He Didn't Look at His Watch — He Saluted, He Listened, and He Gave Them a Ride Home on Air Force One
Thursday, July 23, 2026
You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 22, 2026.
We open with President Trump attending the dignified transfer of four fallen U.S. service members at Dover Air Force Base — and the political left's insistence on finding fault with it. We explain what a dignified transfer actually is: not a press conference, not a campaign event, not a photo opportunity. It is the most solemn responsibility a commander-in-chief carries — standing on behalf of 340 million Americans to receive sons and daughters who left home in uniform and came back draped in the flag. We also note a detail that made no headlines: President Trump gave the family of Lieutenant Tyler Feehan, who was from Georgia, a ride home on Air Force One. We contrast this with the man who checked his watch at an identical ceremony. And we put the 18 casualties in historical context — fewer than the invasion of Grenada, fewer than the invasion of Panama, against a military exponentially larger than either. We are not losing this conflict.
In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, Trump-backed candidates swept Republican primaries in Arizona — with Andy Biggs winning the gubernatorial nomination to challenge Katie Hobbs, Mark Lamb winning the 5th Congressional District nomination, and retired NFL kicker Jay Feeley winning the 1st Congressional District nomination. More than 95% of Trump-endorsed candidates win their Republican primaries — a political endorsement success rate unprecedented in American history. Then the FBI captured fugitive Khalid Satari — a fraudster who had fled to Dubai after allegedly bilking Medicare out of $547 million through a scheme of kickbacks and bribes to doctors for unnecessary genetic testing across Georgia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. He was arrested overseas and returned to the United States to face trial. We also want to know who the doctors are.
We also push back on MyPillow CEO and Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Lindell's proposal to give illegal aliens amnesty through conditional work visas with no expiration date. We acknowledge Lindell is a patriot and his heart may be in the right place. We also note that we have seen this movie before. A work visa with no expiration date plus a family and a mortgage will produce, in exactly the timeline the left expects, a demand for citizenship and a voter registration form. The second chance we are willing to offer: $2,600 from the federal government to fly home and try the right way. That is the second chance. We are not offering a third.
Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson respond to a listener question about wheelchair abuse at airports — and Teri, as a former flight attendant, confirms it has always happened but is now out of control. The mechanism is simple: wheelchair assistance gets you to the front of the boarding line, but requires you to wait for everyone to deplane before you can exit. So the people who needed a wheelchair to board are miraculously able to walk off the plane on their own. Teri connects it to the broader problem of low-trust cultural values meeting high-trust American systems — and notes that systems built on good faith get abused when the good faith isn't there.
We sit down with Brett Ackleberry of Focus on the Family to discuss PluggedIn.com — a free media discernment tool that provides in-depth content reviews of movies, TV shows, video games, books, and YouTube channels from a Christian perspective. We discuss The Odyssey, The Passion of the Christ, and the difference between entertainment that earns its darkness and content that simply delivers it. Brett explains that PluggedIn is not there to tell anyone what to watch — it's there to give families the information they need to decide for themselves. It's free, it's thorough, and it's available right now at PluggedIn.com.
We cover the New Jersey non-citizen voter registration story — where the state called 6,000 improper registrations a software glitch and the software company said it was not their error — and connect it to the 24 states that still refuse to use the federal SAVE system, which is now free, to verify citizenship on their voter rolls. States with Democrat trifectas represent the vast majority of those refusing to use it. They also insist no illegal voting is occurring.
We predict a government shutdown in September — driven by Senate Republicans who won't pass spending bills the House has already sent over — and say plainly that the game is simple. Democrats stall, Democrats posture, and the country pays the price. Republicans in the Senate don't have to help them. John Thune needs to pick a side.
For our Bright Spot, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a consolidated ruling across multiple cases involving detained illegal aliens — finding that they do not have a constitutional due process right to bail that would allow them to remain in the country while fighting deportation proceedings. This year alone, judges had released more than 11,000 ICE detainees before removal could be completed. The Fifth Circuit just closed that door across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas — and in doing so, removed the incentive for detained illegal aliens to fight and delay removal rather than accepting voluntary departure.
We also cover a Tennessee Republican candidate named Brian Stewart whose campaign presents him as a Marine veteran — with the Marine Corps itself reportedly saying his premature discharge was incongruent with Marine Corps standards. We say it plainly: you do not lie about your military service. It is not a resume bullet point. It is sacrifice, discipline, and danger. Some gave the full measure of devotion. If you are thinking about lying about that, stop.
And we close with Jenitar and Jortham Na'amuana — who already had four children when they discovered their fifth pregnancy was actually four babies. Natural identical quadruplets. No fertility therapy. Odds of one in fifteen million. All four delivered by C-section at 28 weeks, each weighing just over two pounds, all doing well and expected to go home soon. They are certainly doing their part. 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!
