🎭 Classroom Crisis or Conservative Con? DeSimone's Education Attack Ignores GOP's Role in School Struggles | WAKE UP LIVE
Behind the numbers: How right-wing media weaponizes test scores while hiding Republican defunding. When $2,700 rent makes you "fine people" but working families are "cockroaches"
This is based on Wake Up Live with Chris DeSimone, a MAGA-conservative podcast hosted by a mayoral candidate for Oro Valley, podcasting from Marana, perpetually hating on Tucson, brought to you by Live The Dream Media on 5/20/25.
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
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🎙️ A podcast called "Wake Up" discussed Tucson's mayor traveling to 🇶🇦 Qatar to help bring business to our city, but instead of seeing how this could help Tucson, the host 😂 made fun of her. They also talked about 📚 students having trouble with reading and 🧮 math but didn't mention that Arizona schools don't get enough 💵 money compared to other states. When they talked about 🏢 apartments, they said expensive ones are good but cheaper ones bring "bad people," which isn't fair to families who can't afford 💸 expensive rent. They also made fun of programs that help 👨👩👧👦 working families with low incomes.
🗝️ Takeaways
🌎 While Mayor Romero works to establish international economic connections in Qatar, local conservative media mocks her efforts with fictional postcards and classist commentary.
📊 DeSimone presented alarming education statistics without mentioning Arizona's bottom-ranking per-pupil funding, teacher exodus crisis, or Republican-led diversion of funds to private schools.
🏘️ The podcast revealed stunning hypocrisy on housing, supporting high-end apartment development ($2,700/month) while demonizing affordable housing and portraying working-class renters as a "bad element."
💸 The discussion of the Earned Income Tax Credit portrayed working poor families as calculating welfare cheats, ignoring research showing EITC increases employment and reduces poverty.
🗣️ Even when quoting Bernie Sanders criticizing Democrats for abandoning working-class voters, the host couldn't resist undermining the message with a personal attack.
The Echo Chamber of Tucson's Elite: MAGA Media on Parade
In the scorching desert of Tucson media, where conservative talking points bloom like prickly pear in monsoon season, Tuesday's "Wake Up" podcast offered another helping of privilege masquerading as insight.
Host Chris DeSimone, whose mayoral aspirations for Oro Valley seem to rival his disdain for Tucson proper, served listeners his usual cocktail of anti-city rhetoric, thinly-veiled classism, and MAGA talking points that would make Tucker Carlson reach for his notepad.
The Mayor's Mission and the Conservative Meltdown
The podcast wasted no time targeting Mayor Regina Romero, who is currently in Qatar for an economic development trip sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. As Tucson works to expand its global economic footprint, DeSimone's reaction was predictably parochial:
"The old queen mayor. Where did she go? Did she go up to Sedona and get some sort of organic colander? Did she go to Symphonic Therapy? Did she go to California and hang out and check out some out-of-state drug camps? Did she go to her old alma mater, where she went for five days of Harvard, and went to some post-graduation ceremony work with her lovely husband, Ruben? No. No. She's in Qatar."
Trump was also recently in Qatar and received a $400,000,000 jet plane from them, but all you heard from DeSimone & Co. when Master Trump went was crickets.
DeSimone even crafted a fictional postcard, mockingly saying: "Hey all, Qatar is ludicrous. Hope you don't get shivved by a Fenty head. X's and O's, Regina."
Ah yes, nothing says "I have substantive policy critiques" quite like mocking a Latina mayor's international economic development work while making light of addiction struggles in the same breath. Peak conservative discourse.
The host's fixation on Mayor Romero's transportation choices—repeatedly questioning why she would fly out of Phoenix Sky Harbor rather than Tucson International—conveniently ignores the reality of international flight options. But logic seldom interrupts a good conservative grievance session.
Meanwhile, as DeSimone obsesses over the Mayor's travel itinerary, Tucson residents continue facing real challenges that demand solutions rather than snarky commentary. The Bloomberg Qatar Economic Forum brings together global business leaders and policymakers, precisely the kind of connections that could benefit Tucson's economic development.
However, acknowledging this would require DeSimone to deviate from his script of relentless criticism.
Downtown Tucson: Reality vs. Conservative Fantasy
DeSimone's portrayal of downtown Tucson as a lawless wasteland reached comical proportions as he breathlessly described a street altercation: "This is downtown Tucson on Sunday night... This is what's going on downtown."
The podcast then played portions of a video showing a fight outside a downtown establishment, with DeSimone narrating: "I mean, if you want to, there's just so much cursing in it. Now, if you want to play it with the volume down, we could do that too."
Because nothing says "serious journalist" like selectively highlighting isolated incidents to paint an entire urban center as dangerous while simultaneously being too delicate for adult language.
This portrayal stands in stark contrast to the vibrant reality of downtown Tucson's revitalization, with its thriving restaurant scene, cultural events, and growing residential community. The economic development that Mayor Romero is working to foster internationally is already happening locally—yet DeSimone seems determined to undermine it with fear-mongering narratives that wouldn't be out of place on a Fox News chyron.
The Education Smear Campaign: Numbers Without Context
Perhaps the most insidious segment came when DeSimone presented his "reading chart," rattling off statistics about reading and math proficiency rates for various school districts in Tucson:
"TUSD, I gave you the numbers with Brother Joe yesterday. 69% of graduates this week from TUSD are not proficient in reading. 80% not proficient in math... Amphi, 50% of Amphi graduates are not, cannot read proficiently. 57%. Math is 62%. Marana School District, 61% not proficient in reading, 69% not proficient in math."
The litany continued through Flowing Wells (69% not proficient in reading, 73% in math), Sunnyside (80% not proficient in reading, 90% in math), Sahuarita (62% in reading, 72% in math), and Vail (41% in reading, 52% in math).
Nothing says "I care about education" quite like using struggling students as political props while ignoring the systematic defunding of public education by Republican legislators who've been in control of Arizona for decades.
Conspicuously absent from this statistical barrage was any mention of:
Arizona's ranking near the bottom nationally in per-pupil spending
The teacher exodus crisis driven by inadequate pay and working conditions
The diversion of public funds to private schools through voucher programs
The impact of poverty and food insecurity on educational outcomes
The chronic underfunding of infrastructure and resources in public schools
Instead, DeSimone's commentary veered into mockery: "Mona, she said, they can't read, but they are in touch with their feelings. She gets a ding for that. Thank you."
This approach represents the classic conservative playbook: highlight problems in public institutions while actively undermining the funding and support needed to address them, then use the resulting struggles to justify further privatization and cuts.
The Tariffs Mirage with Ed Eddington: Selective Economic History
During the third hour, Ed Eddington from Desert Rose Tax and Accounting joined the show, eventually steering the conversation toward tariffs and taxation history:
"Up until 1913, we didn't even have an income tax," Eddington noted. "It was mostly supported by tariffs and excise taxes up until then. The federal government was also a lot more limited until then."
Ah yes, the golden age of American governance—when child labor was legal, workers had no protections, women couldn't vote, and racial segregation was the law of the land. Conservative nostalgia at its finest.
This selective history lesson conveniently omits that pre-1913 America had minimal federal spending on social security, Medicare, infrastructure, public education, and defense compared to today's needs. The nostalgia for a tariff-based economy also overlooks the devastating economic impacts of trade wars, which disproportionately harm working-class Americans through higher prices on everyday goods.
Eddington continued by questioning why products are cheaper to produce overseas: "Why is it that they can produce it over there so much lower? And yeah, labor is part of it, sure. But then again, we're trying to—how is their cost of living so much lower?"
The answer, which neither host nor guest seemed interested in exploring, includes the exploitation of workers without labor protections, environmental regulations, or living wages—all protections that the conservative movement has fought against for decades in the United States.
Housing Hypocrisy: Regulations for Thee, Not for Me
The conversation with Eddington also touched on housing affordability, with both participants falling back on the conservative refrain that regulations are the primary problem:
"Regulation is a big [invisible tax]," Eddington claimed. "And it's that's what keeps it so that it's cheaper to build it halfway around the world and ship it over here and pay tariffs than building it in our own backyard."
On housing specifically, he added: "These costs are the same, whether you're building a $100,000 home or a million-dollar home... So if you're a builder, and you've got these costs, that all adds up into the price of that home."
Because nothing says "serious economic analysis" like pretending that impact fees—which fund the roads, water, and sewer systems developments require—are just government extortion with no purpose.
This discussion conveniently ignored the role of speculation, corporate landlords buying up properties, and the commodification of housing in driving up costs. Instead, they defaulted to the standard conservative line that regulations are the problem, not predatory capitalism.
The hypocrisy reached its peak when DeSimone complained about resistance to apartment developments in Oro Valley:
"There is a portion of our senior population who is in the not-in-my-backyard world, who hate the word apartment," he noted, criticizing people who oppose high-density housing in their neighborhoods. "Watching the Oro Valley Town Council bust the hump of Jim Horvath on redoing the Oro Valley marketplace. Because they want to put apartments and hotels. So you can increase the business of the places that rent there because there's people who can walk out their door and go buy beer, food or whatever."
The cognitive dissonance is almost admirable—simultaneously complaining about housing regulations while supporting a developer's right to build apartments, but only if they're luxury units catering to affluent residents.
DeSimone made this clear when defending certain apartment developments: "The average rent's like $2,700 over there. What are we talking about, the bad, you know, it brings a bad element. No, it doesn't... If you have nice product that has a high monthly rent slash mortgage that you have to get into it, you'll attract fine people."
The mask slips to reveal the classism beneath the housing discussion—apartments are fine as long as they're expensive enough to keep out "the bad element," which means working-class Tucsonans who can't afford $2,700 monthly rents.
The Class Warfare Against the Poor: Earned Income Tax Credit Demonization
Perhaps the most disturbing segment came when discussing the Earned Income Tax Credit, with both host and guest perpetuating harmful stereotypes about low-income Americans:
Eddington characterized it as "a big giveaway" that's "really like you're unarmed."
DeSimone agreed it was essentially "a welfare payment for filling out paperwork," adding: "What I've learned is people that I know possibly just barely graduated high school or maybe never graduated high school, when it comes to coordinating welfare benefits, they become a mix of a math professor and Ed Eddington. They can't read normal stuff...but they can do the math to figure it out, and I can earn this much money."
Eddington claimed "a lot of them know the line and they know that...they can earn up to this much money and then they stop working."
Nothing quite captures conservative "compassion" like portraying working parents struggling to feed their children as calculating welfare cheats.
This caricature of poor Americans as manipulative welfare recipients ignores the overwhelming evidence that the EITC helps lift millions of families out of poverty and encourages work participation. Research consistently shows the EITC increases employment and reduces poverty, particularly among single mothers.
However, addressing these realities would require acknowledging the genuine struggles of working families—a demographic that doesn't seem to register in DeSimone and Eddington's worldview except as objects of derision.
The Bernie Sanders Paradox: Even a Broken Clock...
In a rare moment of near-agreement with progressive views, DeSimone mentioned Bernie Sanders' recent podcast appearance, where Sanders criticized the Democratic establishment:
"Bernie Sanders was on a pod... And he said the Democrats in the establishment sold out decades ago, trading working-class donors for wealthy donors and out-of-touch consultants... When you have a Democrat establishment now, which is funded by wealthy people, you have consultants who are really out of touch with reality, who make a whole lot of money in campaigns, and the working class is ignored."
Even in this moment of potential reflection, DeSimone can't resist adding: "The thing about Bernie is he plays both sides of the fed so well. The guy is wealthy as hell, but he makes it sound like he's, you know, some sort of working class socialist folk hero, which of course he's not."
The irony seems lost on DeSimone, who hosts a podcast catering to wealthy conservatives and is funded by a wealthy brother while claiming to speak for working-class values—exactly the dynamic Sanders critiqued in mainstream Democratic politics.
A Message of Hope: Beyond the Echo Chamber
Despite the divisive rhetoric emanating from conservative media, Tucson remains a resilient community with a rich multicultural heritage and a commitment to creating a more just and equitable future. The challenges we face in education, housing, and economic development are real but will not be solved through mockery, division, and class warfare.
True progress will come when we reject the politics of resentment and embrace solidarity across our differences, when we acknowledge that a teacher struggling with inadequate classroom resources, a family priced out of housing, and a small business owner navigating regulations are not enemies but potential allies in building a Tucson that works for everyone.
The path forward requires not just criticizing what isn't working but also imagining and creating what could be. And that begins with seeing each other's humanity beyond the caricatures presented in podcasts like "Wake Up."
Here in Tucson, grassroots organizations are already doing this essential work:
LUCHA Arizona is organizing communities to fight for economic and racial justice
Tucson Education Association is advocating for properly funded schools and fair teacher pay
Tucson Tenants Union is working to protect renters' rights and fight for affordable housing
Casa Maria continues to feed hungry Tucsonans while advocating for systemic change
PCIC (Pima County Interfaith Council) brings together diverse faith communities to address common concerns
We build the community we want to see by getting involved with these organizations—or simply showing up to a City Council meeting to support policies that benefit all Tucsonans, not just the wealthy few.
And supporting independent media outlets like Three Sonorans is essential to ensuring that perspectives beyond the conservative echo chamber are heard. Your subscription to our Substack helps us continue providing the analysis and commentary that mainstream outlets won't touch. Subscribe today and help keep independent, progressive journalism alive in Tucson.
What Do You Think?
How would Tucson's economic landscape change if influential voices focused on constructive solutions rather than constant criticism?
What resources do you think our schools actually need to improve educational outcomes?
Have you experienced the housing affordability crisis firsthand? What solutions do you think would help?
How do we build media that truly represents Tucson's diverse communities?
Share your thoughts in the comments below, and let's continue this conversation beyond the conservative echo chamber.
Quotes:
"The old queen mayor... She's in Qatar. Malta Joe. There it is. There's the postcard she sent out to everybody. Just having a great time. Having fun in Qatar is just ludicrous." - Chris DeSimone, mocking Mayor Romero's economic development trip, where Trump just was.
"69% of graduates this week from TUSD are not proficient in reading. 80% not proficient in math." - Chris DeSimone, presenting education statistics without context of Arizona's educational funding crisis
"The average rent's like $2,700 over there. What are we talking about of the bad, you know, it brings a bad element. No, it doesn't... If you have nice product that has a high monthly rent slash mortgage that you have to get into it, you'll attract fine people." - Chris DeSimone, revealing class bias in housing discussion
"What I've learned is people that I know possibly just barely graduated high school or maybe never graduated high school, when it comes to coordinating welfare benefits, they become a mix of a math professor and Ed Eddington. They can't read normal stuff...but they can do the math to figure out, I can earn this much money." - Chris DeSimone, demonizing low-income Americans who receive benefits
"Up until 1913, we didn't even have an income tax. It was mostly supported by tariffs and excise taxes up until then." - Ed Eddington, selectively describing pre-New Deal tax structure
People Mentioned:
Regina Romero - Mayor of Tucson, criticized for attending the Qatar Economic Forum: "She's in Qatar. Malta Joe. There it is. There's the postcard she sent out to everybody. Just having a great time."
Ed Eddington - From Desert Rose Tax, who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit is "a big giveaway" and portrayed recipients as manipulative
Bernie Sanders - Quoted criticizing Democratic establishment: "When you got a Democrat establishment now, which is funded by wealthy people, you have consultants who are really out of touch with reality who make a whole lot of money in campaigns and the working class is ignored."
Jim Horvath - Mentioned regarding the Oro Valley marketplace redevelopment
Mike Zinkin - Former councilman who DeSimone said he "got in a fight with" over apartment development
Shawn Bullock - State Senator mentioned as drafting legislation related to housing
Victor Mercado - Described as "Mayor Romero's mouth of Sauron," apparently a city spokesperson
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