendance was all that great. I don't know that they were doing. I think they did pretty well, did they? Yeah, they sold out most of the game. I don't get that. So my information was anecdotal. I knew so many people had season tickets that just weren't going to do it. They weren't. And I heard that over and over. But it sounds like they still get a good attendance. But I think in baseball where you have over 100 games a year and you have a lot of home games. If you don't have a product on that field that gives you a chance to even be in a win, I just think it's hard. I think it would be hard. You know what happens. It doesn't happen all season long. Remember when the Jazz were not that good. But if the Lakers came to town, the Celtics came to town, people would go to the games to see those guys. And, you know, the same with baseball. If the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Red Sox, other great teams come to town, people will go see them.

They'll see their favorite players. That's the one redeeming value, I guess. It would be that we'd get to see those players in our hometown. Now, speaking of money, I wonder how many people who are in our audience on this hot Monday afternoon, Greg, would say that their college degree was worth it. Yeah, you know, because college degrees, this is my philosophy on degrees. It's not a trade school necessarily. I think that a lot of times your degree in college, you learn how to learn. You're giving new information. You need to digest it and be able to regurgitate it back in some form, be it tests, whatever you may have to do. And so I don't think that you have to have a career related exactly to a college degree. That said, there should be some practical i mean you learn how to learn but there also should be something that doesn't preclude you from other opportunities and some of these degrees or majors seem to be so outlandish I don't know that they're even interesting to a prospective employer in terms of what you're touting your bachelor's degree or your degree in colleges is from. I think it could have a chilling effect, frankly, in some of these studies that they've come up with in these schools. Well, I didn't realize that this new effort by the education department was part of the big beautiful bill, but apparently it is. And the program, Batesley, it says that this month, the Department of Ed will begin rolling out a new accountability test. that most colleges and universities will soon have to pass. Okay, so you say, what is the accountability test? Here it is. It's pretty simple. If, Greg, an undergraduate program's graduates, okay? Don't earn more than workers who never went to college, that program would be cut off from federal student loans. That sounds very reasonable to me. Very reasonable. Again, here it is. If an undergraduate program's graduates don't earn more than workers who never went to college, that program could be cut off from federal student loans. And there are some examples out there. Yes. I think even here in the state of Utah, we don't have that information, but around the country, it would apply. Now, the same goes for any graduate program whose graduates earn less than someone with only a bachelor's degree. Wow. Well, yeah, I support. So if you look at some of the ones they're talking about these, a lot of them are the arts, okay? And there are art classes. You can take art. There's art schools. I don't think if you went to a traditional institution of higher learning to get an art degree, I don't know if that's what's making or breaking artists of our day is the actual degree. I think there's ways that artists in that, in those various fields.

can become artists and successful artists. And then some are these studies like women's studies, ethnic studies, gender studies. Gender studies. All of those seem to be throwaways, too, where I don't think it's a say, I think you'd be better off with a more general bachelor's degree than some of these studies. Interesting, Penn State, 42,000 undergraduates. They graduated. Big school, yeah. I can't pull it up right now, but one of these studies, one of these specialized degrees graduated 10. graduates out of 42,000 undergraduates, but they graduated 10 students. They have 28 professors of that specialty or that degree. That studies program. That studies program has 28 professors with 10 graduates. So I think it would fail this new standard. I'm just guessing. I'm just going to take a leap. Maybe it pays a lot? I don't think so. It seems to me there was a story not long ago here in the state of Utah. where up the University of Utah had the same situation. Do you recall that, Greg? It seemed to me there was a story there in which maybe five people graduated out of this program or two people because the state legislature this year tried to analyze that, didn't they? As I recall. Yes, they did. And they found out you're getting like five graduates for a program that were spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on. And it's only cranking out five or six graduates. Yeah. No, it's a problem, and I think they're going to have to – because here's the thing. I don't think tuition is going down. No, it keeps going up. You know, assistance, federal loans, they keep going up. They keep saying, well, we should just forgive those loans. The students shouldn't have to pay them back. But the cost for higher education and a degree keep climbing. And I don't know that the return on investment is looking favorable anymore. I think it's a new world. And I think that – Look, it's a combination of things. I think these schools have just gotten, I mean, they say out loud now, we can't hire conservatives as our faculty because they're racist. They wouldn't survive. They don't acknowledge science, which is an irony when you talk about some liberal causes. And it's, you know, where it doesn't touch science, it actually contradicts it. But anyway, I think that they are, they have run themselves aground or a higher ed, or institution of higher learning and institutions of higher learning. So. It makes sense to me that you would have some kind of litmus test, some kind of measurement that says if you could make more money. And any chosen career that does not require a college degree and a certain degree. Yeah, yeah. And if you got one there, you would make less than someone who never darkened the door of the place. Then that's probably not the – that's probably not where taxpayer money or anyone's tuition money ought to go towards. Well, here a couple of quotes. And then I want to get to our listeners on this. I've got a question for him. But here's – this is a spokesman for the department of it. His name is Nicholas Kent. He says, if a program cannot show –

that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had ever, never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers. Yeah, here, here. Okay. But then you have the other side of the equation. Earnings is only a small piece of the puzzle. Okay. That you do learn to learn. And I do, but I do subscribe to that. So the question would be, you know, how do you feel about a program like this where universities throughout the country, this be only public universities, can't do anything in private universities, would have an accountability test. And you've got assured that those graduates who leave your program are, in fact, making more money than someone who never went to college. Yeah, I love that we're going to start staring at this a little bit more. Look, aren't you afraid? I look at these schools, and not so much, Utah has its problems, has its challenges, I would say. But we should say, too, tuition in this state is fairly low. It's a fraction of what, yeah. I mean, Appalachian State was 30,000 a semester 20 years ago. So I can only imagine what some of those schools back east would cost today. uh we're looking at very we're looking at lower tuition i i was fortunate enough i got two kids now that have degrees and there's no way on earth i could have i could have paid for that tuition if they were going to schools you know out of out of state of utah that's that's the reason why and that's uv and us u s you respectively but That said, they become little propaganda centers these schools. They're pushing ideas that we wouldn't subscribe to. And there isn't a diversity of thought. I've got no problem with higher education, learning how to learn being you're confronted with maybe some ideas, philosophies that you didn't think of, you didn't really subscribe to, but they're new. And you've got to think it through and you've got to weigh what you believe, what your values are versus some of the competing thoughts that are out there. That doesn't happen anymore. It's, it's, it's, this is your choice in higher ed. you sign up and you sing off this sheet of music. You can form. Or, and if you don't, well, then you're intellectually a failure or you're a moral failure because there's no diversity of thought. It's just what we're telling you is going to be the case. Who wants to send their kid into that environment? Yeah. Well, I'd like to know from our listeners, their feelings about higher education and this idea, the accountability test, if an undergraduate program's graduates.

Don't earn more than workers who never went to college. Their program would be cut off from federal student loans. Do you support that idea? 888-5708010 on your cell phone, dial pound 250 and say, hey, Rod, or leave us a message on our talkback line by downloading the iHeart radio app and make sure you find K&RS to leave a comment on our talkback line. We'll get to your calls and comments, the value of college anymore. Coming up on the Rod and Greg show and Talk Radio 105-9 canteress, Beehive State residents have less confidence in higher education institutions nationally with just over half of the respondents, 53% expressing certain levels of distrust. We're bringing this up because the Department of Education, now looking at a new program that says it's a very simple accountability test. It says if an undergraduate program. graduates don't earn more than workers who never went to college, that program could lose federal funding. And we're going to get your comments on this. 888-5708010-10, cell phone, dial pound 250, or leave us a comment on our talkback line. All right, let's go to Alan, who's been waiting in Taylor'sville. Alan, welcome to the Rodding Greg Show. Hi, thank you. Yeah, I attended the U and got a history degree back in the 90s. In my senior seminar, there were 20 of us, and I was the only one who had a job lined up after graduation because I was going in the Air Force. I had a history degree. I joined the Air Force. Five years later, I got out. I couldn't get a job with my history degree. So I went back up to college on the GI Bill, got a computer science degree. Now I'm 25 years in that industry. So the degree mattered. Yeah, so the saying that you learn how to learn, it only goes so far. With a history degree, you might have known history so you didn't repeat it, but Alan, it wasn't getting you into the door on it with an employer. Well, Alan, I was going to ask you, why did you take us back? Why did you think a history degree would get you a job? I was going to make the Air Force a career and I didn't. It didn't matter what my degree was in as long as I had one. That's how Air Force commissions work. Yeah. And then after five years, decided it was time to get out. And so then I realized I needed a job. Yeah, yeah. I'm with Alan. I studied history. You know what? My thing was the same. I learned how to learn. And I'd been working in some political campaigns. And I saw you didn't need a political science degree to really work inside of public policy or things like that. So I wanted to study something I had an interest in. But to Alan's point, and I didn't think that every degree is supposed to be at trade school. If you're not going to be a... an engineer if you're not going to be there's certain things that you need to have specific courses to have a profession in but i do i do see how and the 90s is an interesting time because that's when i think it still was kind of conventional wisdom everyone should have a degree to get any kind of real job and it began to decline after that and so he i agree he gets out of the air force i could see where that would be tough well you know i graduated when i did from college or from high school in the 70s

Everybody went to college. Everybody in my class. I remember where are you going? What are you going on a study? What are you going to do? Nowadays, I don't know if that question is being asked anymore. What I did, I started a small, I had a friend and we started a business together. You started a small business together. That's right. Do you have any idea what you were doing? Not at all. Do you have any idea what you're doing now? Fake it until you make it. That's like my approach as a radio host, you know, just faking it until I make it. Don't laugh. I'm not laughing. You know, people are listening. I am not laughing. You are a pro. Matter of fact, we should pat you on the back today. Well, thanks. For the first time, and I've been bugging you to do this for how long. Thank you, Rod Arquette. You've been telling me I should be doing this. You wanted to do this. You wrote a column, and the column was in the Daily Signal today. That's right. It was published in the Daily Signal today. So I was the editorial editor at UVU when it was UBSC. I used to be able to write. Anyway. You and I've talked about that. I'd like to do a little bit of contribution that way and submitted it over the weekend and it was published in the Daily Signal. And it's on our Twitter page, our X page now, too. Our X page as well. And I'm glad you did it. At Rodden Greg Show. At Rodden Greg Show. Yeah. But you can see the article that he wrote for the Daily Signal, which I think is part of the Heritage Foundation. So the Heritage Foundation wanted to have its media arm. They wanted to have a press corps and everything else. They had to get it away from the foundation itself as a think tank. And it's a media. But it is owned by the Heritage Foundation. But it's its media wing or operation. And it's... Rob Blewey, he runs it, but you'll see him on Fox News. You'll see him do a lot of interviews. He's a good guy. Submitted one over the weekend, they accept it. Yeah, it's about John Solomon with Just the News. He's really coming up with, he's worked very hard. He's done a lot of investigative reporting that I just wonder if Americans even see it because the regime media hides it. Yeah. All right, let's go back to the phones. Al is in Salt Lake City tonight here on the Rod and Greg Show. Al, how are you? Thanks so much for joining us. Well, thank you, sir. Listen to you guys all the time. Thank you. I just want to make a comment. You don't necessarily need college to have a great pay, so to speak, because, again, you know, I actually did go in the Marine Corps right out of high school. I was doing environmental health and safety, got out of the Marine Corps, went to work for environmental health and safety companies, and I made over $150,000 a year just by what I was doing in the Marine Corps. Good for you. Wow, congratulations. That was good. That's good. My brother, my wife's oldest brother, enrolled in the Air Force. He wanted to be a dentist. So he was in the Air Force. They told him to be a dentist. Once his commitment to the Air Force was done, he set up his own practice, had a very successful practice for a long, long time. Well, that's, I think that's great. Yeah. I think that works. And I, look, again, if you get into the medical field, you're going to have to go to some schooling. Some training, a lot of training. And I get that. And I think even, you know, electrician, you know, you're going to have to be, if to be an electrician, where you could.

shock and kill someone you better have some yeah you better know what you're doing that's not college that's trade schools but same thing yeah there are some some things that are just very specific and you should everything else you watch with especially with ai i think that these degrees especially these gender studies and these uh all these different weird ones i think that take them off the general education list go back to your classic education for your general ed and see what you get they have to all right more coming up or your calls and comments on the rod and gregg show if an undergraduate program's graduates don't earn more than workers who never went to college the program could be cut off from federal student loans we're getting your reaction to it yeah i think i think there's some practicality that needs to happen given especially how much people go into debt okay let's go to our great listeners let's go to uh bart and kaysville been patiently waiting welcome to the rot and gregg show bart Afternoon, gentlemen, I would say that the basic idea that college is supposed to equal money is a flawed concept, even though that's what everybody does. I think that the end of going to college is knowledge. And because knowledge is intrinsically valuable, that's been monetized over time. But it's kind of a false understanding of the purpose of higher education. I just got an MS or an MA degree up at USU. And I saw the impact of what you're talking about everywhere. Programs are panicking. because they're graduating people that can't get jobs. And I'm really, I understand that. I think there's a lot of wasted. time space and effort spent on, on, you know, basket weaving and all the various studies, all the, you know, the study X and study Y, which are, which is pathetic. But that's, that's more an issue with, uh, with people getting easy money to go to college, whether it comes from the government or their parents and, and people not doing their due diligence into why they're there in the first place. So like, You were saying before, I also graduated with a history degree back in the 80s. And then I went back just recently. And so I understand the consternation about I did history and polysize, so I double majored. And I also went in the military. And so I found an easy road into that. But, you know, history taught me to think. And no matter where I went in the world, whether I was in Afghanistan or in Europe or in Africa, I could relate to people because I knew their story. And I found that really, really valuable because other people that were business majors or that had some other kind of practical degree. Yeah, they were good in their field.

But they did not understand culture. They didn't understand language. They didn't understand history. Let me ask you two questions. I don't disagree with what you're saying. But these are the two things that come to mind. One, is the critical thinking and the ability to learn, learning how to learn, but even what you learn, are you trusting it that it is what today, what it would have been back when you were in school? That's the first question is, are you really learning? Like, are those schools just getting a little bit too? propaganda or they too ideologically bent second is these kids if you're not in utah you're walking out of there with a couple hundred grand in debt you have to put you have to tether it to some kind of job because you're staring at bills as soon as you get out of college hasn't hasn't higher ed itself tethered itself to professions because you need to pay off all those loans so the question is is it still is it still higher education as we used to know it and what do you do about all that tuition that you end up uh racking up when you go The ideology question is front and center. And the reason I went to USU living in Tazeville instead of the U or back up to Weber or something like that is because I wanted to escape. The wokeism. I wanted to escape the ideology. But what I found at USU is it was everywhere. Yes, yes. Every professor had a little rainbow flag, and it would say ally on it. And there was DEI banners all over. And there were, you know, transgender people everywhere until just last spring when the... when the governor came out and they did it like a ban, you know. It's like it's illegal to do that now. So they had to shift all their departments. So I think that's a real concern, and it definitely undermines the purpose, again, of education, which... All right, Bard, thank you. Thank you, Bart. Yeah, I kind of cheated by asking those questions, but I just wanted to hear his take. All right, let's go to West and Cadesville. Wes, weigh in on this. What do you say? So I think you're going to have a lot of military guys calling in today. Sounds like it. That's okay. We love our military guys. I'm another one of them guys. I was, I joined an 03, and I served for four years and then got out and then ended up doing another 17 of the reserves. And the, I tried going to school to college for a year. I was going to go get a criminal justice degree. I just, it didn't feel right to me. And I, I ended up going into IT. Uh, and the thing I found is that IT, the IT industry doesn't really care about your, you know, your, your, your, your college degree. It cares about certifications, whether or not you know, a specific, you know, a, uh, method of support. Yeah, yeah. And for this. When we talk about this bill, I think it's a really good idea because, I mean, if you think about it from a business perspective, let's say you own like a restaurant or something. You wouldn't hire a ferrier to, you know, work at your restaurant and just keep them on the payroll because, you know, what's he going to do? There's no horses around. That's true. You know, so it makes, you know, I make six figures a year and I don't have a degree.

You know, I have a bunch of certifications in the IT industry, but, you know, it doesn't, and that's not to say that, you know, certain degrees aren't, aren't profitable. There's a bunch of smart guys I work with that have degrees, and, you know, they do really smart guy things. You know, they're, they got a lot of knowledge. Yeah. Yeah, you're doing your thing. You're right, Wes. You're right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. All right. We've got more calls and some of our talk back comments. Please hold. Yeah. We'll get back to your thoughts coming up on the Rod and Greg show that a certain program, people graduate from there, are actually earning money, making a living. And if they don't. They may lose their opportunity to have some student loans. I think we've had some pros and cons whether income is your sole measure of whether that education is worth it or not. And I hear what they're saying, but there's still bills at the end, usually when you're done and a life to proceed upon on. So I think the compensation does play into that. Okay, let's go back to our listeners. Let's go to caller Larry, who's in Lehigh. Larry, thank you for holding. Welcome to the Rod and Greg Show. Well, thanks for having me. From Caysville to Lehigh, and I'm a veteran. There you go. Good for you. Thank you for your service. So many, so many military. But my work, I'm a consultant for higher education. I help schools to become accredited, institutionally accredited, and I help them to get out of accreditation jail. Right. And so this whole regulation. came from the one big beautiful bill earnings premium. Yes, yes. And so what I like about it is for the first time, the education department is holding public institutions and private institutions and for profit institutions accountable. And so that may sound really crazy, but in the past... They've always gone after for-profit, and the publics have always got away with not being held accountable for outcomes. And same with private. And so what this has done is it's made it so that schools... have to pay more attention to outcomes like retention, placement, and those kinds of statistics that schools are going to be held accountable to. And it works like this. After one year, if your program doesn't meet the thresholds, then you have the opportunity to revise the program. or close it out. And if you revise it, you get another year. And if you don't meet the outcomes at the end of two years, you'll never, ever get student loan money for that program. So I just thought that would help you. It does. Larry, real quick, how is the education, you work in education, how is the education community responding to this? How are they responding to it? Oh.

Well, people are afraid, you know. I mean, let me tell you what's going on. I mean, if you watch the news, like there's one university back in the east that is eliminating 90 programs. Wow. And that's because they see it coming. I'm on the board of another university, an audio and video, S-A-E, they're going to have to close down. a location because they can't meet the premium. There's no way with audio and video people, you know, the way to work does. And I'm on, I'm chair of the board of trustees of Bryan University in Arizona. And I will tell you they're very concerned. There are programs they're eliminating because they know that they'll never make it. Yeah. All right. Larry, thank you. Interesting input on that. I loved it. I mean, that was that, isn't that eye-opening? He helps with accreditation and then accreditation jail. They lost their accreditation to get back, be accredited. He helps them through that. That's an interesting, great perspective. And I didn't know. I mean, it doesn't surprise me, but wouldn't it be something that public institutions of higher learning aren't held at the same standard as others, of course. You know, I want to bring up one point. I think I've got time to get this in. A lot of the socialist movement in this country is being led by young people. Young people who are frustrated. Young people who are overeducated and underachieving. They're blaming the system. They're blaming capitalism for this. Blame your education. Yeah. Because get your education, give you the skills you need to be able to have that job, maybe to afford out. Yep. That's where their anger should be doing. My opinion. I agree. Third hour of the Rodding Greg Show coming up. Stay with us. I'll tell my little granddaughter. When she gets upset, she just goes, I grunt too. You do grunt? I think that's, I think a primal grunt's always good. Primal grunt. Well, apparently, illegal labor isn't farming's future. You believe of that? Is or is not? No, it's not. Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security's latest move limiting worksbates enforcement and putting a stop to immigration and customs enforcement raids on farms around the country. Now, it protects some corporate giants that are bleeding rural communities dry. So if you're hiring illegals to work on a farm, you may get an exemption. Does that sound like amnesty to you? It does. Is this the bill that's in Congress? Because we've got a motley crew of Republicans that are supporting it. It might be one from Utah as well. Really? Really. Well, let's find out what's going on here. Joining us on our Any Hour Newsmaker line is Ammon Blair. He is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Ammon, how are you? Welcome to the Rod and Greg Show. I'm good. Thank you for having me. And tell us exactly what's up with agriculture, illegal immigration, and boy, does this sound like amnesty. Yeah, so, man, this is kind of a wicked problem in the fact that we kind of created it, you know, due to large industrial agriculture and their need for cheap goods, what they did is they prioritized commodities outside of the country because it's...

cheaper and and faster to produce. You can produce it all year round given certain climates. And so these corporations are international corporations, not just the main four meat packers that are currently under investigation by the Trump administration. And so by focusing all their efforts and resources and policies and proposals to provide cheap imported goods, what that does is it decreases the domestic supply and it eradicates the competition. So a lot of times your local farmers and ranchers really can't compete against cheap imports. So they end up having to either go bankrupt or go big. to scale their operation. And when you do that, unfortunately, they need labor. And so, but because they're still making pennies on the consumer dollar that they're receiving, they really can't afford, you know, living wages for any American. No American is going to want to work that type of labor. And so they have two options. They can either do the H2A visa route or they can do illegal aliens. And it is very costly to do the H2A visa route. They have to pay for the sponsorship. They have to pay for their paperwork to get done. Housing. They have to go through multiple three letter agencies through their regulations. And so they end up just choosing the legal aliens. And so we've unfortunately created a system where not only do we rely, not only do we rely on cheap imported commodities to feed ourselves, we now rely on kind of like a second class citizen imported into the U.S. to do the dirty work. So, and I'll tell you, the dilemma here, I think there's a bill in Congress that would say if you've worked in agriculture for last two years or something, you would be, there'd be a, you don't, and you're not documented, there'd be some sort, maybe amnesty is too strong over it, I don't know what you want to call it, but there'd be some pathway to stay and keep working. But, Amon, here's my question. I could hear this same argument made for construction. uh for for the services we could hotels and and the service industry would probably make an argument similar to this once you allow one segment of the workforce these kind of accommodations where do you how do you tell other employers who may feel those margins are pretty challenging also that they're they're not eligible for the same consideration Yeah, you can't. The ag sector is now going to be the Overton window. You know, once you say yes to this, every other industry, just like you said, is going to say, why them and not us? And then, in fact, if you look, Mark Green Wallens actually met with these sectors in the industries just recently to talk about this and talk about the ice raids on work sites.

And so really what we're doing is we're just carving out immigration or really citizenship and for industrial needs. And instead of looking at it as like a systems approach and trying to figure out an actual solution, they think it's by providing them a legalized way to remain in the United States, thinking that that's going to solve the problems. And unfortunately, it's not going to. Look, you know, the Mexican cartels at the southern border, when we, whether it was in the first Trump administration or the Biden administration, we released certain individuals or family units based off of their nationality and also the family unit status. And so the cartels at that time would just change documents, force them to throw their documents away. Also, they could fall within that category and that policy. Same thing is going to happen here. How can we actually vet and identify those in the ag sector? And what is considered an ag sector, is that going to be also the electricians that work on farms and ranches, welders, and you name it? And so it's going to be very difficult to have a left and right limit on who is and who is not part of this. And then there's no veting. Look, we can't even vet right now who's coming at our southern border, let alone who's on the interior. Amen, as I'm reading through your story, it sounds to me like these big producers, like you mentioned, Tyson, Smithfield, Cargo are being given special treatment. What are they doing for the little farmer, the little guy? I mean, are these the guys that are really in trouble because of this policy, Amman? Oh, 100%. We're not doing anything really for them at all. Right now, like I said, there's an executive order to conduct an investigation on antitrust laws against the four meat packers. But look, the entire industry is completely consolidated and verticalized, whether that is your retailer like Walmart and Kroger, they own such a large proportion of the share of the market, as well as even your equipment like John Deere. The entire system is actually completely consolidated, and it forces your independent farmer and rancher out of business. Look, we've lost over 105,000 cattle ranches in five years. We're continuously losing farms and ranchers. And what's interesting, you'll see the numbers and you'll see the data, and you're like, yes, but the family farm and ranch is actually increasing in size. Well, that's because these large corporations... are feeding off these bankrupt farms and ranches, consolidating them and growing their operations. So really, it's only helping and benefiting a select few that are actually international corporations or they're extracting money from rural America, as opposed to having a decentralized program and process and resources and businesses. Really, we need to focus on the main street of America as opposed to the Wall Street. And these corporations represent that Wall Street. So, yeah, so that does not sound like a free market to me. That sounds like we have antitrust laws that are being broken because, you know, if you look at grocery stores, you know, we have a large grocery store chain here that another large grocery store couldn't buy it because it would have too much strength in the market. You see that with hospitals. How is it that we're seeing the consolidation of so many different industries?

And it's not having federal antitrust laws getting in the way or stopping it from happening. Yeah, so if you look at there was a really good case, a cargo case in the 1980s. And this came up. And at that same time, under the Reagan administration, there was a man from the Chicago School of Economics called Robert Bork. Robert Bork shifted the idea of what antitrust means. For him in the consumer welfare doctrine, it means that antitrust really is about getting cheap products and that the consumer must be at the forefront. So it's all about affordability, not market consolidation. And so when we lost that case in the 1980s, that really spiraled the growth of these large corporations to what we have today. And what many people think is we have to wait for the federal government to act. And that's what the case. Actually, the first antitrust laws were actually built by states. Texas was second. And we actually conducted a antitrust case against the Rockefeller Foundation in 1905. when it was the cotton in Texas working hand-in-hand with the rail. And they were not only concentrating the area, but they were also... fixing prices and whatnot because they had so much market space in that area. So we could definitely do it today. You don't have to wait for the federal government. Your attorney general in each state could actually go after each and every one of these and conduct antitrust lawsuits and investigations into each and every one of these organizations and entities. Evan, thanks for the information. We'll have to see what happens. Thank you for your work on this. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right. On our newsmaker line, that's Ammon Blair, he is with the Texas Public Policy Institutes taking a look at illegal labor and farming. Well, we talked about these young people. You know, they might lose faith in a free market because we're thinking what we have today isn't. a free market or saying that the free market's failing them i would say this is big government and big business merging at the expense of american people that isn't a free market at the american farmer and they're what do you say 105 000 ranchers we've lost in the last five years yes and i and look i I wonder beef is so high. And it's in the processing of beefs down to three, three companies nationally. More coming up. Rod and Greg with you on this Monday and talk radio, 105.9. Before the break, Greg, about, you know, these major corporations and what they're doing when it comes to agriculture and using illegal immigrants to work the farms and stuff like that. And the concern that some farmers have out there that, you know, sooner or later, the, you know, the big farm companies are giving special treatment.

Whereas the small farmers is not getting a break at all. It's chronic capitalism. Yeah, yeah. Well, have you ever heard of the 10-plus rule when it comes to the creation of wealth? For every one person that creates wealth, 10 more people become wealthier? Yeah, that would be a supply-side economics. Supply. Yes. Well, Jeff Bezos. has come up with an idea. You know, Fortune Magazine ranks the richest people in the world. Yes. He says, why don't you rank the people who created more wealth for other people? Wouldn't that be better? Let's do what he had to say. Let me see if I can find this audio bite real fast of what he said about wealth creation. Somebody needs to make a list where they rank people by how much wealth they've created for other people. And so instead of the Forbes list, it ranks you by your own wealth. So, you know, Amazon's market cap is $2.3 trillion today. I own about, you know, $200 billion-ish of it. So if you take $2.3 billion and subtract out the piece I kept from myself, then, you know, I've created something like $2.1 trillion of wealth for other people. That should put me pretty high on some kind of list. And that's a better list. You know, how much wealth have you created for other people? You know, that's good question because the socialist movement in this country is attacking people like Basso's. That's right. But look how many other people are getting wealthy as a result of what he's done. Well, we've always said that the free market and a free, you know, free markets lift more people out of poverty than any, you know, UN program, federal program, state program, county program, you name it, combined. The free market has delivered more people out of poverty than any of those government-sponsored programs. And so it stands the reason of what he's saying is right. And you know what else I would out all these trust fund babies inheriting their money where they haven't made anything. They're just living off the interest that they were given when they were born. We get those trust fund babies and out them. How many people have been lifted out of poverty by socialism? I'd say zero. How many people have been murdered by communism? Millions. Millions, yeah. Upon millions. All right. We were talking about the value of a college education earlier, getting some phone calls, but we got some talkback comments as well. Let's listen to what some of our listeners are suggesting when it comes to the value of a college education. A lot of things, well, great to know, are not necessary for survival in life. So those degrees that aren't making the money that supports a family, I say, adios.

Good point. See, the interesting thing about 2026 is that self-learning is a real thing now. Before you had to go to an institution, I had to really get access to maybe the best thought or different philosophical belief, whatever it might be. But we can self-teach now. We can learn. The world's our oyster with technology. You can explore and learn. You don't need the school the way you used to used to. Yeah. So I like the, it ought to be. How are you going to make it? What are you going to do? Well, are we hurting our children when it comes to AI? And let me bring this point up. I use AI all the time anymore. Chat G-D-G-T, right? If I've got a question, what about it? Yeah. Right? It used to be we had to go dig it out. Yeah. Remember, I mean, how value-worthy encyclopedias? Well, I got to warn you, folks. If you think AI is giving you all the answers, be careful. Because if you use it like Google where you're trying to get a factual answer. AI is still not accurate. If it's a process, how do I start a business? All the elements of starting a business, you might get the right answer. But I asked it a question. I can't remember what was it about. You actually argued with AI. I did. I told it it was faux. It was this Nikki Flores. I wanted to know more about it. And they said that Nikki Flores. My AI told me that Nikki Flores didn't have anything to do with Trump's address on Thursday. I said, you are absolutely wrong. He absolutely does. He even put the information in his that you could look at whitehouse.gov and then you know what the answer from a i was i stand corrected you're correct you are you felt good because you beat a no i don't because every time i already know an answer and i ask a i whether it be groch chap gpte whatever it is It gives me the wrong answer. It told me the Utah had 12 refineries when I had seven. It's not accurate. You cannot trust you. You've got to be careful with AI. It doesn't know facts like you think it does. I couldn't believe. You were telling me. Yeah. And I yell at it too. You argued with AI. You know what? And it hears me because it apologizes. It does. Oh, by the way, you got to see what AI said about your car. I didn't even ask about your car. What, my car? Yeah. What are you asking AI about my car for? I had a picture of my car and I was saying something and then it ripped on your car while it was talking about my car. Why was it ripping on my car? He said, compared to mine, it looked like it was a, it was a training car for valet service. I'll show it to you. It was amazing what it said. Did I ask you to compare the both? I did. Yes, you did. No, no. It doesn't volunteer information. It sure did. I was asking only about my car and it said that car, that, that, that. and said your brand, it said that car next to it, and it ripped on it by itself. I didn't even prompt it. I'll show you. I'll show you the conversation. I don't want to see it. All right, back to our talk, guideline. I went to college many years. I have a master's degree in nursing as a nurse practitioner. My degree does not earn me as much as I was hoping, but it is, it was a good education. Yeah.

And I want to add to that, Greg, what this caller just said. If you're happy doing what you're doing, maybe you aren't making a ton of money in the world, but you're just happy. Yeah. And, you know, okay, should we be critical of that? No. Again, if you think you're learning to learn, that's great. I just don't even have the faith that you're learning critical thinking or there's a diversity of thought happening in our institutions of higher learning where you're getting the full picture. I'm afraid that universities are made up of professors where the saying goes, if you can, you do, if you can't, you teach. And you've got a bunch of professors out there that are arrogant. They've got God complexes. They've never had to make it out there in the real world. And they push. philosophies and beliefs that they've never had to apply themselves. And frankly, I don't think work. And, but they get to talk about it because there's no check to what they say or say, you know, you're actually completely wrong about what you're, what you're promoting or what you say is the better way. And so I, I don't, maybe there's areas and fields where you can still learn a lot and get something from it. I fear that universities are getting so. so hardcore left driven that you're not getting the full picture you know i don't know how you feel i've been doing this for more than 50 years now wow that's a long time right that all i thought it was way longer i have never felt like this is a job no yeah no that's and i've done i've done all kinds of things yeah from spinning the hits to managing i've never felt it like a job and and if you feel like that I really don't care how much money you make sometimes. As long they make a good living, you're fine. Charles Schultz, who is the artist who created Charlie Brown, Peanuts. He said the secret of, and many people have said this, but he said the secret of life is doing something you love. Yeah, and I do. And I don't think Charles Schultz said, I want to be a multimillionaire. I know what I'll do. I'll draw cartoons. I don't think that's how that went. I think he did what he loved. He was an artist. He loved cartoons. He was so good at it, and it didn't feel like a job, that he saw... monetary success but i don't even think as you as you say the monetary success is the is the measure it's that if you are fortunate enough to find something that's a soul's code something that you love something that you would do without it being a job i consider yourself lucky and i think that is uh the key well you love what you're doing i do you love public policy i do i love public policy i love politics i love being on the show i had to beg you how many years before you let me in the door You hate me, actually, but we don't bring that up. I mean, I'm the goofy kid, Greg, who would take, this really dates me. A transistor radio? Yeah. Remember transistor radio? Yep. I would tape it to my bike handles so I could drive around and have a radio with me. You sound like Rush Limbaugh. Remember Rush Limbaugh came from a family of doctors and lawyers. And the Limbaas were not, DJs were not in the social economic status of the Limbaugh families. And his name was Rush, for heaven's sake. Yeah. But he, it was in his soul's code. He was, he was doing the same thing you were as a little kid. And he was pretending he was on the radio. And his father was disappointed. And everybody's like, oh, my gosh, what are you doing? And he bounced around for a while before he finally hit the, you know, the show and the vehicle that brought him to who he is. I remember late at night.

because of the signal and the skips that you get. I'd stay up and I'd tune the radio and try and list stations that we could get. Grina, we'd get W.A.B.C. out of New York. We'd get W. L.S. out of Chicago on, you know, it'd be scratchy, but I'd tune just so I could hear it. Yeah, that is a story I've heard familiar. That's a familiar story to people who this is what they want to do. If you love this industry, if it gets in your blood? And you've been in many versions of it, too. You haven't just been in radio and on the executive level, not just on the entertainment side. But see, I go back to the point, if you love it, if you love something you're doing. Yes. I don't think the monetary value comes into play. No. And if you love to learn and you're, yeah, you don't want to be homeless doing it. So you got to figure out how you're paying the bills, how you're making the mortgage and whatever, paying the rent. But, but yeah, I do think there is something beautiful about being able to do something you truly love. Yeah. All right. More coming up here on the Rod and Greg Show and Utah's Talk Radio 105.9. KNRS. And what's going on? There was this White House report coming out, taking a look at what's going on at the Smithsonian Institute, something that you've experienced. Yes. And a lot of discussion about that. It scarred me. I just didn't know. Like I said, I just, the things that they were attaching our history, the motivations behind our history were just. draconian and inaccurate in my mind. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, well, there's a lot of discussion about what's going on there. And joining us on our any hour newsmaker line right now is Alan Mendenhall. He is a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He looks at economic policy studies. Alan, thanks for joining us tonight. I want to ask you, you say there's more to what's going on at the Smithsonian Institute more than just the displays. What do you mean by that and what do you have found out? Well, I guess so. I went through graduate school, got a PhD in English, and I was immersed in the Marxism that was in these English departments. So sometimes you get this vocabulary or you get these ideological frames, and people are operating within those, and they don't even realize that that's what they're doing. And I think that's what's happening at the Smithsonian. So it is incorporating sort of this residual Marxism. So it's not out there doing just pure Marxist economics, but it's using... frameworks of oppressor and oppressed, and it's borrowing from people like Gromsky and Stuart Hall and Louis Altusay, who are trying to take race, gender, sexuality, and pull those through Marxist theories. And that's what you're seeing at the Smithsonian. So things that they're doing, for example, would be They're using race, gender, climate change, immigration, economic inequality, all these kinds of things in their exhibits. And it's meant to influence the way people think about history. And so they are politicizing the history in a way to try to shape opinion so that people leave the Smithsonian with a different view of American history than...

sort of anything that would be favorable. You know, you mentioned that this is something that's been longstanding. I have just, maybe it's a Neanderthal. I just noticed it, you know, blatantly as of late, maybe last summer taking my family to the American History Museum, it's Smithsonian. How did it manifest itself prior to the way they blatantly say that circuses were created because we wanted to, we were colonialists and imperialists and we wanted to take over the world? What were they doing all this time to maybe set the table for what we see today? So are you talking about the people who are doing Marxist theory or the people who are curating the museums? I've actually conflated them. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I actually thought they were one and the same. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think now they pretty much are one and the same, regardless of whether these people sort of identify as Marxists, what they're doing is they're taking from classical Marxism, this notion of oppressors and oppressed, which in the Marxist sort of vocabulary would be like the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But then they're building on what these cultural Marxists. Did, like, so people like Gromski or Adorno or Marcusa, and they're trying to show that, you know, we have to capture these institutions. We have to capture schools. We have to capture universities. We have to capture the media. We have to capture the entertainment industry. This is what these cultural Marxists were doing because they realized that, oh, no, the... proletariat never rose up and overthrew the working class. Why is that? Why did that not happen? And then they said, well, it's because all these types of institutions, like the ones I just listed, are basically, they didn't use the term brainwashing, but that's basically what they suggested, is that these institutions are informing the way people think, and therefore we have to capture those institutions. So all these Marxist theories, theorists, since the 1960s, in succession been advocating for ways to capture institutions ideologically. And so we act like we're surprised, like you say, like when did this happen? Like it seems like it's been that way for a long time. Well, some people seem really surprised that it's that way when in reality you've got all these Marxist theorists that are outlining a playbook. you know, over half a century ago now. Yeah. Alan, why are institutions like the Smithsonian and others? Why are they so vital to America and that we get the story straight? Well, because it's important because we need to have a real understanding. When we make decisions every day about what we're going to do in our lives, what we're going to do in our careers, how we're going to treat people, you know, we need to base those things on facts and reality and not on, you know, falsehoods or not on not on

particular ideologies that are meant to destroy and to tear down because society needs people who are building things. We need to build institutions. We need to grow, you know, and all these ideologies are specifically meant to tear things down. And that is a... It's been happening is we're losing the America that we built. So, you know, all the great institutions from checks and balances to federalism, our constitutional structure, our bill of rights, all these things are being diluted and replaced by grievance culture. And that's particularly bad because it is actually Western culture. that did things like abolished the slave trade, abolished slavery. The West never invented slavery, but it was the very first sort of culture to start getting rid of it. I mean, slavery was ancient. It existed in ancient civilizations. It existed everywhere. It existed in the medieval world. And really, it was Western thought, a combination of enlightenment and ideas, commitments to natural rights, and human equality and liberty combined with sort of... Christian teachings on the inherent dignity of the human person. These are all Western things, and they're what enabled slavery to... to reach its demise. And when you start saying, okay, everything from the West is bad, everything that has to do with the foundations of America, they're all bad. Well, then you're going to replace those things with, I guess, tyrannical structures and attempts to dominate, which is exactly ironically what they are accusing, you know. the sort of traditional way of looking at American history of doing. So here's my question. You're seeing this play out politically. You're talking the philosophical, maybe the lurch or the, you know, slouch towards Gomorrah that we've seen socialist, communism, just Marxism, maybe take hold in our country. But you're seeing this weekend, you're seeing Bill Maher, who's a liberal. He's saying, I've read this, the Democrat Socialists of America. I've read their platform. I'd rather vote for JD Vance. You're seeing even crazy James Carvel say, I'm not, we're not communist. I reject this. Bernie Sanders and that ilk of socialist slash communists are probably more popular and politically powerful today than they've ever been. Is that just within the Democrat Party that will alienate itself from the electorate as a whole? Or do you see that having any kind of traction? All this work that you just described, to what end? Is this going to – what's going to happen next? Well, I think it's a play for young people because – All these politicians know that young people are feeling disempowered and frustrated and we have this housing crisis and they're saddled with student loans and they can't buy homes and they're delaying marriage and all these different things. And so they're trying to take advantage of that moment.

capture the hearts and minds of young people. They know that if you can take people who are struggling or who are, you know, young and susceptible to ideology, that you can get them early and win them over. And that's where you get all the Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez type followers and the Democratic Socialists of America and all that. But I think if you... combat those types of arguments with history, with real history, with data, with evidence, and you make a rational case for your point of views, and you do it based on argumentation, and you do it based on principle, that in the long run, you win. Alan Mendenhall, he's from the Heritage Foundation, talking about the Smithsonian Report issued by the White House. More coming up on The Rod and Greg Show. Movie The Odyssey over the weekend. Yeah. liked it. Enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there were some weird parts of it, you know, every way, the PC people. It had some, it had some negative buzz amongst conservatives, it was kind of, it was politically correct or something, I don't know what, woke. Yeah, yeah. But, uh, but, uh, Matt Damon really does a good job. He does a good job with this, but it's long, three hours, almost three hours. Geez, yeah. Hey, did you see the protests broke out about national parks or cutting, uh, There's, I don't know, protest on, what, fifth or sixth east in South Temple, protesting the cuts on national parks, national park lands, or is it the, is it the National Monument? Yeah, bears' ears, grand staircase. People in the rural Utah, they're very happy. As they should be. They're very happy. They live on that land. They live around that land. They were never bad stewards of that land. Yeah. Yeah. They're the ones. Their voice is what counts. The people are protesting. People who wear socks with their sandals. Yeah, they're people that actually think humans are the enemy. Yeah. Humans are the enemies. They want all humans off of all land. Yeah. Well. So. Good luck on that one. Did you ever compete in track or run at any time? No. I laugh because I run like a duck. No. Really? If there was a fighter flight instinct, I got to go with the fight because there's no flight in me. I run like a duck. I've been mocked about how I run. I can't. Yeah, no, no. I've just never found on a track meet. Really? At a track meet ever. I used to run. I used to enjoy running. I have a very odd gate. I ran several 10Ks and a couple of half marathons. Yeah, I have an odd gate. I don't know why. I just have never been. I don't know why, but I've never been one that's the nuns for running. Oh, I got to see you run sometime. No, you don't, actually. Does Queen Bee have video of you running? No, but she could send me? She would tell you that I run like a duck. Not her, everybody. Anyone that's ever seen me run. I had to chase down a cab. My wallet fell out. I was traveling. And the people I was traveling with, they saw me just burst out of this hotel. It was like a half round. I had to get to the other side before that guy got with my wallet. Yes. And when I walked back to that group after catching. They're all laughing. They're like, what just happened? What was that you just did? We never want to see that again. So I guess I'm a bit of a spectacle and I'm running. Well, I bring this up because a Brit by the name of Josh Kerr.

smashed the men's mile world record, which has stood since 1999. It's amazing. I thought it'd be, yeah, so it's from Scotland, right? He ran it in three minutes, 42.66 seconds. It averages like over 16 miles an hour. 60 miles an hour, he ran it. He maintained that pace. That is insane. I remember, this is how old I am, when American Jim Ryan broke the record. And he got it to 351, I believe. And now it's down to 342. It was thought for the longest time that the human body could not run a sub four-minute mile. Well, yeah, I remember that Roger Bannister broke that number. They said it cannot be done. Yeah. And then it was done. Now we're down to what? 3 what? 3.42. She was. That's crazy. Yeah, I think he maintained 16 and a half miles. Do you make anyone mad? Was he running for his life? I don't know. Maybe you get a little adrenaline up when you made someone mad and you got to run. I don't know. Wow. That's fast. Stood for 27 years, 342. Will it be broken? I bet it will be. Give it time. All right, that does it for us tonight. Head up, shoulders back. May God bless you and your family. In this great country of ours, we're back tomorrow at 4. We'll talk to you then.