America's Truckin' Network · iHeartRadio and Newsradio 700 WLW

America's Truckin Network -- 2/18/26

February 18, 2026·45 min·3 clips

A $350,000 home payment drops by $500 monthly if interest rates hit pre-pandemic levels.

A weather alert starts the board. Gordon reads the National Weather Service warning on extremely critical fire weather across the Central and Southern Plains, along with Pacific storms bringing rain, wind, and Sierra Nevada snow. The part that sticks with him is the contrast. He compares that alert with the earlier snow and ice storm running from New Mexico toward the Northeast, when he says greater Cincinnati and northern Kentucky got 13 inches of snow, then another three or four inches, with temperatures in the teens and 20s. That becomes the show’s frame: public warnings and public narratives should be checked against what listeners actually saw, paid, or drove through. Housing then takes over. Gordon walks through payment math, moving from the current rate around six percent to a hoped-for five percent, then back to a pre-pandemic three percent benchmark. The numbers do most of the talking. At five percent, he says the payment drops to $1,799, which is $187 less each month than the $1,986 figure he uses for today. At three percent, he puts the payment at $1,484 and treats the roughly $500 gap as real household money, not policy fog. The economy becomes the fight. He says predictions after Liberation Day on April 2nd about recession, out-of-control inflation, and heavy unemployment did not happen, and he thinks that should have led to a correction. He does not expect one. Instead, he criticizes mainstream media voices for repeating bad forecasts and then moving on. The close turns to spending. Gordon says Rand Paul has backed cutting the federal budget by one penny per dollar, a small image he uses to sharpen a bigger complaint about federal spending. Weather, rates, media accountability, and budget discipline all come back to the same question: what does this cost people on the road, at home, and month to month?

As heard by us

A weather-and-mortgage hour that uses monthly payment math to frame policy.

The hour opens with National Weather Service warnings for critical fire weather in the Central and Southern Plains, then shifts to Pacific storms that bring gusty winds, low-elevation rain, and heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the housing math that turns rate talk into a real monthly bill.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from America's Truckin' Network