Transcript
Chaos, Conspiracies, and Cats: A Morning in Madison (Hour 1)
John & Gordy · Tue Sep 30, 2025
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We're truly
Oh, the code.
The only reason I have to do that is because my charge cards are also on the watch.
And so when I wake the watch up from being charged, I have to enter, reenter.
In fact, if it goes off my risk, I have to reenter the code.
in order to access the charge cards.
What a hassle that must be.
Yes.
What a complicated device that is.
What a hassle.
Four digits.
Well, it takes so long and I have to sit there, oh, what were those four digits?
Honestly, at first I thought it was a big hassle.
And I thought, do I really want to go through this every time I take the watch on and off, you know, and into the four digits?
Every time you want
We have covered this.
ad nauseam and I'm just, I'm like, you know, I'm bumping into walls at home now.
And I'm thinking, dude, is this ever, is this ever gonna end?
And we've got like over three years of this whole thing just collapsing around us as we watch, but it may not be three years.
Yes, we
are
I'm hoping my
God, we gotta have something happen.
Well, there's gonna be a government shutdown in a day or two.
We don't get it together.
Yeah, right?
You know, that could have been a question for this week.
What?
Should we have the government shutdown?
Yeah,
Because, you know, the government shutdown is something that is now becoming clear to the American public.
We have been seeing it on this show for a long time that the excuse they're giving now is the Democrats want to shut the government down because they want a trillion dollars to fund health care for illegal immigrants.
That is completely untrue.
Doesn't make any sense at all.
It is stupid to even say that.
And now.
It came out yesterday or the day before they asked Mike Johnson something about it and they ran that by him saying you know really the Democrats want to keep the tax credit going for the Affordable Care Act so people don't have to drop off and not have health care anymore.
And then he acknowledged it and he said then he went into some other lie.
You know at least the press there's somebody out there in the press that knows Why the government is being shut down by the Democrats because the Democrats want to save the tax credit?
That will prevent everybody from losing their health care right?
That's what it's all about getting their premiums increased by two to three hundred dollars a month Yeah, that's a huge hit for all of us right.
Yeah
Well, guys, you know, here's what I think this meeting's about.
First of all, what in the world is he doing?
The way they referred to this even isn't just absolutely insulting.
They kind of whip him in the shape.
Yeah.
And yeah.
And then it's been said that this is highly
insecure having this many of these people in the same place at the same time and telling the world where they are as well.
But last but not least, here's what I think it is.
He's going to tell them what side they're on when the coup happens.
Yeah, I'm not either.
know the most crazy thing I've ever heard of
and and most military experts that I've seen them talking head types on TV are saying the same thing that this is not something you do Gathering all these people together in the same place.
Well
You know dick coming up a little after seven o'clock the big story is also something that'll scare the daylights out of just about everybody It's called nsp m7 And it is a seven no actually about 11 indicators of things that the administration will be looking out for and these are terrorism indicators and It involves the liberals the left
and they will be able to interrogate you, to lock you up, to take you away.
Remember the preemption policy that George W. Bush put in place?
You know, they wanted to stop wars before they began.
This is, you know, a minority report on steroids.
Well, this is the minority report
for the Trump administration, they're gonna prevent a lot of things from happening.
When you hear what they're gonna look for in all of us, before they take us away and lock us up for good in some kind of FEMA camp, you will be shocked and stunned.
This isn't just occupying Portland, you know, war-torn Portland.
God, I can't believe we're even saying these things now.
But you know, they're gonna lock people up just.
on suspicion of you possibly committing a crime or a terrorist act in the future.
Possibly.
You
But you know, that obviously, you know, this was a reveal that Trump did not know that the tax credits were the issue for the Democrats.
He did not know that.
He probably thought it was providing healthcare for illegal immigrants.
No one told him, no, it's the tax credits.
You know, people are gonna have their premiums increased.
And the whole thing here is that we're all gonna know about it when we all have to re-sign up for healthcare in the not too distant future, like month or two or half.
So when that happens, people are gonna be freaking out and there'll be an uprising in this country like no one has ever seen before because it's their families we're talking about.
And that's gonna, you know, cause some big problems.
So the Democrats have a huge hand to play in all of this.
If they delay it and just have a continuing resolution till maybe a half a month from now, that's when everybody's gonna be shopping for healthcare and everybody's gonna know that their increase is going up because the Republicans want, you know, and here's the other thing.
We're all just sitting here thinking to ourselves, gee, will the Democrats get blamed for the shutdown?
And everybody is now saying, well, wait a minute.
Actually, the Democrats finally came up with this a day before the decision.
Thanks, guys, for thinking ahead.
Good timing.
Good timing is right.
But the whole point is that they are the majority.
They have the Congress.
They have the presidency.
They have the Supreme Court.
They have it all.
And they're going to blame the Democrats for shutting the government down.
I know.
Okay.
What?
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
That's it for Would You Rather?
Let's see.
It's 19 past the hour.
Coming up in a little while, we're going to check in with Lisa Bernard from the Dane County Humane Society.
Also, Hannah Van.
We're going to get the update on the Walk to End Alzheimer's, which is coming up this weekend on Sunday.
And Jesse Christensen from Cannabis DNP.
Find out what's happening in the cannabis world.
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I wrote this book because I got tired of seeing my parents' faith used as a cloaking device for meanness and bigotry and superiority.
Jesus' movement was about humility.
It was about service to others.
It was about uplifting the marginalized.
not about total right-wing domination of the school board.
I wrote this book for believers and atheists.
Anyone who's going to have to deal with a far right wing mean Christian nationalist or fundamentalist in their job, in their home, in their government, in their social media feeds.
I think they say the largest growing religious group are Mormons or none of the above.
I think it's people who were raised religious and now consider themselves spiritual because they're sick of the hypocrisy of men in dresses and funny hats.
You see you see a breaking point like where do you see these you the teachings of Jesus the biblical teachings shifting over to just being a political ploy
I mean when Rome took over really I mean that's what we're going back that far well if you want to go back to when it's stopping an oppressed movement of the brown-skinned Jewish carpenter about love and empathy and it became an imperial religion that got to beat up on smaller minorities and pagans and go invade and kill Jews and kill Muslims in the crusades all of which was a total violation of Jesus and the whole history of Christianity
Christianity is this authoritarian power, right?
But it's always the Jesus followers who resist.
So you got the crusades, St.
Francis quits and preaches nonviolence.
You got Columbus and the doctrine of discovery and they're raping the tiny new people and it's the Catholic priest Bartolomeo de las Casas, first act of protest by a white person in this hemisphere.
And it was against what Columbus was doing.
Slavery was propped up by Christianity, but it was Christ followers like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and the Quakers who
back, segregation, propped up by Christianity, Dr. King fights back, and how many people have taught their parents and grandparents out of so much homophobia in the past 30 years.
There's an amazing history of Christian activism, but it always manifests itself in resistance to Christian authoritarianism.
And I'm sick of it, and I think people are too.
And if the Democratic Party is not going to use the Bible and the media is afraid to touch it, then it's going to be up to all of us asking our right-wing loved ones, what Jesus teaching does Donald Trump and MAGA fight for?
because I haven't actually found it
There you go.
John Fugle saying,
Right.
And he's promoting that and he's out there talking about it.
And, you know, we've had the church shootings a whole string of them.
And I think it
Pretty much has to do with something I told my friend who is a born-again Christian always trying to get me to join him I Told him you know, I don't want to become a part of any religion
that has become politicized because what you have done is you've made religion ugly.
You've made it what you want it to be.
You've put politics inside religion.
And if you don't have that political leaning, then religion doesn't work for you.
I mean, that doesn't work.
Religion has to be on its own.
It has to stand alone.
It can't be part of a political party, and that's what they're doing.
They're killing religion, they're making it repugnant to most people and Gen Zers especially.
Yeah.
The thing is, you know, we heard a very straight cut from him on the daily show of all places.
Right.
But, uh, the guy, you know, behind all the word of those words that we just heard, there's a lot of jokes and humor.
Yeah.
He's a stand up comedian.
He's a great guy.
He
Yeah.
As a matter of fact, I talked to John last night on his show.
Oh, and his father was a Franciscan monk and his mother was a nun.
That's right.
they, you know, fell in love and
Yeah, and you know after You know a quite a time they actually you know they fell in love and he got married and they had John I think he was You know he has others he has siblings, but um And the book is great.
I've got the book.
I've been reading it.
Yeah
one nightly program on sirs.
It's like tell me everything.
It's from 8 to 8 to Bar times 8 to 8 to 11.
Okay,
that it's a great show.
It is
on the progress channel.
Yeah.
If you have old
ahead.
No.
Yeah, it is.
It's a great book that in one of the things that I've
proves through my reading that struck me that apparently John Woodthrow, by the Puritans, thought democracy was a hideous, you know, I don't know.
He didn't like democracy at all, because it was a violation of the Fifth Commandment because we're supposed
to obey our
fathers.
The government's supposed to be our father and mother now.
It's Christian fundamentalists.
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point, a dumbing down, until humanity was incapable of solving even its most basic problems.
this, you idiot!
Idiocracy.
For the smartest guy in the world, you're pretty dumb sometimes.
Oh,
635 Tuesday morning.
We are starting out in the mid fifties.
We should get into the low to mid eighties a little bit later on.
You should check out our website, WMDXradio.com.
You can find out all about the upcoming.
Walk to End Alzheimer's.
In fact, we're gonna talk to Hannah Vann in our next hour about that.
Also, Lisa Bernard coming up in this half hour from the Dane County Humane Society.
And a little bit later, we'll talk to Jesse Christensen from Cannabis DNP.
Debate okay heard yesterday.
I got quite a reaction from that.
Yeah, I want to get to this text.
This is a text from Come on by in Jamesville.
Yeah, and he says hey John and Gordy piggybacking from yesterday on the incorporation of the word woke I would buy a yard sign or bumper sticker that states woke up Americans They're trying to ruin America love your show
Bud and that's a great suggestion actually using the word woke for that
right
well
Yeah back to good morning guys Back to John Fugos saying I always love to ask these fake Christians that voted for their orange Jesus What has Trump actually done?
that Jesus would approve of.
And they can never answer that,
there's nothing.
Exactly.
Bible?
This is a lot different from an executive order.
And Trump signed this thing, and they're going to try to identify anti-Christian and anti-American views.
They're going to try to prevent those people from committing acts of violence.
It's a minority report thing, and it's gonna freak out.
Did you feel
I know.
Wow.
Believe where we are.
My son found this story for me, and I just thought, wow, okay, yeah, something I did not see.
All right, right now, though, let's get to the terrorist network that Stephen Miller wants to destroy.
None of us knew about it.
And no one's ever talked about this terrorist network.
The left wing terrorist network out there.
But they found it.
You know, that's lucky they're in charge now.
Last year, before Kashpatel, by the way, federal officials accused Russia of using unwitting right wing American influencers to spread Kremlin propaganda.
The thing is, right-wing media influencers, Benny Johnson, Tim Poole, David Rubin, Lauren Southern, were already spouting Russian talking points, with no help from Putin, by the way.
And again, Russia and the right-wing media are currently spouting the same propaganda over and over again.
Now let me let that sink in.
So they were paying big bucks to these people.
This is a short clip.
I shorten this a lot from PBS.
They did a coverage of this last September, and I want to play a little part of this.
This is 212.
212, listen.
The federal officials accuse Russia of using unwitting right-wing influencers in the United States to spread Kremlin propaganda ahead of the November election.
The Justice Department charged two Russian media employees in this scheme.
Investigators say they helped to publish online videos.
that received 16 million views on YouTube and other social media platforms.
Well, officials say two employees of Russian state media broadcaster RT secretly funded and directed the production of hundreds of these videos on social media.
And the videos were often consistent with Russia's goals of exacerbating domestic divisions and undermining support for Ukraine, but without disclosing that RT or Russia was behind the videos.
So how did this alleged scheme
work?
Simon says these RT employees funneled nearly $10 million to this Tennessee company that goes unnamed in the indictment.
But details in the indictment are an exact match for a company called Tenant Media.
This was founded by Lauren Chen, she's a conservative Canadian influencer, and Liam Donovan, and they allegedly worked with the RT employees who they knew were Russian to recruit influencers with large audiences to make these videos.
They pushed for angles that echoed
Kremlin narrative.
So, for example, an RT staffer wanted the company to blame Ukraine for a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall, even though ISIS had claimed responsibility.
I mean, how does this all fit in a larger pattern of foreign efforts to target American voters?
That's right.
I mean, these efforts are escalating A, and we're hearing more and more about them.
Yesterday, U.S.
officials also announced that they had taken down separately a set of Internet domains involved in a separate Russian influence operation.
A lot of these efforts
So far have not been very effective when we see these kind of influence operations.
What's notable about this RT video operation?
It's one of the few that's actually managed to get in front of a lot of people and
probably because of these influencers.
Yeah And again, you know, they really didn't have to pay these people because they were saying the exact same thing that Trump was saying about, you know, Russia
Poor Russia being attacked by Ukraine.
All right, so I mean that I think is the real network here.
My point is that's the network.
It's not a left-wing network that no one's ever heard of.
It's a right-wing plus white and Christian nationalist network that's out there.
That's the big one and all the while make us cheer on the supposed patriotic authority under Trump saving America.
by using fascism, taking ideological control of news organizations, buying interest in corporations, education, social media, public surveillance by Palantir, right?
And using the military to occupy cities that are liberal only and saying that they're at war in those cities.
I mean, we're watching this in real
time.
Yes.
I don't have to make this up.
We're seeing it in the news right now and you can be your own judge on that.
Um, okay.
You know, I know all of this is kind of scary stuff.
Yes, it is.
And, uh, and there's really no hope and we've got three years of this.
And I, uh, I truly think that we are going to be on the watch list and we'll probably be broadcasting from FEMA camps.
Uh, you know, we'll make the rounds, you know, we'll
This time,
This is a big promise from Trump, you know cutting drug prices and stuff now the big truck drug companies responded to Trump.
Oh, really?
Yeah Well in a way What you Trump demanded that they commit to to
Most favored nation pricing policy by raising prices abroad without cutting them in the US now I'm not kidding if you heard that if you thought you heard that correctly you did again Trump's plan was to raise prices abroad where they negotiate deals for better prices on drugs without
cutting prices in the US.
Now I'm thinking mostly here that the drug companies are gonna be the big winners in this.
They seem to be.
The prices go up in Europe and we stay the same paying huge drug prices for helping our health.
Anyway, Trump's paranoid fantasy that every country wants to rip him off prompted him to call others global freeloaders.
He wants other developed countries to foot more of the cost while lowering the cost for Americans.
But he's not lowering the cost for Americans.
He is clueless about the price of drugs in this country and the EU.
I want to play Cut 168 to kind of explain a little bit.
Let's go to this.
This is Trump.
The ones I've seen, it hasn't worked so well.
A lot of friends get fat.
They said, yeah, I lost some weight.
I said, you don't look it to me.
But they paid $1,300, $1,200, and they go to London, and they pay $88.
And they call me.
They go, what's this all about?
We're subsidizing the rest of the world stupidly because a lot of stupid people in this country running things.
Yes You know but Democrats have wanted to bring the prices down for a long long time and Biden was on his way to do that but get this the EU member countries Negotiate drug prices with price caps
discounts and health technology assessments to control pharmaceutical spending and achieve lower prices compared to the US.
That's why the prices are lower in the EU.
It's not because somehow it was magically a thing they did by buying prices or buying drugs at a lower price.
It was because they negotiated
it down.
the country itself was too large to actually negotiate prices with drug companies.
They had an advantage over drug companies because the government was so large, so they would get very, very low prices if they negotiated with drug companies.
And the Republicans said, yeah, that's really unfair, the government do.
So they blocked the...
US government from negotiating drug prices.
So anyway, that's that's a long story short.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, again, this is a another failed plan by Trump.
No one's really going along with this.
But drug prices are going up in in Europe because of the negotiated price and tariffs with the
we
up and they won't negotiate with the Democrats and at least spending a little bit of money to keep drug prices and health care prices down for Americans
Yeah, man, there's not much hope actually.
So I'm going to curl up in the fetal position in the corner of this room and take a little break.
Oh, OK.
Well, while you do that, you continue on.
All right.
Well, we're going to get here.
I've got some therapy for
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If dogs run free, why not we?
Across the swooping plane.
My ears hear a symphony.
Two mules, trains ring.
The best is always yet to come.
That's what they explain to me.
Thank you.
for that update.
It's a border calling.
Okay.
653, this portion of John and Gordy in the morning is brought to you by Serenity Pet Spa.
Give your pup the spa day they deserve.
Check out SerenityPetSpaMadison.com.
All right.
And now it's time for us to check in with the Dane County Humane Society.
Lisa Bernard joins us this morning.
Good morning, Lisa.
Uh, he doesn't like to be picked up.
So he's an adult brown tabby cat.
He's about 8.5 pounds.
Uh, he was found as a stray in Madison in early August and brought to us.
Um,
He's very energetic.
He knows what he likes, which is treats and plain.
But he also knows what he doesn't like and that's being picked up.
And yet he'll jump on your shoulder.
is
on you and kind of
So our canine behavior team has been working with him and improving his manners, like keeping all four paws on the ground, sitting, working on his leash walking, and it's been working.
He's, he's, he's doing great.
Partially because he's so treat motivated.
He loves his treats He's super friendly loves to stay close for attention and sometimes he'll even sit on your feet
Frankie is an adult short hair Chihuahua mix who's mostly tan with some weight on his chest and feet.
When he was brought to the shelter as a stray in early September, he was very scared.
But with patience and time from our staff and they've been working with him, he's really warmed up to people and he likes receiving pets.
He it's so cute.
We go out to the arts and he just gets the zoomies and he runs around He's got so much energy and it's so cute.
He's really easy to walk on leash One thing though is he's not fully potty trained yet.
So he's looking for a patient family who's gonna work with him
Give shelter.org.
Thanks, Lisa.
Give shelter.org.
Okay, we'll talk to you next time.
Talk to you in a couple of weeks.
Yeah, hope to find a home for all these beautiful pets.
Yes, that's Lisa Bernard from the Dane County Humane Society.
Okay, right around the corner after we go through some news here, we'll reveal the keyword in our go for the green and gold text to win contest.
Also in our next hour, we'll talk to Anna Mann about the Alzheimer's Walk coming up this weekend and Jesse Christensen from Cannabis DNP.
It's all coming up on John and
Gordy on WMDX.
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