EPISODE 612： AMERICAN NO GO ZONES
Episode Stats
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Summary
On this episode of Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec, we are joined by Rahim Kassam, editor-in-chief of The National Pulse and host of the podcast No Go Zones, to discuss the rise of crime in America.
Transcript
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Ladies and gentlemen, we know Christmas is coming, but before Christmas, the gathering
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Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, myself, Donald Trump Jr., Steve Bannon, Roseanne Barr.
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Rob Schneider, James Lindsay, and so many more are going to be at this year's Turning
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Point America Fest, December 16th to 19th, 2023, Phoenix, Arizona.
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Don't come crying to me when this thing is sold out like it does every single year.
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This is what happens when the fourth turning meets fifth-generation warfare.
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A commentator, international social media sensation, and former Navy intelligence veteran.
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This is Human Events with your host, Jack Posobiec.
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard today's edition of Human Events Daily from Jack Posobiec.
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Mariano Domini, you know, a while back we sat down with Rahim Kassam to talk about the
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rise of crime in America, and Rahim, you guys may not know this, but actually found the ability.
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I know it's a bit of a stretch for Rahim to be able to do this.
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One of them was about no-go zones, and he was talking about the no-go zones in Europe,
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Well, it turns out that because of the rise of crime in America and the lack of policing
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due to the defund the police movement and the George Floyd riots, we now have American
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You need to watch this to understand the situation.
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We are returning with the editor-in-chief of The National Pulse, Mr. Rahim Kassam.
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So one of the original things that I knew of Rahim Kassam before you and I got to know
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each other, unfortunately, much to both of our chagrins, is that I knew about Brexit, I
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knew about Nigel and UKIP, but you had a book in, I believe it was 2017, called No-Go
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And this was all about Europe and the rise of European no-go zones.
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And I've been thinking recently about the, and particularly, so I actually went over
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myself to Malmo, Malmo, Sweden, and we went into, I think it was called Rotterberg, inside
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Well, Tanya, I believe you're not, inside there.
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It was, I mean, drive-by shooting happened the night before we landed.
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Um, all the taxi drivers were talking about everything that was going on.
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They said it was a lot of, uh, Somali gangs versus the more established Arab gangs that
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So it was really gang violence that was coming up and, you know, which is not something you
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think of when you think of Sweden, you know, you think of, you know, uh, you know, I know
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what I think of open, open sandwiches and, uh, open face sandwiches and, and smorgasbord and
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And I remember this was a huge, a huge story and a huge narrative for so many years.
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And, and of course, uh, Trump made his famous, uh, statement about it, which really set off
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a lot of this, you know, remember what happened in Sweden last night, you know, and I noticed
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though that here we are five years later, and it feels like the same type of thing is happening
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But it's not necessarily, or at least we're not hearing about it as much in Europe, but
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So this is my thesis that a lot of American inner cities, and in some cases cities themselves
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inside America, major cities, every major city is becoming a no-go zone.
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And it's because this, of this massive rise of violent crime, uh, you've been in Washington,
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And we know there's certain parts of the city that you just don't go to.
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Uh, there have always been Anacostia was a huge one of these.
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When I was, when I was in a DIA unit and, uh, or even when I was at Navy intelligence, Navy
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Um, that was, if you get, you get off work, you do, you drive, you just drive straight
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You know, we had a guy, we had an E3 that came into our, uh, our units and he had just
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And he thought it would be really smart to get, to get himself off base housing at, at
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And we basically had to, we, we basically forced him to move within the end of the first
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There was a shooting like the day after he left right there.
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And so the fact that all of this is going on, um, and, and balling air force base where
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the DIA is, it's also the home of Marine one, the entire Marine one fleet that the president
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uses, and you can go within a stone's throw of there.
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And you're in one of the most violent neighborhoods in America.
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Do you, or, or give me your take on my thesis here.
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Yeah, I think, I think we're living the rise of American no-go zones right now.
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And, and, and, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll coin, I'll coin this phrase for the sake of
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the conversation as well is the subtitle of my book is how Sharia is coming to a neighborhood
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Um, and I suppose that still remains the case, except for the fact that it's a Sharia of
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the left of the political left, rather than a Sharia of radical Islam that you're seeing
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taking root in so many cities across the United States at the moment.
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I think it was accelerated in large part by COVID and, and the movement away from downtown
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Um, the downtown of Washington DC itself became, you know, the entirety became a no-go zone for
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a couple of days, um, when the BLM marches were taking place.
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And I went out there with my camera and documented what had happened, uh, there and, and, and started
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to see how it was taking root in, in, in lots of American cities.
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And I've worked on this thesis for a while now is that as you see, uh, you know, downtowns
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like Houston and Dallas, and, and this is going on all over the country, but these two really
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stick in my head from recent visits, they are not just empty, but they're effectively becoming
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The office block buildings are obviously empty and they are in the process of converting those
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into residential areas, but they're not going to be high-end residential areas.
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They're not going to be places that people want to live because there's nothing really
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You know, in places like Dallas, you don't go downtown, you go to Highland park.
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Um, Houston has its own, they're building these kind of rich little areas on in, in the suburbs
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and outside of the downtown areas that typically hosted the types of places that I like to go
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The steak houses and the fancy restaurants and all of that stuff was downtown, not the case
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And I think we're living that moment where these things are changing right now.
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And my prediction is this, um, within three to four years, uh, maybe I'll go, maybe I'll
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go as high as five, but not much longer than that.
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Um, you're going to see all of these downtown areas in what used to be, you know, proud, you
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know, prideful American cities, um, turn into, turn into shanty towns.
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Well, I mean, uh, uh, uh, Chicago, of course, the magnificent mile, right?
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Uh, you, they, they're, they're beset now with these, what they call them teen takeovers
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where one of the recent and, and this girl, and she, she was on, she's been on Fox, she's
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We're just surrounded, uh, this young white girl, um, who was surrounded.
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But the fact of the matter is that was in one of the most, one of the richest neighborhoods
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And I was actually on with Charlie, um, Charlie Kirk talking about this and I'm, I'm more of
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And so he, when he saw the address of where the, you know, the intersection where this
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Um, he said, how could there be something like this going on in one of the ritziest downtown
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areas of Chicago, a place where, you know, now in Philadelphia.
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Um, I've already had that sort of process of shock where you knew that it used to be that
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if you, you know, you know, so Will Smith, the fresh Prince, right.
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You knew if you went to West Philly, things were, you know, things were going to be trouble
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if you, which is interesting too, because in Philadelphia, it goes, um, university city,
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which is, has the houses, the university of Pennsylvania and the university of Pennsylvania.
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There are the children of world leaders who go there.
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There are professionals going there, et cetera, et cetera.
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And then if you go four or five blocks up, if you continue West up the same street, um,
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You get into areas where the move bombing took place in the 1980s, believe it or not.
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And it, it isn't even too far to the intersection where Kermit Gosnell's house of horrors took
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The abortionist it's, it's within walking distance of the university of Pennsylvania.
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But I think for people, if you're not from the area, you think of all these narratives
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You wouldn't realize that they're in that proximity.
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And so the university of Pennsylvania dealt with this by having one of the largest, I believe,
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um, the largest private police force in the entire state of Pennsylvania is right there.
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And one of the only private police forces that is armed in the state of Pennsylvania because
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of this, again, you, you've got millions of billions of dollars, right?
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This is the Biden pen center, et cetera, is there.
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Um, and they have their office in DC as well, but this is, this is a huge, huge place, um,
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Even when I was living in Philly, I remember this.
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And so then I was at temple university when I was in school and this was, this is 20 years
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ago, but temple was in North Philly and we knew that the campus itself was safe.
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But if you did something off campus, you went off campus into North Philly, up North broad
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street, and you were out there at two in the morning, three in the morning, you were asking
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for trouble and every single one of the stories that I ever heard of someone being mugged or
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Again, this is 20 years ago was, it was always that situation.
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Oh, I was walking home from the party by myself at three in the morning.
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Now, when I hear stories about my alma mater, it's, oh, there was a student who got an apartment
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right off of campus and someone carjacked them and then, uh, and then shot him in the
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head because he fought back, uh, which is something that happened or, oh, there was somebody who
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he was, it seemed like an attempted carjacking at first, but then he ordered him into his
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apartment and started actually taking everything from inside the apartment while they were there.
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And as well, there was a story of, uh, the killing of a temple university police officer
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just not too long ago that really resonated with me because this happened right outside
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the student center, right outside the student center, uh, within, within view of the campus
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And so one thing that I tell people now, I used to say, you could go, but just stay on
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Not just, I'll never bring my children anywhere near there, anywhere near there whatsoever.
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Um, it, the city of Philadelphia is a no-go zone at this point, as far as I'm concerned.
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Um, every neighborhood in the entire city has become this way.
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So there's not really much you can do at that level other than get your family out and get
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And so I see other cities and people who are from those cities going through this process,
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which you have really documented quite well, I think on Washington DC.
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In fact, just before the interview here, there were sirens, you know, going on.
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Um, and, uh, cause I think DC, they have the citizen app, right?
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What are some of the things that you've seen on there since, since 2020 and now that you'd
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Well, look, I live in a pretty affluent part of Washington DC.
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And yet there are two, three blocks away from where I sit, regular, uh, reports of assaults
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Um, and, and, you know, around here we have multiple police.
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You have secret service that comes around here, all of that.
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And yet it remains, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say I've lived in some dangerous
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places and I've been to some really dangerous places.
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I went to some extremely dangerous places, as you say, for that 2017 book, um, no go zones,
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Um, for, for somebody like you, IE somebody with a family, I wouldn't recommend going around
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here, taking the family, taking the kids, taking the wife, letting the wife go around
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Um, I say it to the women that work around here that are my friends.
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I always say, please, you know, make sure you're home by the time, uh, uh, you know,
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And again, look, a lot of people hear this and go, well, of course it's a city, high concentrations
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Uh, those things, you know, those things can happen.
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And it's especially a cop out when you think about the, the, the leaps that were made, uh,
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you only have to go back and watch, you know, on fire, the vanities movie, watch taxi driver
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and watch the leaps that were made after those things came out that people turned around and
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We actually don't like our cities to be that way.
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We don't want the house next door being a brothel.
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We don't want the underpass under the highway being somewhere, but you can't, you can't
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If you got on the highway incorrectly without fear of getting your tires stolen off your
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And you talked about the, you know, how close it is to the rich people, Georgetown university
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Um, there is this spate right now of wealthy kids going to college who are having their
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They have these expensive, like $5,000 puffer jackets.
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And those are being targeted in midtown Manhattan.
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Uh, if you wear the Apple pro max headphones out of your house, you aren't likely walking
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It's, you know, they're being ripped off your head.
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And, and, you know, you can see the targeting going on here.
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Um, you add to that the reluctance to really properly police any of these areas by, by
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the, you know, the liberal left city councils and the Muriel Bowser in Washington, DC, and
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Um, you end up with the perfect storm and the perfect storm is this.
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I said this, I said this years ago about London under Sadiq Khan.
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Uh, and I'll say it now about so many American cities.
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It's really, it's actually, um, we were, we were looking at some travel plans for a, uh,
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this conference that's going on in Europe and we're bringing the kids.
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And so typically, you know, when you fly over, there's direct flights, but then there's also
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And one thing Tanya and I'll do to, um, you know, save some money, but it's also can be
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kind of fun is you, you do like a, like a one day transfer city, one day transfer stop.
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So you'll, you'll do a stopover, but just stay there for a day.
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So, you know, last year when we were on the way to Poland, we did, we did it in Rome and
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Um, so just one, you know, one night, essentially 24 hours, but you know, how much of Rome can
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you see in 24 hours and sort of becomes a, you know, a catch-all.
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And, um, so you, you see so many of the ones through London.
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Um, and even though the airports are all outside the city, you know, it's about an hour, give
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Um, I said, I, I said, even though it was, it was cheaper to go through London, I said,
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It's not, um, it's not something that I, I feel we got another, we got it or whatsoever.
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And that's, and that's distinctly a police siren.
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Like, you know, this is the middle of the day, you know, you can see by the lighting
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in this room, um, middle of a, middle of a, uh, a work day and, and, and this is what
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It's interesting that you say that because we did that as kids, uh, ourselves, you know,
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my first trip ever to Washington DC was when we were taking a, uh, layover, uh, from London
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and we were, I think we were going to Orlando and Florida to visit family.
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Um, but my parents decided to surprise us with, I think we did two days in Manhattan and,
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and, and half a day, uh, in DC and, and back, back then you would think like, yeah, those
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It was post, um, Giuliani in New York and, and a lot of gentrification was going on in
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I mean, people from DC will know what I mean when I say this.
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Um, you wouldn't, you certainly wouldn't have gone to the Navy yard back then.
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No, the first time I went to DC, it was like that.
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I remember going there on a field trip when I was in grade school, number three, by the
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This sounds like it's a soundtrack that we're laying over this.
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So I remember, maybe I should check the citizen app.
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Um, so no, but I, I remember, um, going to visit to see the Smithsonian and do some field
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trip type stuff as you do growing up in the Philly area.
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So that was something that you, you know, you get a day off, you go to the March for life,
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And I remember though, you know, we were told very specifically that you do not leave the
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That's not, you know, I mean, it was drilled into us.
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Now you look at Navy yard and this is like one of the most boom for folks who don't understand
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This is the, the area, the neighborhood around the Navy yard in DC on the river.
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Um, and then the wharf, which is a bit down from there.
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These are some of the most, uh, gentrified areas of DC over the last decade.
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There's been tens of millions of dollars ford into these areas under Muriel Bowser.
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Um, this, and, and by the way, to, to her, you know, something for when you're on the
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left, you're supposed to be against gentrification because what have they been doing?
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They've been taking the families that have lived there for so long and they're kicking
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them up, they're pricing them well and kicked them into PG County.
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But the Chinese investors are getting visas and that's, what's important.
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So as we're, as we're talking right now, I look up the, uh, there's a Twitter account
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called, um, at real time news, 10 DC real time news.
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Um, I won't give away, you know, my exact location by talking about this, but 10 blocks
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away, um, shooting, uh, on the scene, DC police department shooting with one individual gunshot
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Wait, wait, wait, you know, wait, you broad daylight.
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There's actually a shooting that went on just a few blocks from your apartment.
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Well, somebody has to stay here and hold the fort down, you know, we're going to have to
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make American cities great again at some point.
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Um, and I, I think that's something worth mentioning as well is credit to these people
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because the, even the DC local media doesn't cover, give this the coverage that it should
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And there are all these little, um, former corporate media people that have gone, um,
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independent and they spend all day long tracking down, you know, these shootings and these car
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jackings because there's a guy who doesn't get out of.
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And, and otherwise you'd never hear about them.
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I think there was something like 12 shootings this weekend alone in Washington, DC.
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Um, but you don't, you know, when do you see flash of that on the Chiron on, on CNN or Fox
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Now, the great thing about them is they always provide source material.
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So you can go back to the DC, uh, metropolitan police department's website and cross-reference
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But I'll tell you, if somebody wants to make a living out of running a new site, you know,
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a DC crime news site, you have no shortage of news.
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No, honestly, I mean, you could, it would be a billion dollar idea, probably a billion
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If you just did a, essentially a crime blotter and then you had specific ones, you remember
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Gothamists, you remember when Gothamists used to be around, it was like the cool stuff
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And they had DC, they had Gotham, they had Shanghai.
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Cause I, when I lived there, I read Shanghaiist was one of the ones they had, uh, I believe the
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Um, but you'd basically do that, but for crime and then run each city, a billion dollar
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I think, I think, yeah, but you'd, you'd be targeted so quickly because, because the regime
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Um, it is, it is to the extent where you'd need a pretty significant newsroom actually
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to, to put that, to put all of that information together.
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It's happening all over the place all the time in all major American cities.
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Um, if somebody wants to bankroll it, you and I can put it together.
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But let me ask you, but let me ask you, and there are some Chicago ones out there and there's
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some Philly ones at least Twitter account level that have, that have started to come up.
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But, but let me ask you, why does it seem that these stories or this narrative that America
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has become so violent that it doesn't sort of gain any traction at all whatsoever that
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I mean, the wire came out, what, almost 25 years ago that showed the violence of Baltimore
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If anything, it's increased, uh, thanks to the Freddie Gray riots, which were one of the
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first riots that I ever covered, uh, on, on the ground in person in 2015.
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Um, the response to George Floyd, obviously we have to talk about the George Floyd effect
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So, uh, the left will make this, this argument that they'll say, well, there, you know, there
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Yes, maybe, but there's been de-policing, right?
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So there's been de-policing in these areas, de-policing in the cities, de-policing on the
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highways, which is something that nobody talks about.
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Um, that's led to massive, um, reckless driving deaths.
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And, and why, if you're the police officer, are you putting your life in danger?
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If you know, you arrest this person and there's not going to be any significant charges.
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I mean, the criminals, right, right, right, right.
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It's just, it's not worth putting them in cuffs.
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It's not worth it even for your boss's, um, you know, umbrage that will be targeted in
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If you make that arrest, if you intervene in that incident, so they just forget about
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And, and here's the answer to your question, right?
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We have to, we have to realize that, uh, on this, on this matter, um, Kanye West was
00:25:04.380
You know, George Bush doesn't care about black people.
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A lot of these things are happening to black people in predominantly black neighborhoods.
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Like they see those people as, you know, remaining on their plantations, on their Democrat left
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They don't think they're going to move off them, uh, uh, you know, in any significant
00:25:36.100
Well, and you, and you made the point before about, you know, pre Giuliani, New York and
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post Giuliani, but people need to understand that that sort of the, the Scorsese taxi driver
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in New York, um, versus the New York of the nineties and really the two thousands, especially
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when times square became the amusement park that it is now.
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Um, this was because a massive increase in policing, a massive increase in arrest.
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It was because of policies like stop and frisk was because of prosecutions.
00:26:05.220
And it was because of a, a very proactive, um, stance on policing directly target.
00:26:13.900
And this was that, that, uh, was it leaked audio, the hot mic on, um, on Michael Bloomberg
00:26:20.080
from, from some fundraiser when he was trying to enter president in 2020, where he said,
00:26:24.640
well, we send police to the minority neighborhoods and people, and, and the entire media tried
00:26:29.980
to frame it as we're sending them there because we want to arrest more minorities.
00:26:34.860
And he came out, I'll give him credit for a guy who's on the left, uh, you know, nominally
00:26:42.540
I'm not sending police to minority neighborhoods to arrest minorities.
00:26:45.980
I'm sending the police there to protect the minorities.
00:26:51.380
And we've, we've gotten so far in this country with this massive, I call it a psychological
00:26:56.900
operation against police, the demonization of police that's been going on really kicking
00:27:01.600
off with Ferguson, um, the original BLM hashtag, whichever forgets that started as a hashtag
00:27:06.960
on Twitter that has done more to increase the deaths of black Americans since it began
00:27:18.560
And yet they'll find some viral video and they'll decide that that's exactly what's
00:27:22.100
going on because you have these politicians who don't understand statistics or people
00:27:26.500
who, um, just don't care about statistics and know better, uh, that'll go on and lie
00:27:31.640
And it's, you know, I'll put it this way for some of the cities, it's very hard to see
00:27:37.600
Um, obviously you've seen the success in New York and maybe they can get back to that
00:27:43.400
Um, at least for DC, there is an option and it's called takeaway home rule.
00:27:47.460
Because DC is not a, it is not a municipal city.
00:27:54.100
Um, it is, it is very similar under federal law to say Guam or Puerto Rico in this sense
00:28:01.420
because it doesn't have statehood nor should it receive statehood.
00:28:06.180
Not only should DC, um, lose its home rule status and go directly back to the Congress,
00:28:10.480
but if those parts of DC want to have representation, et cetera, like they all call for, that's
00:28:17.800
perfectly fine because you, I'm sure, you know, that on your U S history, that Alexandria
00:28:22.500
and Arlington used to be part of Washington, DC, because in the constitution D if you read
00:28:31.760
And, uh, they were de-annexed, I guess you could say, or re-annexed by Virginia at one
00:28:38.640
point for these very same reasons in the 1800s to receive their, their, um, their representation
00:28:45.020
If you want to return to us, if you want to retain statehood, that's absolutely fine.
00:28:50.100
You will become part of it and you'll receive all the representation you want.
00:28:53.060
Yeah, it, it, it, it's going to stick in the craw of, of Virginia voters.
00:28:58.580
If, if they are made to subsume more DC residents into their voting, um, whatever, but, but, but
00:29:06.180
It's actually factually correct that, um, the federal side of Washington, DC must be, you
00:29:12.860
know, the, you know, Capitol Hill down to the white house surrounding areas, that sort
00:29:17.960
And the rest, the rest can go and join the states that already have representation.
00:29:25.160
Um, the, I'd like to talk about taxi driver more because I, funny enough, you know, I,
00:29:32.900
I didn't even know we were going to get this far into this sort of conversation, but I
00:29:36.080
was, I was actually rewatching it, um, just last night and that, yeah.
00:29:41.720
And that scene that I'd forgotten about when the, uh, when the political candidate is in
00:29:47.240
the backseat of his cab and he's saying to him, so what are you, you know, I, I, he goes,
00:29:51.940
I learned more from taxi drivers than I learned from everybody.
00:29:55.320
You know, he's pandering and he says, well, what do you think should be done?
00:29:58.620
And, and De Niro's character turns around and goes, wow, you know, I just, I just think
00:30:02.120
somebody needs to just get in here and clean it all up, you know, flush it down the toilet.
00:30:07.520
And it's remember that same attitude and it's that same realization.
00:30:12.700
And also, also that same frustration that you see in a movie like falling down, right?
00:30:18.320
Where, where city, city doesn't work man who has paid into city and surfed his city in,
00:30:25.660
in whatever way, all of his life suddenly finds out nothing around him works.
00:30:29.360
And I understand that these aren't supposed to be protagonists in the strictest sense,
00:30:33.580
um, in these movies, but, but those movies are what led to people like Mr. Giuliani coming
00:30:39.460
along, becoming the mayor and going, you know what, somebody does really need to clean this
00:30:46.440
And I think you're going to start seeing more of that in popular culture now as, as American
00:30:51.180
no-go zones proliferate across the United States.
00:30:55.260
You'll probably see a lot more of that reflected in common culture.
00:30:58.800
When I was in New York, uh, covering the, uh, the arrest of president Trump, uh, I had
00:31:04.360
a taxi driver tell me, and we were staying in the East village and I had a taxi driver
00:31:08.520
tell me that he thought that the city was as bad as Dinkins as it was on Dinkins, which
00:31:13.800
is, you know, immediately prior to, um, uh, to Giuliani.
00:31:18.680
Oh, producer Angelo is, is sending me the, the great quote from, from the immortal Travis
00:31:23.420
Bickle, someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.
00:31:30.640
And then actually, believe it or not though, um, totally separate case, but my, the driver
00:31:41.760
They'll, you'll get, you'll get stuck up for wearing a pair of Apple maxes and, and
00:31:47.020
Donald Trump is the one getting arrested for some paycheck thing, the discrepancy that they
00:31:53.660
Um, but the driver who picked me up from there and that was taking me back to the hotel.
00:31:58.540
Um, uh, he asked me if I had been, uh, at the thing I said, yeah, cause he knew where
00:32:04.680
And he goes, and it turns out that he was Armenian and he goes, you know, you know, the
00:32:08.500
person they should be really arresting and said, who's that?
00:32:10.500
He goes, he goes, they should be arresting that effing Victoria Nuland.
00:32:17.100
I was like, and then immediately, I immediately turned my phone on, hit record, go on.
00:32:25.260
And then I didn't actually release it because it just, I don't know.
00:32:27.680
It didn't feel like one of those things to release, but, uh, it was, it was amazing to
00:32:31.100
me that the taxi drivers know, man, the taxi, you can't, you can't hide that stuff from
00:32:40.020
Yeah, I was thinking about this a moment ago, um, because, you know, taxi driver and taxi
00:32:48.200
driver, he goes and he puts the suit and tie on and he takes the girl out for a, a, a
00:32:53.380
slice of, by the way, a slice of apple pie with cheddar cheese melted on top, which is
00:33:01.100
I'm going to, I'm going to bring, bring cheese back.
00:33:08.980
Yeah, I know this is worse than your pizza appetites.
00:33:13.140
Now, listen, we'll talk about that another time, but, but, you know, you find me a taxi
00:33:17.740
driver in New York city today that, that owns a shirt and tie, let alone is walking into
00:33:23.540
a political campaign office and chatting up, you know, the girl at the desk in, in proficient
00:33:28.940
English, a lot has changed in that regard as well.
00:33:32.220
And I think one of the things, yes, you can still find them every, every so often.
00:33:36.520
Um, by the way, do we have to call it the King's English now?
00:33:42.820
I picked up the Telegraph app on my phone and they, some, somebody had passed away, you
00:33:49.320
know, one of these sort of X factor America's got talent hosts and it says queen sends condolences.
00:33:58.720
And you open the article and it's queen Camilla.
00:34:02.100
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:34:09.380
Well, of course, all the people will remember the queen mother was the queen once upon a
00:34:13.620
time, you know, before the queen became the queen.
00:34:18.220
Was the queen mother, but that would, that would be until someone came of age, right?
00:34:22.240
That was before she took the throne, before, before Elizabeth took the throne, the queen
00:34:33.880
No, I thought I was having a stroke or something, you know, I thought maybe I imagined that queen
00:34:42.760
And then I realized that talking about Camilla, this is dreadful.
00:34:46.640
Even, even, even, even worse as, as, as the UK slumps into a clown show version of itself.
00:34:56.040
You want to talk about cities that haven't been the same in a long time.
00:34:59.020
I mean, London, look, if you hang out in Mayfair, if you hang out in Westminster, fine, you're
00:35:05.040
broadly going to be left unaccosted and, and they're very nice places to hang out.
00:35:20.700
But if you start venturing out into the Brixton's and the Camberwell's and the, um, tower Hamlet's
00:35:28.980
and, and so on and so forth, my goodness, you know, you better have your head on a swivel
00:35:35.940
Now that now would those be considered suburbs?
00:35:43.620
But so what I mean by that is, I mean, are they, are they analogous to American suburbs?
00:35:48.120
Because unfortunately what we've seen and what I've seen in, in the Philadelphia area,
00:35:55.160
my parents still live in the Philadelphia suburbs, um, that you see it in DC as well, that this
00:36:05.480
It is not stationary and that it is spreading out into the suburbs.
00:36:10.520
Um, we just had a shooting a couple of weeks ago here that took place right outside of Disney
00:36:19.860
And this was, this was the one where, if you remember, his name was Keith Moses, where this
00:36:23.740
guy was so crazy that he actually went back to the scene of the crime and shot the reporter
00:36:34.180
And this was within, so they called it an Orlando shooting, but if you actually, again,
00:36:38.740
cause Orlando sort of has the, the, you know, the, sort of the main city part, but then
00:36:42.460
the most of it, most of Orlando is it's the theme parks.
00:36:45.960
And then it's the, it's either the resort hotels or the off resort hotels where, you know,
00:36:50.980
if you, if you're looking to save a couple of bucks and you've got your family in, you
00:36:55.380
This was right down the street from the hotels.
00:37:00.460
Killed it, killed a nine-year-old with the initial, um, the initial killing and then came
00:37:04.660
back around and it was like dating the mother or something like that and shoots the reporter.
00:37:08.300
And so, I mean, I use that example just cause it was so heinous, but we've seen it again
00:37:12.540
Um, actually at the, uh, I'll just say it at the bowling alley near where my parents
00:37:17.780
live, the bowling alley that I learned how to bowl.
00:37:20.420
There was a, you know, like a gang shooting from Philadelphia.
00:37:23.060
I was like, why are Philadelphia gangs coming out to the burbs and, you know, settling beefs
00:37:31.340
Um, but it's also, it just speaks to this wider deep policing that I feel like that's
00:37:35.620
And I think in any of these States that if you've got an ability to, um, you know, cause
00:37:40.580
some of these States like, you know, Pennsylvania is kind of a purple state or St. Louis is a
00:37:47.780
That's a red state where the crime in St. Louis, particularly East St. Louis is absolutely
00:37:56.120
And yet you don't, uh, uh, New Orleans is another example.
00:37:59.220
It's a red state that has an, or excuse me, uh, Louisiana is a red state, but new Orleans
00:38:06.820
And they don't seem to be dealing with this at the state.
00:38:12.180
I think you just have to take state action where you have the ability.
00:38:16.380
And of course the media is going to lose their minds over this, but what else would
00:38:22.100
And, and if anything, we need to be making the argument for the fact that, look, you'll
00:38:26.660
forgive me for this because I'm a city boy, right?
00:38:34.360
Um, and, and, and, and, and, and genuinely enjoy ambling aimlessly around a new city.
00:38:50.140
There's, there's a huge difference between, and this is where I, where I think you would
00:38:55.820
And there's a huge difference between sort of like your, your country boy, which is a
00:39:01.300
I think you just, you grow up with conservatism, um, that it's all around you, but, but being
00:39:06.400
a city concert, an urban conservative, it's, it's much more reactive.
00:39:10.500
I feel like it's, it's just much more react because the culture is quite different.
00:39:14.720
And we're, we're, we're the renegades in our towns, you know, with, with one sort of
00:39:18.240
pointing at the, at the street corners going, remember what that was like five years ago?
00:39:26.340
I have letters, I have letters to my old, uh, my old local paper talking about how we
00:39:30.080
shouldn't make the town a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants from Mexico, because
00:39:34.780
it's going to increase crime and it's going to shut down the hospitals.
00:39:41.700
The hospital where I was born, I talk about this all the time.
00:39:47.900
And across the street is a Planned Parenthood clinic.
00:39:52.040
Well, look, I mean, the resurgence of gang culture, um, is absolutely massive now.
00:39:56.920
And it's, and it's the thing that nobody's talking about.
00:39:59.220
Um, there were these conversations that happened in the early nineties.
00:40:01.780
Remember, I think it was Tipper Gore wanted to ban rap.
00:40:04.540
Um, as a, you know, Hillary Clinton, the super predators comment, Joe Biden coming out with
00:40:12.360
I mean, this, this was a, a Democrat left-wing mainstream centrist position in the 1990s.
00:40:23.600
And, um, you know, like your solution, like your state led solution there is going to
00:40:28.540
take some radical conversation, um, about what's going on in these areas, because look,
00:40:33.780
I could probably, you know, touch wood, probably go through my life in Washington, DC without
00:40:40.060
necessarily seeing anything firsthand like that.
00:40:46.720
Um, but on the other hand, um, like you say, these aren't static problems and, and these
00:40:52.420
gangs that, that for instance, you want to take Anacostia or you want to take that area
00:41:00.640
You can go up to Eckington in Northeast DC, just North of union station, by the way, literally
00:41:05.200
like five minutes walk North of university, Catholic university.
00:41:10.140
Um, those you, you, you're starting to see this encirclement now of gang warfare around
00:41:16.760
And now that certain gangs and certain groups of people from like, you know, these ghettos
00:41:22.060
have established control over their local neighborhoods.
00:41:24.780
Now they're pushing out and having confrontations with, with rival gangs.
00:41:31.520
Now, this is why, by the way, these 12 shootings take place over the weekend.
00:41:35.680
It's not, it's not people necessarily getting mugged when they come out of union station.
00:41:40.140
And then being shot, they're just being mugged and maybe kicked in the backside.
00:41:47.160
Well, this is why you get the birthday party shootings indiscriminately, you know, driving
00:41:52.360
past funeral homes, driving to birthday parties and lighting each other up.
00:41:57.500
And of course it's, you know, every so often unrelated civilian cash is astray and that's
00:42:04.420
So this is, this is probably the policy that you can tie this directly to it's, it's, and
00:42:11.160
I, we need to emphasize the depolicing because that is a huge part of this.
00:42:15.560
Um, but obviously no cash bail is, is this policy that you can probably most directly
00:42:26.860
I think it's, I think it's no cash bail and depolicing.
00:42:32.720
You're taking off all the brakes on the system.
00:42:35.080
And, and the amazing thing is the system was working.
00:42:42.260
Do you think anyone would be investing in DC if it wasn't for, um, the fact that the
00:42:49.940
That's when the investments in that's, that's how Donald Trump made his money, um, by believing
00:42:54.480
in Manhattan and starting to go in, in the 1970s when it was still taxi driver time, people
00:43:01.620
Um, but he said, I believe in Manhattan and I think Manhattan can come back.
00:43:04.960
He tried to do whatever Trump world was going to be there.
00:43:07.740
Trump city was going to be a thing on the, um, what was that on the, uh, on the Hudson.
00:43:13.120
And there were, there was this, this whole bit, he never quite got all the way there
00:43:16.800
with it, but he believed in this idea that you could bring the cities back.
00:43:21.240
And under Giuliani, it was the two of them from an economic and a, a criminal perspective,
00:43:27.540
And every, almost every time that I do one of these with, uh, with mayor Giuliani, I
00:43:31.260
always bring that up to say, I say, Mr. Mayor, you know, you were the man who fixed this.
00:43:38.480
And part of, not the only reason, but part of the reason I think they demonize him is
00:43:42.800
because they don't want anyone considering doing that again.
00:43:49.700
Um, I was reminded when I went, there's a little, um, town in the South of France,
00:43:55.260
Bézier and Bézier, you know, being in the South of France, a lot of people can imagine the
00:44:01.220
types of migrant crime that, that were going on.
00:44:03.900
There is extremely gang related Arab dominated, um, crime that was going on down there.
00:44:11.460
And, and the mayor, he was actually, he's a chap called Robert Menard.
00:44:15.660
He, um, he was off the left defected to the right, but not to any right political party.
00:44:23.400
Just sort of said like, you know, I don't associate with the left anymore.
00:44:26.420
And by the way, we're going to clean up this city now it's a small, it's a small city, but
00:44:31.400
what he did was obviously massive, you know, policing presence, physically cleaning up the
00:44:36.760
He says that did a huge amount, uh, for, for, for stopping crime, you know, broken windows
00:44:43.600
I mean, literally cleaning grime off the buildings.
00:44:46.640
He said, you know, just changed people's, um, interpretations of where they were and what
00:44:51.820
Um, and then he instituted this thing called, called the big brother program where he actually
00:44:56.680
went into these communities and recruited from within these communities, people who acted
00:45:01.580
as police liaison officers to the leading gang members.
00:45:04.960
And so every time that there was a big bust up, big shooting, whatever, they would have this
00:45:10.220
community come together with the police, the big brothers and the gangs themselves, right?
00:45:19.320
So they don't necessarily, and their families live there too.
00:45:25.920
And I know it's a little bit more of a softer touch and it's a little bit like negotiating
00:45:32.740
But at the end of the day, the, the Taliban taking over.
00:45:37.600
Well, you've also got, you've also got El Presidente down there in El Salvador.
00:45:41.500
Who's, who's got a little bit of a different approach.
00:45:44.800
Um, but again, that's, that's because in his situation, I mean.
00:45:58.480
They were effectively the government in certain areas.
00:46:00.760
If you wore the wrong number on your shoes or your shirt, or you, or you run, wore the
00:46:08.160
So you're going to, it doesn't matter how old you are.
00:46:10.880
Like we're, we're down to our last five minutes, but there's this policy that president Trump
00:46:16.480
has called for where he, it all, I don't know if it sounds like he's abandoning the cities
00:46:21.840
or what, but he said, you know, let's, let's, let's, let's, um, let's go there.
00:46:25.700
Let's say he's talked about creating 10 American freedom cities, brand new cities from scratch.
00:46:34.220
And I get the impression that in him saying that he's referring to all of these issues
00:46:40.560
that we were talking about of the current cities and I have to give him credit for having a
00:46:46.160
I don't know anyone else out in the playing field right now who's, who's suggested any
00:46:49.760
kind of futuristic vision for America, uh, other than simply like, like you and I have
00:46:54.300
been saying, just reacting to all of it, um, which are things that can be done.
00:46:57.740
But what do you, what do you think of that, of that idea?
00:47:01.580
Do you think it's charismatic, this idea that we can create new cities and hopefully avoid
00:47:06.980
Yeah, it is weird that, that in a lot of places we've given up creating new places throughout
00:47:14.880
human history, there hasn't really been the relent on, on the development of, of, of new,
00:47:21.120
um, urban and suburban areas as there has been in, in recent decades.
00:47:26.140
So I think even just from a planning perspective, right, a developmental perspective, a futurist
00:47:32.300
perspective, this is one of the problems I always have with my own side is that we all,
00:47:36.120
we conservatives are always so easy and quick to, to lament the problems with today, but
00:47:41.540
never, never that quick to suggest the solutions.
00:47:43.700
And I, I do like that solution for that reason.
00:47:46.340
I like that solution also because it serves to underscore some of the other points that
00:47:49.920
we've been making about architecture and beauty and aesthetics and city planning and all of
00:47:55.540
this stuff where we can actually do this and start from scratch and go like, okay, let's
00:47:59.820
take the best of this, this, and this, and the best of this, this, and this.
00:48:06.520
Which by the way, if you know Donald Trump, that that's, I mean, he's, he's, he's a builder.
00:48:11.540
That's kind of the whole point of Donald Trump originally before all the rest of everything
00:48:16.580
What I'm still unsure of is what he's talking about when he talks about tent cities and
00:48:21.360
he talks about taking, taking a lot of the homeless out of current existing American
00:48:26.020
cities and moving them to tent cities, you know, effectively in the suburbs, right?
00:48:30.240
He's talking about, he's talking about doing this just outside of, and I just think that
00:48:40.300
Well, actually I used to be at Fort Meade and there's a, uh, down the way from there
00:48:48.600
So it's, it's, it's physically in Maryland, but, um, it's actually land that's not owned
00:48:55.480
It's just, it's immediately adjacent to Fort Meade, but it's where NSA is, but it's actually
00:49:01.620
owned by the city of DC and it's where they held their juvenile hall.
00:49:05.420
So, I mean, or, you know, Atlanta is kind of doing their, um, remember they were, they're
00:49:09.600
having that, that, uh, tree house Antifa, um, situation.
00:49:14.520
And, uh, and the, so there, there are areas outside of cities that are underdeveloped or
00:49:18.560
undeveloped, I, I think could be used, but yeah, I would obviously hope that they're not
00:49:26.020
Not call them tent cities, like, because, you know, we all remember Hoovervilles or, you
00:49:30.920
know, not, not firsthand, but we know what Hoovervilles were.
00:49:34.520
And we, you, you know, as soon as these things are developed, they're going to use it against
00:49:37.300
him, whether or not it improves the cities or not.
00:49:40.020
Um, I, I think what it does is give him the ability to.
00:49:48.420
It starts the conversation, but it also, it's also very clearly Donald Trump, the real,
00:49:53.500
the real estate guy who's looking at major American cities and going, I wouldn't invest
00:49:59.360
there, you know, and he's trying to think of like, what would make you invest there again?
00:50:03.380
Like, how would you rejuvenate these places that took hundreds of years to build up?
00:50:08.500
Because you, you wouldn't want to lose them, right?
00:50:13.600
You don't really want to lose midtown Manhattan.
00:50:16.980
Um, I, I'm shocked when I go out to, to, to West coast of what you see in LA, what you
00:50:26.380
I just think it needs a little bit more fleshing out than just saying, we're going to build 10
00:50:33.780
We are, we are, we're just up against time here.
00:50:39.940
It's a fantastic thing that we're having this conversation because it means that some,
00:50:43.660
some forward progress is, is, you know, within, within sight.
00:50:47.840
Um, these are the positive kinds of conversations that you need to have about how you improve.
00:50:51.820
And look, I always say this, um, cities can be great places.
00:51:03.660
Um, and so I think, I think it's a good conversation to have because maybe it will mean that certain
00:51:10.020
people who might've spent some time in cities before, but have been put off from it for
00:51:13.700
a long time might start thinking about, oh, okay, well, if we're going to improve them,
00:51:18.820
We're going to reintroduce real policing into these areas.
00:51:26.700
Um, so of course, you know, you, you and my wife, what you have in common is that you're
00:51:32.780
Uh, the very, so Tanya drives here, but, um, usually like, you know, she calls when you're
00:51:39.720
drunk and, you know, she'll come and pick you up as, as, as happens.
00:51:42.840
Um, and the very first time she ever drove a car in Europe was last year.
00:51:50.340
She's never driven a car in Europe her entire life.
00:51:58.520
Cause she's why would I, what would I have to, you walk around town and then you take
00:52:01.400
the train to the next town and that's all you have to do.
00:52:03.720
Um, public transportation in major built up areas is not a bad thing.
00:52:15.780
I did the tube a lot growing up, but, um, it can be very good.
00:52:21.540
Um, it can't be rotting tin cans being dragged down the street, like some kind of, you know,
00:52:27.400
like the H street sidecar, whatever it's called streetcar in Washington, DC, that the government
00:52:32.420
is now paying people to ride because nobody wants to take it because H street is so can
00:52:37.580
be done major walking American cities coming to a future near you.
00:52:42.700
Raheem Kassam, national polls and the sub stack.
00:52:45.280
Make sure to check out the sub stack and friend, always a pleasure.
00:52:47.960
Ladies and gentlemen, as always, you have my permission, lay it short.