Latest / ToddCast Podcast with Todd Starnes / Send the Right Message

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Send the Right Message · ToddCast Podcast with Todd Starnes

0:10
Speaker 1: From Memphis, Tennessee, on the banks of the mighty Mississippi,
0:15
Speaker 1: it's America's conservative blowtorch.
0:18
Speaker 2: That's us, that's right, I.
0:22
Speaker 3: Love this American ride.
0:25
Speaker 1: Todd Starnes.
0:27
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
0:28
Speaker 2: Hello fellow patriots, Jeff Stein, blessed to be filling in
0:33
Speaker 2: for Mr. Starnes today. He continues his tremendous trip to California,
0:38
Speaker 2: taking the place by storm. We'll tell you a little
0:40
Speaker 2: more about that a little later on. My privilege to
0:43
Speaker 2: be speaking to you from the heartland, my home base
0:46
Speaker 2: in Iowa, KXEL Radio, Iowa's home to the Todd Starnes Show.
0:52
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining us from the Liberty University studio.
0:57
Speaker 2: 901-260-5926 is how you can join the Coast to Coast
1:01
Speaker 2: conversation on this Open Line Friday. We have a lot
1:05
Speaker 2: to get to, and I want to go right to
1:07
Speaker 2: the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line. Iowa is a spotlighted state
1:13
Speaker 2: if the Republicans want to hold on to majorities in Congress.
1:17
Speaker 2: And one of the open seats that folks are looking
1:21
Speaker 2: at is in Northeast Iowa. It is the 2nd District.
1:24
Speaker 2: And joining us on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line is
1:26
Speaker 2: the Republican candidate for U.S. House in that district. He's
1:30
Speaker 2: Joe Mitchell. JoeMitchell.com is the website. Mr. Mitchell, thanks so
1:34
Speaker 2: much for joining us. How are you?
1:36
Speaker 5: Jeff, good to be on this morning.
1:38
Speaker 6: How are you?
1:39
Speaker 2: I'm quite well, but I didn't have to do a
1:41
Speaker 2: debate last night on television. You did, and we should
1:45
Speaker 2: point out to folks, this is an open seat because
1:49
Speaker 2: the incumbent Republican is seeking the U.S.
1:51
Speaker 7: Senate.
1:52
Speaker 2: You've got a voter registration advantage, Republicans over Independents over Democrats.
1:57
Speaker 2: You've got a Libertarian, a Democrat, a Republican, and an Independent,
2:01
Speaker 2: four on the ballot. You and the Democrat debated last night.
2:05
Speaker 2: How was that for you?
2:07
Speaker 5: It was good. I could have debated three more hours, Jeff.
2:10
Speaker 5: I was having a good time by the end, and
2:12
Speaker 5: we'll have another debate next week, actually. But it was
2:15
Speaker 5: an hour long. KGAN out of Cedar Rapids.
2:19
Speaker 4: The CBS affiliate.
2:20
Speaker 5: They're the ones that hosted it. They did a nice job.
2:23
Speaker 5: They were very fair. You know, we got over a
2:26
Speaker 5: lot of topics, agriculture, tariffs, immigration.
2:30
Speaker 4: The economy.
2:31
Speaker 5: So I thought it went good. You know, we tweeted
2:34
Speaker 5: out and posted probably 20 different clips from the debate.
2:38
Speaker 5: And so we were, you know, clipping stuff nonstop, sending
2:41
Speaker 5: it out. And our opponent did, I think, one clip.
2:45
Speaker 5: her answering the Iran war question. So I think that
2:48
Speaker 5: tells you maybe who won the debate, you know.
2:52
Speaker 2: If you go to Twitter X and you can follow
2:56
Speaker 2: Joe Mitchell, Iowa, that's where you find this stuff. JoeMitchell.com
3:00
Speaker 2: is his website. I know that you brought up a
3:04
Speaker 2: few things that your opponent, the Democrat, did not have
3:07
Speaker 2: an answer for, in particular, showing up for work.
3:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was crazy. And, you know, Ray, who was
3:15
Speaker 5: one of the moderators, Ray Beccaro, KGAN, he had to
3:18
Speaker 5: ask her three times. And she had the same canned
3:22
Speaker 5: answer every time, avoiding the question, talking about this word
3:27
Speaker 5: salad of, you know, she's there for her community and
3:29
Speaker 5: her neighbors. And he had to ask her three separate
3:32
Speaker 5: times point blank. But, Lindsay, did you miss over half
3:35
Speaker 5: of your votes in the legislature? And she would not
3:38
Speaker 5: answer it. And that's where I said she did, in fact,
3:41
Speaker 5: miss over 50 percent of her votes. And now she's
3:44
Speaker 5: asking the voters of this district to give her a
3:47
Speaker 5: job promotion and a pay raise when she can't show
3:50
Speaker 5: up to the job that she's elected for right now.
3:53
Speaker 5: And I said, imagine anybody listening. If you did not
3:57
Speaker 5: show up to your job over half the time, you
3:59
Speaker 5: would be fired on the spot. And I said, we
4:02
Speaker 5: must fire Lindsay James come November 3rd. And I mean,
4:07
Speaker 5: I think she wasn't very happy after I said that.
4:10
Speaker 4: But it's true.
4:11
Speaker 5: It's like it's ridiculous to these people, whether it be
4:14
Speaker 5: her or Josh Turek or anybody else in the legislature.
4:18
Speaker 5: They can't show up for the job they're currently elected for.
4:21
Speaker 5: And they think they're going to then, you know, get
4:24
Speaker 5: a job promotion and go to D.C. and get this
4:28
Speaker 5: huge pay raise. It's absolutely absurd. That's what they think.
4:31
Speaker 5: But that's a lot of these candidates on the Democrat
4:33
Speaker 5: side of the aisle now, is they're totally out of
4:36
Speaker 5: touch with everyday Iowa.
4:38
Speaker 2: Joe Mitchell is our guest. He's the Republican running for
4:41
Speaker 2: Congress from Northeast Iowa. JoeMitchell.com. If you like what you hear,
4:44
Speaker 2: there's a nice subtle donate button to help get him
4:47
Speaker 2: across the finish line. He's joining us on the Patriot
4:49
Speaker 2: Mobile Newsmaker line on the Todd Starnes program. That debate
4:52
Speaker 2: you referenced was put on by our friends at the
4:55
Speaker 2: Sinclair Broadcast Group, their local affiliates in Cedar Rapids. You
5:00
Speaker 2: served in the state legislature. I'm going to take a
5:03
Speaker 2: wild stab that your attendance rate, your voting record, was
5:07
Speaker 2: better than your opponent's.
5:11
Speaker 5: Well, you know, Jeff, to be honest, I thought I
5:14
Speaker 5: had missed maybe two or three votes. I didn't think
5:16
Speaker 5: I had made 100% of the votes. And I probably
5:21
Speaker 5: shouldn't admit that on this broadcast, but one of my
5:24
Speaker 5: supporters the other day, they said they looked it up,
5:26
Speaker 5: and it said I had a 100% voting record, I guess.
5:29
Speaker 5: But I said, well, that's pretty good. I thought it
5:32
Speaker 5: was 99%, and they said it was 100%. But either way,
5:36
Speaker 5: it's like I showed up to work each and every
5:39
Speaker 5: day unless there was an absolute emergency. And these people
5:43
Speaker 5: couldn't show up to work over half the time. But
5:45
Speaker 5: the interesting thing is, Jeff, I don't know what's more concerning,
5:49
Speaker 5: the votes that they missed or the things that they
5:52
Speaker 5: were actually voting for when they were there. Because when
5:55
Speaker 5: they were there, like Lindsay James, she was voting to
5:58
Speaker 5: give illegal immigrants state-funded Medicaid benefits, food stamps, housing assistance.
6:05
Speaker 5: She was voting to allow kids to have sex changes.
6:09
Speaker 5: She was voting for higher taxes. She voted against almost
6:12
Speaker 5: every single bill to cut taxes when I was in
6:15
Speaker 5: the legislature, whether that was property tax or income tax. So,
6:18
Speaker 5: I mean, her position on issues are totally out of
6:22
Speaker 5: line with Iowa's. And, you know, we say she's from Portland, Oregon,
6:26
Speaker 5: and I say I don't hold that against her. We
6:28
Speaker 5: don't hold where you're born against you. But she brought
6:31
Speaker 5: her values from Portland, Oregon, to Iowa. That's what we
6:35
Speaker 5: hold against her. And so that's where she's voting for
6:37
Speaker 5: these how to control immigration policies. She stopped on crime.
6:42
Speaker 5: She wants high taxes. I mean, the list goes on
6:45
Speaker 5: and on and on. And this is what Iowans are
6:48
Speaker 5: going to reject November 3rd.
6:51
Speaker 2: Joe Mitchell, Republican running for Congress from Northeast Iowa. It
6:55
Speaker 2: is the seat currently held by Ashley Hinson, who's running
6:58
Speaker 2: for the U.S. Senate. JoeMitchell.com is the website. And if
7:03
Speaker 2: folks want to learn a little more, You were kind
7:06
Speaker 2: enough to come on my television program. All four candidates
7:09
Speaker 2: in this race were. Folks can see that at iowatalkingpoints.com.
7:14
Speaker 2: But you've built things, not just your own business. You're
7:18
Speaker 2: a home builder by trade. You're not a career politician,
7:21
Speaker 2: as I understand it.
7:24
Speaker 8: Right.
7:24
Speaker 5: So, you know, I've had a business for the last
7:26
Speaker 5: six years, Jeff. I've been building development, primarily workforce housing
7:32
Speaker 5: development around eastern Iowa. I've built stuff in Dyersville and
7:35
Speaker 5: Clear Lake and Grinnell, and I build typically duplexes or townhomes,
7:41
Speaker 5: and they're typically for seniors. for working families. I live
7:45
Speaker 5: in one of my duplexes that I built and, you know,
7:48
Speaker 5: live amongst, you know, all the folks that I've built
7:51
Speaker 5: houses for. And, you know, these are people that are veterans.
7:55
Speaker 5: These are working people. These are, you know, really just
8:00
Speaker 5: tough Iowans that I love. And they're the same people
8:04
Speaker 5: I grew up with because I grew up in small
8:06
Speaker 5: town Iowa and I still live in small town Iowa. And,
8:09
Speaker 5: you know, what I noticed a number of years ago
8:11
Speaker 5: is that we don't have the appropriate amount of housing,
8:17
Speaker 5: the quality of housing that we deserve in rural America
8:21
Speaker 5: and rural Iowa. And so that's where I set out
8:23
Speaker 5: to put together.
8:24
Speaker 6: Sort of a partnership.
8:26
Speaker 5: And an investment group to go out and invest tens
8:30
Speaker 5: of millions of dollars in rural Iowa. And that's where
8:33
Speaker 5: I've done, and that's where we've built these homes. And
8:36
Speaker 5: it's just been a blessing to be able to put
8:38
Speaker 5: a roof above people's heads Um, you know, one of
8:41
Speaker 5: my neighbors, Dick, uh, you know, he's a Vietnam war
8:45
Speaker 5: veteran and he's an awesome guy and he couldn't find
8:49
Speaker 5: a zero rent free two bedroom, uh, condo anywhere in
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Speaker 5: Clear Lake. And we built these new units and he
8:55
Speaker 5: moved in probably six months ago. And he talks to
8:57
Speaker 5: me every day about the blessing it is to have
9:00
Speaker 5: something that he could downsize to. It doesn't have stairs.
9:03
Speaker 5: There's nothing else like that in town that he could,
9:06
Speaker 5: he could rent. So, um, Um, you know, the VA
9:09
Speaker 5: helps them with his housing and everything. And so, you know,
9:11
Speaker 5: these are the stories I get to hear and I
9:13
Speaker 5: get to work with my contractors and you, these guys
9:16
Speaker 5: are some of the best people. Uh, they're so hardworking
9:20
Speaker 5: and they get things done and they have pride in
9:22
Speaker 5: their work. And I just love going through the process
9:25
Speaker 5: to get these things done. We want progress. And that's
9:28
Speaker 5: what frustrates me about government. It's what frustrates me about
9:32
Speaker 5: Washington is they want to stop progress. Every single place
9:37
Speaker 5: you go, whether that be the state government, whether it
9:39
Speaker 5: be the federal government, it seems like they're putting up
9:41
Speaker 5: more hoops to jump through. And I think we actually
9:44
Speaker 5: need to make it easier to do business, to build things.
9:47
Speaker 5: We need less bureaucrats. I think we need to fire
9:50
Speaker 5: several million more bureaucrats in D.C. that exist there. And
9:54
Speaker 5: that's what I did. I worked for the president, as
9:56
Speaker 5: you know, last year, and I fired a lot of
9:58
Speaker 5: bureaucrats because we have too many. of them on the government,
10:02
Speaker 5: you know, payroll, taking your taxpayer dollars. And so we
10:07
Speaker 5: need people that want to get things done.
10:10
Speaker 2: I don't think you understand how this works. Isn't government
10:12
Speaker 2: supposed to do all of this and do bailouts for people?
10:15
Speaker 2: You're talking about having the private sector see a need
10:18
Speaker 2: and fill it. I didn't think that's how it worked, Mr.
10:21
Speaker 7: Mitchell. Right.
10:23
Speaker 5: Well, and that's where my opponent thinks. And if you
10:25
Speaker 5: listen to the debate yesterday, this is somebody who every
10:29
Speaker 5: single answer, it was about spending more money. It was
10:32
Speaker 5: about spending more of your money. It was about spending
10:35
Speaker 5: money that we don't have as a country. You know,
10:38
Speaker 5: even if you seize Every single asset from every single
10:42
Speaker 5: billionaire in this country, you could not pay for the
10:45
Speaker 5: programs that my opponent is talking about. And so that
10:49
Speaker 5: is the answer to all these radical left Democrats and
10:53
Speaker 5: what they want to do. They want to seize assets.
10:55
Speaker 5: They want to have higher taxes. They want new programs.
11:00
Speaker 5: And they don't understand how to balance a checkbook. And
11:04
Speaker 5: they don't understand what it means to run a business.
11:08
Speaker 5: They certainly don't know how to run government because we
11:11
Speaker 5: had just 15 years ago before Governor Branstad came back
11:15
Speaker 5: to save this state from the deficit crisis we were in,
11:19
Speaker 5: we had a Democrat-controlled trifecta that ran this state into
11:23
Speaker 5: the ground thanks to Chuck Tolbert. And so this is
11:26
Speaker 5: the type of governing they want to bring back again.
11:29
Speaker 5: And I tell people that, you know, it wasn't 20
11:31
Speaker 5: years ago that these people were in charge. It was
11:34
Speaker 5: less than two years ago on the federal level that
11:36
Speaker 5: they were in charge. And you saw what they did.
11:38
Speaker 5: They spent like drunken sailors. They had more regulation than
11:43
Speaker 5: ever before. You know, they made it hard to do business.
11:46
Speaker 5: They made it hard for workers. I mean, life was
11:49
Speaker 5: tough between 2021 and 2025. And, you know, thank God
11:54
Speaker 5: the president came in and they passed the working families
11:57
Speaker 5: tax cut. No tax on Social Security now. No tax
12:00
Speaker 5: on tips. No tax on overtime. And so we're letting
12:04
Speaker 5: people have more of their hard-earned money. And I always
12:07
Speaker 5: say the solution is ever more government. It's actually less government.
12:11
Speaker 5: Let's get government out.
12:13
Speaker 7: Of your life.
12:13
Speaker 2: 32 days until Election Day. Joe Mitchell, the Republican running
12:18
Speaker 2: for Congress. Open seat, Northeast Iowa. JoeMitchell.com. On the Twitter
12:23
Speaker 2: X machine, where they've clipped some of that debate from
12:26
Speaker 2: last night, JoeMitchellIowa is the handle on Twitter X. Mr. Mitchell,
12:30
Speaker 2: thanks so much for taking the time. Continued success on
12:34
Speaker 2: the campaign trail, and thanks for joining us on the
12:36
Speaker 2: national show on this Friday.
12:39
Speaker 5: Thank you, Jeff. Take care.
12:41
Speaker 2: And Joe Mitchell joined us on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line. Mr. Mitchell,
12:46
Speaker 2: running for Congress, JoeMitchell.com. I have a story to tell
12:49
Speaker 2: you about Mr. Mitchell and his background. We'll do it
12:52
Speaker 2: after this break. 901-260-5926 is how you can join the
12:57
Speaker 2: Coast to Coast conversation from the Liberty University studio. Jeff
13:01
Speaker 2: Stein filling in for Todd. Thanks for being along on
13:03
Speaker 2: this edition of the Todd Starn Show. Welcome back to
13:13
Speaker 2: the Liberty University studio in the Todd Starnes Show. Jeff
13:17
Speaker 2: Stein filling in for Todd on this Open Line Friday, 901-260-5926,
13:21
Speaker 2: if you would like to weigh in. Coming up just
13:25
Speaker 2: after the bottom of the hour, we'll speak with the
13:28
Speaker 2: best-selling author Joshua Lisek. Mr. Lisek, along with Jennica Pounds,
13:33
Speaker 2: they are the authors of a forthcoming book called Unelected,
13:37
Speaker 2: How You Paid a Sinister Elite to Take Over America.
13:41
Speaker 2: This is fascinating stuff. He joined me on my Iowa
13:45
Speaker 2: program earlier this week. And when I got the opportunity
13:48
Speaker 2: to speak to you all coast to coast through Todd's microphone,
13:51
Speaker 2: I thought this is a conversation we need to share
13:53
Speaker 2: with you all nationally. And we'll do it after the
13:56
Speaker 2: bottom of the hour. Joe Mitchell was our guest in
13:59
Speaker 2: the first part of this hour. And Mr. Mitchell had
14:06
Speaker 2: a mentor as he was a young state lawmaker. He
14:11
Speaker 2: was elected, I think, at age 20, 21, something like that.
14:15
Speaker 2: And he went to an event in Iowa where Charlie
14:19
Speaker 2: Kirk was the speaker. They wound up meeting afterwards and
14:25
Speaker 2: struck up a friendship that led to Mr. Mitchell being
14:29
Speaker 2: involved with TPUSA at events around the country. Mr. Mitchell
14:34
Speaker 2: announced that he was going to run for Congress on
14:37
Speaker 2: September 8th of last year. The last person who reviewed
14:42
Speaker 2: his press release before it went out was Charlie Kirk.
14:48
Speaker 2: That's how closely involved Mr. Kirk was in Mr. Mitchell's career. Obviously,
14:56
Speaker 2: two days after Joe Mitchell announced for Congress, Charlie Kirk
15:01
Speaker 2: was murdered. TP Action, Turning Point Action, endorsed him in
15:07
Speaker 2: December of last year. There was a primary. He was victorious.
15:11
Speaker 2: And he is now in the general election against a Democrat,
15:15
Speaker 2: a Libertarian, and an Independent. This is a key seat
15:18
Speaker 2: because it's held by a Republican, open seat. They've got
15:23
Speaker 2: the voter registration advantage in the district. The Democrats fall
15:27
Speaker 2: far behind. But one of the things in my home
15:30
Speaker 2: state of Iowa, and I talked to Todd on the
15:32
Speaker 2: national show about this last week, we have a lot
15:35
Speaker 2: of non-affiliated voters, Independents. by voter registration. That makes it
15:40
Speaker 2: much harder to predict. So you can look on paper
15:44
Speaker 2: and say, well, you've got a great voter registration advantage.
15:48
Speaker 2: This looks pretty good. Well, as they say, they don't
15:50
Speaker 2: play the game on paper. So if you are interested
15:54
Speaker 2: in any of these key races nationally and you have
15:57
Speaker 2: the means to make phone calls, get friends in the
16:00
Speaker 2: area to turn out, yes, monetary donations. People say to
16:05
Speaker 2: me all the time, what can I do? Well, that's
16:07
Speaker 2: something you can do. You may not have the financial
16:10
Speaker 2: wherewithal to do it, and that's fine. But maybe you
16:14
Speaker 2: know somebody who lives in the area and is thinking
16:17
Speaker 2: of sitting on their hands. The election is too important
16:20
Speaker 2: for sitting on your hands. They all are. But look
16:25
Speaker 2: at the razor-thin margins. And look what will happen if
16:31
Speaker 2: the Democrats get a majority in either or heaven forbid,
16:36
Speaker 2: both chambers. So this is the time, 32 days away.
16:43
Speaker 2: It is not an overstatement. And if you have a
16:47
Speaker 2: copy of The Golden Age, How Trump Saved America, the
16:50
Speaker 2: great book by Todd Starnes, the current book that's out,
16:53
Speaker 2: you get it wherever you get your good books these days, toddstarnes.com, amazon.com,
16:58
Speaker 2: Barnes & Noble. And I went through it when I
17:02
Speaker 2: got my copy. And, you know, I hit the high points.
17:05
Speaker 2: And then I sat down when I had some time
17:09
Speaker 2: and just poured over it, cover to cover. There are
17:13
Speaker 2: so many great examples in that book. It's hard to
17:17
Speaker 2: remember all the things that were bad in the Biden
17:21
Speaker 2: era and hard to keep track of all of the
17:25
Speaker 2: advancements made in less than two years of Trump 2.0.
17:32
Speaker 2: So first, go get another copy of Todd's book, The
17:35
Speaker 2: Golden Age. Share it with friends. It's a reminder. Because
17:40
Speaker 2: we're all busy. And as some of us get older,
17:43
Speaker 2: we don't remember things as well as we used to.
17:46
Speaker 2: But as Mr. Mitchell pointed out, it's only been two
17:49
Speaker 2: years since Democrats held forth in Washington. And look at
17:56
Speaker 2: what a difference. I mean, we've had a lot of
17:59
Speaker 2: rainy weather here in the Midwest where I live. But
18:02
Speaker 2: today the sun came out. You can just tell everybody's
18:04
Speaker 2: mood is better. You could just tell once that 2024
18:09
Speaker 2: election was over, hey, it's not so bad. We might
18:14
Speaker 2: get through this. Let's not take a step back on
18:17
Speaker 2: November 3rd. Do your part. Joshua Lysak, co-author of Unelected.
18:23
Speaker 2: He'll join us after this bottom of the hour break.
18:26
Speaker 2: Jeff Stein in for Todd from the Liberty University studio
18:30
Speaker 2: on the Todd Starnes Show. Welcome back to the Liberty
18:46
Speaker 2: University studio and the Todd Starnes show. Jeff Stein filling
18:50
Speaker 2: in for Todd today. 901-260-5926 is how you can join
18:55
Speaker 2: this coast-to-coast conversation on an open line Friday. We'll take
18:59
Speaker 2: your calls in the next segment, but let's go now
19:01
Speaker 2: to the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line, and I'm pleased to
19:04
Speaker 2: welcome the New York Times bestselling author Joshua Lysak, Mr.
19:09
Speaker 2: Lysak is author with Jennica Pounds of a forthcoming book.
19:14
Speaker 2: It will be released October 20th. You can pre-order it
19:16
Speaker 2: now at Amazon or wherever you get your good books
19:19
Speaker 2: these days. The book is entitled Unelected, How You Paid
19:23
Speaker 2: a Sinister Elite to Take Over America. Mr. Lysak, Jeff
19:27
Speaker 2: Stein filling in for Todd on the national show. How
19:30
Speaker 2: are you today?
19:32
Speaker 8: I'm well.
19:32
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me on.
19:34
Speaker 2: Tell us about the relationship with the co-author, Jennica Pounds.
19:39
Speaker 2: There are folks who know your name from the past
19:42
Speaker 2: books you've written. They may know her name from a
19:44
Speaker 2: different context, though.
19:46
Speaker 6: Yes, Jenica Pounds is better known, my co-author. She's better
19:51
Speaker 6: known as Data Republican at Data Republican or DataRepublican.com. That's
19:57
Speaker 6: where she's most popular these days. She's one of the
20:03
Speaker 6: people who collaborated with Elon Musk and others on the
20:08
Speaker 6: Doge project, the Department of Government Efficiency, and it was
20:12
Speaker 6: through that that it was found that literally trillions of U.S.
20:16
Speaker 6: taxpayer dollars were being handed over via blank checks for
20:21
Speaker 6: the administrative state, together with various foundations, nonprofits, NGOs, charities,
20:27
Speaker 6: an institution set that we call the NGO Administrative Complex.
20:32
Speaker 6: Doge was the organization that founded primarily the U.S. Treasury,
20:36
Speaker 6: to and through USAID, U.S. aid, that so much U.S.
20:41
Speaker 6: taxpayer money was being gifted to our enemies, or at
20:45
Speaker 6: the very least, to anti-American activities. Rather depressing, but we,
20:52
Speaker 6: of course, are relieved that we found it. But it
20:54
Speaker 6: was because of so much of these findings that Jenica
21:01
Speaker 6: and others associated with Doge were, of course, harassed all
21:05
Speaker 6: manner of catastrophes in the first of all life crises
21:08
Speaker 6: that they that they face by finding this out you
21:10
Speaker 6: know they call it being over the target.
21:12
Speaker 2: Right yeah absolutely when they when they start firing at
21:16
Speaker 2: you then you know that you're on to something here
21:19
Speaker 2: you know a fundamental question how did it get so
21:23
Speaker 2: bad and i suppose the answer is well slowly then
21:26
Speaker 2: all of a sudden but this this was not of
21:28
Speaker 2: short-term duration some of these folks were playing a long
21:31
Speaker 2: game were they not sir That's right.
21:35
Speaker 6: In fact, the book Unelected, although it may sound like
21:38
Speaker 6: its current event, it's actually also historical nonfiction, because we
21:43
Speaker 6: go back almost 400 years in the classical liberal story,
21:50
Speaker 6: this idea, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence,
21:55
Speaker 6: all men are created equal. Sounds kind of nice, right? Well,
21:59
Speaker 6: take that to its logical end. If all men are
22:03
Speaker 6: created equal... Well, then all people and all citizens are
22:07
Speaker 6: created equal. And so now our administrative elite, our cosmopolitan elite,
22:13
Speaker 6: who deem themselves, of course, bastions and protectors of democracy,
22:18
Speaker 6: women's rights, minority rights, etc., etc., they think of themselves
22:22
Speaker 6: as global citizens. And therefore, because all men are created equal,
22:28
Speaker 6: all citizenships are also created equal. So even if you
22:32
Speaker 6: are an American... There's no difference between an American and,
22:36
Speaker 6: let's say, a Haitian or a Somali. And if you
22:39
Speaker 6: look at it through the lens of social justice theory, well,
22:44
Speaker 6: the white working-class Trump voters of Springfield, Ohio, well, who
22:50
Speaker 6: has it worse off? The white Springfield residents or black Haitians? Well, obviously,
22:57
Speaker 6: we need cultural reparations. So we need to ship as
23:00
Speaker 6: many thousands of Haitians as possible here. into Ohio to
23:03
Speaker 6: extract handouts, gimme's, simmies, and freebies, that's only fair that
23:09
Speaker 6: the Springfield residents, the white Springfield citizens that they pay
23:13
Speaker 6: for it, that they suffer. See, it's sort of a
23:16
Speaker 6: generational justice. You see civil justice, global justice. This is
23:22
Speaker 6: how the NGOs think. That's why there is so much
23:26
Speaker 6: fraud in the smaller communities of Columbus, Ohio. You can
23:30
Speaker 6: tell I live in Ohio first. as well as the
23:31
Speaker 6: Twin Cities area region of Minnesota that Nick Shirley and
23:35
Speaker 6: others have pointed out. And it's simply deemed racist if
23:40
Speaker 6: you investigate these matters and find that such and such
23:44
Speaker 6: leering center, you know, the type of graphical error learning center,
23:48
Speaker 6: the leering center is not, in fact, educating kids. Well,
23:52
Speaker 6: that's how racist of you to think that a black
23:54
Speaker 6: Somali would be committing a crime. And then we're like, well,
23:58
Speaker 6: obviously this is fraud. Well, you only say that because
24:01
Speaker 6: you're erasing. You see that now? So you're now stuck
24:04
Speaker 6: in a cycle. No matter what you say or do
24:06
Speaker 6: to defend yourself, you'll be deemed racist by our cosmopolitan betters.
24:10
Speaker 6: This is one of many, many myriad things that we've found,
24:14
Speaker 6: and it's ultimately late stage in secular enlightenment liberalism that's
24:18
Speaker 6: brought us here.
24:20
Speaker 2: Unelected is the forthcoming book. Jennica Pounds and our guest
24:24
Speaker 2: Joshua Lysak are the co-authors. Unelected, How You Paid, A
24:28
Speaker 2: Sinister Elite to Take Over America. He's kind enough to
24:31
Speaker 2: join us on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line on the
24:34
Speaker 2: Todd Starnes Show. Jeff Stein filling in for Todd today. Well,
24:38
Speaker 2: that's fine to say all men are created equal, but
24:41
Speaker 2: the way that I learned it in law school is
24:43
Speaker 2: we're talking about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.
24:49
Speaker 2: And they kind of just blur right over that, don't they?
24:53
Speaker 6: But that's right yes and and part of the federal
24:56
Speaker 6: component to this with the great society welfare programs of
25:01
Speaker 6: johnson and afterward the democratic party realize they can create
25:05
Speaker 6: permanent minority voting block amongst african-american where depending on the
25:10
Speaker 6: election they can get between eighty five ninety percent of
25:14
Speaker 6: about black american to give an area to vote democrat
25:17
Speaker 6: and they realize that it's a lot easier to perpetually
25:20
Speaker 6: make and not fulfill promises politically to minority group and
25:25
Speaker 6: so it's a lot easier to do that then to uh...
25:29
Speaker 6: fulfill your promises to larger population like that baby union
25:34
Speaker 6: american working-class blue-collar gray-collar americans at the store peep and uh...
25:39
Speaker 6: the so-called blue-dog democrat those might be in other sort
25:42
Speaker 6: of people that uh... gd event by vice president hails
25:46
Speaker 6: from initially but it's a lot easier to import non-white
25:51
Speaker 6: population block from Central America, South America, East Africa, West Africa,
25:56
Speaker 6: Southeast Asia, and so on, and make them all myriad
26:00
Speaker 6: of promises that you gain access to when you become
26:04
Speaker 6: an American citizen, when you become a voter. And the
26:07
Speaker 6: Breast Right Citizenship, of course, is essential to this population
26:12
Speaker 6: erasure project, this population replacement initiative. And, of course, if
26:17
Speaker 6: you complain, well, obviously, conspiracy theories And then when you
26:21
Speaker 6: present evidence that it is in fact happening and that
26:23
Speaker 6: we're paying for it, well, now it's still a conspiracy
26:26
Speaker 6: theory because you're saying it's a bad thing. So no
26:28
Speaker 6: matter what you do, you're on the losing side of
26:32
Speaker 6: the rhetoric of our elite. It's a rather troubling situation,
26:36
Speaker 6: but we do everything that we can in 472 pages
26:39
Speaker 6: of a hardcover book to expose all the networks. We
26:44
Speaker 6: give you all the names. We name, we blame, and
26:47
Speaker 6: we shame you.
26:49
Speaker 2: The only problem is I don't think these people have
26:51
Speaker 2: any shame, but that's a whole different point. This is
26:55
Speaker 2: the key first part, is it not, Mr. Lysak? You
26:58
Speaker 2: identify it and put the light of day on it
27:02
Speaker 2: so that people can respond. What's a reader to do
27:06
Speaker 2: after they get their hands on this book later this
27:08
Speaker 2: month and they get this information? What can they do?
27:12
Speaker 2: Because it didn't get here overnight, as noted, and you
27:15
Speaker 2: have motivated people who want the status quo to continue.
27:18
Speaker 2: What's the listener to this conversation to do when they
27:22
Speaker 2: are finally armed with this information?
27:25
Speaker 6: We lay out quite a few things practically that we
27:28
Speaker 6: as individuals can do as communities, as a culture, and
27:34
Speaker 6: even as a nation that we can't do to fix
27:37
Speaker 6: this problem. And the simplest, the most simple thing that
27:41
Speaker 6: any one person can do is is to withdraw your
27:46
Speaker 6: consent whenever you possibly can. Just simply say, no. No,
27:51
Speaker 6: that's not okay that you do that to my community. No,
27:53
Speaker 6: it's not okay that this happened here. No, it's not
27:56
Speaker 6: okay that you require me to say this or do this. No,
27:58
Speaker 6: it's not okay. No, I'm not going to.
28:00
Speaker 2: No.
28:01
Speaker 6: No, no, no. No is the most empowering word in
28:05
Speaker 6: the English language. And for far too long, Americans have
28:08
Speaker 6: wanted to be, you know, a nice person, go along
28:11
Speaker 6: to get along, kumbaya. but understand what time it is.
28:15
Speaker 6: You know, the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible regularly
28:18
Speaker 6: says that there is a time for everything, a time
28:21
Speaker 6: given for everything under the sun, right? Well, now it's
28:23
Speaker 6: time for America and Egypt to think no.
28:27
Speaker 2: And that's so hard to do because, again, it is
28:32
Speaker 2: colored in this language. Not just the part where they
28:36
Speaker 2: blame you or they tag you as a racist, but
28:39
Speaker 2: I'm talking about well, why wouldn't you want to help
28:43
Speaker 2: your fellow man? You know, we are the world. All
28:45
Speaker 2: of these platitudes, all of this squishy stuff that when
28:50
Speaker 2: you don't have substance attached to it, you know, it
28:53
Speaker 2: sounds okay. How could you possibly be against, you know,
28:56
Speaker 2: sunshine and nice weather? The reality is, however, that that's
29:01
Speaker 2: just a mask. That's just a pleasant-looking facade of And
29:05
Speaker 2: the real evil is behind it, and that's why it's
29:08
Speaker 2: going to take a while to recover, because we've been
29:11
Speaker 2: so used to just kind of going along and being,
29:15
Speaker 2: in your case and my case, Midwestern nice.
29:19
Speaker 6: That's right, yes. And the good news, and I and
29:24
Speaker 6: my co-authors on other projects and other people that we've
29:28
Speaker 6: spoken with about it, I also, I mentioned the Haitian
29:31
Speaker 6: community of America migrated here several times. I have a
29:35
Speaker 6: book also on the Haitian migration situation, in Springfield, better
29:39
Speaker 6: known as the eating the cats, eating the dogs, eating
29:42
Speaker 6: the pets.
29:42
Speaker 5: You remember that story?
29:43
Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
29:44
Speaker 6: Well, I've had this conversation many times with Springfield residents
29:48
Speaker 6: who share exactly that concern of, well, we're actually not
29:51
Speaker 6: a racist community. We're a welcoming community, but we've been
29:54
Speaker 6: taken extreme advantage of. And what I've told them in
29:56
Speaker 6: person is as follows. No racism. is a complete sentence.
30:01
Speaker 6: You do not have to explain yourself. You do not
30:03
Speaker 6: have to prostrate yourself. You do not have to say, no,
30:07
Speaker 6: but I promise you I'm not racist. No, I am,
30:10
Speaker 6: and then give excuse. No is a complete sentence. You
30:13
Speaker 6: do not need any reason to want your community to
30:16
Speaker 6: say your community. I grew up with a vision of
30:20
Speaker 6: a Norman Rockwell heritage America, and as I look out
30:24
Speaker 6: across my state, Ohio, across my region, the Midwest, and
30:27
Speaker 6: the nation, I see that being fast taken from us,
30:31
Speaker 6: and we are paying for it, like Jennica and I
30:33
Speaker 6: have documented.
30:35
Speaker 2: I just love that. No is a complete sentence. I
30:39
Speaker 2: don't have children, but I think I would use that
30:42
Speaker 2: in parenting.
30:44
Speaker 6: We need to treat the liberal elite like they are
30:46
Speaker 6: children and just say, no, no, we're not doing that.
30:49
Speaker 4: No, period.
30:50
Speaker 2: Well, they are whining an awful lot. Joshua Lysak is
30:54
Speaker 2: the author of Unelected. We've only got a couple of
30:55
Speaker 2: more minutes. give us a sense of as you marshaled
30:59
Speaker 2: this evidence with Jennica Pounds, the co-author, what jumped out
31:03
Speaker 2: where you kind of, even after everything you'd seen, you
31:05
Speaker 2: kind of sat back and said, wow, that's new or
31:08
Speaker 2: that surprises me.
31:11
Speaker 1: Yes.
31:11
Speaker 6: So one of the most interesting aspects of this is
31:15
Speaker 6: during the Cold War period and then following that, the
31:18
Speaker 6: War on Terror period, and then the Arab Spring, kind
31:21
Speaker 6: of those three distinct eras of American foreign policy, The
31:25
Speaker 6: NGO administrative complex, the so-called deep state, we also know it,
31:29
Speaker 6: or perhaps the swamp, it has been around for more
31:32
Speaker 6: than 60 years. In some cases, approximately 75 years, this
31:39
Speaker 6: organization has been active to run color revolutions, cultural revolutions
31:44
Speaker 6: in other countries to destabilize them due to Soviet or
31:48
Speaker 6: radical Islamic political ambition and influence. But following the election
31:54
Speaker 6: of President Donald J. Trump, the color revolution apparatus of
31:58
Speaker 6: the military-industrial complex has been turned on its own people, us,
32:04
Speaker 6: we the people. We are now the targets of the
32:07
Speaker 6: same color revolution. We've spent three chapters documenting just this
32:11
Speaker 6: one aspect of it. The same organizations that have toppled
32:15
Speaker 6: governments overseas have now turned against our own.
32:18
Speaker 7: Wow.
32:19
Speaker 2: That is scary stuff, but it is all documented. In
32:21
Speaker 2: the forthcoming book, Unelected, Jenica Pounds and our guest Joshua Lysak,
32:26
Speaker 2: the authors, Unelected, How You Paid a Sinister Elite to
32:30
Speaker 2: Take Over America. This is fascinating work. Thank you so
32:33
Speaker 2: much for putting it together, and thank you for sharing
32:35
Speaker 2: it with us on the program today. My pleasure.
32:38
Speaker 6: It's very important, and remember, folks, no is a complete mess.
32:42
Speaker 2: I'm going to cross-stitch that and put it on the
32:44
Speaker 2: wall here at the radio station. Thank you, sir.
32:48
Speaker 8: Mr.
32:48
Speaker 2: Lysak joined us on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line. Pre-order
32:51
Speaker 2: Unelected now at Amazon, and while you're there, you want
32:54
Speaker 2: something to read that could be delivered as quickly as tomorrow?
32:57
Speaker 2: How about The Golden Age, How Trump Saved America by
33:00
Speaker 2: Todd Starnes? You already got a copy? Get a second
33:03
Speaker 2: for a friend. The Golden Age, and it's at Amazon
33:07
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your good books. 901-260-5926. Your calls
33:12
Speaker 2: when we come back from the Liberty University studio. Jeff
33:15
Speaker 2: Stein in for Todd on the Todd Starnes Show. Welcome
33:24
Speaker 2: back to the Liberty University studio and an open line
33:28
Speaker 2: Friday edition of the Todd Starnes radio program. Jeff Stein
33:32
Speaker 2: filling in for Todd today. Same number as always, if
33:36
Speaker 2: you want to join this coast-to-coast conversation, 901-260-5926. Coming up
33:43
Speaker 2: in our next hour, I urge you to stay around
33:45
Speaker 2: a couple of very good guests. The great Brad Meltzer,
33:49
Speaker 2: Emmy-nominated presenter on television, best-selling author. Now, you may know
33:54
Speaker 2: of his books, both fiction and nonfiction for adults, but
33:57
Speaker 2: he is also the driving force behind a series for
34:01
Speaker 2: The small ones called Ordinary People Change the World and
34:05
Speaker 2: the 40th book. The 40th biography in that New York
34:10
Speaker 2: Times bestselling picture book series has just come out. It's
34:13
Speaker 2: called We Are the Right Brothers. And there are some
34:17
Speaker 2: fun things associated with this project that Brad Meltzer will
34:21
Speaker 2: share with us when he joins us just after the
34:23
Speaker 2: top of the hour. And we're hearing all about affordability
34:27
Speaker 2: and the economy is weak and all of this, the
34:32
Speaker 2: talking points of those on the left.
34:35
Speaker 1: Is it?
34:36
Speaker 2: Or is this just political spin? We'll find out when
34:39
Speaker 2: the great economist Phil Kirpin of American Commitment joins us.
34:44
Speaker 2: That's at the bottom of the next hour. And in
34:46
Speaker 2: and around all of that, we'll take your calls at 901-260-5926.
34:49
Speaker 2: We've talked about Todd's book, The Golden Age. And while
34:56
Speaker 2: he was out in California, if you follow him on
34:58
Speaker 2: the socials, on the social media, you'd see some of
35:01
Speaker 2: these photos. He recorded a program for C-SPAN 2 and
35:05
Speaker 2: their book TV channel. You know, like on the weekends,
35:07
Speaker 2: they run all these really informative, extended conversations with authors.
35:12
Speaker 2: And he just recorded one while he was out in California.
35:16
Speaker 2: And so that'll be showing up on the channel sooner
35:19
Speaker 2: than later. So again, get your copy of The Golden
35:22
Speaker 2: Age so that you can read it in advance, and
35:24
Speaker 2: then when you hear that conversation that was recorded out
35:27
Speaker 2: there at the college in California, when you see that
35:29
Speaker 2: on C-SPAN 2, or the DEUCE, as we call it
35:33
Speaker 2: in the House, then you'll know even more about it.
35:37
Speaker 2: But that's really cool to have. Those are great conversations
35:41
Speaker 2: if it's a topic that is worthwhile to you. One
35:45
Speaker 2: of the things that was released today was the Federal
35:49
Speaker 2: Jobs Report. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts this out, and
35:54
Speaker 2: they say, oh, it fell very short of expectations, etc.,
35:58
Speaker 2: and we only got, I don't know, 29,000 jobs. The
36:02
Speaker 2: people who supposedly know all about this thought it should
36:05
Speaker 2: be much more. Here's the thing I really want people
36:08
Speaker 2: to focus on. The number of government jobs, in other words,
36:13
Speaker 2: the jobs you're paying salaries for across the country, dropped
36:18
Speaker 2: by 17,000 last month alone. I'll say that again. the
36:22
Speaker 2: number of government jobs dropped by 17,000. So when you
36:28
Speaker 2: hear that the jobs report came out and, oh, we
36:32
Speaker 2: only got 29,000 new jobs, factor in how many jobs
36:37
Speaker 2: were lost because of economics at the government level actually
36:42
Speaker 2: trying to save you money. It really means that the economy,
36:46
Speaker 2: the private sector, grew by 46,000 jobs. That's where you
36:51
Speaker 2: want the job growth is in the private sector, not
36:54
Speaker 2: in government. Well, there are some across the aisle who
36:57
Speaker 2: would disagree, but, ah, well, you're not one of them,
37:00
Speaker 2: are you? Hour one in the books. Come back for
37:03
Speaker 2: hour two. Jeff Stein in for Todd. This is the
37:05
Speaker 2: Todd Starnes Show.
37:24
Speaker 1: From Memphis, Tennessee, it's America's favorite gun-toting, Bible-clinging, deplorable American.
37:31
Speaker 2: That's us, that's right.
37:33
Speaker 1: I love this American ride. Todd Starr.
37:40
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Hello, fellow patriots. Jeff Stein filling in for
37:44
Speaker 2: Todd on this Open Line Friday from the Liberty University
37:48
Speaker 2: studio at my home base at News Talk 1540 KXEL
37:52
Speaker 2: in the heartland of Iowa. 901-260-5926 is how you can
37:58
Speaker 2: join this coast-to-coast conversation on an open line Friday. And
38:02
Speaker 2: we'll take your calls in the next segment. Todd continues
38:05
Speaker 2: his work out in California promoting his book, The Golden Age.
38:09
Speaker 2: He'll be back with you behind this microphone on Tuesday.
38:12
Speaker 2: My privilege to be here today and Monday. And a
38:15
Speaker 2: real pleasure to welcome on the Patriot Newsmaker line to
38:19
Speaker 2: start this hour, the best-selling author, Emmy-nominated television producer and host,
38:25
Speaker 2: Brad Meltzer. You can learn all about his fiction and
38:29
Speaker 2: nonfiction books at bradmeltzer.com. But I want you to make
38:33
Speaker 2: a note now about this other website, because this is
38:36
Speaker 2: our focus today, ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com.
38:41
Speaker 8: Mr.
38:41
Speaker 2: Meltzer, good to talk to you again. Jeff Stein in
38:43
Speaker 2: for Todd from Iowa. How are you?
38:44
Speaker 4: I'm good, Jeff.
38:46
Speaker 7: Always good to be back and hear your voice.
38:49
Speaker 2: It is a privilege to speak to you. And as
38:51
Speaker 2: I think you know, and this audience knows, I am
38:55
Speaker 2: a big history buff. I've been fortunate enough to have
38:59
Speaker 2: written some books on history. It is not easy work.
39:03
Speaker 2: And I don't have children, so I don't know how
39:05
Speaker 2: to relate to the little ones. But you have a
39:08
Speaker 2: real gift of being able to speak not only to
39:12
Speaker 2: those of us of a more senior status with history,
39:15
Speaker 2: But this Ordinary People Change the World series, tell us
39:19
Speaker 2: about that and how the idea came to be.
39:21
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people know me
39:24
Speaker 7: from my History Channel TV show, Dakota, that we used
39:26
Speaker 7: to do. And I love teaching history to adults. but
39:29
Speaker 7: then I had kids and I basically was like, I
39:33
Speaker 7: want to give my kids better heroes to look up
39:35
Speaker 7: to great American heroes like Abraham Lincoln.
39:37
Speaker 8: So we did.
39:38
Speaker 7: I am Abraham Lincoln. We did. I'm Amelia Earhart. I
39:41
Speaker 7: am George Washington and I am Rosa Parks. And we've
39:44
Speaker 7: been for the past decade plus, uh, helping people build
39:49
Speaker 7: this library of real heroes. And we've now been at
39:53
Speaker 7: it so long, we're on our 40th book in the
39:55
Speaker 7: series to teach kids, you know, I don't want my
39:58
Speaker 7: kids looking up to millionaire overpaid athletes. I don't want
40:01
Speaker 7: them looking at people out of a million followers on
40:03
Speaker 7: Instagram doing their makeup. Like, that's nonsense to me. That's fame.
40:07
Speaker 7: And being famous is very different than being a hero.
40:10
Speaker 7: And so I started writing these books to give my
40:12
Speaker 7: kids lessons of kindness and compassion and perseverance and hard
40:16
Speaker 7: work and humility and dignity. And what I love is
40:20
Speaker 7: that we're now on our 40th book in the series,
40:24
Speaker 7: which is We Are the Wright Brothers, and we're focusing
40:27
Speaker 7: on those great American heroes, the Wright Brothers.
40:31
Speaker 2: Forty books, and it's reached, what, 10 million young people
40:36
Speaker 2: over the course of time? That's a fantastic amount of reach.
40:42
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, my family buys a lot of copies.
40:44
Speaker 5: So, no, but.
40:46
Speaker 7: But all kidding aside.
40:47
Speaker 2: Yours too, huh? That's very helpful, isn't it, when they do?
40:50
Speaker 7: It's very helpful. But all kidding aside, you know, I
40:54
Speaker 7: love the fact that people use our series to build
40:58
Speaker 7: libraries of real heroes for their kids and their grandkids,
41:01
Speaker 7: their nieces and their nephews, right? These are cartoon books.
41:04
Speaker 7: They're picture books. You can buy them for kids when
41:06
Speaker 7: they're born to, you know, 5, 8, 12. I wrote
41:08
Speaker 7: them when my kids were 5 and 8 for them.
41:11
Speaker 7: And they read them through when they were 12 years old.
41:12
Speaker 7: And I love the fact that... that right now in America,
41:16
Speaker 7: for the 40th book, we let people vote. We let
41:18
Speaker 7: America vote. And the three people it came down to,
41:21
Speaker 7: it was Taylor Swift, it was LeBron James, and it
41:26
Speaker 7: was the Wright Brothers. And I thought, I know who's
41:28
Speaker 7: going to win this. I thought for sure Taylor Swift's
41:30
Speaker 7: going to win this. And it was the Wright Brothers.
41:34
Speaker 7: And it was so interesting to me. And so we're
41:37
Speaker 7: at this age right now where we're in this age
41:39
Speaker 7: of kind of of anger and and you know where
41:43
Speaker 7: you feel like the country's just divided in whatever side
41:45
Speaker 7: you're on you hate the other side but to me
41:48
Speaker 7: i love the fact that america chose these two american
41:52
Speaker 7: heroes from the middle of the country have nothing more
41:55
Speaker 7: than ingenuity and working together and being connected to each
41:59
Speaker 7: other those values are vital to america and we have
42:03
Speaker 7: to fight for them and i love the fact that
42:05
Speaker 7: that's what they can't work so It's amazing to me
42:08
Speaker 7: that of all the people they could pick, they chose
42:10
Speaker 7: the Wright brothers.
42:13
Speaker 2: This is aspirational, right? I mean, LeBron James has tremendous talent,
42:20
Speaker 2: and he's made the most of it. Well, I was
42:22
Speaker 2: not so blessed. And so when I look to someone
42:25
Speaker 2: like that, I'm never going to do that. I was
42:27
Speaker 2: never going to pitch for the Yankees, no matter how
42:30
Speaker 2: much I wanted to. But with a spark of inventions,
42:34
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the sort of role model and
42:37
Speaker 2: the aspirational goal that can say to somebody ages five
42:41
Speaker 2: to nine or whatever age, these guys did this when
42:45
Speaker 2: everybody said they were crazy. You can follow your ideas
42:49
Speaker 2: and your dreams and be a massively constructive member of
42:54
Speaker 2: society to whatever extent you wish.
42:58
Speaker 7: That's exactly right, Jeff. In fact, one of my favorite
43:00
Speaker 7: stories of the Wright brothers in this book is this one.
43:04
Speaker 7: is every time the Wright brothers went out to fly
43:06
Speaker 7: their plane, they would bring enough extra materials for multiple crashes,
43:11
Speaker 7: which means every time they went out, they knew they
43:13
Speaker 7: would fail. And they would crash and rebuild and crash
43:16
Speaker 7: and rebuild, and that's why they took off. And I
43:20
Speaker 7: love that story. I wanted my sons to hear that story.
43:23
Speaker 7: I wanted my daughter to hear that story. I wanted
43:25
Speaker 7: everyone to know if you dream big and you work
43:27
Speaker 7: hard and you have a good side order of stubbornness,
43:30
Speaker 7: you can do anything in this world. And I said,
43:32
Speaker 7: that's the book I want to write. Not a book
43:34
Speaker 7: of rules, but I want to give my kids heroes.
43:37
Speaker 7: And that's something we can all do. Like you said,
43:39
Speaker 7: I'm not going to play like LeBron James. I'm not
43:40
Speaker 7: even going to build the next airplane. But I know
43:43
Speaker 7: what it's like to crash and then teach my kids
43:45
Speaker 7: to rebuild and crash and rebuild. And that, again, is
43:48
Speaker 7: a lesson worth fighting for. And when you buy We
43:51
Speaker 7: Are the Wright Brothers as a kid's book, that's the
43:54
Speaker 7: gift you're giving your kid. It's teaching them how to
43:56
Speaker 7: do that.
43:57
Speaker 2: OrdinaryPeopleChangeTheWorld.com is the website, the 40th. 40th book in the series,
44:03
Speaker 2: We Are the Wright Brothers. It's released on Tuesday. You
44:07
Speaker 2: get it wherever you get your good books these days.
44:10
Speaker 2: The author is our guest, Brad Meltzer, joining us on
44:13
Speaker 2: the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line on the Todd Starn Show,
44:15
Speaker 2: Jeff Stein filling in for Todd today. And I remember
44:20
Speaker 2: 150 years ago as a young person, I'd go to
44:22
Speaker 2: the library and they had some series of biographies for
44:25
Speaker 2: young people. Now, I was a little older than this
44:28
Speaker 2: target audience, but again, you could just immerse yourself in
44:31
Speaker 2: it and learn about people who did great things and
44:35
Speaker 2: think to yourself, all right, it's possible to come from
44:39
Speaker 2: humble beginnings, a town in my case of 2300 in
44:41
Speaker 2: the heartland. There's also, though, the ability to use these
44:48
Speaker 2: from a teaching perspective, as you mentioned, and you even
44:51
Speaker 2: help on this with educator resources so that people can
44:56
Speaker 2: actually not have to reinvent the wheel in every classroom,
44:59
Speaker 2: large or small?
45:01
Speaker 7: Oh, we get so many homeschool families and people who
45:03
Speaker 7: just want to teach their kids good values. You know,
45:06
Speaker 7: I never wrote this series to teach kids history. What
45:10
Speaker 7: I wanted to do is teach them their ability to
45:12
Speaker 7: make history. And that's what we all can do. So
45:15
Speaker 7: I get all these people who say, I bought copies
45:18
Speaker 7: from my church. I bought them from my synagogue. I
45:20
Speaker 7: donate them. I make sure that, you know, I give
45:23
Speaker 7: them to the children's hospital. because they want kids to
45:26
Speaker 7: have these lessons. And we saw it happening so much
45:29
Speaker 7: with exactly what she said. We started building teacher resources.
45:32
Speaker 7: So you can go to OrdinaryPeopleChangeTheWorld.com, hit the button that
45:35
Speaker 7: says Teacher Resources, and you will see all these lesson
45:40
Speaker 7: plans and games you can play with your kids all free.
45:43
Speaker 7: You don't have to pay for those. And they go
45:45
Speaker 7: along with the books. So when you buy one of
45:47
Speaker 7: the books and you can teach the kids. Right now,
45:52
Speaker 7: all of us are wringing our hands on how we
45:55
Speaker 7: teach history to our kids. Everyone's worried about how we,
45:58
Speaker 7: you know, that we don't know our sense of history anymore,
46:00
Speaker 7: that we've lost our sense of history. And to me,
46:04
Speaker 7: I don't think we're in an age of division. I
46:06
Speaker 7: don't think it's about being in an age of anger.
46:08
Speaker 7: I think we can be in an age of inspiration,
46:10
Speaker 7: but only if we fight for it. You've got to
46:12
Speaker 7: fight for it. There are, believe it or not, there
46:14
Speaker 7: are shared values we all share. And I don't think
46:19
Speaker 7: those values are arguable, right? To be a good person,
46:24
Speaker 7: to be kind to each other, to work hard, to
46:27
Speaker 7: dream big, to have humility, to make sure it's not
46:30
Speaker 7: all about I, I, I, me, me, me, but to
46:32
Speaker 7: make sure it's about taking care of other people. Those
46:35
Speaker 7: are things we all do agree on. And to me,
46:39
Speaker 7: this has never been a set of books about history.
46:41
Speaker 7: It's books that are about values and teaching you how
46:44
Speaker 7: to be a good human being. And I can't change, Jeff,
46:47
Speaker 7: the minds of adults. But for over a decade now,
46:51
Speaker 7: I have been fighting to give kids better heroes to
46:53
Speaker 7: look up to and arming the next generation of kids
46:56
Speaker 7: with these lessons of kindness and perseverance, and that is
46:58
Speaker 7: a fight I will take every day.
47:01
Speaker 2: The books all have the same style, theme, etc. You've
47:05
Speaker 2: worked with the same illustrator throughout, correct?
47:08
Speaker 7: Yeah, so Chris Eliopoulos is our incredible artist. The reason
47:12
Speaker 7: kids love our books is he's the secret weapon, not me.
47:16
Speaker 7: Because his art style is a little bit like Charlie
47:18
Speaker 7: Brown meets Calvin and Hobbes. And That's why kids like it.
47:22
Speaker 7: They're like, oh, and we always draw, you'll see on
47:24
Speaker 7: the cover that the kid, the hero's always drawn as
47:27
Speaker 7: a kid. And the reason why we do that is
47:31
Speaker 7: because we want kids to look at it and say, oh,
47:33
Speaker 7: that person was just like me. And we don't focus
47:35
Speaker 7: on just when they're great. We show you that George
47:38
Speaker 7: Washington lost his first election, that Abraham Lincoln lost half
47:42
Speaker 7: a dozen elections, that Rosa Parks, when she stood up
47:45
Speaker 7: to that person, that bus driver on the bus, that
47:47
Speaker 7: wasn't the first time she encountered him. She met him
47:49
Speaker 7: before that. And she didn't, on that first day, stand
47:53
Speaker 7: up to them, but she then found that strength. And
47:56
Speaker 7: I love the fact, you know, right now we do
47:59
Speaker 7: this thing in America where we build big statues of
48:01
Speaker 7: our heroes and we worship and we make them look
48:03
Speaker 7: like they're bigger than life. But I think we do
48:07
Speaker 7: those heroes a disservice. Because every person I've mentioned to
48:10
Speaker 7: you here today, right, whether it's Rosa Parks or Dr.
48:13
Speaker 7: King or Amelia Earhart or George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, they
48:16
Speaker 7: all have moments where they were scared and they were
48:18
Speaker 7: terrified and didn't know if they could go on. But
48:21
Speaker 7: they did. And that's the story we're telling, not the
48:24
Speaker 7: stories of famous people, but what we're all capable of
48:27
Speaker 7: on our very best days.
48:30
Speaker 2: Ordinary People Change the World, not only a fact, but
48:32
Speaker 2: the name of the website and the book series, ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com.
48:38
Speaker 2: And lastly, what I find interesting about this from a
48:42
Speaker 2: potential standpoint. So let's say you give someone, I am
48:47
Speaker 2: George Washington. I am Helen Keller. any of the soon-to-be
48:52
Speaker 2: 40 books in this series. So they learn about the
48:56
Speaker 2: person at a young age. I have a feeling that
49:00
Speaker 2: their interest may be piqued so that as they get
49:03
Speaker 2: to their teenage or young adult years and they see
49:08
Speaker 2: a different sort of biography, not a picture book per se,
49:12
Speaker 2: you know, one of those with words and a few photos,
49:17
Speaker 2: I have a sense that they will build upon the
49:19
Speaker 2: knowledge because their interest has been piqued at a young age,
49:24
Speaker 2: and then it just grows to where as the young
49:27
Speaker 2: person gets older, they can have a greater appreciation for
49:32
Speaker 2: these people they should be looking up to.
49:35
Speaker 7: The nicest compliment that I've ever gotten for these books
49:40
Speaker 7: is every Halloween, on my social media, on Instagram, on Facebook,
49:44
Speaker 7: on everywhere, people send me pictures of their kids, not
49:49
Speaker 7: dressed as a princess from Disney, not dressed as some
49:52
Speaker 7: licensed character from some big corporation, but dressed as Rosa Parks,
49:58
Speaker 7: dressed as Jackie Robinson, dressed as Jane Goodall, dressed as
50:02
Speaker 7: Dolly Parton, saying that their kid read our books and
50:05
Speaker 7: wanted to dress like this hero this Halloween. And man,
50:09
Speaker 7: that's what I want my kids to be doing. That's
50:11
Speaker 7: why I wrote these books. Again, now kids are realizing
50:15
Speaker 7: these people are amazing. And you don't grow out of that.
50:18
Speaker 7: I used to dress as Batman when I was a
50:20
Speaker 7: little kid. I still love Batman. I write Batman. I've
50:24
Speaker 7: written his comics. But I love the fact when someone
50:27
Speaker 7: loves Jane Goodall or loves Jackie Robinson and wants to
50:30
Speaker 7: dress like them as a kid, that's never going away.
50:34
Speaker 7: And I love the fact that we get to be
50:35
Speaker 7: that little seed planted in them. and that over time
50:39
Speaker 7: gets to sprout and stay with them.
50:42
Speaker 2: It's such important work, and I am a big fan
50:47
Speaker 2: of the concept, and I'm certainly a big fan of
50:49
Speaker 2: your writing, whether it's the fiction, the nonfiction, or as
50:51
Speaker 2: we're talking about here, the 40th book in the Ordinary
50:55
Speaker 2: People Change the World series, released Tuesday, We Are the
50:57
Speaker 2: Wright Brothers, and you can find it at ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com, Mr.
51:03
Speaker 2: Meltzer's broad website, bradmeltzer.com, Thank you so much for taking
51:08
Speaker 2: the time. I really appreciate it, and continued success with
51:11
Speaker 2: this series. Lots of folks you can still profile, I bet.
51:15
Speaker 7: No, thank you, and thanks for always supporting us, Brother Jeff.
51:17
Speaker 7: We appreciate you.
51:19
Speaker 2: Take good care, sir.
51:20
Speaker 4: You too.
51:21
Speaker 2: And Mr. Meltzer joined us live on the Patriot Mobile
51:24
Speaker 2: Newsmaker Line, 901-260-5926. Join the conversation after this short break.
51:30
Speaker 2: We'll be back in the Liberty University studio in a moment.
51:33
Speaker 2: Jeff Stein in for Todd on the Todd Starnes Show.
51:42
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Liberty University studio and this Open
51:44
Speaker 2: Line Friday edition of the Todd Starnes Show. Jeff Stein
51:47
Speaker 2: filling in for Todd today. Coming up after the bottom
51:50
Speaker 2: of the hour, return guest to the program, he's Phil
51:53
Speaker 2: Kirpin of American Commitment. You hear an awful lot of
51:57
Speaker 2: talk about the economy. What's the truth? Phil Kirpin will
52:01
Speaker 2: tell us when he joins us just after the bottom
52:04
Speaker 2: of the hour.
52:04
Speaker 4: Now, Mr.
52:05
Speaker 2: Starnes is out there in California doing the heavy work
52:08
Speaker 2: of trying to, uh, reform minds one conversation at a
52:13
Speaker 2: time and talking about his book, The Golden Age, but
52:16
Speaker 2: it's not like he's just sitting there on a beach. Well,
52:18
Speaker 2: he could be on a beach. I don't know. At
52:20
Speaker 2: least he's posting at toddstarns.com and, of course, through the
52:24
Speaker 2: social media. There's a story that he has posted here
52:27
Speaker 2: just a little bit ago talking about a new California
52:32
Speaker 2: law that is going to infringe upon churches. And it's
52:39
Speaker 2: not an accident by any stretch. According to ToddStarns.com, California
52:45
Speaker 2: employers will be required to incorporate anti-hate speech instruction into
52:50
Speaker 2: their workplace harassment training, and churches are not exempt, and
52:57
Speaker 2: LGBT activists are happy. When activists on the left are happy,
53:06
Speaker 2: I know not to be. And again, this is a
53:10
Speaker 2: law that was signed, oh, just a week ago, maybe.
53:14
Speaker 2: And it's got a year of grace in it. Beginning
53:18
Speaker 2: January 1st of 2028. And again, you can read the
53:21
Speaker 2: whole story at toddstarns.com. If you are a business in
53:24
Speaker 2: California with five or more employees, you have to include
53:29
Speaker 2: in your already mandated harassment training. You already have to
53:34
Speaker 2: do that, but now you have to include guidance on that. Recognizing, reporting,
53:39
Speaker 2: and confronting workplace speech that, in their words, vilifies, humiliates,
53:45
Speaker 2: or incites hatred, unquote, based on protected characteristics. So, once again,
53:55
Speaker 2: there are certain facts, like God created two genders, male
54:03
Speaker 2: and female. If someone wants to identify as something else,
54:11
Speaker 2: that may be their world, but it's not a fact
54:15
Speaker 2: and it's not reality. But apparently you have to just
54:20
Speaker 2: bend the knee so that you're not accused of having
54:23
Speaker 2: a hostile work environment. Now again, they cannot define this stuff.
54:31
Speaker 2: They cannot define the problem. but yet they're going to
54:36
Speaker 2: regulate it. Now, if you've read The Golden Age by
54:40
Speaker 2: Todd Starnes, you know through a whole host of examples
54:45
Speaker 2: that are in the book with annotations. That's what I
54:49
Speaker 2: love about Todd's books. He tells a story, and then
54:52
Speaker 2: there are the footnotes. Go look for yourself. He's not
54:54
Speaker 2: making this stuff up. But as Todd writes, the ultimate
54:58
Speaker 2: goal of LGBT activists is to shut down Christian churches
55:02
Speaker 2: across the nation and outlaw the Bibles. plainly stated and
55:07
Speaker 2: this piece of legislation in california just adds to it
55:12
Speaker 2: if you'd like to read the story go to toddstarns.com
55:15
Speaker 2: it was posted just a little bit ago by mr
55:17
Speaker 2: starns the headline is churches not exempt from california lgbt
55:22
Speaker 2: hate speech law 901-260-5926 we'll take your calls later this
55:27
Speaker 2: hour but after this break phil kirpen of american commitment
55:32
Speaker 2: As we continue from the Liberty University studio, Jeff Stein
55:35
Speaker 2: in for Todd Starnes. This is the Todd Starnes Show.
55:54
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Liberty University studio and the Todd
55:57
Speaker 2: Starnes Show. Jeff Stein filling in for Todd today. From
56:01
Speaker 2: my home base at News Talk 1540 KXEL in Iowa,
56:05
Speaker 2: Iowa's home to the Todd Starnes Show, scorching the heartland
56:09
Speaker 2: with 50,000 watts of accurate news and reasonable views. And
56:13
Speaker 2: we look forward to the conversation with you a little
56:16
Speaker 2: later this hour at 901-260-5926. Very busy third hour of
56:22
Speaker 2: the program today, just after the top of the hour.
56:25
Speaker 2: We'll speak with Peachy Keenan about her new book, Supervillains,
56:29
Speaker 2: Architects of America's Decline. And since she's out there at
56:33
Speaker 2: the left coast, we'll see what she thought of that
56:35
Speaker 2: gubernatorial debate the other night. That's just after the top
56:39
Speaker 2: of the next hour. About an hour from now, we'll
56:42
Speaker 2: connect with Ohio-born, Tennessee-based musician Adam Calvert. Now, I met
56:49
Speaker 2: him in my home base of Iowa last week. He
56:51
Speaker 2: came into the studio, was in town for some performances
56:55
Speaker 2: at a fair. Really a great story and some very
56:58
Speaker 2: fine music. We'll share that with you in about an hour.
57:01
Speaker 2: And what's going on with fraud in Minnesota? What are
57:04
Speaker 2: Republicans doing about it? Minnesota Republican floor leader Harry Niska
57:10
Speaker 2: will join us near the end of the third hour
57:13
Speaker 2: as well. So all that. And if you miss any
57:16
Speaker 2: of it or you want to hear it again, well,
57:19
Speaker 2: of course, the Toddcast podcast, one of the most popular
57:23
Speaker 2: things on the Salem Podcast Network, Just go to wherever
57:27
Speaker 2: you get your good podcasts these days. I actually listen
57:29
Speaker 2: online as opposed to the actual podcast through one of
57:33
Speaker 2: those platforms. So just go to SalemPodcastNetwork.com and you can listen,
57:38
Speaker 2: you can download all of that good stuff. You can
57:42
Speaker 2: follow me on the socials, not Facebook, because, you know, why?
57:46
Speaker 2: Why do Facebook? But I do other things, XTruthSocial.com. Instagram threads,
57:53
Speaker 2: there's a whole host of them. Getter, yeah, all of that.
57:57
Speaker 2: And it's all at Iowa Politics. That's I-O-W-A Politics. That's
58:02
Speaker 2: how you can reach me on the social media. I
58:06
Speaker 2: mentioned my day job is at KXEL Radio in Iowa,
58:10
Speaker 2: and each day we do a poll question. And I'll
58:14
Speaker 2: open it up to all of you in Starnes Nation today.
58:17
Speaker 2: If you go to kxel.com slash poll, that's kxel.com slash poll,
58:25
Speaker 2: here's the question. The president is holding a series of
58:28
Speaker 2: campaign rallies before the November election. Will that help or
58:33
Speaker 2: hurt the GOP? And you can vote. Will it help?
58:38
Speaker 2: Will it hurt? Does it depend on the state or
58:41
Speaker 2: the race? Or do you have some other thoughts on it?
58:44
Speaker 2: The KXEL poll question of the day at my home station,
58:47
Speaker 2: but you all across the country can weigh in at
58:50
Speaker 2: kxel.com slash poll. And the question again is, the president
58:55
Speaker 2: is holding a series of campaign rallies before the November election.
59:00
Speaker 2: Will that help or hurt the GOP? Interested in what
59:04
Speaker 2: your thoughts might be on that. A lot of reports
59:07
Speaker 2: of folks who say, uh, Harris, you want to come
59:11
Speaker 2: to my state? How about you not? The Democrat in
59:16
Speaker 2: Kansas who is, I think, trying to reposition himself in
59:22
Speaker 2: terms of what he stands for was asked point blank, well,
59:25
Speaker 2: what about having her come? No, no, thank you, please.
59:28
Speaker 2: That's not going to help. And it really makes you
59:31
Speaker 2: wonder what Democrat running for office right now would find
59:38
Speaker 2: it to be a benefit to have the former vice president, Ms. Harris,
59:44
Speaker 2: the former president, Mr.
59:45
Speaker 4: Obama.
59:45
Speaker 2: Is that helpful? Especially if some of these folks are
59:51
Speaker 2: trying to shake off the failed policies of the past. Now,
59:56
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about the Democratic Socialists. That's a whole
59:59
Speaker 2: different breed that needs to be weeded out. But I'm
1:00:04
Speaker 2: finding this is happening more and more. And maybe it's
1:00:09
Speaker 2: because we're tired of all the fighting in politics. Maybe
1:00:14
Speaker 2: it's because so many of us are now registering to
1:00:17
Speaker 2: vote as non-affiliated voters, not Republican or Democrat. But a
1:00:24
Speaker 2: lot of these folks running for office, you watch their
1:00:26
Speaker 2: ads on TV, they don't tell you if they're a
1:00:28
Speaker 2: Democrat or a Republican. And that is really interesting to me.
1:00:35
Speaker 2: It's not because they're all bipartisan fighters for the American people.
1:00:42
Speaker 2: It's because they think it's the most advantageous way to win. Now, again,
1:00:47
Speaker 2: in my home state, we have an awful lot of independents.
1:00:50
Speaker 2: We have more non-registered voters, or non-affiliated registered voters. Quote independents.
1:00:56
Speaker 2: We have more of those than Democrats. So, obviously... you're
1:01:00
Speaker 2: going to play to those folks who don't have a
1:01:04
Speaker 2: partisan affiliation. So if you're a Republican, yeah, you've got
1:01:07
Speaker 2: to get your base because you have more of those
1:01:10
Speaker 2: in the registered voter pool than anything else. But you
1:01:13
Speaker 2: also want a hefty amount of the independents so that
1:01:15
Speaker 2: you can seal the deal. And if you're a Democrat
1:01:19
Speaker 2: and you know there's not much to your base, you
1:01:21
Speaker 2: better be preaching whatever you can to those who are open,
1:01:28
Speaker 2: as in independents. But when you're watching some of these
1:01:32
Speaker 2: ads and you don't know what party they represent because
1:01:36
Speaker 2: they're just talking in these platitudes and not actually talking
1:01:41
Speaker 2: about what they would do in office, that really tells
1:01:44
Speaker 2: you something. It tells you that they either do not
1:01:48
Speaker 2: have convictions, and that's a problem, or they're willing to
1:01:53
Speaker 2: hide them just to get power. I grant you, you've
1:01:57
Speaker 2: got to get elected. Can't do anything without actually being
1:02:01
Speaker 2: in office. But it seems to me that we need
1:02:05
Speaker 2: to be a little cautious about divesting party identification. Because
1:02:14
Speaker 2: first of all, if you're not proud of it, why
1:02:17
Speaker 2: are you one of them? Now, folks who listen to
1:02:20
Speaker 2: my station have heard me say this more than a
1:02:23
Speaker 2: few times. I hear a lot, and I brought it
1:02:27
Speaker 2: up today on the radio back here at home, but
1:02:29
Speaker 2: I hear a lot of people who say, well, I'm
1:02:31
Speaker 2: going to vote, and I'm going to send a message
1:02:34
Speaker 2: in November. Okay, well, what do you mean by sending
1:02:38
Speaker 2: a message? Well, those Republicans, you know, I'm a Republican,
1:02:42
Speaker 2: but they're not doing anything to support the president, so
1:02:45
Speaker 2: I'm going to show them I'm going to vote for
1:02:47
Speaker 2: somebody else. I'm going to vote for the Libertarian. I'm
1:02:51
Speaker 2: going to vote for the Independent. Or it could be
1:02:54
Speaker 2: a Democrat who says, I don't think my Democrat in
1:02:58
Speaker 2: office is doing enough to stop the president, so I'm
1:03:01
Speaker 2: going to show them I'm not going to support them.
1:03:05
Speaker 2: I'm going to send a message. Well, yeah, you're sending
1:03:08
Speaker 2: a message, all right, but what is it? Let's say
1:03:11
Speaker 2: you're a Republican. You're not thrilled with everything your candidate
1:03:17
Speaker 2: is standing for or what they are doing or not
1:03:19
Speaker 2: doing in Washington. So you want to send a message.
1:03:24
Speaker 2: Is voting for the Democrat really the message you're trying
1:03:27
Speaker 2: to send? Because again, it's going to look like you
1:03:33
Speaker 2: are against the Republicans and you're in favor of the Democrats.
1:03:37
Speaker 2: Is that the message? If you're a Democrat and you say, well,
1:03:42
Speaker 2: I don't like this breed of Democrat, so I'm going
1:03:46
Speaker 2: to show them. What are you showing? Are you showing
1:03:50
Speaker 2: that the party has gone too far? Or are you
1:03:52
Speaker 2: showing that You're in favor of the Republican. The problem
1:03:57
Speaker 2: is just casting a vote without context. We have no
1:04:01
Speaker 2: idea what your message is. I'm going to send them
1:04:05
Speaker 2: a message. What is it? Now, if we're talking a primary,
1:04:11
Speaker 2: that's where you send a message. If you're talking a
1:04:15
Speaker 2: primary election and you don't like what the incumbent has
1:04:18
Speaker 2: been doing and you vote for somebody else, then you're
1:04:21
Speaker 2: sending a very direct message about the future of your party.
1:04:28
Speaker 2: But when you get to a general election, I'm not
1:04:33
Speaker 2: sure that's the time to start sending messages. I'm not
1:04:39
Speaker 2: sure that that is a message that is clear enough
1:04:43
Speaker 2: to be received. Because if somebody of one party loses,
1:04:50
Speaker 2: the automatic presumption is that more people favored the other one.
1:04:54
Speaker 2: They had more votes. Some would call it a mandate
1:04:58
Speaker 2: then by winning. Is that the message you're trying to send? Well,
1:05:03
Speaker 2: all right, I just won't vote for anybody in that race.
1:05:07
Speaker 2: So what's your message then? That you don't care enough?
1:05:12
Speaker 2: I mean, I am not a straight ticket voter. I
1:05:15
Speaker 2: never have been. My state does not allow you to
1:05:18
Speaker 2: simply fill in one oval and vote for every R
1:05:22
Speaker 2: or D candidate. on the ballot. And there are a
1:05:26
Speaker 2: lot of partisans who wish we'd go back to that,
1:05:29
Speaker 2: because then, if you like a few of the Democrats
1:05:32
Speaker 2: or a few of the Republicans, you fill in the
1:05:34
Speaker 2: circle for the party, and then there's a big coattail effect.
1:05:39
Speaker 2: I think voting, frankly, is too important for that. I
1:05:42
Speaker 2: think what you ought to do when you vote is
1:05:44
Speaker 2: examine every single race. And if you want to vote
1:05:47
Speaker 2: for everybody of the same party, great, go for it.
1:05:52
Speaker 2: Race by race, contest by contest, because it's entirely possible
1:06:00
Speaker 2: that you don't know enough to weigh in. That's on you.
1:06:05
Speaker 2: Or it's entirely possible that not everybody from your party
1:06:08
Speaker 2: deserves to get in. You have to weigh all the factors.
1:06:12
Speaker 2: What's the alternative? What have they done? What will they do?
1:06:16
Speaker 2: How's that line up with what you feel, etc.? But
1:06:20
Speaker 2: the bottom line of saying, I'm going to send a
1:06:23
Speaker 2: message this general election, all I'm saying is, you might
1:06:28
Speaker 2: be sending a message, but it might not be understood correctly.
1:06:35
Speaker 2: It might not be understood accurately. You send a message
1:06:40
Speaker 2: in a primary, oh yeah, okay, I got that. But
1:06:44
Speaker 2: in the general election, it's a little different. And if
1:06:48
Speaker 2: you're upset about something, well, rise up and do something
1:06:52
Speaker 2: about it. Heaven knows. If you don't know how to
1:06:57
Speaker 2: reach your representatives on a regular basis, and you may say, well,
1:07:02
Speaker 2: I'm just winding up leaving a message, they take score.
1:07:06
Speaker 2: They keep count. So if you call your congressman's office
1:07:11
Speaker 2: and weigh in on an issue, they put a little
1:07:14
Speaker 2: mark down of how you felt, and they keep score.
1:07:18
Speaker 2: It's up to us to be active on more than
1:07:22
Speaker 2: Election Day. And if we want to start sending signals,
1:07:27
Speaker 2: do it in the right way.
1:07:28
Speaker 1: 901-260-5926.
1:07:33
Speaker 2: Your call is on the other side of this break
1:07:34
Speaker 2: from the Liberty University studio. Jeff Stein filling in for
1:07:38
Speaker 2: Todd on an open line Friday edition of the Todd
1:07:41
Speaker 2: Starnes Show. Welcome back to the Liberty University studio on
1:07:50
Speaker 2: the Todd Starnes Show. Jeff Stein filling in for Todd.
1:07:53
Speaker 2: Let's spend the rest of this hour by going to
1:07:55
Speaker 2: the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker in line and reconnecting with Phil Kirpin.
1:07:59
Speaker 8: Mr.
1:08:00
Speaker 2: Kirpin is president of American Commitment. He is a principal
1:08:03
Speaker 2: at Unleash Prosperity. You follow him on the Twitter X
1:08:05
Speaker 2: machine at Kirpin. Phil, thanks so much for taking the time, sir.
1:08:09
Speaker 9: Hey, my pleasure, Jeff.
1:08:12
Speaker 2: We hear a lot about affordability. We have all sorts
1:08:15
Speaker 2: of folks saying... that the economy is bad, the economy
1:08:19
Speaker 2: is horrible. All right, what's the truth about all this, please?
1:08:24
Speaker 9: Well, we have an economy that in many ways is very,
1:08:26
Speaker 9: very strong. We have very, very strong record income growth
1:08:31
Speaker 9: in 2025. We've got pretty strong GDP growth right now,
1:08:35
Speaker 9: just revised up to 2.2% for the last quarter, which
1:08:39
Speaker 9: is a pretty substantial growth. upward revision. We've got a
1:08:42
Speaker 9: lot of business investment. We've got a huge boom in
1:08:44
Speaker 9: business investment. That tends to flow through to higher productivity
1:08:48
Speaker 9: and higher wages. So there are a lot of positives.
1:08:50
Speaker 9: Of course, there's one very, very obvious negative, which is
1:08:53
Speaker 9: we're dealing with a supply shock, price shock in oil.
1:08:56
Speaker 9: And we already had high prices from a crude oil
1:09:00
Speaker 9: shock in the Middle East when we got a second shock,
1:09:03
Speaker 9: a shock on top of a shock, this one specific
1:09:05
Speaker 9: to diesel, because of the Ukrainians bombing all those refineries
1:09:09
Speaker 9: in Russia that specialize in producing diesel. And so now
1:09:12
Speaker 9: we've got this sort of this double shock. price shock,
1:09:15
Speaker 9: and that hurts. And for the past several months, we've
1:09:19
Speaker 9: now been in this situation where prices are rising faster
1:09:23
Speaker 9: than income. So people are falling behind a little bit again,
1:09:25
Speaker 9: as they were in the Biden years after the opposite
1:09:28
Speaker 9: last year. So this is the challenge we've got. We've
1:09:30
Speaker 9: got a lot of very strong elements economically. And even
1:09:33
Speaker 9: in this employment report that came out today, Jeff, we
1:09:35
Speaker 9: saw these headlines about how So few jobs were created,
1:09:38
Speaker 9: but they produced two different surveys from the Bureau of
1:09:42
Speaker 9: Labor Statistics, and the establishment survey, the one where they
1:09:45
Speaker 9: surveyed employers, was weak, but the one where they surveyed
1:09:48
Speaker 9: households was actually very strong. So a lot more people
1:09:50
Speaker 9: said they were working, and that kind of a dichotomy
1:09:54
Speaker 9: makes you scratch your head, because which one's telling the truth?
1:09:57
Speaker 9: It's hard to say. But that's kind of the story
1:09:59
Speaker 9: of the economy right now. We've got kind of a
1:10:02
Speaker 9: lot of very good indicators, and we've got this one big,
1:10:05
Speaker 9: very negative one with the energy price situation.
1:10:09
Speaker 2: And as I mentioned last hour, yes, the jobs numbers
1:10:13
Speaker 2: overall fell short of expectations, but when you factor how
1:10:18
Speaker 2: many government jobs were lost, the actual private sector gains
1:10:23
Speaker 2: were even stronger certainly not what the so-called analyst wanted
1:10:28
Speaker 2: but still not bad when the private sector gain is
1:10:31
Speaker 2: what forty six thousand in a month.
1:10:34
Speaker 1: Uh.
1:10:35
Speaker 9: yeah that's right uh... need to have private sector job
1:10:39
Speaker 9: growth and in the government sector public sector decreases which
1:10:43
Speaker 9: anytime that happens it's good because it means you have
1:10:45
Speaker 9: more people kind of pulling the wagon if you were
1:10:46
Speaker 9: riding inside and uh... they know that improves the outlook
1:10:49
Speaker 9: going forward we would like to see a bigger number
1:10:52
Speaker 9: of course uh... but as i said you know we
1:10:54
Speaker 9: did have a big number on the uh... on the
1:10:57
Speaker 9: household survey which kind of suggest that you've got a
1:11:01
Speaker 9: lot of people that are doing you know from that
1:11:03
Speaker 9: they consider employment but i'm not showing up on a
1:11:06
Speaker 9: on a payroll somewhere so they might be you know
1:11:08
Speaker 9: doing some kind of a geek economy thing or working
1:11:10
Speaker 9: something app based or whatever it might be but they're
1:11:13
Speaker 9: reporting that they are employed uh... and you know that
1:11:16
Speaker 9: may be a better indicator than what we're seeing in
1:11:18
Speaker 9: the other survey you know i think maybe because it's
1:11:20
Speaker 9: hard to stay with these things but uh... You know,
1:11:23
Speaker 9: I can say, no matter which survey you're looking at,
1:11:25
Speaker 9: the employment situation is very strong. We have very low
1:11:28
Speaker 9: unemployment in this country. There are a lot of job openings.
1:11:30
Speaker 9: Our challenge is not that people can't find work. Our
1:11:33
Speaker 9: challenge is that prices are now again rising faster than
1:11:37
Speaker 9: incomes are rising, and that's entirely because of the energy
1:11:41
Speaker 9: price spike. And so if we could get these conflicts
1:11:43
Speaker 9: resolved and get that back to normal, I actually think
1:11:45
Speaker 9: the economic outlook would be extremely strong. But because it's
1:11:47
Speaker 9: been difficult, to resolve the geopolitical situations we've now got
1:11:52
Speaker 9: the federal reserve thing we don't want the higher-energy prices
1:11:54
Speaker 9: spread to other things we're going to start raising rates
1:11:56
Speaker 9: and that could pull the economy overall and so that's
1:11:59
Speaker 9: i think uh... you know that you can only go
1:12:01
Speaker 9: so long with these conflicts before you start to uh...
1:12:04
Speaker 9: it starts to become harder to just be passed on
1:12:06
Speaker 9: and i think that that's a challenge we've got right
1:12:08
Speaker 9: now so i really hope you know we can get
1:12:10
Speaker 9: a resolution in iran and get a resolution obviously that's
1:12:13
Speaker 9: much harder in uh... in ukraine and russia that one
1:12:16
Speaker 9: seems like it might go on forever but It's important
1:12:20
Speaker 9: for people to keep in mind the problem is not
1:12:23
Speaker 9: Trump administration policies. The tax policies have been very good.
1:12:27
Speaker 9: The energy policies have been very good. The regulatory policies
1:12:29
Speaker 9: have been very good. We've just got these geopolitical situations
1:12:33
Speaker 9: that have caused this spike in energy prices. But even
1:12:36
Speaker 9: with that, they're not as high as they were under
1:12:38
Speaker 9: Obama and under Biden when you had an intentional policy
1:12:41
Speaker 9: of making energy more expensive to save us from global warming.
1:12:43
Speaker 9: And so this political... idea that we keep seeing everywhere
1:12:47
Speaker 9: that things are unaffordable and you should vote for the Democrats.
1:12:49
Speaker 9: I have to kind of scratch my head and say
1:12:50
Speaker 9: the only reason some things are unaffordable is this energy
1:12:53
Speaker 9: price spike, and the Democrats favor high energy prices as
1:12:56
Speaker 9: a matter of ideology. So I don't think you can
1:12:58
Speaker 9: get a solution at the ballot box.
1:13:01
Speaker 2: In less than a minute, how long will it take
1:13:04
Speaker 2: for things to right themselves once the Iran situation is resolved?
1:13:11
Speaker 2: Is that a six-month recovery, 12-month recovery, or what?
1:13:16
Speaker 9: Yeah, it probably takes six months to a year. You know,
1:13:19
Speaker 9: they say in the oil industry, they say that prices
1:13:22
Speaker 9: go up like a rocket and float down like a feather.
1:13:24
Speaker 9: There are just a lot of things involved in, you know,
1:13:27
Speaker 9: working through the supply chain. And private inventories have been
1:13:30
Speaker 9: drawn down dramatically, as well as, you know, government strategic reserves.
1:13:34
Speaker 9: And so it's going to take a long time. You know,
1:13:36
Speaker 9: right now, the latest information I've seen is that Oil
1:13:39
Speaker 9: transiting straight to Formosa is back to about 75 percent
1:13:43
Speaker 9: of pre-war levels. And so, you know, it's largely getting
1:13:48
Speaker 9: closer to back to normal, but it does take a
1:13:51
Speaker 9: very long time for inventories to rebuild and supply chains
1:13:54
Speaker 9: to return to normal. And, of course, diesel is now
1:13:57
Speaker 9: greatly complicated even beyond that because we've got so many
1:13:59
Speaker 9: of the Russian refineries that supply so much of the
1:14:02
Speaker 9: global export market that are now offline.
1:14:05
Speaker 2: Phil Kirpin, American Commitment dot org. Thanks so much for
1:14:08
Speaker 2: the time, sir. That's it for our two of the
1:14:10
Speaker 2: Starnes program on a Friday. Come back after the top
1:14:13
Speaker 2: of the hour. We'll talk with Peachy Keenan, Jeff Stein
1:14:16
Speaker 2: in for Todd on the Todd Starnes show.
1:14:32
Speaker 1: Broadcasting coast-to-coast and border-to-border from Memphis, Tennessee.
1:14:37
Speaker 2: That's us, that's right.
1:14:40
Speaker 1: I love this American ride. Todd Starnes.
1:14:47
Speaker 2: Hello, fellow patriots. Jeff Stein filling in for Todd Starnes today.
1:14:52
Speaker 2: Todd continues his tour of California promoting his latest book,
1:14:56
Speaker 2: The Golden Age. Get it wherever you get your good
1:14:59
Speaker 2: books these days. Todd will be back in the studio
1:15:02
Speaker 2: on Tuesday. It's my privilege to come to you from
1:15:05
Speaker 2: my home base here in the heartland in the state
1:15:08
Speaker 2: of Iowa. Hour three of our Open Line Friday program today.
1:15:12
Speaker 2: And speaking of books that you should pick up, when
1:15:15
Speaker 2: you go to Amazon, you pick up your fifth or
1:15:17
Speaker 2: sixth copy of Todd's latest book. Why not pick up
1:15:20
Speaker 2: a copy of Super Villains, Architects of America's Decline? That's
1:15:25
Speaker 2: the brand new book. That was authored by our guest,
1:15:28
Speaker 2: who joins us now on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line.
1:15:31
Speaker 2: She is Peachy Keenan. Thanks so much for taking the time,
1:15:34
Speaker 2: Jeff Stein, in for Todd today. How are you?
1:15:36
Speaker 8: I'm doing great, Jeff.
1:15:38
Speaker 3: Thank you.
1:15:39
Speaker 2: Good to talk to you again. Peachy Keenan is the
1:15:42
Speaker 2: name that you assumed for writing in this way on
1:15:46
Speaker 2: popular culture. For those who have not heard the story,
1:15:50
Speaker 2: why did you find it necessary to use a pseudonym
1:15:54
Speaker 2: as you're telling truth?
1:15:56
Speaker 3: Well, I am a conservative living here in Los Angeles,
1:16:00
Speaker 3: so that's number one. And number two, at the time
1:16:03
Speaker 3: when I started writing about politics and cultural matters, I
1:16:06
Speaker 3: was working full-time at Disney. And so I thought, you know,
1:16:10
Speaker 3: if they find out how I really feel about the
1:16:12
Speaker 3: election and Donald Trump, I know I'll get fired. And
1:16:16
Speaker 3: I'm right. I mean, that's exactly what would have happened.
1:16:18
Speaker 3: So I had no choice. I had to come up
1:16:20
Speaker 3: with a pseudonym.
1:16:22
Speaker 2: Of course, you work at Disney these days, you get
1:16:23
Speaker 2: fired anyway with all of the layoffs, sad to say.
1:16:27
Speaker 2: But Supervillain's not your first book. Tell us about why
1:16:32
Speaker 2: this book at this time.
1:16:35
Speaker 3: My first book, Domestic Extremist, was sort of like a
1:16:38
Speaker 3: humorous critique of modern-day feminism and how women can kind
1:16:42
Speaker 3: of break through that programming like I did. I'm a
1:16:45
Speaker 3: former recovering feminist. Supervillain's was my... my idea to take
1:16:51
Speaker 3: that view, that kind of humorous critique, and apply it
1:16:53
Speaker 3: to really every sector of our lives, starting in the COVID.
1:16:58
Speaker 3: During the COVID years, I started seeing the same names
1:17:00
Speaker 3: crop up again and again in social media, on X,
1:17:03
Speaker 3: of people who were, like, really forcing us into these crazy, weird,
1:17:07
Speaker 3: destructive policies. My two-year-old had to wear a mask when
1:17:11
Speaker 3: I dropped off at preschool, playing outside, just all of
1:17:14
Speaker 3: the things that have happened to us, from DEI to police,
1:17:18
Speaker 3: you know, vaccine mandates, transgender craze for kids. All of
1:17:23
Speaker 3: these things I thought needed the peachy treatment, so to speak.
1:17:26
Speaker 3: And so supervillains is my way of naming the names,
1:17:29
Speaker 3: trying to hold these people accountable, but also having fun.
1:17:32
Speaker 2: The cover art, as I commented to you before, when
1:17:35
Speaker 2: you were kind enough to join me on my local program.
1:17:37
Speaker 2: I mean, this takes me back to growing up and
1:17:40
Speaker 2: Saturday morning cartoons with superheroes. And so you've got these
1:17:44
Speaker 2: cartoon images of the villains in It really is something
1:17:48
Speaker 2: out of a Dick Tracy comic strip at some points
1:17:51
Speaker 2: because they just appear to be so laughable. Like, this
1:17:56
Speaker 2: can't possibly be happening. The sad part is everything you're
1:18:00
Speaker 2: talking about, it may look like some fictional villain. It's happening,
1:18:05
Speaker 2: as you've noted.
1:18:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing. These people are sort of walking
1:18:09
Speaker 3: among us and they're in charge of Hollywood. They're in
1:18:12
Speaker 3: charge of, you know, big pharma, medicine, the colleges. politics,
1:18:17
Speaker 3: the Justice Department. They're in charge of all these sort
1:18:20
Speaker 3: of elite institutions, and we have no way to kind
1:18:23
Speaker 3: of fight back to them. And really what they are,
1:18:25
Speaker 3: are just like you said, right out of a comic book.
1:18:27
Speaker 3: I mean, they're just comic book villains, but they're wearing
1:18:29
Speaker 3: suits and ties, you know, and pantsuits. They're not wearing,
1:18:33
Speaker 3: they don't look like the Joker, okay? They don't have
1:18:35
Speaker 3: face paint and capes and hoods. But they're still really doing,
1:18:39
Speaker 3: they're promoting ideas and policies that are just as bad
1:18:43
Speaker 3: as anything Batman ever faced.
1:18:45
Speaker 2: Supervillains, Architects of America's Decline, the latest book released just
1:18:49
Speaker 2: last month by our guest, Peachy Keenan. You get it
1:18:52
Speaker 2: wherever you get your good books these days. Peachykeenan.com is
1:18:56
Speaker 2: where you go to read her Substack writings and other
1:18:59
Speaker 2: things as well. She's kind enough to join us on
1:19:01
Speaker 2: the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line on the Todd Starnes Show,
1:19:05
Speaker 2: Jeff Stein filling in. Now, I assume as you put
1:19:08
Speaker 2: together a book like this, you're collecting anecdotes, you're collecting stories,
1:19:12
Speaker 2: looking at the things that you've written over the course
1:19:14
Speaker 2: of time. And then you start to put it all
1:19:17
Speaker 2: together in book form. Sometimes I find that a note
1:19:22
Speaker 2: here and a note there, they're sort of disconnected. But
1:19:24
Speaker 2: then when I put the whole mess together in a pile,
1:19:27
Speaker 2: then I start making connections I hadn't made before. Was
1:19:30
Speaker 2: that the case for you? In other words, here's a piece,
1:19:33
Speaker 2: here's a piece. But when you put it together, you
1:19:35
Speaker 2: kind of sit back and say, wow. Now it really
1:19:37
Speaker 2: starts to become clear.
1:19:43
Speaker 3: We had hundreds and hundreds of names, and we had
1:19:45
Speaker 3: to winnow it down, obviously, because it would take an
1:19:47
Speaker 3: entire forest to produce enough paper to print the volumes
1:19:50
Speaker 3: that you would need to catalog everybody. But yeah, the
1:19:54
Speaker 3: common thread that I found, you know, it's not just
1:19:56
Speaker 3: this guy wants more power or this guy wants to control,
1:19:58
Speaker 3: you know, what you do with your children or how
1:20:01
Speaker 3: you educate your kids. My conclusion at the end was
1:20:05
Speaker 3: that these people... don't think they're super villain in fact
1:20:08
Speaker 3: they think they're super hero and there saving us they're
1:20:12
Speaker 3: doing it for our own good and I'm sorry this
1:20:14
Speaker 3: might hurt a little bit but they're just gonna have
1:20:16
Speaker 3: to do the quote right thing because they're good and
1:20:19
Speaker 3: decent and moral people and in fact.
1:20:21
Speaker 8: They're they're superior to us we're just these.
1:20:24
Speaker 3: You know awful hateful idiot who persist in our bad
1:20:28
Speaker 3: wrong ideas are bad voting choices that are and are
1:20:31
Speaker 3: bad IE conservative our politics but we have to listen
1:20:35
Speaker 3: to them And they're willing, what I found is they're
1:20:37
Speaker 3: really willing to use any and all levers of power,
1:20:41
Speaker 3: of cultural influence and clout to get their way. And,
1:20:45
Speaker 3: you know, woe to us if you stand in their way.
1:20:49
Speaker 2: That truly is one of the problems, is it not?
1:20:51
Speaker 2: Because in the old days, I would say, and this
1:20:54
Speaker 2: is probably not true, but at least I thought it was,
1:20:57
Speaker 2: people had good motives, reasonable people could disagree on something,
1:21:03
Speaker 2: but it wasn't that they held these views with such,
1:21:09
Speaker 2: I'll say, religious fervor. And that may be a sacrilegious
1:21:15
Speaker 2: way of describing it. But for some of these folks,
1:21:19
Speaker 2: they are so convinced they're right. Maybe it's because we've
1:21:23
Speaker 2: all been taught these days that we're all special snowflakes
1:21:27
Speaker 2: from the time we're born, and so we're entitled. But
1:21:30
Speaker 2: the attitude by these folks just appears more strident and
1:21:35
Speaker 2: much more of a take-no-prisoners approach. Am I missing something?
1:21:39
Speaker 3: No, I think that's right. I think the difference is
1:21:41
Speaker 3: that 50 years ago, let's say, you had political differences, Democrats, Republicans,
1:21:45
Speaker 3: but you still shared some quintessential things in common. You
1:21:50
Speaker 3: still shared, you know, you probably shared a similar background,
1:21:53
Speaker 3: a similar religion. Your families probably had similar origin stories,
1:21:56
Speaker 3: coming to America, working hard. Maybe you have the same religion,
1:22:01
Speaker 3: the same family dynamic.
1:22:03
Speaker 2: You.
1:22:04
Speaker 3: You know, you might disagree on, you know, foreign policy
1:22:07
Speaker 3: or tax law or whatever, but everyone knew how many
1:22:09
Speaker 3: genders there were, and everyone knew sort of what was
1:22:12
Speaker 3: best for children. Everyone understood that even if you were
1:22:14
Speaker 3: a liberal, that putting drag queens in kindergarten classrooms and
1:22:18
Speaker 3: teaching little kids about, you know, safe sex and all
1:22:21
Speaker 3: the rest is not a good idea. So we still
1:22:23
Speaker 3: had a sort of moral grounding and framework that everyone shared,
1:22:28
Speaker 3: left and right. Of course, that is now completely erased.
1:22:32
Speaker 3: We have nothing in common. anymore with the left. I mean,
1:22:35
Speaker 3: truly nothing. They don't just hate the other side. They
1:22:38
Speaker 3: really do want us all dead. They really do want
1:22:41
Speaker 3: us dead, replaced by mass immigration. They harbor enormous racial animus.
1:22:46
Speaker 3: They call us bigots, but they have enormous racial animus
1:22:49
Speaker 3: and religious bigotry towards, let's say, the sort of white
1:22:54
Speaker 3: Anglo-Saxon Protestant or Christian Americans who built this country. And
1:23:00
Speaker 3: that is what they're trying to eradicate. And so we
1:23:03
Speaker 3: have very little in common with them nowadays. And then
1:23:06
Speaker 3: you can see they're just openly kind of calling for,
1:23:10
Speaker 3: you know, things that would be unheard of 50 years ago.
1:23:13
Speaker 3: So it is hard to find common ground. What do
1:23:15
Speaker 3: you do when you're just trying to debate a policy
1:23:18
Speaker 3: or immigration, but they just want you dead?
1:23:22
Speaker 2: Again, it's like the old days of the Cold War.
1:23:24
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, when you're fighting... and presuming that
1:23:31
Speaker 2: reasonable minds may differ. And again, the other side, for
1:23:34
Speaker 2: them it's life or death, preferably your death. It's really
1:23:39
Speaker 2: hard to move anything forward. I have to ask and
1:23:43
Speaker 2: remind the audience, we're speaking with Peachy Keenan. Her latest
1:23:47
Speaker 2: book is called Supervillains. Get it wherever you get your
1:23:49
Speaker 2: good books these days. She joins us on the Patriot
1:23:51
Speaker 2: Mobile Newsmaker line. Now there you are in California. I'm sorry,
1:23:57
Speaker 2: first of all. But second of all, get out. If
1:24:01
Speaker 2: you need help, blink or something. Anyway, so you have
1:24:05
Speaker 2: the race for governor. And I've said this with regard
1:24:08
Speaker 2: to so many contests this year. It's not like people
1:24:11
Speaker 2: are going in going, I'm not sure they're really pretty close.
1:24:14
Speaker 2: I mean, we could not be further apart in terms
1:24:16
Speaker 2: of the choices, but There you have Becerra and Hilton
1:24:20
Speaker 2: on the stage the other night. Was that popcorn-inducing for
1:24:25
Speaker 2: you to watch or cringeworthy more often than not?
1:24:28
Speaker 3: I mean, Steve Hilton is amazing. He has all the
1:24:31
Speaker 3: right ideas. And honestly, he could fix almost everything wrong very,
1:24:35
Speaker 3: very quickly. Like in a week, we would have homelessness fixed.
1:24:39
Speaker 3: We would have taxes lowered. We would have just so
1:24:41
Speaker 3: many things, corruption going away. Becerra is just, you know,
1:24:45
Speaker 3: it's like Karen Bass. Kamala Harris, all the worst, all
1:24:51
Speaker 3: the worst sort of like villains of the Democrat Party,
1:24:54
Speaker 3: but in an even stupider package. And so if he wins,
1:24:57
Speaker 3: which he is still likely to just based on, you know,
1:25:00
Speaker 3: the Democrats outnumbering us, we are truly doomed.
1:25:04
Speaker 7: And it's just sad.
1:25:06
Speaker 3: But the difference is, you know, the takers will vote
1:25:09
Speaker 3: for him. They want to keep taking.
1:25:10
Speaker 8: From the system.
1:25:11
Speaker 6: They're the ones.
1:25:12
Speaker 3: His voting base are people who do rely on the
1:25:14
Speaker 3: government for... food stamps and housing and free health care
1:25:19
Speaker 3: and all the rest of it, all the social safety net,
1:25:23
Speaker 3: which is totally being abused by scammers and frauds and
1:25:27
Speaker 3: people who aren't even from here, aren't even Americans, and
1:25:30
Speaker 3: the takers versus the makers, the families and the people
1:25:33
Speaker 3: who are working as hard as they possibly can to
1:25:36
Speaker 3: try to pay their bills and pay their taxes. They
1:25:38
Speaker 3: just imposed another countywide Los Angeles County sales hike We
1:25:43
Speaker 3: have the highest gas, the highest everything in the country,
1:25:46
Speaker 3: and Becerra is blaming the high gas prices on Donald Trump. Meanwhile,
1:25:51
Speaker 3: California has always had the highest gas prices because you
1:25:54
Speaker 3: pay basically a dollar extra versus like someone in Arizona
1:25:57
Speaker 3: for the California Democrat-imposed gas tax. So they're just trying
1:26:01
Speaker 3: to deflect all the blame to Donald Trump, but this
1:26:03
Speaker 3: is all on them. And unfortunately, not enough people will care.
1:26:08
Speaker 2: Well, and this is one of the things that just
1:26:10
Speaker 2: struck me about it because, you know, again, At some point,
1:26:14
Speaker 2: you have to stop saying everything is Trump's fault. But
1:26:17
Speaker 2: I guess if you can get across the finish line
1:26:20
Speaker 2: in an election, I guess I see why you do it.
1:26:22
Speaker 2: Let me ask finally in the remaining minute or so,
1:26:24
Speaker 2: what do you hope someone who picks up a copy
1:26:26
Speaker 2: of Super Villains over the weekend and sits down to read,
1:26:29
Speaker 2: what do you hope they take away from the whole thing?
1:26:32
Speaker 3: Well, I was trying to do two things with this book.
1:26:34
Speaker 3: The first was to raise awareness. I think there's a
1:26:36
Speaker 3: lot of names people will recognize, guys like Anthony Fauci
1:26:40
Speaker 3: and all of our favorite villains. There's a lot of
1:26:42
Speaker 3: people they have never heard of, and they'll be, I think,
1:26:45
Speaker 3: shocked to learn who the people are behind the scenes,
1:26:48
Speaker 3: who is pulling the strings in a lot of these places.
1:26:51
Speaker 3: And it was really eye-opening for me as I did
1:26:53
Speaker 3: all this research. You can't believe the institutional structure and
1:26:56
Speaker 3: support around some of these initiatives. And the other thing
1:27:00
Speaker 3: I hope they take away is they have some fun.
1:27:02
Speaker 3: I didn't want to make this gloom and doom.
1:27:05
Speaker 6: It's not a slog.
1:27:06
Speaker 3: It's not academic.
1:27:07
Speaker 8: It's actually entertaining.
1:27:08
Speaker 3: I'm trying to make you laugh. And that's all we
1:27:10
Speaker 3: can do. We have to make fun of these people
1:27:12
Speaker 3: and we have to kind of enjoy.
1:27:15
Speaker 8: Here they are.
1:27:15
Speaker 3: We at least can enjoy, you know, having a little
1:27:17
Speaker 3: fun with them.
1:27:19
Speaker 2: Well, certainly it's comical if it wouldn't be so serious.
1:27:23
Speaker 2: The brand new book from Peachy Keenan is Supervillains, Architects
1:27:28
Speaker 2: of America's Decline. Thanks so much for the fun conversation.
1:27:31
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. And again, just get out. Just get
1:27:34
Speaker 2: out of there.
1:27:36
Speaker 3: We're trying. We're working on it, Jeff.
1:27:38
Speaker 2: Take good care. Have a wonderful weekend. And Peachy Keenan
1:27:41
Speaker 2: was kind enough to join us on the Patriot Mobile
1:27:43
Speaker 2: Newsmaker Line, 901-260-5926. If you'd like to jump in, we'll
1:27:49
Speaker 2: be back in the Liberty University studio to take your
1:27:52
Speaker 2: calls after this short break. Jeff Stein filling in for Todd.
1:27:55
Speaker 2: Thanks for being along on the Todd Starnes Show. Welcome
1:28:05
Speaker 2: back to the Liberty University studio and the Todd Starnes show.
1:28:10
Speaker 2: Jeff Stein filling in for Todd today. Now I have
1:28:13
Speaker 2: a philosophy about this radio program. Now the first is
1:28:18
Speaker 2: when I'm asked to fill in, it's kind of like
1:28:21
Speaker 2: I'm borrowing somebody's car, right? And if Mr. Starnes were
1:28:26
Speaker 2: to let me behind the wheel of his big Cadillac,
1:28:29
Speaker 2: I'm going to drive it carefully, right? I got to
1:28:32
Speaker 2: be very careful about these things. And I also know,
1:28:35
Speaker 2: If Todd's not here, we don't care what I think.
1:28:38
Speaker 2: So we try to bring as many guests on as
1:28:40
Speaker 2: possible because more guests and less me, that's always a
1:28:44
Speaker 2: good philosophy. So we've got, I think, seven guests that
1:28:48
Speaker 2: are joining us today and they're all doing it via
1:28:52
Speaker 2: the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line. Now here at my radio
1:28:56
Speaker 2: station in Iowa today, uh, One of my colleagues was
1:28:59
Speaker 2: talking about a relative who was having problems with cell phones.
1:29:03
Speaker 2: You know, like you got to do something with the phone.
1:29:05
Speaker 2: And it was like, well, yeah, but I don't want
1:29:09
Speaker 2: to do it. It's such a hassle to deal with
1:29:10
Speaker 2: cell phones, et cetera. This is what the person was
1:29:14
Speaker 2: saying to my colleague. And, you know, I'm thinking, yes,
1:29:18
Speaker 2: sometimes going into a place like a cell phone store
1:29:21
Speaker 2: and trying to get the service figured out, yeah, that's
1:29:23
Speaker 2: a pain. But there's a better answer, and it's Patriot Mobile.
1:29:28
Speaker 2: We make choices every day that determine our future, and
1:29:33
Speaker 2: one of them is the cell phone provider we support. Now,
1:29:36
Speaker 2: you know, Patriot Mobile is not just a wireless provider.
1:29:40
Speaker 2: They're an organization that helps fund various causes, the same
1:29:45
Speaker 2: ones you and I believe in. Now, how do they
1:29:48
Speaker 2: do this? Well, they sell top-tier cell phone service, and
1:29:51
Speaker 2: that is the revenue they use to help defend our freedoms.
1:29:55
Speaker 2: This is prioritized premium service on all three major networks.
1:30:00
Speaker 2: Not like the old days. You know, now you've all
1:30:04
Speaker 2: got access to these great networks. And so who connects
1:30:08
Speaker 2: you is more important than ever. Because you get the
1:30:10
Speaker 2: same or even better service, thanks to the folks at
1:30:13
Speaker 2: Patriot Mobile. 100% U.S.-based customer support. Thank you very much.
1:30:19
Speaker 2: So when you have a question, there's somebody there who
1:30:22
Speaker 2: can explain it to you. Now, you could get unlimited data,
1:30:26
Speaker 2: mobile hotspots, international roaming, whatever it is you need. And
1:30:31
Speaker 2: when you switch to Patriot Mobile, you'll help grow a
1:30:33
Speaker 2: movement that fuels the Christian conservative cause. Every bill you
1:30:38
Speaker 2: pay helps advance the values of faith, family, and freedom.
1:30:42
Speaker 2: And you can't say that about a lot of these
1:30:44
Speaker 2: big companies. You want to pay these big companies so
1:30:47
Speaker 2: that they can go fund causes you don't believe in?
1:30:51
Speaker 2: Don't think so. Switching to Patriot Mobile is easier than ever.
1:30:55
Speaker 2: You can just activate in minutes. Keep your number. Keep
1:30:59
Speaker 2: your phone. Switch your number. Upgrade the phone. Whatever's best
1:31:02
Speaker 2: for you. They're not going to put on the hard sell.
1:31:05
Speaker 2: They're just going to ask what's best for you. So
1:31:08
Speaker 2: here's how you take a stand. Go to patriotmobile.com slash Todd.
1:31:13
Speaker 2: Or call 972-PATRIOT. But whichever. Use promo code Todd because
1:31:19
Speaker 2: then you get a free month of service. Yes, Mabel,
1:31:23
Speaker 2: he said free. PatriotMobile.com slash Todd. 972-PATRIOT. This is how
1:31:31
Speaker 2: you can make the switch. And again, make sure that
1:31:34
Speaker 2: the people you're doing business with are aligned with you.
1:31:38
Speaker 2: It's your hard-earned money. Make sure it's going to go
1:31:40
Speaker 2: to the right people. PatriotMobile.com slash Todd. PatriotMobile.com slash Todd.
1:31:47
Speaker 2: Or 972-PATRIOT. That's 972-PATRIOT. We are going to have a
1:31:55
Speaker 2: little bit of fun in the next segment because it's Friday, right?
1:31:59
Speaker 2: Got to get ready for the weekend. And we love
1:32:01
Speaker 2: us some good music that tells a good story and
1:32:05
Speaker 2: tells about what a great country it is. You're going
1:32:08
Speaker 2: to hear from musician Adam Calvert after the bottom of
1:32:11
Speaker 2: the hour. And also, this fraud stuff in Minnesota. It's deep.
1:32:17
Speaker 2: And the Minnesota Republican floor leader, his name is Harry Niska.
1:32:22
Speaker 2: He has a few minutes at the end of the
1:32:23
Speaker 2: program to join to talk about what they're doing up
1:32:26
Speaker 2: there concerning these fraud issues. And it's one thing for
1:32:30
Speaker 2: the Democrat governor, Governor Walz, to say, oh, no, it's
1:32:33
Speaker 2: on my watch. It's mine. I own it. I didn't
1:32:37
Speaker 2: mean anything. What are they actually going to do to help?
1:32:41
Speaker 2: the cause? We'll find out. All that and more in
1:32:43
Speaker 2: our final half hour. Short break now. Back on the
1:32:46
Speaker 2: other side, Jeff Stein in for Todd. This is the
1:32:48
Speaker 2: Todd Starnes Show. First road trip when you turned 18,
1:33:10
Speaker 2: running wide open to PCB. Felt like summer would never end,
1:33:16
Speaker 2: making new memories.
1:33:17
Speaker 1: With your old friends.
1:33:19
Speaker 2: Flying fast down an old farm road, arm around your girl,
1:33:23
Speaker 2: sun setting slow. First real kiss in a Silverado, yeah
1:33:28
Speaker 2: don't you know, freedom feels like.
1:33:39
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Liberty University studio and an open
1:33:42
Speaker 2: line Friday edition of the Todd Starnes show. Jeff Stein
1:33:45
Speaker 2: filling in for Todd today. That's a little bit of
1:33:48
Speaker 2: a song called Freedom Feels Like That. Freedom Feels Like
1:33:52
Speaker 2: That is the name of the current tour by Adam Calvert.
1:33:57
Speaker 2: And he is the performer of that song. AdamCalvertMusic.com is
1:34:01
Speaker 2: the website. and he's kind enough to join us now
1:34:03
Speaker 2: on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line. Adam, how are you, sir?
1:34:06
Speaker 2: Good to talk to you.
1:34:08
Speaker 4: Hey, thank you so much for taking the time to
1:34:09
Speaker 4: have me on, Jeff. It's good to hear from you.
1:34:11
Speaker 2: It was just a week ago you were here in
1:34:13
Speaker 2: Iowa to do some gigs in the town where I broadcast,
1:34:16
Speaker 2: and you came into the studio, and we had a
1:34:18
Speaker 2: great deal of fun, and I thought this is a
1:34:21
Speaker 2: great story to share with America, because you're based now
1:34:24
Speaker 2: in Tennessee, but you're a product of the heartland and
1:34:27
Speaker 2: rural America with your songs.
1:34:30
Speaker 4: Hey, absolutely. I had an absolute blast in Waterloo, and
1:34:33
Speaker 4: I really appreciate you having me in the studio.
1:34:36
Speaker 2: So tell us a bit about how you got involved
1:34:39
Speaker 2: with music, and what's a typical Adam Calvert song sound like?
1:34:45
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I kind of derived from my roots.
1:34:47
Speaker 4: You know, at the age of five years old, my
1:34:49
Speaker 4: mom and dad took me to our local county fair
1:34:51
Speaker 4: where I met Mr. Toby Keith. You know, he was
1:34:53
Speaker 4: just an up-and-coming country artist at the time. And, you know,
1:34:56
Speaker 4: he took the time to meet me and sign an
1:34:57
Speaker 4: autograph for me. And Neil McCoy did the same thing
1:35:00
Speaker 4: at the county fair that I'm from. And that's why
1:35:03
Speaker 4: I'm so involved in county fairs today.
1:35:07
Speaker 2: The audience knows every edition, every hour of this program
1:35:10
Speaker 2: begins with a little Toby Keith music. So you've struck
1:35:13
Speaker 2: a chord there. Freedom feels like that. Where did that
1:35:16
Speaker 2: come from? You're one of the writers of that song.
1:35:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, so for folks that are listening, you know, come
1:35:22
Speaker 4: see our live show. We fly a D1 parachute behind
1:35:24
Speaker 4: our production, and we've always had, you know, vets up
1:35:28
Speaker 4: on stage to sign that shoot. Now it's riddled with
1:35:30
Speaker 4: autographs of heroes.
1:35:33
Speaker 5: You know.
1:35:33
Speaker 4: But the song that they would come up and sign,
1:35:36
Speaker 4: it was always a cover song, which was, you know,
1:35:38
Speaker 4: God Bless USA or God Bless America or something like that.
1:35:41
Speaker 4: And for years I dreamed of, you know, doing that
1:35:43
Speaker 4: with my own original song, and Freedom Feels Like That
1:35:46
Speaker 4: is that song.
1:35:47
Speaker 2: If you go to adamcalvertmusic.com, it's right there. And, of course,
1:35:51
Speaker 2: you get it at Apple Music, Spotify, wherever you crazy
1:35:55
Speaker 2: kids get your music these days. Freedom feels like that.
1:35:57
Speaker 2: But what I love about the song, and we got
1:36:01
Speaker 2: just a snippet of it here in the introduction, but
1:36:04
Speaker 2: you're not necessarily talking about the things that those veterans
1:36:08
Speaker 2: went through because the things you're talking about are the
1:36:11
Speaker 2: things they made possible, right? You're talking about everyday ability
1:36:15
Speaker 2: to live your life.
1:36:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, you hit it right on the nose. You know,
1:36:18
Speaker 4: I wasn't trying to go, like, super political with the
1:36:20
Speaker 4: song or anything like that. I just wanted people to,
1:36:22
Speaker 4: you know, feel the way that I feel, or at least,
1:36:24
Speaker 4: you know, through the song, understand the way that I
1:36:26
Speaker 4: feel that, you know, freedom's different for everybody, you know.
1:36:29
Speaker 4: Depending on your walk of life, if you live in
1:36:31
Speaker 4: the city, you live in the country, where you're at
1:36:33
Speaker 4: in the country, you know, some people might be just
1:36:35
Speaker 4: hitting a golf course or going fishing on the bass
1:36:38
Speaker 4: boat out on their favorite lake. You know, for me, it's,
1:36:40
Speaker 4: you know, getting back to the middle Tennessee to the
1:36:42
Speaker 4: gravel roads and, And then we've got an old CJ-7,
1:36:45
Speaker 4: I think it's a 1982, that I just love to
1:36:47
Speaker 4: feel the gravel underneath the wheels. And it's a manual.
1:36:50
Speaker 4: And listen to some country gold, country good music. That's
1:36:54
Speaker 4: my kind of freedom. But regardless of what freedom feels
1:36:57
Speaker 4: like to you, we wouldn't have those freedoms if it
1:37:00
Speaker 4: weren't for those folks that are currently serving in our
1:37:02
Speaker 4: United States Armed Forces.
1:37:04
Speaker 2: Absolutely right. Adam Calvert is our guest. Musician AdamCalvertMusic.com is
1:37:09
Speaker 2: the website. Just finished up some shows in Gatlinburg this week.
1:37:12
Speaker 2: And I've mentioned Freedom Feels Like That because it's not
1:37:15
Speaker 2: only a great song, but it is the name of
1:37:17
Speaker 2: the current tour. And you have a new song that
1:37:21
Speaker 2: just dropped last week, and you've got a big video
1:37:24
Speaker 2: release party coming up, what, just a week away back
1:37:27
Speaker 2: in your old stomping grounds in Ohio?
1:37:30
Speaker 5: That's right, Jeff.
1:37:31
Speaker 4: I'm back in my hometown of Cambridge, Ohio. We'll be
1:37:33
Speaker 4: doing a release party for my latest single, Horses in Ohio.
1:37:38
Speaker 4: And we'll be doing that at the Downtown Arena in Cambridge, Ohio,
1:37:40
Speaker 4: October 10th. So, yeah, that's a week from tomorrow. So
1:37:43
Speaker 4: for anyone that might be listening in the Ohio region,
1:37:45
Speaker 4: come and see me. It's going to be a very
1:37:47
Speaker 4: special night. It's going to be Western-themed in honor of
1:37:49
Speaker 4: Art Postal Wait, a fellow that was incredibly important to
1:37:53
Speaker 4: my upbringing, especially with music. He had a traveling rodeo show,
1:37:57
Speaker 4: and he allowed me to come to that traveling rodeo
1:37:59
Speaker 4: show and perform at the age of six years old.
1:38:02
Speaker 4: And that's actually the album cover for this song is
1:38:04
Speaker 4: is Mr. Art holding me at six years old. And,
1:38:06
Speaker 4: you know, he passed away last year, and I was
1:38:08
Speaker 4: in a write in Nashville, and the writers could tell
1:38:10
Speaker 4: I was a bit down. And, you know, we came
1:38:12
Speaker 4: up with this song, and, you know, it's been an
1:38:14
Speaker 4: honor to write a song to memory, for his memory.
1:38:17
Speaker 4: But more than that, the music video is going to
1:38:19
Speaker 4: have his belt buckles in it, his lassos, and it's
1:38:22
Speaker 4: just going to be very special, and we're very thankful
1:38:25
Speaker 4: to have his family involved in the music video.
1:38:27
Speaker 2: AdamCalvertMusic.com is the website. where you can learn much more,
1:38:32
Speaker 2: and you've had the opportunity as your career has taken off.
1:38:35
Speaker 2: You've been working with and opening for some of these
1:38:38
Speaker 2: great performers, and I think many of them are known
1:38:43
Speaker 2: for being great songwriters. Yes, they're great performers, but they're
1:38:47
Speaker 2: also great songwriters. And that really, I think, speaks to
1:38:51
Speaker 2: where your roots are.
1:38:52
Speaker 4: Absolutely. You know, I've always felt, you know, it's all music, music,
1:38:56
Speaker 4: you know, it's broad. You know, if you don't write
1:38:59
Speaker 4: your own music and you record other songs, you know,
1:39:02
Speaker 4: Keith Whitley didn't write those songs that he recorded, you know.
1:39:05
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes those songs just speak to you. So
1:39:07
Speaker 4: I'm not 100% opposed to recording, you know, something that
1:39:10
Speaker 4: I didn't write, but I do feel like I reached
1:39:12
Speaker 4: the listener better by performing songs that I've written. I
1:39:15
Speaker 4: think it's special, and some of my favorite artists have
1:39:19
Speaker 4: done it that way. We opened up for Hardy, and
1:39:22
Speaker 4: he's one of the greatest songwriters in town. I've opened
1:39:25
Speaker 4: up for Craig Campbell, and we actually saw him last
1:39:27
Speaker 4: night downtown Nashville, and he's an incredible songwriter as well.
1:39:30
Speaker 4: And I think when you see those guys perform the
1:39:32
Speaker 4: songs that they wrote, it just hits differently.
1:39:35
Speaker 2: Adam Calvert is our guest. He's joining us for a
1:39:38
Speaker 2: couple more minutes on the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line. Writing
1:39:42
Speaker 2: songs these days in Nashville in particular, and it could
1:39:45
Speaker 2: be other places, but it seems to be much more
1:39:48
Speaker 2: of a collaboration. Do you prefer just kind of sitting
1:39:51
Speaker 2: there with a notepad alone on your spread there in Tennessee,
1:39:56
Speaker 2: or do you like the camaraderie of everybody working together better?
1:40:01
Speaker 4: Hey, you know, there's many ways to get to that,
1:40:03
Speaker 4: you know, that end game there, you know, the end
1:40:05
Speaker 4: of the road. You know, every rider's different. You know,
1:40:09
Speaker 4: for me, I do ride a lot on my own.
1:40:10
Speaker 4: I come up with a lot of just the main
1:40:13
Speaker 4: idea or the title by myself, you know, from past
1:40:16
Speaker 4: experience and things that are going on in my life.
1:40:18
Speaker 4: And then, you know, oftentimes, you know, I'll get something started,
1:40:21
Speaker 4: and I'll try my darn goodness to finish it myself,
1:40:24
Speaker 4: you know, but a lot of times I'll get with
1:40:26
Speaker 4: those guys. that I'm close with that are stronger writers
1:40:29
Speaker 4: than me. You know, my strong suit is performing, and
1:40:32
Speaker 4: I'll get with them, and they'll help me finish the song,
1:40:34
Speaker 4: and they'll help pull that out of me. And, you know,
1:40:37
Speaker 4: I think using those people is what's important. That's why
1:40:39
Speaker 4: I moved to Nashville.
1:40:41
Speaker 2: Now, I cannot carry a tune even if you gave
1:40:45
Speaker 2: me a bucket, okay? You know, in church when they say,
1:40:48
Speaker 2: all right, every voice should be heard, they look at
1:40:50
Speaker 2: me and go, not you. Okay, so I can't sing.
1:40:53
Speaker 2: I'm going to own that. But I can write, and
1:40:56
Speaker 2: so sometimes, you know, I've had a book come out,
1:40:58
Speaker 2: I open the box, you see the book for the
1:40:59
Speaker 2: first time, oh my gosh, what a wonderful thing, right?
1:41:02
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that when you're on the stage and you're
1:41:06
Speaker 2: singing one of your own songs that means a lot
1:41:08
Speaker 2: to you, how does that feel when you see the
1:41:11
Speaker 2: audience singing along with you because they know the words?
1:41:14
Speaker 2: That's got to be pretty cool.
1:41:16
Speaker 4: It's very cool, especially as an independent and unsigned artist.
1:41:19
Speaker 4: You know, I've not had anything... you know, pop off on, like,
1:41:22
Speaker 4: TikTok or anything like that, you know, I've earned them
1:41:24
Speaker 4: singing those songs by, you know, meeting them and making
1:41:27
Speaker 4: fans of those folks. And so, like, when I see
1:41:30
Speaker 4: that out in the audience, yeah, it hits me sometimes.
1:41:32
Speaker 4: It overwhelms me. And Eminem has several songs where he
1:41:36
Speaker 4: raps about it, you know, that, you know, when the
1:41:38
Speaker 4: audience just gets it and they're digging your stuff, like,
1:41:41
Speaker 4: there's just, I don't know, there's just, it's the closest
1:41:44
Speaker 4: thing I think we'll ever get to magic.
1:41:46
Speaker 2: Adam Calvert music.com is the website. And that's where you
1:41:50
Speaker 2: can figure out how to get his stuff, including a
1:41:53
Speaker 2: really cool song. Freedom feels like that. You folks in Ohio,
1:41:57
Speaker 2: it's next Saturday, California coming up after that. And the
1:42:02
Speaker 2: latest one that dropped last week, horses in Ohio, Adam Calvert,
1:42:05
Speaker 2: music.com last 30 seconds. If we have this conversation in
1:42:11
Speaker 2: five years, where do you hope you're at with your music?
1:42:14
Speaker 4: I hope just to continue to make great songs and
1:42:17
Speaker 4: maybe find more writers to collaborate with here in town
1:42:21
Speaker 4: and just work harder to get my music out there.
1:42:23
Speaker 4: I absolutely love touring, so more shows all around the country,
1:42:27
Speaker 4: and eventually I hope to take my music overseas.
1:42:31
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. Well, I really enjoyed meeting you last week here,
1:42:35
Speaker 2: and I'm so glad you had time to share the
1:42:37
Speaker 2: story and share your music with the national audience. Best
1:42:39
Speaker 2: of luck, and stay in touch, please.
1:42:41
Speaker 4: Hey, Jeff, thank you again, seriously, from the bottom of
1:42:44
Speaker 4: my heart, for taking the time to help promote my music.
1:42:45
Speaker 4: As someone that's doing it all alone with just me
1:42:48
Speaker 4: and this page and my dad and the band, we
1:42:50
Speaker 4: appreciate the support very much.
1:42:52
Speaker 2: Well, it's well worth it. It's good stuff. Thank you, sir.
1:42:55
Speaker 2: God bless. Adam Calvert, our guest, adamcalvertmusic.com. He's on the
1:42:59
Speaker 2: Freedom Feels Like That Tour, and that's the name of
1:43:02
Speaker 2: the single, and you get it wherever you get your
1:43:04
Speaker 2: music these days. Patriot Mobile Newsmaker Line was how we
1:43:08
Speaker 2: connected with Adam Calvert. Short break now, back on the
1:43:10
Speaker 2: other side from the Liberty University studio. Jeff Stein in
1:43:13
Speaker 2: for Todd. This is the Todd Starnes Show. Final segment
1:43:22
Speaker 2: now from the Liberty University studio on this open line
1:43:25
Speaker 2: Friday edition of the Todd Starnes Show. Jeff Stein filling
1:43:27
Speaker 2: in for Todd today. Thanks so much for being along.
1:43:30
Speaker 2: Thanks as always to Dylan and Helen at Team Todd
1:43:33
Speaker 2: in Memphis. Mr. Starnes, always a privilege to fill in
1:43:36
Speaker 2: Happy to do so today. Happy to come back Monday.
1:43:38
Speaker 2: Let's go now to the Patriot Mobile Newsmaker line, and
1:43:41
Speaker 2: I'm pleased to welcome the floor leader of the House
1:43:45
Speaker 2: of Representatives, the Republican floor leader in the state of Minnesota,
1:43:49
Speaker 2: the Honorable Harry Niska. Leader Niska, thanks so much for
1:43:53
Speaker 2: taking the time. Jeff Stein here in Iowa, how are you?
1:43:55
Speaker 8: I'm good, Jeff. Thanks for having me.
1:43:59
Speaker 2: All right, so you're my neighbor to the north. What
1:44:01
Speaker 2: in the blazes? What's the worst atrocity of this fraud
1:44:06
Speaker 2: that you've heard of most recently? And then we'll ask
1:44:08
Speaker 2: how you're going to fix this.
1:44:10
Speaker 8: Oh, my goodness. I don't even know where to start.
1:44:12
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, it's $ 18 billion, you know, high-risk programs.
1:44:18
Speaker 8: And we had a former, you know, acting U.S. attorney
1:44:21
Speaker 8: say he thought maybe even half of that was fraudulent.
1:44:24
Speaker 8: You know, billions and billions of dollars. of our of
1:44:28
Speaker 8: our tax dollars and billions and billions of what should
1:44:31
Speaker 8: have gone to you know folks who really need it uh...
1:44:34
Speaker 8: stolen by criminals under the no other keith ellison and
1:44:37
Speaker 8: peggy flanagan and and keith ellison uh... you know i
1:44:40
Speaker 8: think is that that the worst thing is uh... you
1:44:43
Speaker 8: know tim wallace decided to fire himself but peggy flanagan
1:44:46
Speaker 8: is looking for promotion and keith ellison is looking for
1:44:49
Speaker 8: another uh... chance at it in minnesota voters have a
1:44:52
Speaker 8: big choice in front of them as uh... you know
1:44:54
Speaker 8: every every office in minnesota state government is up for
1:44:57
Speaker 8: election here in 32 days.
1:44:59
Speaker 2: How do you turn it around? I mean, obviously, it
1:45:02
Speaker 2: didn't happen overnight. Some of these bad actors, they've already
1:45:06
Speaker 2: funneled the cash out of the country. You know, it's
1:45:09
Speaker 2: not that you shouldn't go after what was stolen, but
1:45:12
Speaker 2: you have to look forward to how to prevent it
1:45:14
Speaker 2: in the future. So what do you and like-minded Republicans
1:45:17
Speaker 2: in Minnesota hope to do to make sure we're not
1:45:20
Speaker 2: still having this conversation in one, two, or five years?
1:45:24
Speaker 8: You know, we have to fundamentally change the culture of
1:45:26
Speaker 8: state government here. We have too many folks in these
1:45:29
Speaker 8: agencies that are handling these programs that think spending money
1:45:34
Speaker 8: is the goal or spending money is the achievement instead
1:45:37
Speaker 8: of trying to make sure that we're actually, you know,
1:45:39
Speaker 8: impacting people's lives who truly need it. And, you know,
1:45:43
Speaker 8: this happened really because of, you know, a perfect storm
1:45:47
Speaker 8: of woke ideology and incompetence, you know, in Minnesota state government.
1:45:52
Speaker 8: You have folks who... If they did notice there was
1:45:55
Speaker 8: a problem, we're shouted down because that was racist to
1:45:59
Speaker 8: question whether certain organizations were breaking the law.
1:46:05
Speaker 2: That's got to be frustrating as all get out, because
1:46:07
Speaker 2: if you are shouted down, and again, the tag of racist,
1:46:11
Speaker 2: when all you're doing is asking a question about what
1:46:14
Speaker 2: happened to the money, I mean, is there a tipping
1:46:18
Speaker 2: point now where Minnesotans are saying, okay, we get what
1:46:22
Speaker 2: you were saying and we want you to do something
1:46:24
Speaker 2: about it?
1:46:25
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely.
1:46:26
Speaker 8: And that's why we're seeing a very different environment here
1:46:29
Speaker 8: in Minnesota than we're seeing in a lot of other
1:46:31
Speaker 8: places around the country. Minnesotans are furious about it. We
1:46:36
Speaker 8: like to think of ourselves as generous people, but we
1:46:38
Speaker 8: like to think of or have thought of our government
1:46:41
Speaker 8: as being uh.
1:46:43
Speaker 1: uh.
1:46:43
Speaker 8: clean and and we learned otherwise very brutally over the
1:46:47
Speaker 8: last a few years the federal government as a federal
1:46:50
Speaker 8: you know the u.s. attorney's office has been prosecuting uh...
1:46:53
Speaker 8: these cases for uh... the last few years and then
1:46:56
Speaker 8: we finally you know that the cover has kind of
1:46:59
Speaker 8: really been blown off of it um... in the last
1:47:01
Speaker 8: couple years when we uh... got to a tie in
1:47:04
Speaker 8: the minnesota house we made it a priority to have
1:47:07
Speaker 8: a fraud prevention committee uh... that continued to you know
1:47:10
Speaker 8: expose some of this stuff There was the Nick Shirley
1:47:13
Speaker 8: video at the end of last year with the infamous
1:47:16
Speaker 8: leering center that I think really put a fine point
1:47:20
Speaker 8: on a lot of this stuff, that the state government
1:47:22
Speaker 8: was giving money to something, some child care center that
1:47:26
Speaker 8: couldn't even spell learning correctly. And then just continued, the
1:47:30
Speaker 8: hits have continued to come. We just got, for example,
1:47:33
Speaker 8: recently the news that a program in Hennepin County to
1:47:39
Speaker 8: give money to to businesses for Operation Metro Surge, even
1:47:42
Speaker 8: Hennepin County, the woke lefties running that county had to
1:47:48
Speaker 8: shut down this program when they realized how many of
1:47:51
Speaker 8: those applications were fraudulent. We just have this culture of
1:47:54
Speaker 8: fraud here in the state of Minnesota that has taken root,
1:47:57
Speaker 8: and we have to deal with it.
1:48:00
Speaker 2: The Minnesota Senate has a very narrow Democrat, Farmer, Labor,
1:48:05
Speaker 2: DFL majority. As you've noted, you've got a flat-out tie
1:48:09
Speaker 2: in the House. I imagine that's, you know, a lot
1:48:12
Speaker 2: of us think of Minnesota. It's like, all right, there's Minneapolis, St. Paul,
1:48:15
Speaker 2: and you've got, you know, Duluth and some of these
1:48:17
Speaker 2: other areas. But it's large. largely a rural state. I mean,
1:48:22
Speaker 2: are the good rural citizens of Minnesota figuring it out?
1:48:25
Speaker 2: And that's why the legislature is so close and perhaps
1:48:28
Speaker 2: will tip in 32 days.
1:48:31
Speaker 8: Well, most of the rural areas in Minnesota now are
1:48:34
Speaker 8: represented by Republicans in the state legislature. Like you mentioned,
1:48:37
Speaker 8: we have the closest divided state legislature in the country,
1:48:40
Speaker 8: 201 legislators, 101 Democrats, and 100 Republicans. And so we do,
1:48:47
Speaker 8: you know, and when it comes to winning a majority,
1:48:49
Speaker 8: we're going to have to win some seats in the
1:48:51
Speaker 8: suburbs that have been closed in the past. We're going
1:48:53
Speaker 8: to have to win some seats near a couple of
1:48:55
Speaker 8: regional centers. But we've had some really, really close elections
1:48:59
Speaker 8: that the Last year when it came down to the
1:49:01
Speaker 8: difference between us having a one-seat majority or a tie,
1:49:06
Speaker 8: we lost one seat by 13 votes and 20 ballots
1:49:09
Speaker 8: were thrown away. We contested that. The courts ruled against us. And,
1:49:14
Speaker 8: you know, that was kind of a fight at the
1:49:16
Speaker 8: beginning of the legislative session as well about what to
1:49:18
Speaker 8: do about that race. But this is a very, very close.
1:49:22
Speaker 8: Last election was very close. This election is going to
1:49:24
Speaker 8: be very, very close for both the House and the Senate,
1:49:26
Speaker 8: and I'm optimistic that we're going to have a chance
1:49:29
Speaker 8: to win. We've got great candidates working really, really hard.
1:49:32
Speaker 2: He's the GOP floor leader of the Minnesota House, Harry Niska,
1:49:35
Speaker 2: joining us for another minute or two here on the
1:49:37
Speaker 2: Todd Starnes Show. And I just wonder, I mean, I
1:49:40
Speaker 2: understand these statewide office holders, they're Democrats, they're doubling down
1:49:45
Speaker 2: on it. I wonder if you're getting any sort of
1:49:48
Speaker 2: cooperation from Democrats in the legislature, given the balance of power,
1:49:53
Speaker 2: given the fact that they're more directly accountable to to
1:49:56
Speaker 2: citizens as opposed to a statewide elected official. I'm just
1:50:00
Speaker 2: looking to see how quickly you folks can turn this
1:50:03
Speaker 2: thing around and if you're going to get any help
1:50:05
Speaker 2: from the other side.
1:50:07
Speaker 8: Well, we'll see how things shake out in 32 days.
1:50:10
Speaker 8: We definitely have seen Democrats acting like they've gotten religion
1:50:13
Speaker 8: on the topic. We did pass on a bipartisan basis
1:50:17
Speaker 8: an independent inspector general petition Bill, this last year where
1:50:23
Speaker 8: we finally got Democrats to be on board with getting
1:50:25
Speaker 8: tougher on fraud, but we didn't get all the way there.
1:50:28
Speaker 8: There are accountability measures we want to pass against bureaucrats
1:50:32
Speaker 8: who allow fraud to happen. We want to do more
1:50:34
Speaker 8: to help. prosecute these fraud cases on a state level. But,
1:50:39
Speaker 8: you know, Democrats certainly are going to voters right now
1:50:42
Speaker 8: and trying to pretend like they're really serious about the fraud. And,
1:50:45
Speaker 8: you know, hopefully we do win both chambers and we
1:50:49
Speaker 8: have a great governor candidate, the strongest governor candidate that
1:50:53
Speaker 8: I think we've had in a very long time here
1:50:55
Speaker 8: on our side. So we just have to win this
1:50:58
Speaker 8: election and hopefully we'll be able to get some stuff
1:51:02
Speaker 8: done here next year.
1:51:04
Speaker 2: Good luck to you, sir. Thanks so much for the time.
1:51:06
Speaker 2: The Republican floor leader of the Minnesota House, Harry Niska,
1:51:09
Speaker 2: joining us to wrap up this edition of the Todd
1:51:12
Speaker 2: Starnes Show. Leader Niska joined us on the Patriot Mobile
1:51:15
Speaker 2: Newsmaker line. Turn out the lights of the Liberty University
1:51:19
Speaker 2: studio and do it again Monday. Have a super weekend, folks.
1:51:22
Speaker 2: Jeff in for Todd on the Todd Starnes Show.