Speaker 1: And she spent a lot of time on the sidelines,
Speaker 1: bringing us the trade scoop as it was happening down
Speaker 1: on the sidelines.
Speaker 2: Well, now she has.
Speaker 1: Moved into the world of political talk. And I got
Speaker 1: to tell you, Michelle Tafoya, I think you're crazy because
Speaker 1: it's miserable in here.
Speaker 3: Right, Like sports is fun.
Speaker 2: Everybody loves sports.
Speaker 1: But man, you start getting down in the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: and you start bringing out the worst in people.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you.
Speaker 4: You're not the first person who told me I was
Speaker 4: crazy for making this decision, But I will tell you
Speaker 4: that being in Green Bay on you know, like December
Speaker 4: thirty first, is also miserable. So and trust me, I
Speaker 4: was at Denver many times in the snow where I
Speaker 4: was dying to be endorsed.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: I had a great, wonderful, wonderful sports career. I loved
Speaker 4: every minute of it. But I just fell to calling
Speaker 4: to do something different.
Speaker 1: So I've got to ask you, is it harder to
Speaker 1: be a woman on the sidelines or harder to someone
Speaker 1: right of center in television?
Speaker 4: The latter for sure, someone right center. Now, I'll tell
Speaker 4: you this, I had a blast with my colleagues. You know, Look,
Speaker 4: I worked with John Madden and Al Michaels and then John,
Speaker 4: then Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth, and for all of
Speaker 4: those years we had just some wonderful conversations about.
Speaker 3: All kinds of things, politics included.
Speaker 4: Look, we were covering the NFL during the twenty sixteen election,
Speaker 4: when players were kneeling during the anthem, We had the.
Speaker 3: Whole COVID season.
Speaker 4: We had so much going on that you couldn't help
Speaker 4: but talk politics behind the scenes. Now, it's not something
Speaker 4: we ever brought to the screen with us, but in
Speaker 4: our meetings, at.
Speaker 3: Our dinners all of that, they all knew.
Speaker 4: Exactly who I was and where I stood, and everyone
Speaker 4: was incredibly respectful, almost everyone.
Speaker 1: What made you the way you are? Like, what do
Speaker 1: you credit your life experiences? What got you to the
Speaker 1: point where you're like, you know what, I'm pretty unabashed.
Speaker 1: I call myself a libreservative, like I am a libertarian.
Speaker 2: Who is you know?
Speaker 1: I would say a little more conservative than a pure libertarian.
Speaker 1: I think based on following you on Twitter or x
Speaker 1: I'll call it Twitter probably till I die, you were
Speaker 1: in much of the same camp. What created that.
Speaker 3: Well. First of all, my upbringing.
Speaker 4: My dad was the son of legal migrants and grew.
Speaker 3: Up very poor. My mom grew up very poor.
Speaker 4: They both grew up during the Depression, extremely poor, and
Speaker 4: so they both had an intense, insane work ethic.
Speaker 3: And you couldn't.
Speaker 4: Help, as one of their kids to absorb that and
Speaker 4: understand what hard work is all about, and that when
Speaker 4: you work hard enough, you get really lucky. It's really interesting.
Speaker 4: The harder you work, the luckier you get. And I
Speaker 4: just practiced that my entire life, from the time I
Speaker 4: was a kid. Seriously, I've worked almost my entire life.
Speaker 3: And so because I.
Speaker 4: Wanted the American dream that both my parents got, and
Speaker 4: they made sure all before their kids went to college.
Speaker 4: Neither of my parents had an exceedingly high paying job.
Speaker 4: My mom was a public school teacher, my dad was
Speaker 4: an aeronautical engineer. But they they made education very important
Speaker 4: in our lives. And I'm fortunate to say I got
Speaker 4: out of education somewhat unscathed, even though I went to
Speaker 4: Berkeley for my college years, so you know, and then
Speaker 4: I went to business school.
Speaker 3: I got a master's in business, and.
Speaker 4: That will really open your eyes to a lot of
Speaker 4: reality as opposed to some of the emotional stuff you
Speaker 4: can learn in school, some of the sociology and all
Speaker 4: the psychology and all this. You take a business degree,
Speaker 4: get a master's in business, and the real world kind of.
Speaker 3: Slapped you in the face.
Speaker 4: And then nine to eleven happened, and I felt for
Speaker 4: the first time like I actually was worried for my country.
Speaker 4: And I really love this country in spite of her
Speaker 4: flaws past flaws. I know there's no place better on Earth.
Speaker 4: I adopted a child from Columbia, South America. I know
Speaker 4: there's no better place on Earth than America.
Speaker 3: So I love this place. I cherish it, and I see.
Speaker 4: Things going badly certainly after nine to eleven, I did,
Speaker 4: and I just over time, I just thought I've got
Speaker 4: too much to say, and you can't when you're on
Speaker 4: the number one show.
Speaker 3: In primetime, as Sunday Night.
Speaker 4: Football was, you can't bring those opinions in without being
Speaker 4: really selfish. And I was part of a team and
Speaker 4: I signed up for that, and I knew that I
Speaker 4: needed to keep my politics to myself. So ultimately I thought,
Speaker 4: I got to get out of this show so I
Speaker 4: can be who I am.
Speaker 1: How do I admire that about you, and I'm not
Speaker 1: just blowing smoke up your skirt. I mean that is
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who don't take those
Speaker 1: other things into consideration, and we've seen it.
Speaker 2: This is so random, but.
Speaker 1: Yesterday I saw an article where gal Gado is in
Speaker 1: Israel trying to explain why snow White bombed talk about
Speaker 1: you know, her co star really set the table for
Speaker 1: that failure. And to your point, a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't think about the impact that it's having. What are
Speaker 1: some of the things that are animating you right now?
Speaker 1: On the Michelle Tafoya podcast, which is also available on
Speaker 1: all of your podcast platforms, A little plug there.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, please dude, check it out, subscribe, never missed
Speaker 4: an episode. Well, certainly, crime, public safety, and national security
Speaker 4: have always seemed to me to be the very base
Speaker 4: level requirements of people we hire to run our country,
Speaker 4: run our cities, run our states, and they've done, in
Speaker 4: many Winny ways, such an abysmal.
Speaker 3: Job, and that affects every single person.
Speaker 4: I don't care what your gender identity is, I don't
Speaker 4: care what your nation, your background is, I don't care
Speaker 4: where you come from, what your income is. Public safety
Speaker 4: is a concern for everyone, just as national security is
Speaker 4: for everyone. So I was big on the border. The
Speaker 4: whole crisis under Biden was just, to me, an absolute
Speaker 4: It was the most foolish thing. I think there were
Speaker 4: reasons that was happening, but for people to stand up
Speaker 4: there and tell us the border was closed, the border
Speaker 4: was safe, and if you're thinking of coming, don't it
Speaker 4: was laughable to me. So that one really animated me,
Speaker 4: particularly because you know, I come from a family of
Speaker 4: legal immigrants, not that many generations back, so that one, I'll.
Speaker 3: Tell you, school choice is really high on my list.
Speaker 3: And I.
Speaker 4: Must say that just every day that I'm bouncing around
Speaker 4: what you call Twitter, what we all call either Twitter
Speaker 4: or X and I see the hypocrisy out there and
Speaker 4: some of the arguments that aren't really arguments, the left.
Speaker 3: Of center people.
Speaker 4: Just shouting louder, calling names, and not really arguing their
Speaker 4: points with real facts and real acumen.
Speaker 1: I've been fascinated as of late, and I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: perfectly honest with you. My audience knows I was not
Speaker 1: an enthusiastic Trump supporter. After January sixth, I was kind
Speaker 1: of like, I'm done. I voted for him again. He
Speaker 1: has surprised me on so many measures. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that I found the most shocking recently was
Speaker 1: that you now have people on social media saying things
Speaker 1: like I've lived in Washington, d C. For four years
Speaker 1: and I was mugged once, but it's much better now.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, wait a minute, why why is that
Speaker 1: level of crime okay? And it's almost like there's this
Speaker 1: weird like Stockholm syndrome all most of these people in
Speaker 1: these big cities that their response to We're going to
Speaker 1: do something about crime is but crime isn't that bad,
Speaker 1: is it?
Speaker 2: And it's like, what is happening right now?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: It reminds me of that wonderful moment during the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four campaign when jd Vance sat across from Martha
Speaker 4: Raddits and say, just a few apartments.
Speaker 3: Being overrun by Sunday Martha, do you hear yourself? Do
Speaker 3: you hear your saw? I love that. I wanted to
Speaker 3: make a tea sure, do you hear yourself?
Speaker 2: Mind?
Speaker 4: Because it was like, hey, things, you know, only a
Speaker 4: couple of people got raped, There were only a few murders. Now, look,
Speaker 4: we're never going to one hundred percent eradicate crime, although
Speaker 4: there are countries that have, but they have some really
Speaker 4: crazy laws about it, you know, cutting off the hand
Speaker 4: of someone who steals.
Speaker 3: A piece of bread.
Speaker 4: So I understand that we're always going to have some
Speaker 4: level of crime, but public state like people not feeling
Speaker 4: safe right, you know, it's just insane to me. And
Speaker 4: I've had people say to me, look, there plenty of
Speaker 4: Americans commit crimes. Why are we so worried about illegal immigrants? Well,
Speaker 4: there are a million ways I could go with that.
Speaker 4: What would you like to you know, Yes, we have
Speaker 4: our own issues, so why would we unnecessarily add more
Speaker 4: from people who are not vetted that we don't know
Speaker 4: their backgrounds, or many of them have criminal backgrounds that
Speaker 4: we just simply let go of and ignored. I mean,
Speaker 4: to me, it's like, you know, why are people arguing
Speaker 4: against the really to common sense safety?
Speaker 3: And it's amazing.
Speaker 4: I don't know if this was some amazing mind trick
Speaker 4: by Trump, but he has gotten Democrats to come out
Speaker 4: in favor of crime, and that's amazing.
Speaker 1: He's gotten him to come out in favor of boys
Speaker 1: and girls' sports, He's gotten him to come out in
Speaker 1: favor of I mean, all of this insane stuff, and
Speaker 1: you think. I think they're starting to get a hip
Speaker 1: to it now because I did see MSNBC.
Speaker 3: What did you see?
Speaker 1: Mika Brazinski actually said this DC thing is a trap.
Speaker 1: Don't fall for it because you're going to be arguing
Speaker 1: that DC is safe when it might be thirty percent
Speaker 1: safer than it was a year ago when it was
Speaker 1: the most dangerous place in the country. That kind of
Speaker 1: stuff I find fascinating just to watch how any reflexive
Speaker 1: reaction is usually going to be the wrong one.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, what are you going to.
Speaker 1: Be talking about at the Steamboat Institute's Freedom Conference.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm still working on that, but I'm really excited
Speaker 4: to be there. I want to talk about the good,
Speaker 4: the bad, and the ugly of America today, and you know,
Speaker 4: just my story of why this is so meaningful to me.
Speaker 4: Do you evolve a lot in life? And it's so
Speaker 4: funny because I feel like I sound like my aunts
Speaker 4: and uncles used to sound back in the day. These
Speaker 4: kids today, you know, you're too young to understand, but
Speaker 4: it really is amazing how young people who really haven't
Speaker 4: experienced a lot in the world to think they have
Speaker 4: all the answers, and I think that we have to
Speaker 4: find better ways of communicating with those with those younger people.
Speaker 4: And we've got the access, we've got, all the social
Speaker 4: media platforms, we've got all that there are ways to
Speaker 4: reach them. We just got to do it better. And
Speaker 4: so that's that's going to be one of my one
Speaker 4: of my messages.
Speaker 1: You know, I tell people all the time. I, you know,
Speaker 1: grew up. I essentially was a rush baby because my
Speaker 1: dad would make me listen to rushlan Ba on the car.
Speaker 1: Then I went to college and became a total dirty
Speaker 1: foot hippie liberal, like full on much of my father's
Speaker 1: shock and horror when I came back from college, but
Speaker 1: ultimately my brain started to kick in a way that
Speaker 1: I would see things.
Speaker 2: And I'm being told.
Speaker 1: By my friends on the left that you know, black
Speaker 1: is white and white is black, and and I, luckily,
Speaker 1: I guess I had enough of a foundation to be
Speaker 1: able to say, Okay, it doesn't make any sense, there's
Speaker 1: no logic there. But for young people, in my view,
Speaker 1: I tried really hard when I'm talking to a younger
Speaker 1: person that I know is to the left of me,
Speaker 1: instead of telling them you're wrong and you don't know
Speaker 1: what you're doing. I'll say to them, let me tell
Speaker 1: you what I've lived through that you haven't, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of value in just saying you just haven't
Speaker 1: been alive long enough, right, because when you're young, you
Speaker 1: haven't been alive long enough to have experienced these things.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what I experienced, so you understand
Speaker 1: where I'm coming from. That seems to be I've found
Speaker 1: the most effective way to just get someone to think
Speaker 1: about something.
Speaker 2: And really, that's all you can hope for.
Speaker 3: Is I think that think you're great.
Speaker 4: And I think the other way in addition to that
Speaker 4: is asking them questions when they make a strong, brash
Speaker 4: statement about you know, Trump is racist?
Speaker 3: Real? Okay, really, why tell me how you know that?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: You let them try to answer their own questions and flesh.
Speaker 3: It out, because very often.
Speaker 4: Very often they can't, and and then they realize it,
Speaker 4: and and sometimes it frustrates them because they want to be.
Speaker 3: Right so badly and they really believe that they're right.
Speaker 4: But you know, whatever the issue is that they feel
Speaker 4: so strongly about, counter with some quid, Oh, we really
Speaker 4: tell me about that?
Speaker 3: What do you mean? How do you how do you
Speaker 3: experience that what do you think?
Speaker 4: I saw Kimmel, Jimmy Kimmel, talking on some podcasts recently,
Speaker 4: and he was saying how this administration is.
Speaker 3: So much worse than he ever imagined, and I wanted
Speaker 3: to say, how, what is it?
Speaker 1: How?
Speaker 3: What give me specifics? What in your life is so bad?
Speaker 4: Jimmy Kimmel, You know, is it your perception or is
Speaker 4: it the fact? And very often it's perception.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I'm talking with Michelle Tavoya.
Speaker 1: She is going to be one of the speakers at
Speaker 1: the Steamboat Institute's Freedom Conference up in Deaver Creek this weekend.
Speaker 2: There are still tickets of aailable.
Speaker 1: She is one of another amazing slate of speakers that
Speaker 1: they have put together and you get a little bit
Speaker 1: of everything. Guy Benson we spoke to yesterday, We've got yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh he's hilarious. There's actually also a guy with a puppet.
Speaker 1: See now when I come Michelle, they're like, they give
Speaker 1: me what I like to call the hard hitting interviews.
Speaker 1: I got to interview Kyle Berry from the Babylon b
Speaker 1: one year, and then I was supposed to interview the
Speaker 1: puppet guy. This is what they think of my you know,
Speaker 1: interviewing style over this puppet guy.
Speaker 3: I need to know that would be wait to see this.
Speaker 1: Roger Rowndee, creator of Ask America with Edgar. It's a
Speaker 1: channel on the YouTube and the kids today love it,
Speaker 1: I think. But the event is fantastic. It's going to
Speaker 1: be this weekend, Friday and Saturday. Tickets are still available.
Speaker 1: I put a link on the blog. Now, Michelle, let
Speaker 1: me ask you one more question before we let you go, Like,
Speaker 1: you have kids, and what do you want to happen
Speaker 1: in this country when you think about your kids growing
Speaker 1: up here?
Speaker 3: I really really, really really.
Speaker 4: Want this turn towards socialism to be averted at all costs.
Speaker 4: Not at all costs, but at reasonable costs. This candidate's
Speaker 4: like Mom, Donnie, I live here in Minnesota. We've got
Speaker 4: a mayoral candidate, Amama Fata, who is basically an Islamist extremist,
Speaker 4: and he's got the Democrat endorsement in Minneapolis. So I
Speaker 4: feel like some of the ideology, the ideological ship is
Speaker 4: starting to turn around. But some of these developments are
Speaker 4: really telling, and I don't think they're going to stop
Speaker 4: with Mom Donnie and Fata, and I think people need
Speaker 4: to start getting their courage back to stand up to
Speaker 4: some of this stuff that we know is antithetical to
Speaker 4: what our ideals are here.
Speaker 3: It's not a thing.
Speaker 4: It's not about being prejudiced or xenophobic. It's about do
Speaker 4: people share our values?
Speaker 3: Period.
Speaker 1: I agree wholeheartedly. Michelle Tavoy. By the way, check out
Speaker 1: what just happened in Bolivia. Socialism fails again in real
Speaker 1: time in Bolivia where it's happening again. So I would
Speaker 1: like to point this out. I was an early adopter
Speaker 1: of watching Venezuela. When I first got my first show
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and five, my program director was like,
Speaker 1: what why are we talking about Venezuela, And I was like,
Speaker 1: cause we're going to watch that nation fall.
Speaker 2: In real time.
Speaker 1: We're going to live through that history because it's going
Speaker 1: to the same thing that's going to happen everywhere it happens.
Speaker 1: And about ten years later, that guy who I no
Speaker 1: longer worked with called me and said, I now understand
Speaker 1: why you're watching Venezuela.
Speaker 2: I'm like, it's my hobby, that's what I do.
Speaker 1: Michelle Tafoya, I'm so sad I'm not gonna be able
Speaker 1: to meet you this weekend, but I know you're gonna
Speaker 1: have a badful topic.
Speaker 3: It's great, great to talk with you. I'd love to
Speaker 3: do it again.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Michelle. Michelle Tafoya podcast. You can hear on all
Speaker 1: your podcast platforms or visit Michelle tafoya dot com. Both
Speaker 1: linked on the blog today.
Speaker 2: Thanks Michelle, thank you. That is Michelle Tafoya. She's awesome.