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