Carmelo Anthony Didn't Die at That Track Meet — Austin Metcalf Did

Friday, June 5, 2026

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Louis R. Avallone and Stephen Parr. This is the full show for June 4, 2026.

We open with a conversation about Congress's seemingly unlimited capacity for symbolism and its equally limited appetite for actual governance — prompted by the bill to rename the street in front of the Chinese embassy Tiananmen Square Memorial Boulevard. We love the trolling, we love the underlying principle, and we think every Chinese diplomat should have to write that address on their stationery every day. But we also note that the SAVE Act — which 70% of Americans support, including 69% of independents and nearly half of rank-and-file Democrats — is still sitting unactioned. You cannot tell us you can walk and chew gum at the same time if you're only blowing bubbles.

In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, President Trump announced he wants Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch to become the permanent AG — and after overseeing the indictment of James Comey and launching the National Fraud Enforcement Division, we think he's earned it. Then the federal government cut off Hawaii from Medicaid funding after decertifying its Medicaid Fraud Control Unit — a unit that received millions of dollars to fight fraud, produced zero criminal indictments between 2022 and 2025, and watched Medicaid enrollment explode by 40% in the same period. And water began flowing again into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — restored for an estimated $13 to $20 million, which is less than half of what the Obama administration spent on a failed repair project that left the pool just as dirty six months later.

Our American Mama Teri Netterville responds to the Black Crows concert in Florida where the lead singer told a crowd chanting USA that he didn't understand why they were cheering for this country. Thousands walked out. Teri says she would have been one of them — and explains why the cultural fatigue is real and permanent now. We talk about why woke entertainment keeps failing at the box office, why Snow White bombed, why the all-lesbian Star Trek didn't survive one season, and why Americans are done pretending they'll tolerate being told their country is awful by the people it made wealthy.

We dig into the Austin Metcalf murder trial — which CBS News and most of the media are calling the Carmelo Anthony trial, burying the name of the murdered boy seven paragraphs down. We explain why the jury ended up without any Black members — and the answer, straight from CBS News itself, is not that prosecutors were racist. It's that several prospective Black jurors admitted under oath they could not vote to convict a defendant who looked like them, or who looked like a kid, regardless of the evidence. One said he would have a hard time putting a brother in jail. We ask the question nobody wants to ask — if jurors in the other direction had said the same thing in reverse, what would happen? And we ask how many juries have had people on them who felt the same way but didn't say so out loud?

The Senate voted to strip the SAVE Act from the reconciliation package — with four Republicans joining Democrats to kill it: Murkowski, McConnell, Tillis, and Collins. We explain why each of them voted the way they did, and we note that 81% of Americans support requiring voter ID and 80% want states to purge non-citizens from voter rolls. This is not a radical idea. It is the will of the American people, and four Republican senators just overruled it.

For our Bright Spot, Senator John Fetterman — standing alone again among Senate Democrats — went on record calling out Maine Democrat Senate candidate Graham Plattner over the new revelations about his explicit messaging to women on a platform known for sexual predators. Fetterman said if you've already lied about the Nazi tattoo situation, there are probably a lot more ranches you haven't seen yet. We make the comparison to Alexander Hamilton's endorsement of Thomas Jefferson — I may disagree with his principles, but at least he has them.

We also cover the Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah ceasefire framework — and explain why the big if in that deal is Hezbollah, which has never wanted peace with Israel and still doesn't.

And we close with Sterling Nassa, who was sitting in the audience at a live orchestra performance of La La Land in Sydney when the pianist came down ill at intermission. The conductor walked out and asked if anyone in the house could play. Sterling was a trained pianist and an accomplished sight reader. He walked up, sight read the second half of the concert, including a complicated piano solo, and saved the show. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776!

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