The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Pro America Report. This is Ryan Hite, filling in today yet again here for Mr. Ed Martin going to close out the week. And we’ve got a good show ahead of us. Really good show. Always have good guests. But I’m looking forward to today’s in particular, and it’s going to be a good one, but I’m glad to be here with you. Glad to be taking part in this wonderful Pro America Report family.
Before we get any further, let me go ahead and remind you, go to proamericareport.com. That’s proamericareport.com. You can also head over to PhyllisSchlafly.com. At those places you will find, as we say, every day, so I hope you’re doing it. The podcasts and stand alone segments. You’ll get all the audio from these wonderful segments that we do here on the Pro America report. You will also find the links and the resources and all of the things that we post on social media and author has a book or something similar. Writing or column or anything like that, it’s. Going to be. Over there and you’re not going to want to miss it because there are a lot of good things that you will want to send to your friends and family Co workers as you have these discussions, which we hope that you are having after we have this show, a lot of good topics get covered here. So, we’ll dive into it.
The the news that I wanted to bring to you today, the WYNK, the what you need to know is actually something we’ve talked about. It goes off into a couple of different directions, but I want to pull them together here because I think that this matters. It’s worth saying it’s worth reminding even if we have in fact talked about this months before. Oh, probably more than once, that’s for sure. But here’s here’s here it is. Here’s the WYNK, what You need to know is.
Your dollars are part of your free speech and I think that we need to really take that to heart because we’ve seen some massive movements in the economy of America, from private and public schools to private corporations. There have been some incredible movements. Of two different versions I should say, an agenda versus a response or two different versions of the direction we should go, and when consumers speak up through the use of their dollars, man does it make a big deal. So here, here’s what makes me say this.
Here’s what brings it up. We kind of talked about it a little bit, but we didn’t really go too too far into it this week. You may have seen there were. Of multiple heads of different colleges at Harvard, UPenn. Ohh. I forget the third one at the moment, but college presidents came and testified before a congressional hearing this week on anti-Semitism on their campus and the response to it. And like college university. Protocol and rules around that and how it works and and of course that’s a whole issue that we could have is speech on campus. But here’s, here’s what I’d like to draw down on. And this isn’t even really getting into the Israel-Hamas into the anti-Semitic into free speech into whatever it is this this is we’re going to kind of sidestep that. But this is of course the the conversation that’s coming.
A huge, huge donor for the University of Pennsylvania. His response to their President, Liz Mcgill’s a testimony and his very much unsatisfied feeling after her response at how they were handling the pro Hamas and the anti Israel and the anti Jewish sentiments on campus and how this behemoth of liberalism as we now know, you know, Marxism liberalists, or leftists have completely taken over higher ed at this point. That is one of their bastions of safety for themselves. He was incredibly unhappy with her response and completely unsatisfied with the college’s response. The I should say the university’s response to this situation, and he decided to withdraw his donation.
Now, that might not seem like a big deal. One person withdrawing their donation from this massive multi billion dollar University. However, when that donor is Mr. Ross Stevens, the founder and CEO of Stoneridge Asset Management, and his donation he’s withdrawing is for $100 million. That leaves a mark. That’s a big ouch and I tell you what the the the in Two days this is was. What Wednesday that these hearings happened in two days. The University of Pennsylvania has lost 2% of their operating academic budget and and I’m not just making this up here. I I went and looked it up from the university themselves, their operating academic budget is just over $4 billion for the fiscal year ’24, $100 million. About $4 billion. That’s a that’s just over 2%. So in two days with one person’s decision, 2% of the college budget is gone. It is gone 2% of their budget for the year. That’s a big deal when you start to think about the numbers of how different things work and and where it goes. And and this is what I like to, this is what I hearken back to.
I feel like. In the world Of boycotts. And in the world of being a consumer and deciding where you are or aren’t going to spend your money, it’s really hard. You know, we talk about giving your money to people who who represent your values and don’t give money to people who don’t represent your values. It’s hard to feel like you’re making an impact. And I mean I I feel the same way. This isn’t me being preachy at other people. I feel the same way. It’s it’s really hard to look at it and say, well, does it really matter if I choose not to shop there? Are they going to really feel it? But then I’ve drastically changed my life and has it just been anything, even a Drop in the bucket to this giant corporation.
Well, when enough Of us Make that decision and stick to it. Change is definitely possible and I this is my opportunity to remind you when I say what you need to know is that we have, you know, you have to remember your dollars represent part of your speech, your dollars are your speech in this consumer economy or just let’s all remember bud light for a moment. You know, we may not have necessarily. Had destroyed Anheuser Busch or anything like that, but Bud Light took a hit this year because of their there, as we’ve now found out, very official. They said it wasn’t to begin with. Ohh it wasn’t an official marketing campaign. They’re very official marketing campaign that. They paid a lot of money for with Dylan Mulvaney, the face of transgenderism, I should say one of the faces of transgenderism online today who had a very lackluster college appearance. You may have seen this this week, but that that’s neither here nor there. An empty room for the primary trans activist in America right now. That’s a different topic. But if you look back at what happened. Bud light that section of of the company of AB inBev lost month over month over month. They dropped massive percentage points. I think it reached the 30s. I I should have looked this up before I hopped on, but I’m pretty sure it it it it crossed with almost or almost got to the 30%. They’re they’re sales dropped 30%. Month over month, over the course of this this fiasco playing out. That’s huge. I mean that’s that is company ending stuff here. If if that were their only product. If the company were solely based on that and it weren’t giant and diversified like it was, we may have in fact seen AB inBev, you know. Contract significantly if not close up, that’s. Huge.
And you look back across and see some of the same things. The echoes of that have happened at Target and I think that that’s about to happen at Disney, but this this, you know, UPenn story this week, 2% they’ve lost 2% of their budget in two days because of 1 donor being extremely unhappy with the way that they’re handling this situation. And it’s a very political situation. Make no mistake, they are choosing a value from the far radical left narrative. They are choosing that agenda and it is now hurting their bottom line to a pretty tune. What if several others, maybe not every person that decides to withdraw their donation, it’s $100 million donation. But what if several other people decided you know what I am done with these people? What if a lot of other people said, you know what? I’m gonna go ahead and pile in. It wasn’t even the anti-Semitic stuff. I’m just sick of what you’re doing and I’ve decided that that’s more important to me than my connection with, you know, the University of Pennsylvania. If that’s my alma mater or something like that. In fact, that’s what this guy said at the very end.
The statement from Mr. Ross Stevens’ attorneys was to the effect of I love, you know, the University of Pennsylvania, I think, he said. I love Penn and it is important to me there it is. But our firm’s principles are more important.
You know what? We may not be the $100 million donor to a certain university. We may not have the power to snap our fingers and change public funding, student loans and likewise across the board. Your one Disney plus subscription may not make or break the giant world of grooming extraordinaires that Disney has built.
But it matters, and if we stick to it and if more people get on board and if more. People stick to it. There are measurable and marked differences that can make or break some of these institutions that certainly need breaking. So this is my reminder that your dollars matter. Your dollars are part of your speech and we have got to treat them as such. It’s not convenience. It’s not what I’d like to do. But I’d like to stop giving my money to Amazon and do more mom and pop stuff. I’d like to stop giving my money to Starbucks and buy more. Make the decision what’s more important To you are your principles more important or the convenience to your dollars matter to you as a, as a form of your speech? If they do, do something about it, stick with it. It’ll come up to other people. More people will make that decision. And guess what? Suddenly you find a bud light situation where someone’s sales are tumbling and they realize we’ve gone down the wrong path. We’re either going to close up or we’re going to change. Or you’ll find a Upenn who’s probably having some very difficult conversations this week, 2% of their budget gone in two days. You know, that seems like a drop in the bucket when we’re talking billions, but if this happens one or two more times, they’re in serious trouble. So there is the lesson for us. This is important. It matters. It is a value that we need to hold, and it is a. Path that we need to walk and stick to. Your dollars are a part of your speech. We need to treat them like that. Treat them like the sacred free speech that is recognized here in America. That’s what you need to know today.
And that’s why you should go to the Pro America report website. Go over, proamericareport.com. PhyllisSchlafly.com, grab this segment, send it to someone, see what they think, and then don’t forget to come back to the other side of the break here. After you go there, get the segment. Sign up for the e-mail proamericareport.com. Come on right back here after the break. Got a couple of great guests and we will continue with the show, right back here on the Pro America Report.
