SUNDAY SPECIAL WITH RAHEEM KASSAM
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Summary
On today s sunday special, we are returning with the Editor-in-Chief of the National P pulse, Mr. Rahim Kasam, to discuss his new book, No-Go Zones: The Rise of Europe's No-go Zones, and the growing problem of violent crime in the United States.
Transcript
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ladies and gentlemen michael board today's sunday special here we are returning with the editor-in-chief
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of the national pulse mr rahim kasam rahim thanks for returning to us thank you for having me back
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so one of the original things that i knew of rahim kasam before you and i got to know each other
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unfortunately much to both of our chagrins is that um even i mean i knew about brexit i knew
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about nigel and and ukip but you had a book in i believe it was 2017 called no-go zones and and this
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was all about europe and the rise of european no-go zones and i've been thinking recently about the
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and and particularly so i actually went over myself to uh malbo malmo sweden and we went into it was
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called roderberg inside um inside malmo and this was sort of the no-go zone oh tanya i believe you're
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not um inside there and it was terrible it was i mean drive-by shooting happened the night before
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we landed um all the taxi drivers were talking about everything that was going on they said it
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was a lot of uh somali gangs versus the more established arab gangs that had been there so it's
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really gang violence that was coming up and you know which is not something you think of when you
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think of sweden you know you think of you know uh you know i know what i think of open open sandwiches
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and open-faced sandwiches and and smorgasbord and meatballs yeah meatballs you know and leggy blondes
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yeah blondes vikings etc so that was very eye-opening and i remember this was a huge a huge story and a huge
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narrative for so many years and and of course uh trump get made his famous uh statement about it
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which really set off a lot of this you know you remember what happened in sweden last night you know
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and i noticed though that here we are five years later and it feels like the same type of thing
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is happening again but it's not necessarily or at least we're not hearing about it as much
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in europe but it's happening in america so this is my thesis that a lot of american inner cities
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and in some cases cities themselves inside america major cities every major city is becoming a no-go
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zone and it's because this of this massive rise of violent crime uh you've been in washington dc for
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about as many years as i have 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 when i was when i was in a dia unit and
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uh or even when i was at navy intelligence navy intelligence is located in suitland maryland
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that's prince george's county um that's like ms 13 capital um that was if you get you get off work
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you do you drive you just drive straight out you do not stop you know we had a guy we had an e3 that
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came into our uh our units and he had just been transferred in and he thought it would be really smart to
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get to get himself off base housing at at like some apartment down the street and we basically had to
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we we basically forced him to move within the end of the first week that he was there and apartment
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building he was at oh i'm gonna save some money it'd be great yeah there was a shooting like the day
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after he left right there and so the fact that all of this is going on um and and balling air force
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base where 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 and you're in one of the most violent
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neighborhoods in america and it blows my mind do you or or give me your take on my thesis here
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has america seen the rise of no-go zones yeah i think i think we're living the rise of american
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no-go zones right now and and you know i'll i'll coin i'll coin this phrase for the sake of the
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conversation as well as the subtitle of my book is how sharia is coming to a neighborhood near you
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um and i suppose that still remains the case except for the fact that it's a sharia of the left of the
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political left rather than a sharia of radical islam that you're seeing taking root in so many
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cities across the united states at the moment i think it was accelerated in large part by
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covid and and the movement away from downtown office buildings um the downtown of washington dc
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itself became you know the entirety became a no-go zone for a couple of days um when the blm marches
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were taking place and i went out there with my uh camera and and documented what had happened uh there
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and and started to see how it was taking root in in lots of american cities and i've worked on this
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thesis for a while now is that as you see uh you know downtowns like houston and dallas and and this
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is going on all over the country but these two really stick in my head from recent visits they are not just
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empty but they're effectively becoming shanty towns the office block buildings are obviously empty and they
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are in the process of converting those into residential areas but they're not going to be
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high-end residential areas they're not going to be places that people want to live because there's
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nothing really there anymore you know in places like dallas you don't go downtown you go to highland
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park um houston has its own they're building these kind of rich little areas on in in the suburbs and
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outside of the downtown areas that typically hosted the types of places that i like to go to right the
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steakhouses and the fancy restaurants and all of that stuff was downtown not the case anymore and i
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think we're living that moment where these things are changing right now and my prediction is this
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um within three to four years uh maybe i'll go maybe i'll go as high as five but not much longer than
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that um you're going to see all of these downtown areas in what used to be you know proud you know
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prideful american cities um turn into turn into shanty towns well i mean uh uh uh chicago of course
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the magnificent mile right uh you have they they're beset now with these what they call them teen
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takeovers where one of the recent and and this girl and she she was on she's been on fox she's been
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everywhere was just surrounded uh this young white girl um who was surrounded but the fact of matter is
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that was in one of the most one of the richest neighborhoods of chicago and i was actually on
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with charlie um charlie kirk talking about this and i'm i'm more of a philly guy he's from chicago though
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and so he when he saw the address of where the you know the intersection where this took place
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it blew his mind he said how could there be something like this going on in one of the
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ritziest downtown areas of chicago a place where you know now in philadelphia so we've already gone
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through this um i've already had that sort of process of shock where you knew that it used to be
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that if you know you know so will smith the fresh prince right you knew if you went to west philly
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things were you know things were going to be trouble if you which is interesting too because in
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philadelphia it goes um university city which is has the houses the university of pennsylvania
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and the university of pennsylvania there are the children of world leaders who go there
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there are the i mean this is ivy league there are professionals going there etc etc and then if you go
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four or five blocks up if you continue west up the same street um you immediately get into
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run down row houses you get into areas where the move bombing took place in the 1980s believe it or
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not and it isn't even too far to the intersection where kermit gosnell's house of horrors took place
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the abortionist it's it's within walking distance of the university of pennsylvania but i think for
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people if you're not from the area you think of all these narratives as totally separate things you
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wouldn't realize that they're in that proximity and so the university of pennsylvania
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pennsylvania dealt with this by having one of the largest i believe um the largest private police
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force in the entire state of pennsylvania is right there and one of the only private police forces
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that is armed in the state of pennsylvania because of this again you you've got millions of billions
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of dollars right this is the biden penn center etc is there um and their office in dc as well but this
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is this is a huge huge place um that's directly tied to all of this crime and they used to do the
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teen takeovers there even when i was living in philly i remember this and so then i was at temple
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university when i was in school and this was this 20 years ago but temple was in north philly and we
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knew that the campus itself was safe but if you did something off campus you went off campus into north
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philly up north broad street and you were out there at two in the morning three in the morning you were
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asking for trouble and every single one of the stories that i ever heard of someone being mugged or
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something bad happening again this is 20 years ago was it was always that situation i was walking home
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from the party by myself at three in the morning and right um that's no longer the case now when i hear
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stories about my alma mater it's oh there was a student who got an apartment right off of campus
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and someone carjacked them and then uh and then shot him in the head because he fought back uh which
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is something that happened or oh there was somebody who he was it seemed like an attempted carjacking
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at first but then he ordered him into his apartment and started actually taking everything from inside the
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apartment while they were there this just steps from campus just steps away and as well there was
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a story of uh the killing of a temple university police officer just not too long ago that really
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resonated with me because this happened right outside the student center right outside the student center
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uh within within view of the campus itself and so one thing that i tell people now i used to say you
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could go but just stay on campus not just i'll never bring my children anywhere near there anywhere near
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there whatsoever 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 the the people keep voting for it so
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there's not really much you can do at that level other than get your family out and get them out as
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fast as possible and so i see other cities and people who are from those cities going through this
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process which you have really documented quite well i think on washington dc in fact just before the
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interview here there were sirens you know going on and uh because i think dc they have the citizen app
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right not every city has it but dc does yeah yeah what are some of the things that you've seen on there
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since since 2020 and now that you never used to see before well look i live in a pretty affluent
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part of washington dc and yet there are two three blocks away from where i sit regular uh reports of
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assaults and carjackings and you could probably hear the sirens there's another one right now there's
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another one right now right now on you know you can't script it right um and and you know around
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here we have multiple police we don't have just the dc metropolitan police we have capitol hill police you
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have secret service that comes around here all of that and yet it remains you know i wouldn't i
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wouldn't take i've lived in some dangerous places and i've been to some really dangerous places i went
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to some extremely dangerous places as you say for that 2017 book um no-go zones but it's going that way
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um for somebody like you i.e somebody with a family i wouldn't recommend going around here taking the
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family taking the kids taking the wife letting the wife go around here with the kids by themselves
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absolutely not i mean absolutely not under no circumstances um i say it to the women that work
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around here that are my friends i always say please you know make sure you're home by the time uh you
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know darkness hits it's it's fundamentally unsafe and again look a lot of people hear this and go well
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of course it's a city high concentrations of people living together those things you know those things
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can happen right but that's that's a cop-out and it's especially a cop-out when you think about
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the the the leaps that were made uh you only have to go back and watch you know on fire the vanities
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movie watch taxi driver yep and watch the leaps that were made after those things came out that people
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turned around and go actually you know what we actually don't like our cities to be that way we don't
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want the house next door being a brothel we don't want the underpass under the highway being somewhere
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but you can't you can't turn around and drive if you got on the highway incorrectly without fear of
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getting your tires stolen off your cars and and so on and so forth and you talked about you know
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how close it is to the rich people georgetown university in washington dc um there is this spate right
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now of wealthy kids going to college who are having their expensive puffer jackets they have
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these expensive like five thousand dollar puffer jackets that is some kind of fashion statement i
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guess nowadays pope francis has one too yeah that's right and it's like a deep fake they made of him
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and those are being targeted in midtown manhattan uh if you wear the apple pro max headphones out of
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your house you aren't likely walking back into your house with them it's you know they're being
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ripped off your head it's it's a spate of things and and you know you can see the targeting going on
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here um you add to that the reluctance to really properly police any of these areas by by the you
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know the liberal left city councils and the muriel bowser in washington dc and so on and so forth um you
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end up with the perfect storm and the perfect storm is this i'm sorry i said this i said this years ago
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about london under sadiq khan uh and i'll say it now about so many american cities they're turning
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into it's it's sad right it's really so actually um we were we were looking at some travel plans
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for a uh this conference that's going on in europe and we're bringing the kids and so typically you
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know when you fly over there's direct flights but then there's also transfers and one thing tanya
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i'll do to um you know save some money but it's also can be kind of fun is you you do like a like
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a one-day transfer city one-day transfer stop so you'll you'll do a stopover but just stay there for
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a day so you know last year when we were on the way to poland we did we did it in rome and it was
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amazing right 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 and um so you you see so many of
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the ones through london um and even though the airports are all outside the city you know it's
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about an hour give or take you can get in and um yeah i said no to all of them i said i i said even
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though it was it was cheaper to go through london i said absolutely not i'm i'm not interested it's not
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worth it it's not um it's not something that i i feel we got another we got it whatsoever
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we got another another siren that's and that's distinctly a police siren it's just unbelievable
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like you know this is the middle of the day you know you can see by the lighting in this room
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um middle of a middle of a a work day and and this is what you have it's interesting that you say
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that because we did that as kids uh ourselves you know my first trip ever to washington dc
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was when we were taking a uh layover uh from london and we i think we were going to orlando and
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florida to visit family um but my parents decided to surprise us with i think we did two days in
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manhattan and and half a day uh in dc and and back back then you would think like yeah those cities
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had had improved it was post um giuliani in new york and and a lot of gentrification was going on
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in washington dc i mean people from dc will know what i mean when i say this um you wouldn't you
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certainly wouldn't have gone to the navy yard back then 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 way yeah this
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sounds like it's a soundtrack that we're laying over this that's a cop car right there
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wow i don't know what to tell you so i remember maybe i should check the citizen app
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oh you just check this isn't enough yeah this is real time so no but i i remember um going to
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visit to see the smithsonian and do some field trip type stuff as you do growing up in philly area
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um not far we also used to go to the march for life so that was something because we're catholic
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so that was something that you you know you get a day off you go do the march for life etc it's
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great and uh it's only a couple hours by bus and i remember though you know we were told very
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specifically that you do not leave the hotel you do not go into navy yard you do not go anywhere
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that's not you know i mean it was drilled into us now you look at navy yard and this is like one of
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the most boom for folks who don't understand what we're saying this is the the area around the
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neighborhood around the navy yard in dc on the river um and then the wharf which is a bit down from
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there these are some of the most uh gentrified areas of dc over the last decade there's been
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tens of millions of dollars poured into these areas under muriel bowser um this and and by the
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way to to her you know something for when you're on the left you're supposed to be against gentrification
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because what have they been doing they've been taking the families that have lived there for so
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long and they're kicking them they're pricing them well and kicked them into pg county yes but the
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chinese investors are getting visas and that's what's important that's what's so important db db5
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baby you might get a visa so as we're as we're talking right now i look up the uh there's a
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twitter account called um at real time news 10 dc real time news um i won't give away you know my
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exact location by talking about this but 10 blocks away um shooting uh on the scene dc police department
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shooting with one individual gunshot wound injuries middle of the day wait wait you know
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wait in broad daylight you're serious there's actually a shooting that went on just a few
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blocks from your apartment 24 minutes ago according to that as we were recording this episode yeah that
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just happened yeah you got to get out of there man you got to you have to get out of there well
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somebody has to stay here and hold the fort down you know we're gonna have to make american cities
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great again at some point um and i i think that's something worth mentioning as well is credit to these
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people because even the dc local media doesn't cover give this the coverage that it should get and there
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are all these little um former corporate media people that have gone um independent and they spend
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all day long tracking down you know these shootings and these carjackings because there's a guy who
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doesn't get out of it's phenomenal yeah yeah and and otherwise you'd never hear about them i think
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there was something like 12 shootings this weekend alone in washington dc um but you don't you know
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when do you see flash of that on the chyron on on cnn or fox news or anything you have to rely
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on these now the great thing about them is they always provide source material so you can go back to
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the dc metropolitan police department's website and cross-reference though that information but
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i'll tell you if somebody wants to make a living out of running a news site you know a dc crime news
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site you have no shortage of news no honestly i mean you could it would be a billion dollar idea
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probably a billion dollar idea if you just did a essentially a crime blotter and then you had
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specific ones you remember gothamists you remember when gothamists used to be around it was like the
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cool stuff to do and they had dc they had gotham they had shanghai because when i lived there i read
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shanghaiist was one of the ones they had uh i believe the whole thing was shuttered yeah um but
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you'd basically do that but for crime and then run each city a billion dollar idea right there yeah i
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think i think yeah but you'd you'd be targeted so quickly oh yeah because because the regime does
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not want that information out there um it is it is to the extent where you'd need a pretty significant
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newsroom actually to to put that to put all of that information together it's happening all over
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the place all the time in all major american cities um if somebody wants to bankroll it you and i can put
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it together but let me ask you but let me ask you and there are some chicago ones out there and
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there's some philly ones at least twitter account level that have that have started to come up but
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but let me ask you why does it seem that these stories or this narrative that america has become
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so violent that it doesn't sort of gain any traction at all whatsoever that are americans just immune to
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it i mean the wire came out what almost 25 years ago that showed the violence of baltimore and that
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hasn't changed if anything it's increased uh thanks to the freddie gray riots which were one of the first
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riots that i ever covered uh on on the ground in person in 2015 um the response to george floyd
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obviously we have to talk about the george floyd effect here and the overall so uh the left will
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make this this argument that they'll say well there you know there hasn't been a defunding of the police
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yes maybe but there's been depolicing right so there's been depolicing in these areas depolicing in
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the cities depolicing on the highways which is something that nobody talks about um that's led to
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massive um reckless driving deaths and and why if you're the police officer are you putting your life
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in danger if you know you arrest this person and there's not going to be any significant charges
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you'll be right next to derek chauvin right and but they're not going to be charged you know the the
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the the da's are not even the criminals right right right right it's just it's not worth putting them in
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cuffs it's not worth the paperwork it's not worth the risk to your life it's not worth any of it it's
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not worth even if they go again it's not worth it even for your boss's um you know umbrage that will
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be targeted in your direction if you make that arrest if you intervene in that incident so they
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just forget about it and and here's the answer to your question right we have to we have to realize
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that uh on this on this matter um kanye west was correct you know george bush doesn't care about
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black people barack obama didn't care about black people joe biden doesn't care about black people
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muriel bowser doesn't care about black people a lot of these things are happening to black people
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in predominantly black neighborhoods and so why would they do anything about it right like they see
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those people as you know remaining on their plantations on their democrat left plantations they
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don't think they're going to move off them uh you know in any significant way anytime soon what's the
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point leave them to it that's that's what they think well and you and you made the point before about
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you know pre-giuliani new york and post-giuliani but people need to understand that that's sort of the
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the scorsese taxi driver in new york um versus the new york of the 90s and really the 2000s especially
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when times square became the amusement park that it is now um this was because a massive increase in
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policing a massive increase in arrests it was because of policies like stop and frisk was because
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of prosecutions and it was because of a a very proactive um stance on policing directly target and
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this is what i love and this was that that uh was it leaked audio the hot mic on um on michael bloomberg
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from from some fundraiser when he was trying to run for president in 2020 where he said well we send
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police to the minority neighborhoods and people and and the entire media tried to frame it as
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we're sending them there because we want to arrest more minorities and he came i'll give him credit for
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a guy who's on the left uh you know nominally he said you're looking at it all backwards i'm not
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sending police to minority neighborhoods to arrest minorities i'm sending the police there to protect
00:25:17.840
the minorities that's the point of police and we've we've gotten so far in this country with this
00:25:24.680
massive i call it a psychological operation against police the demonization of police that's been going
00:25:29.920
on really kicking off with ferguson um the original blm hashtag whichever forgets that started as a hashtag
00:25:36.500
on twitter that has done more to increase the deaths of black americans since it began than anything else
00:25:48.100
and yet they'll find some viral video and they'll decide that that's exactly what's going on because
00:25:52.260
you have these politicians who don't understand statistics or people who um just don't care about
00:25:57.780
statistics and know better and they'll go on and lie about it and it's you know i'll put it this way
00:26:04.200
for some of the cities it's very hard to see what you do with this um obviously you've seen the
00:26:08.280
success in new york and and maybe they can get back to that philadelphia i don't know um at least for dc
00:26:13.920
there is an option and it's called takeaway home rule because dc is not a it is not a municipal city
00:26:21.200
it's not a municipality it is a federal territory um it is it is very similar under federal law to say
00:26:28.420
guam or puerto rico in this sense because it doesn't have statehood nor should it receive statehood
00:26:33.220
and by the way i'll go a step further not only should dc um lose its home rule status and go
00:26:38.920
directly back to the congress but if those parts of dc want to have representation etc like they all
00:26:46.380
call for that's perfectly fine because you i'm sure you know that on you know your u.s history
00:26:50.800
that alexandria and arlington used to be part of washington dc because in the constitution d if you
00:26:57.480
read the dimensions dc is a square right well a diamond i guess and uh they were de-annexed i guess
00:27:05.040
you could say or re-annexed by virginia at one point for these very same reasons in the 1800s to receive
00:27:10.620
their their um their representation back and i say that's fine if you want to return to us if you want
00:27:16.060
to retain statehood that's absolutely fine the name of that state is maryland you will become part of it
00:27:21.120
and you'll receive all the representation you want yeah it it it's going to stick in the craw of
00:27:27.000
virginia voters if if they are made to subsume more dc residents into their voting um whatever but but
00:27:34.720
but that's true it's actually factually correct that um the federal side of washington dc must be
00:27:41.980
you know the you know capitol hill down to the white house surrounding areas that sort of thing
00:27:47.500
and the rest the rest can go and join the states that already have representation i think there is
00:27:53.000
a huge case for that um i'd like to talk about taxi driver more because i really funny enough you know
00:28:02.240
i i didn't even know we were going to get this far into this sort of conversation but i was i was
00:28:06.060
actually re-watching it um just last night and oh really yeah and that scene that i'd forgotten
00:28:13.280
about when the uh when the political candidate is in the back seat of his cab yeah and he's saying
00:28:19.660
to him so what do you know i i he goes i learned more from taxi drivers than i learned from everybody
00:28:24.780
you know he's pandering and he says well what do you think should be done and and de Niro's character
00:28:29.340
turns around and goes well you know i just i just think somebody needs to just get in here and and clean
00:28:34.820
it all up you know flush it down the toilet and it's remember that same attitude and it's that same
00:28:41.360
realization and also also that same frustration that you see in a movie like falling down right
00:28:47.580
where where city city doesn't work man who is paid into city and served his city in in whatever way
00:28:56.000
all of his life suddenly finds out nothing around it works and i understand that these aren't supposed
00:29:00.360
to be protagonists in the strictest sense um in these movies but but those movies are what led to
00:29:07.280
people like mr giuliani coming along becoming the mayor and going you know what somebody does really
00:29:12.460
need to clean this up and flush it down the toilet you know and i think you're going to start seeing
00:29:17.960
more of that in popular culture now as as american no-go zones proliferate across the united states you'll
00:29:25.100
probably see a lot more of that reflected in common culture when i was in new york uh covering the uh the
00:29:31.160
arrest of president trump uh i had a taxi driver tell me and we were staying in the east village
00:29:36.520
and i had a taxi driver tell me that he thought that the city was as bad as dinkins as it was on
00:29:42.580
dinkins which is you know immediately prior to um uh to giuliani oh producer angelo is is sending me
00:29:49.940
the the great quote from from the immortal travis bickle someday a real rain will come and wash all
00:29:56.540
this scum off the streets yeah that's right and then actually believe it or not though um totally
00:30:02.800
separate case but my the driver that picked me up at the arrest of trump so it's amazing right right
00:30:09.800
all of this is going on in new york they'll you'll get you'll get stuck up for wearing a pair of apple
00:30:15.360
maxes and and donald trump is the one getting arrested for some paycheck thing the discrepancy that
00:30:21.500
they claim exists um but the driver who picked me up from there and that was taking me back to the
00:30:27.020
hotel um uh he asked me if i had been uh at the thing i said yeah because he knew where he's picking
00:30:32.440
me up from which is yeah i saw that and he goes and it turns out that he was armenian and he goes
00:30:37.320
you know you know the person they should be really arresting i said who's that he goes he goes they
00:30:41.140
should be arresting that effing victorian newland that's the one they should be arresting wow i was
00:30:47.280
like and then immediately i immediately turned my phone on hit record go on so you were saying about
00:30:53.660
victorian newlands and then i didn't actually release it because it just i don't know it didn't feel
00:30:57.560
like one of those things to release but uh it was it was amazing to me that the taxi drivers know man
00:31:03.360
the taxi you can't you can't hide that stuff from the people that live on the ground you just you
00:31:08.960
can't do it yeah i was thinking about this a moment ago um because you know taxi drivers
00:31:17.260
and taxi driver he goes and he puts the suit and tie on and he takes the girl out for a
00:31:21.900
a slice of by the way a slice of apple pie with cheddar cheese melted on top which is something
00:31:28.940
we don't do enough nowadays i'm gonna i'm gonna bring bring you're not gonna have cheese back
00:31:33.840
you're not gonna have that oh apple pie with cheese is amazing it's amazing terrible yeah i know
00:31:39.520
this is listen i know this is worse than your pizza appetites now listen we'll talk about that
00:31:44.400
another time but but you know you find me a taxi driver in new york city today that that owns a
00:31:50.000
shirt and tie let alone is walking into a political campaign office and chatting up you know the girl
00:31:56.160
at the desk in in proficient english a lot has changed in that regard as well and i think one of
00:32:02.720
the things yes you can still find them every every so often um by the way do we have to call it the
00:32:07.660
king's english now yeah you do oh that's right oh i was mortified this morning i picked up the
00:32:13.180
the telegraph app on my phone and they some somebody had passed away you know one of these
00:32:19.320
sort of x factor america's got talent hosts and it says queen sends condolences and i thought to
00:32:27.520
myself what and you open the article and it's queen camilla and i was like no no no no no no no we're not
00:32:34.060
doing that yeah yeah no i don't well of course older people will remember the queen mother was
00:32:42.040
the queen once upon a time you know before the queen became the queen so that's the way it works
00:32:47.600
was the queen mother but that would that would be until someone came of age right that was before she
00:32:52.680
took the throne before before elizabeth took the throne the queen mother her mother was the queen
00:32:56.960
i suppose but yeah strange isn't it no no no i don't accept that no i thought i was having a
00:33:04.920
stroke or something you know i thought maybe i imagined that queen elizabeth had passed away and
00:33:10.200
she didn't and i got very excited for a moment and then i realized that talking about camilla this is
00:33:14.820
dreadful um even even even even worse as as as the uk slumps into a a clown show version of itself
00:33:22.940
and it's yeah and you want to talk about world you want to talk about cities that haven't been
00:33:27.560
the same in a long time i mean london um uh look if you hang out in mayfair if you hang out in
00:33:32.940
westminster fine you're broadly going to be left unaccosted um and and they're very nice places
00:33:38.820
to hang out make sure to keep your narwhal tusk nearby just yeah yeah yeah that's right that's right
00:33:44.100
that was that was london bridge um but but if you and the polish chef that's right but if you start
00:33:51.500
venturing out into the brixtons and the camberwells and the um tower hamlets and and so on and so forth
00:33:59.680
my goodness you know you better have your head on a swivel in those in those areas really now that now
00:34:05.980
would those be considered suburbs yeah yeah but they're boroughs you know london's massive it has
00:34:11.080
32 constituent boroughs right but so what i mean by that is i mean are they are they analogous to
00:34:16.920
american suburbs because unfortunately what we've seen and what i've seen in in the philadelphia
00:34:24.280
area my parents still live in philadelphia suburbs um that you see it in dc as well that this crime is
00:34:33.260
not static it is not stationary and that it is spreading out into the suburbs it is going out
00:34:39.700
further um we just had a shooting a couple of weeks ago here that took place right outside of disney world
00:34:46.920
so this was you know orlando and this was this was the one where if you remember his name was keith
00:34:51.880
moses where this guy was so crazy that he actually went back to the scene of the crime and shot the
00:34:58.600
reporter who was reporting on his earlier shooting yeah you remember this and this was within so they
00:35:05.400
called it an orlando shooting but if you actually again because orlando sort of has the the you know
00:35:10.260
sort of the main city part but then the most of it most of orlando is it's the theme parks and then
00:35:15.960
it's the it's either the resort hotels or the off resort hotels where you know if you if you're
00:35:21.140
looking to save a couple of bucks and you get your family in you know that's where you stay this was
00:35:25.440
right down the street from the hotels this was not in some inner city area killed killed a nine-year-old
00:35:31.280
with the initial um the initial killing and then came back around and was like dating the mother or
00:35:36.300
something like that and shoot the reporter and so i mean i use that example just because it was so
00:35:40.340
heinous but we've seen it again and again um actually at the uh i'll just say it at the bowling
00:35:45.760
alley near where my parents live the bowling alley that where i learned how to bowl there was a you
00:35:50.820
know like a gang shooting from philadelphia it's like why are philadelphia gangs coming out to the burbs
00:35:55.360
and you know settling beefs at a suburban bowling it makes no sense right um but it's also it just
00:36:02.260
speaks to this wider de-policing that i feel like that's going on and i think in any of these states
00:36:06.700
that if you've got an ability to um you know because some of these states like you know
00:36:11.040
pennsylvania is kind of a purple state or you know st louis is a great example where ferguson took place
00:36:15.820
that's a red state okay that's a red state where the crime in st louis particularly east st louis
00:36:21.340
is absolutely horrific um in terms of homicides and yet you don't uh new orleans is another example
00:36:28.760
it's a red state that has an or excuse me louisiana is a red state but new orleans has an incredible
00:36:34.940
homicide problem and they don't seem to be dealing with this at the state i think you have to take
00:36:41.260
state action i think you just have to take state action where you have the ability and of course the
00:36:47.100
media is going to lose their minds over this but what else would you do yeah and and if anything
00:36:52.720
we need to be making the argument for the fact that look you'll forgive me for this because i'm a
00:36:57.460
city boy right like i was born in a city raised in a city i love cities i travel to cities all the
00:37:03.220
time um and and and and and genuinely enjoy ambling aimlessly around a new city i was in
00:37:11.320
seattle a couple of weeks ago did it there i was in st louis last summer uh did it there and and you
00:37:17.300
start can i can i speak to something there's there's a huge difference between and this is why where i
00:37:23.300
think you would have in common that we're not country boys and there's a huge difference between
00:37:27.100
sort of like your your country boy which is a cultural conservative i think you grow up with
00:37:32.480
conservatism um that it's all around you but but being a city concert an urban conservative
00:37:38.160
it's it's much more reactive i feel like it's it's just much more react because the culture is quite
00:37:42.880
different yeah and we're we're the renegades in our towns you know we're the ones pointing at the
00:37:48.600
at the street corners going remember what that was like five years ago why isn't it like that anymore
00:37:53.440
you know um and there is this research i have letter i have letters to my old uh my old local paper
00:37:58.540
talking about how we shouldn't make the town a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants from mexico
00:38:03.900
because it's going to increase crime and it's going to shut down the hospitals guess what all the
00:38:08.440
hospitals are shut down the crime isn't completely insane the hospital where i was born i talk about
00:38:12.920
this all the time the hospital where i was born has been raised there is an empty lot in its place
00:38:17.400
and across the street is a planned parenthood clinic that's that's where i was born well look i mean
00:38:22.560
the resurgence of gang culture um is absolutely massive now and it's and it's the thing that
00:38:27.600
nobody's talking about um there were these conversations that happened in the early 90s
00:38:31.400
remember i think it was tipper gore wanted to ban rat um as a you know hillary clinton the super
00:38:37.700
predators comment joe biden coming out with the uh the crime bill i mean this this was a a democrat
00:38:44.440
left-wing mainstream centrist position in the 1990s yeah yeah tough on crime tough on the causes
00:38:52.180
of crime and um you know like your solution like your state-led solution there it is going to take
00:38:58.300
some a radical conversation um about what's going on in these areas because look i could probably you
00:39:05.720
know touch wood probably go through my life in washington dc without necessarily seeing anything
00:39:10.840
firsthand like that right like like somebody being shot in front of me right touch wood um but on the
00:39:17.700
other hand um like you say these aren't static problems and and these gangs that that for instance
00:39:24.580
you want to take anacostia or you want to take that area down by the wharf uh you want to take the
00:39:29.220
old navy yard you can go up to eckington in northeast dc just north of union station by the way
00:39:34.280
literally like five minutes walk north of catholic university catholic university absolutely um those
00:39:40.840
you're starting to see this encirclement now of gang warfare around the city yeah and now that
00:39:47.060
certain gangs and certain groups of people from like you know these ghettos have established control
00:39:52.820
over their local neighborhoods now they're pushing out and having confrontations with with rival gangs
00:39:58.600
and that that is becoming a real thing here now this is why by the way these 12 shootings take place
00:40:04.340
over the weekend it's not it's not people necessarily getting mugged when they come out of union station
00:40:09.780
and and then being shot they're just being mugged and maybe kicked in the backside um but it's the
00:40:16.060
gang members well this is why you get the the birthday party shootings indiscriminately you know
00:40:21.500
driving past funeral homes driving to birthday parties and lighting each other up and of course
00:40:27.800
it's you know every so often unrelated civilian catches astray and that's getting more and more
00:40:33.240
common right so this is this is that you probably the policy that you can tie this directly to
00:40:39.360
it's it's and i we need to emphasize the deep policing because that is a huge part of this
00:40:44.560
um but obviously no cash bail is is this policy that you can probably most directly tie to this bail
00:40:53.160
reform in general um but i do think it's both i think it's i think it's no cash bail and deep policing
00:40:59.080
you're you're taking off the brakes you're taking off all the brakes on the system and and the
00:41:05.380
amazing thing is the system was working dc was cleaned up uh new york was cleaned up do you think
00:41:12.160
anyone would be investing in dc if it wasn't for um the fact that the crime was down of course not
00:41:18.320
the same with new york that's when the investment was in that's that's how donald trump made his money
00:41:22.420
um by believing in manhattan and starting to go in in the 1970s when it was still taxi driver time
00:41:29.360
people call him crazy um but he said i believe in manhattan and i think manhattan can come back he tried to do
00:41:35.380
remember trump world was going to be if their trump city was going to be a thing on the um
00:41:39.740
what was that on the uh on the hudson and there were there was this this whole bit he never quite
00:41:45.540
got all the way there with it but he believed in this idea that you could bring the cities back
00:41:49.760
and under giuliani it was the two of them from an economic and a a criminal perspective the broken
00:41:55.920
windows policy and every almost every time that i do one of these with uh with mayor giuliani i always
00:42:00.980
bring that up to say i say mr mayor you know you were the man who fixed this you were the one who
00:42:07.100
had the right answer and part of not the only reason but part of the reason i think they demonize
00:42:12.100
him is because they don't want anyone considering doing that again yeah i was reminded i was just
00:42:18.480
looking up um i was reminded when i went there's a little um town in the south of france called
00:42:24.980
bezier and bezier you know being in the south of france a lot of people can imagine the types of
00:42:31.400
migrant crime that that were going on there is extremely gang related arab dominated um crime
00:42:39.960
that was going on down there and and the mayor he was actually his chap called robert menard he um
00:42:46.240
he was of the left defected to the right but not to any right political party just sort of said like
00:42:53.980
you know i don't associate with the left anymore and by the way we're going to clean up this city
00:42:58.680
now it's a small it's a small city but what he did was obviously massive you know policing presence
00:43:04.560
physically cleaning up the neighborhoods he says that did a huge amount uh for for for stopping crime
00:43:10.980
yeah broken windows policy yeah i mean literally cleaning grime off the buildings he said you know just
00:43:17.120
changed people's um interpretations of where they were and what they were doing there um and then he
00:43:22.380
instituted this thing called called the big brother program where he actually went into these
00:43:26.940
communities and recruited from within these communities people who acted as police liaison
00:43:32.080
officers to the leading gang members and so every time that there was a big bust up big shooting
00:43:37.840
whatever they would have this community come together with the police the big brothers and the gangs
00:43:44.080
themselves right because a lot of these gang members right remember are teenagers still
00:43:48.860
so they don't necessarily and their families live there too right and and he credited that and i know
00:43:56.060
it's a little bit more of a softer touch and it's a little bit like negotiating with the taliban
00:44:01.500
right but at the end of the day the the taliban taking over well you've also got you've also got el
00:44:09.420
presidente down there in el salvador who's who's got a little bit of a different approach um but again
00:44:15.180
that's that's because in his situation i mean the gangs had become uh institutions
00:44:21.760
they were taking over the country they were taking over the entire country becoming the government
00:44:27.400
right they were they were effectively the government in certain areas if you wore the wrong
00:44:31.360
number on your shoes or your shirt or you or you run wore the wrong uh brand of shoes in a certain
00:44:36.540
area oh that's a ravel brand so you're gonna doesn't matter how old you are you're shot up
00:44:39.700
right we're we're down to our last five minutes but there's this policy that president trump has
00:44:46.180
called for where he it i don't know if it sounds like he's abandoning the cities or what but he said
00:44:52.440
you know let's let's let's let's um let's go there let's say he's talked about creating 10 american
00:44:59.100
freedom cities brand new cities from scratch and i get the impression that in him saying that
00:45:07.680
he's referring to all of these issues that we're talking about of the current cities
00:45:12.280
and i have to give him credit for having a forward look i don't know anyone else out in the playing
00:45:17.180
field right now who's who's suggested any kind of futuristic vision for america uh other than
00:45:22.620
simply like like you and i've been saying just reacting to all of it um which are things that can
00:45:26.940
be done but what do you think of that of that idea what do you think does it appeal to you do you
00:45:31.340
think it's charismatic this idea that we can create new cities and hopefully avoid these pitfalls
00:45:36.540
yeah it is weird that that in a lot of places we've given up creating new polices throughout
00:45:44.440
human history there hasn't really been the relent on on the development of of of new um urban and
00:45:52.280
suburban areas as there has been in in recent decades so i think even just from a planning perspective
00:45:58.900
right a developmental perspective a futurist perspective this is one of the problems i always
00:46:04.160
have with my own side is that we all we conservatives are always so easy and quick to to lament the
00:46:10.000
problems with today but never never that quick to suggest the solutions and i i do like that solution
00:46:14.740
for that reason i like that solution also because it serves to underscore some of the other points that
00:46:19.480
we've been making about architecture and beauty and aesthetics and city planning and all of this
00:46:25.200
stuff where we can actually do this and start from scratch and go like okay let's take the best of this
00:46:30.760
this and this and the best of this this and this and we put that all together new city great fine
00:46:35.680
well by the way if you know donald trump that that's i mean he's he's he's a builder he's a real
00:46:40.480
estate developer that's kind of the whole point of donald trump right before all the rest of everything
00:46:45.320
else what i'm still unsure of is what he's talking about when he talks about tent cities and he talks
00:46:51.260
about taking taking a lot of the homeless out of current existing american cities and moving them to tent
00:46:57.080
cities you know effectively in the suburbs right he's talking about he's talking about doing this
00:47:02.000
just outside of and i just think that hasn't fully been fleshed out yet it sounds to me like one of
00:47:06.420
these right right you've got to find some kind of ideas that remote well actually i used to be at fort
00:47:11.800
mead and there's a uh down the way from there is actually where the dc juvenile hall is so it's it's
00:47:18.800
it's physically in maryland but um it's actually land that's not owned by the federal government it's just
00:47:25.540
it's immediately adjacent to fort mead but it's where nsa is but it's actually owned by the city
00:47:32.740
of dc and it's where they held their juvenile hall so i mean or you know atlanta is kind of doing their
00:47:37.680
um remember they were having that that uh treehouse antifa um situation and the and that so there
00:47:45.280
there are areas outside of cities that are underdeveloped or undeveloped i i think could be
00:47:50.020
used but yeah i would obviously hope that they're not going into the suburbs i could have a nimby problem
00:47:54.700
not call them tent cities like because you know we all remember hoovervilles or you know not not
00:48:01.100
firsthand but we know what hoovervilles were and you you know as soon as these things are developed
00:48:05.960
they're going to use it against him whether or not it improves the cities or not um but it does i think
00:48:11.180
what it does is give him the ability to have a solution it's like the wall right it's it starts a
00:48:16.840
conversation it starts the conversation but it also it's also very clearly donald trump the real the real
00:48:23.740
estate guy who's looking at major american cities and going i wouldn't invest there you know and he's
00:48:30.080
trying to think of like what would make you invest there again like how would you rejuvenate these
00:48:35.700
places that took hundreds of years to build up because you you wouldn't want to lose them right you
00:48:40.540
don't really want to lose downtown dallas you don't really want to lose midtown manhattan um i i'm shocked
00:48:47.900
when i go out to to the west coast of what you see in la what you see in seattle what you see in
00:48:53.200
portland and so i think it's coming from a good place i just think it needs a little bit more
00:48:57.720
fleshing out than just saying we're going to build 10 cities on the edge of cities like you're doing
00:49:01.720
what we are we are we're just up against time here rahim kassam final thoughts on the issue
00:49:07.320
american no-go zones what do we do it's a fantastic thing that we're having this conversation because it
00:49:12.440
means that some some forward progress is is you know within within sight um these are the positive
00:49:18.680
kinds of conversations that you need to have about how you improve and look i always say this um
00:49:23.820
cities can be great places i understand it's not for everybody it's definitely for me um i like
00:49:29.340
everything on my doorstep i'm a walker i'm not a driver you know i don't do manual labor um and so
00:49:34.260
i think i think it's a good conversation to have because maybe it will mean that certain people who
00:49:40.180
might have spent some time in cities before but have been put off from it for a long time
00:49:43.900
might start thinking about oh okay well if we're going to improve them we're going to zhuzh them up
00:49:48.140
we're going to reintroduce real policing into these areas then american cities can be great again
00:49:52.420
they should be amen you know a funny note on that um so of course you know you and my wife what you
00:49:58.660
have in common is that you're both from europe um europe is designed for walking uh the very
00:50:03.580
so tanya drives here but um usually like you know she calls when you're drunk and you know she'll
00:50:10.520
come pick you up as as happens um and the very first time she ever drove a car in europe was last
00:50:19.180
year she's never driven a car in europe her entire life before she moved to america when she was 18 so
00:50:26.600
that it it blew my mind because she's why would i would i have to you walk around town then you take
00:50:30.940
the train to the next town and that's all you have to do ways public transportation in major built-up
00:50:36.620
areas is not a bad thing like i i'm not a bus guy um frankly nowadays i'm not a train i'm not a you
00:50:43.700
know a tube guy either i did the tube a lot growing up but um it can be very good it can be very very
00:50:50.660
effective um it can't be rotting tin cans being dragged down the street like some kind of you know
00:50:56.940
like the h street sidecar or whatever it's called streetcar in washington dc that the government is
00:51:02.180
now paying people to ride because nobody wants to take it because h street is a hole so can be done
00:51:07.760
major walking american cities coming to a future near you amazing raheem kassam national polls and
00:51:14.060
the substack make sure to check out the substack and friend always a pleasure ladies and gentlemen
00:51:19.520
gentlemen as always you have for my permission lay a short
00:51:20.300
gentlemen as always you have for my permission lay a short