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along with producer Sam behind the controls.
We've got Mike McCabe coming up in about a half hour.
And right now we have Milwaukee Film Festival tickets to give away.
These will get you into one of the films of your choice at the Milwaukee Film Festival, which is going on April 24th through May 8th.
So it's a general admission ticket?
Yes, it is.
And you'll be able to go to the film hopefully that you'll want to go to.
and uh if it's not sold out if it's not sold out that's right yeah some of them do sell out so you'll have your choice but in any case again the festival runs from April 24th through May 8th at the Oriental Theater and the Downer Theater downtown Milwaukee so now it's the time to text us the word Milwaukee text the word Milwaukee which uh
Texture will we take this time around Sam?
It's a mystery Gordy.
Okay, you're gonna keep that a secret.
It's a secret.
Yeah, you can text us.
Yes speaking of the festival tomorrow.
We're gonna have in the artistic programmer of the festival
find her name quick here.
Kara Ogburn.
going to be talking to us about some of what's actually playing at the festival.
So
what you're getting tickets for.
a minute on the monitor.
What a mistake that was to ever think that she could, you know, be in the house.
But anyway, she had a town hall.
Right.
And a few people disagreed with what she was saying.
And some protesters there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, a lot of people are protesting, even at the town halls of Democrats host.
Sure.
And they've been asking, they asked the questions, they get answers.
No big deal, no one's taste, except now, Marjorie Taylor.
Green had a couple of people tased and her town
maybe they were listening to the John and Gordy show and they heard Doug's comments about the John and Gordy taser contest Finally got what they wanted He
They're so.
So good with algorithms.
Anyway, yeah, that's what's happening.
And Chuck Grassley also had a few people that were angry with him.
You know, Chuck Grassley has to talk to the farmers an awful lot.
And the farmers not happy with what's happening with the Republican Party and Trump.
So they got angry as well.
So I'm sure we'll probably have clips of that tomorrow.
Margaret Taylor Green thing.
I can't wait to get clips for that.
All right, let's get to something that happened on Earl Ingram.
show he talked to former mayor and also former ambassador to Luxembourg Tom Barrett the other day okay and if you haven't heard already Trump is proposing closing nearly 30 US embassies and consulates around the globe
Now this is really, really a bad idea.
We're there.
We're answering questions.
We're there to help.
And now we're just going to pull out stakes.
That's it.
Gone.
Any reason
that.
We're going back to school.
Learn how to count.
That's more of a general statement.
The question poses right there at the top question for Tom Barrett.
What is your reaction?
To reports that the Trump administration is looking to close the embassy in Luxembourg
So my reaction is the happiest person in Luxembourg if that happens is the Chinese ambassador to Luxembourg
Why
because because they are ready to just step in and fill any gap when the United and I saw this throughout Europe I saw this throughout international organizations when the United States pulls out China moves in it's that straightforward and so if if
If President Trump thinks his main rival is China, taking these steps that allow China to move in is insane.
It's just insane.
And that was one of the major issues we faced in our embassy in Luxembourg was the Chinese investment in Luxembourg, the economic ties, and to the point where in my final week I was visiting with
Luxembourg officials.
And I said, I want you to watch a video.
It's a Michael Buble video.
I like videos.
I like believe it or not.
I like my Google play save the last dance for me.
It's a tango number and stuff like that.
I said, that's how I view our relationship with Luxembourg.
We were there for them in World War Two.
We saved their country.
We've supported them economically.
We have huge financial ties.
And now they're they're being wooed by China.
Donald Trump is just opening up a huge barn door to let China Drive in all over the all over the world,
you know Tom always say to people at the root of this is this America first Belief that Donald Trump has and and we should lock out everybody else is really insane when you only make up 4% of the global population
what he's doing is isolating us and we can't win that battle if we only make up 4% of the global...
I agree with you.
I agree.
And insulting the people that have been our allies for 80 years.
It just doesn't make any sense to
I'm a little worried that the United States is going to follow the course of China about...
like four or five hundred years ago, when they kind of closed themselves off from the rest of the world.
And then the little thing called the Industrial Revolution happened and China was once, you could argue, the most powerful nation in the world for most of human history.
For like 2,000 years, it was probably the most powerful country in the world.
And then they closed themselves off from the rest of the world.
They stopped trading with people.
They stopped kind of exploring.
They just kind of kept to themselves, and then they got sort of colonized.
Yeah,
I don't want that to happen here.
You know, we have these longstanding alliances with all these countries around the globe, and now we're just cutting it off.
And that would allow, of course, China to step in, and they've been all over the globe trying to put their foot in and try to help those other countries out financially.
And the thing here is, and the reason they gave for doing this, it's to cut the State Department budget by almost half.
What is wrong with... They're making these ridiculous cuts all over the government.
It just doesn't.
Make any sense its mind boggling why we keep cutting really good areas of our budget
Well spent money just willy-nilly.
It doesn't matter to these people.
We need these embassies We need to have some presence around the globe in order to help and be there and listen to them and maybe we can help them financially as well I mean we're the global power in this world.
We were anyway.
I'm sorry.
I think that's coming to an end So anyway, this is this is really a big issue and I think this is going to this hit the fan pretty much yesterday And so we'll see where this
This
Yeah.
Elon, of course, you know, his doge teenagers are saving now
$150 billion that is that that is down dramatically from the one trillion dollars that he estimated before so he kind of gets you on the hook right we're gonna save a trillion dollars and then of course it keeps going down and on the down then it kind of give well 150 billion dollars pretty good huh and then they walk away and they make believe like you know oh well that seemed that seemed good that seemed good
No, it doesn't seem good at all.
Now, let's get to the big story here is, is disappearing people off the sidewalks of America.
Oh boy.
I'm just like, you know, this is stunning.
This is stunning information.
It's just awful to understand or even think it's possible to just take people off the sidewalks and make them disappear.
And my son came up with this yesterday.
This is very quick.
Trump's executive order that he signed a while ago.
gives him the ability now to declare martial law on April 20th, that's Easter, Hitler's birthday.
And this also allows, martial law allows him for deporting American citizens to El Salvador if he wants.
So this gives him the ability, he's talking about it now of course, wondering, well gee, I think, can I send Americans to El Salvador?
Well,
Marshall
Law, once
Yeah, we can stay away in my VW.
here.
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Help me, please.
We're seeing sunshine out there this morning, and it's going to be a beautiful day all day long.
Maybe some clouds moving in later, highs in the mid-fifties, this portion.
of John and Gordy in the morning, brought to you by our friends at Verlo Mattress of Madison.
Wake up and sleep better on a Verlo Mattress.
You know a lot has changed since 1958, but some things have remained constant.
Throughout Verlo's history, they're still direct to consumer and provide superior products at unbeatable prices.
Verlo Mattress, two locations in Madison, east and west.
Go to Verlo.com for more information.
And now it's time for us to welcome in our chief meteorologist, WMDX, Brittany Merlo.
Good morning, Brittany.
Hi,
Good morning.
How are you guys
OK.
I'll try my
Today has been.
Like, yes, you're right.
High pressure is on.
fantastic.
It's got everybody smiling and feeling like that song we just played.
Just relaxed.
the winds are finally calmer.
There's no clouds out there.
We've got the only bad thing I'm going to say is maybe take your allergy meds because that tree pollen is very high today.
So I've already had the runny nose.
I've already been sneezing.
So just get ahead of that if you can.
Otherwise, today, comfortable.
Highs in those mid 50s.
Um, gosh, I mean, I don't really want to talk about tomorrow, really, if you don't want any bad news, but do have rain on the way.
Okay.
Yes.
We not until tomorrow.
We'll still be mild.
We'll still hit 60 degrees.
Those winds will get breezy out of the south and we'll see some showers and storms by the afternoon.
Those will continue into the evening and then we give a little break Friday morning.
It'll be partly sunny, still very comfortable at about 60 degrees and then more showers and storms possible again in the evening.
But at least it moves through during the week because it clears on out of here for the weekend.
We're still looking dry both Saturday and Sunday.
Okay.
It's a big high pressure system builds up north.
It's keeping the rain down to the south, but we do have a chance of some more rain moving in by Sunday night potentially.
So overall, though, a gorgeous weekend, a comfortable one.
Today's gorgeous.
Just those allergies are coming out.
Yeah.
Yes.
So you're still in a high fire danger today, even though the winds are calm.
We've still got that dry vegetation.
We've still got the dry air out there.
So burn bands are still in place for you.
but the president's talking about shower heads.
You don't have enough water that can come through your shower head because of Biden's regulations.
And so again, fixing small things like that, hopefully he's gonna get the dishwashers.
Wouldn't it be good if dishwashers worked again, where you don't have to wash your dishes first and then put them in the dishwasher to actually get a little heat on them?
I mean, common sense stuff he's doing.
No, 100% sir.
And like, I'm so glad that we were
Yeah.
So finally, so glad to straighten that out.
You know, the thing here is, I think we're all kind of used to rinsing off the dishes before we put them into dishwashers.
So no, that's not something I'm complaining about.
And the showerhead thing, seriously, they're the ones talking about it.
They're the ones making it a big issue and no one cares.
And I've got, look, do we have the...
Just ask John, intro, we have it.
That hasn't come in yet.
No, it's not ready yet, I'm
working on it.
Okay, all right.
But you can still give
gonna give you just ask John advice here on the show because I've gone through the shower head nightmare, the maze of shower heads out there.
And it has nothing to do with the limiter in the shower head at all.
Everybody knows and if you go online of like One of the major Distributors of home products,
I tried it.
I went through like four or five shower heads.
They're not that expensive.
But I went through all of those things.
I took out the limiters, I put them on, and the pressure still is not there.
And the thing is, they don't understand that, Sean.
Duffy doesn't understand.
I'm sure that Trump has never tried to replace the shower head on his own.
And again,
It doesn't matter.
It's your water pressure.
And the thing about shower heads, it's the design of the shower head.
It's the distribution of water inside the shower head that makes a difference of whether it's a powerful force or not a powerful force.
And there are settings, everybody has one of those adjustable shower heads.
There are settings on it that just don't provide the kind of power or shower that you want.
And you use the same one or two over and over again because that gives you that power you want.
It really has nothing to do with the limiters.
These people are making a big issue about this.
An executive order for shower head freedom day.
I'm just wondering.
Okay, so it's- Well, it's because he's overturning something that Biden put into place.
That's why.
Yeah, that's
Madison too.
It's probably more just the pipes in your house than the shower
heads.
I mean, my girlfriend,
lives in student housing downtown still, so it's still not the highest quality.
But her water pressure is so bad, it takes-
probably about a minute on her kitchen tap to fill a glass of water.
how bad her water pressure
the
in the morning.
Gonna be beautiful all day long, maybe a few clouds late in the day.
And this portion of John and Gordy in the morning brought to you again by Virlo Mattress of Madison.
Wake up and sleep better on a Virlo Mattress.
Plenty of things have changed since 1958.
But some things have remained constant throughout Verlo's history.
They're still direct to consumer and provide superior products at unbeatable prices.
Verlo mattress of Madison to locations in the Mad City, East and West and Verlo.com is where you can go for
preparing yourself for when your kids put you in a home bag.
won't have to put me in a home
Well, I was talking about how here we are in the 2020s, and it feels a whole lot like the 1920s.
Yeah.
And now we actually have a man in the White House who thinks that's a good thing.
who really looks at the 1920s as a golden age for America.
And of course, it was an age of isolationism and protectionism and nativism.
Well,
Well, he often
about the 1890s as a golden period.
And it should be pointed
that there was the bank collapse of 1893,
which
led to a...
to a depression, not a recession, but a depression in
the
1890s.
And so the golden age he speaks of was a time of great trauma for many Americans.
And then he often glorifies the 1920s as well.
And I suppose he thinks of the roaring 20s as a time of great economic vigor.
But it was a...
It was an era marked by that isolationism and protectionism and nativism.
And so I quoted a former president who used those three words to describe what is going on.
He first used them in 2011.
And I quote an interview of his from 2011, but he didn't change his mind after 2011.
And by the way, I'm not...
talking about Biden or Obama or Carter or,
different president than I'm quoting.
But he said almost the very same words again in 2016, sort of warning the nation.
And I think it was 2020 or 2021, he said it again, but even more with a sharper tongue because he turned the words on his own party and said,
My own party's becoming isolationist and protectionist and nativist.
And he talked about how dangerous that is and how corrosive to the soul it is.
And that was George W. Bush who said those words and kept warning, kept repeating this over and over again.
And so I wanted to quote those interviews.
because they speak so powerfully
here we are.
And I understand you've got that clip.
We played it and it was just, I played it because I couldn't believe I was agreeing with George W. Bush or the fact that I always thought Bush was the dumbest president we ever had.
And after listening to this, this is like, I don't know whether it's comparing it to Trump or not, but I think this is a brilliant comment.
Let's listen to it.
A rational immigration policy eventually passed.
I think there's going to have to be some time.
What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some isms that occasionally pop up.
One is isolationism, and it's evil twin protectionism, and it's evil triplet nativism.
So if you study the 20s, for example, there was an American first policy that said, who cares what happens in Europe?
What happened in Europe mattered eventually because of World War two there was smooth holly, which is a part of an economic policy Which basically said we don't want trade now there was a store of barriers and there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians therefore we should have no immigrants and my point to you is as we've been through this kind of Period of isolationism protections and natives of nativism.
I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period I hope that
These isms pass, which would then allow for a more orderly look in immigration.
He said that in 2011.
That was from a 2011 interview.
So that last line about, I'm a little concerned that we may be entering this sort of phase again.
He didn't say this last week or last year.
He said it in 2011, but he made remarkably similar comments again in 2016.
I linked to it in my latest Substack article.
And then again, I think it was in 2021, he repeated- He
He elaborated, but used these same terms.
But yeah, here we are with an America first policy.
And what do we have but trade policy that mirrors smooth holly?
from the 1920s.
And what do we have but an immigration policy that is an exact reflection of what he described was in place in the 1920s.
And so here we have a regime that is hell bent on returning us to the 1920s.
We're not thinking about where we should go as a country in the 2030s or the 2040s or the 2050s.
They want to sort of return us safely to the 1920s.
And of course, that was a period that led
to the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that plagued this country for well over a decade.
And I think if sometimes history can, you can take comfort from history because you realize that we have been through these kinds of things
before
as
a
nation and we survived.
But man.
Why would we want to return ourselves to a time where that led to so much trauma for so many people?
My parents, my dad was born in 1919 and my mom in 1921.
And they grew up through the Great Depression.
And I think anybody who has depression, your parents or grandparents know how shaped they are by that experience, how scarred they were.
by the Great Depression.
It changed the way they thought forever.
And we have a president who sort of nostalgically says, that's the golden age that we want to return America to.
Yeah, we are trying to wall ourselves off.
And you know that
that these kinds of impulses are tempting to many people because people flocked to it in the 1920s as well.
When certain conditions arise, then people find it almost irresistible to wall ourselves off, to become isolationist and protectionist, to try to expel everybody who looks a little different or who is part of that other
group, and hey, America first, and that's going to remedy what ails us.
And of course, it led to ruin, it led to absolute ruin for our country the last time these policies range supreme.
And I think we either
We either learn from that history or we are doomed to repeat it.
Sure has.
And sometimes if you think like that, you kind of eliminate all the negative possibilities that took place at that time, you know, and you think that you can do it better.
If you did that now, I can make this a successful.
economy in some way, shape, or form.
And people who are sort of bored with a silver spoon in their mouth or born on third base and they think they hit a triple.
Oh yeah.
Maybe people like that were doing fine in the 1920s.
Maybe they even substantially enriched themselves during the 1920s.
at the expense of so many people who were traumatized by that era.
Parents were changed forever, and they never stopped sort of looking over their shoulder thinking, when's the next depression coming?
Because they lived through it.
And an awful lot of families were ruined, an awful lot of people were ruined.
And here we are going down this same exact path.
again.
Well, you know, one of the things I mentioned is that I had to learn Bombra, which is a local language spoken, not only in Mali, but in parts of West Africa.
It's known as Jula and Ivory Coast, for example, but it's the same language.
And I ended up sort of learning it well enough to get by.
I spoke it clumsily, but serviceably, as I write in the column.
But one of the things that, you know, this is like 30 years ago that
I
lived there, but I still remember the blessings that you would give if somebody fell ill.
And I could still repeat them to this day.
They're right there fresh in my mind because they came in so handy so many times.
So, you know, you'd say like, which means,
The first one means may you feel better or may you get better.
The second one means may your troubles lessen.
And the third one is may you come back to your old self.
And I just conclude the column that that is my wish for my country, that we get better, that we, that our troubles lessen and that we come back to ourselves, that we return to, we regain our senses and
And see through America first, and see through the ghost of Smoot Holly, and see through these kinds of backward-looking policies that led to ruin the first time that it transpired in our country, and is gonna lead to ruin again.
So I just closed with those.
Yeah, I still remember him.
Kanoguyake.
But he gives you a perspective.
It certainly does give you a perspective.
You know a lot of things on the right their big deal about the tariffs is that That we're hypocrites that the progressives Democrats and liberals are hypocrites because it seems like we're against tariffs and they always give examples They've always talked about how we have tariffed China in the past So why are we against tariffs now because it's Trump doing the tariffs?
It isn't really it's always this this surgical
Tariff that we put on China because of something they were doing like Obama that talked about tires dumping tires into this country.
He tariffed him.
That's very surgical
They're missing the point that Trump is doing this to every country in the world
even one was
even places without people.
Yes, even even that So this is their excuse that well, we have done it in the past and we thought tariffs were a good idea Well, no we did it surgically and we did it really all the examples are China.
We haven't done it to the rest of the world really so
they are providing this misinformation that we are hypocrites on that and we aren't.
Tariffs are good if you surgically use them and you don't lash out at even your friends, even your neighbors, country, up and down, you know, Canada,
Mexico.
You can aim for free trade.
You can aim for fair trade.
You know, there are free traders out there who just want, you
know, they
just want.
products to flow and without any barriers or restrictions at all.
And then you can aim for fair trade where you try to create some measures that help control things.
Or you can start trade wars.
That's what we're doing.
Yeah, the trade
This is smooth holly revisited.
And in George W. Bush hit the nail right on the head.
This is the same
right after this.
I'm John O'Gordy in the morning.
We want to send our congratulations out to our winner of those Milwaukee Film Festival tickets.
Thomas from Greenfield will be going to that festival.
We'll have more tickets to give away tomorrow.
We'll talk to Cara Ogburn from the Milwaukee Film Fest, and she'll tell us about what's going on, some of the highlights there.
Let's talk about the deportation problem that we have in this country now.
This is just crazy stuff.
You know, Trump has been lashing out at MS-13 for a long time.
I guess he wanted the death penalty for some members he thought were part of that group.
And now he is not backing down with this person who was mistakenly sent
El Salvador even though his administration admitted to it and everybody is talking that well you know it wasn't something we should have done and the Supreme Court sided with them saying try to get him back but of course he doubled down I think he's convinced that this is another MS-13 individual and he's not going to back down he's gonna keep that guy there he even convinced the president of El Salvador to keep him there and now he's talking
This is the scary part.
He's been talking about sending Americans there.
You know, really, really, really bad Americans.
Well, you just can't do it.
You can't call them really bad and send Americans to some foreign country to be tortured.
You just can't do it.
But anyway, he's decided to do that.
And my son...
mentioned this to me yesterday, he says the Trump executive order that he wrote a while back gives him the ability now to declare martial law on April 20th.
This is, and then it's Easter, you know, Hitler's birthday, and now he also will be allowed under martial law to deport American citizens if he wants to.
And so he's suggesting it now.
on April 20th, he can declare martial law and do just that.
So we're kind of building up to this, aren't we?
You know, and I can't know what is in this guy's heart or in his head, and I don't wanna get in that head.
But my gut tells me that what this is really all about is it's just...
It's it's show it's it's for show.
It's for optics He he know he does he's not convinced that any of these people have gang affiliations He slaps that label on them so that he can engage in the theatrics because I think he wants to he wants to get people to self-deport He want he wants people to never come in the first place it is
the nativism that George W. Bush talked about.
It's having an immigration policy that is based on this idea that there are too many of them among us.
People who are different looking or speak with a different tongue.
There's too many of them among us.
Let's make them go away.
Let's make them disappear.
And then you engage in some of this theatrical
behavior, to send an unmistakable message to millions of people, don't come or if you're here, leave.
I think that's what this is really about.
It's about his desire to cleanse America in this fashion, which of course is also an isolationist kind of mentality that never leads anywhere good.
It never...
leads to prosperity.
It never leads to greater freedom.
It never leads anywhere good.
Because, and the reason I can say that with such certainty is that it's been done before in America, and we have a long history of it, and we see what happens when you have these spikes of this kind of behavior and this kind of
Comparing it to the protests that we saw on campuses the Palestinian protests and you know, they're certainly Canceling a lot of visas of the students who participated in that happened here on our campus here at the UW and and now They're pushing very hard on Harvard and Harvard is pushing back just as hard by saying that we're gonna turn down the eight billion dollar Whatever
funding that they were going
incredibly important action by Harvard.
When you think about so many people have kneeled down, so many people have refused to resist, so many lawyers, so many judges, so many universities.
So many institutions and people with considerable power have chosen to kneel down.
And here was an example of an institution that decided to stand firm.
And that's an incredibly important message.
Domino's.
in.
My only point here is that, yes, he's targeting people at the University of Wisconsin.
Madison, he's targeting people all over the country.
But my point is that...
He wants to, if he targets a thousand or if he targets 10,000 or if he targets 100,000, that's not his aim.
aim is to send a message to millions.
That's what he's really aiming to do because he wants millions out of here.
Absolutely.
Thanks for joining us.
Mike McCabe.
He's with us every Wednesday.
Tomorrow we'll talk to Kara.
Oddburn from the Milwaukee Film Festival have more tickets to give away and also Judy Davidoff from Ismus will be with us.
Stephanie Miller is coming up next.
We hope you have a great day, John.
Have a wonderful day.
Mike, you have a good
day too.
thank
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