Off The Cuff Declassified - John Cardillo - June 5⧸2018
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Summary
Special Counsel Robert Mueller accuses Paul Manaford of witness tampering. We ll discuss whether or not President Trump can pardon himself. And what would happen if Maxine Waters held a campaign event and no one showed? Well, it did happen, and we re going to talk all about it.
Transcript
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Today on Off the Cuff Declassified, Special Counsel Robert Mueller accuses Paul Manafort of witness tampering.
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We'll discuss. Legal experts differ on whether or not President Trump can pardon himself.
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Law enforcement analyst Ben Maness joins me to discuss the opioid crisis and crime and how they relate to the growing homelessness problems in the United States.
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And what would happen if Maxine Waters held a campaign event and no one showed?
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Well, it did happen, and we're going to talk all about it.
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Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a guy you know I don't trust, is now claiming that Paul Manafort engaged in witness tampering.
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But others who have gone through the federal prosecution process, as defendants, are saying this is a common tactic.
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One of them is a former police commissioner. I'm going to get to that in a moment.
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This from a Thomson Reuters story, Manafort attempted tamper with potential witnesses, U.S. Special Counsel.
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Mueller, of course, is investigating possible collusion links that don't exist.
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Now, Mueller has indicted Manafort in federal courts in Virginia and D.C.
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He's now claiming that Manafort tampered with witnesses.
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Let me read you this from the Thomson Reuters story.
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FBI Special Agent Brock Doman, in a declaration filed with Mueller's motion,
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said Manafort had attempted to call text and send encrypted messages in February to two people from the, quote, Habsburg group.
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A firm he worked with to promote the interests of the Ukraine.
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The FBI has documents and statements from the two people, as well as telephone records.
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And documents were covered through a search of Manafort's iCloud account,
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showing that Trump's former campaign manager attempted communication while he was out on bail,
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Now, Mueller urged the judge, Amy Berman Jackson, to promptly hold a hearing to decide whether or not Manafort should remain out on bail
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or if he should be what's called remanded and start serving jail time now, pending trial, so he can't communicate with people.
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Now, seems straightforward if you trust Mueller.
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So Bernie Kerik, Bernard Kerik, who was the former police commissioner of New York City.
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Bernie Kerik, at his own time in federal prison, many people feel unjustly,
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Prior to that, he'd have been the New York City Corrections Commissioner.
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And when he was being considered for Homeland Security Secretary,
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certain things pop up that he might have had unscrupulous dealings with contractors,
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and they unfairly gave him free work on his home due to his role as police commissioner in New York City.
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But many people feel that Kerik was railroaded.
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For those about this, he took a quote tweet of a Fox News report on,
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that Mueller is claiming Manafort witnessed, Tamper.
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this maneuver is to scare to death any Manafort friends or supporters
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and mentally torture him with solitary confinement
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in order to force him to take a plea and cooperate.
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Now, that's a pretty heavy allegation level against Mueller,
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No one said that Manafort isn't allowed to communicate with people while he's out on bail.
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No one said Manafort can't speak to people that he formerly worked with.
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Well, I've got a friend who I've mentioned and they were subsequent and they won on appeal
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They were an older couple who did very well on Wall Street.
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They were both sentenced to federal prison for a couple of years.
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An appeals court looked at the way the government acted.
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It was one of the most scathing rebukes I've ever seen against the government from a federal appeals court
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in both vacating and overturning their convictions, dismissing the charges with prejudice
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and essentially saying to the government as a federal court,
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we're embarrassed at how you acted in this case.
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Essentially seize millions of dollars of these people's assets for what amounted to a clerical error
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on one form related to a $150,000 financial transaction.
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In this case with my friends, the government claimed they were one of the elements.
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Their lawyers are almost ready to have them come on air with me because it's so egregious.
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In one case, they claimed that a company they were investing into
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and that the investors in their fund were investing into didn't exist.
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My friends' attorneys showed a video of the factory.
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Showed a video of the pieces of hardware on shelves at stores.
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It showed that the company not only existed, that people were employed there,
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that they made these items, that these items were shipped to big box retailers,
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The investors, by the way, the investors were saying,
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We see the products at our local hardware store.
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We've gotten our dividend checks, wanted out of the investment.
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Even that judge in the trial laughed at the government and essentially told the jury to
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disregard that entire charge and that entire line of questioning.
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So I've seen the government act very unscrupulously.
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The government claimed a company didn't exist that had a factory, was making items,
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And like I said, as soon as these friends of mine can go on camera, their lawyer's about
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I'm going to do a couple of shows with them and they can walk you through exactly how they
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were treated by the Obama Department of Justice.
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And for no other reason than I believe they were very wealthy, very conservative.
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They were big money Republican donors and very charitable to PACs that fought Hillary and Obama
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Very, very conservative people, very religious people.
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And the Obama Justice Department went after them as if they were members of the cartel.
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It was one of the most tragic, disgusting cases I've ever seen as retribution against
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conservatives and the overturn of their conviction on appeal proves the government never should
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But it ties into what Bernie Kerik is saying here.
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Again, for those ignorant of DOJ tactics, this maneuver is to scare to death any Manafort
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friends or supporters that would think of assisting in his defense and mentally torture him with
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solitary confinement in order to force him to take a plea cooperate.
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Well, Manafort reached out to some old colleagues.
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Now, the reason I brought up my friends is that while they were out on bail, they could
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They would have loads of friends over their house knowing they were going to federal prison.
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There's no rule that says you can't speak to people you formerly worked with, that you're
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So it does appear that what Mueller is doing is trying to tell everybody who knows Manafort,
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Because if he calls you even to say, hey, wish your wife a happy birthday, we might see
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it as witness tampering and you're going to be in trouble as well.
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You terrorize and terrify anybody that might come into court to testify on his behalf.
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Then you ask the judge to pull his bail, like Carrick says.
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They probably request that he go to one of the most vile, brutal facilities where his lawyers
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are going to ask for administrative segregation, where he's going to be locked down 23 hours
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And he's going and they're going to say, well, yeah, we can keep going for years.
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Take a plea and do two years in a minimum security facility where you get fresh air every day.
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He's a thug who's drunk on power, abusing what appears to be an unconstitutional appointment.
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Now, the other big question out there in this case is, can the president pardon himself?
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Well, Alan Dershowitz, in an interview with Newsmax, said he doesn't know because it's
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not something the framers of our constitution ever considered.
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And so there really isn't established case law on this.
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There really is an established precedent on this.
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There are a few people I tend to listen to on legal matters.
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But another who I give equal weight to Alan Dershowitz, Andrew McCarthy, feels a little
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So Dershowitz says, well, we don't know if the president can pardon himself.
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Andrew McCarthy says in his piece at National Review yesterday, definitively, Andy says,
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Andrew McCarthy said, but he shouldn't be talking about it.
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The headline is, yes, the president may pardon himself.
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And McCarthy writes, as he often does, President Trump hijacked the news cycle with a Monday
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This one, excuse me, observing that, quote, numerous legal scholars agree that, quote, I
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have the absolute right to pardon, capital letters, myself.
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President elaborates that he has done nothing wrong and thus there is nothing to pardon.
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In any event, McCarthy writes, if we must discuss the matter, then, yes, the Constitution empowers
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Like any other power, the pardon power may be abused.
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And if Congress finds a president's self-pardon, finds a president's self-pardon, sufficiently
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abusive, it may impeach and remove the president, but that would not vitiate, would not invalidate
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It would be impossible to prosecute the president on whichever crimes he has committed, that he
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Now, Andrew McCarthy wrote in a column for PGA Media last year, this, quote, the pardon
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question is factually premature in the sense there is no allegation or indication that the
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president or those close to him have committed a crime.
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There need not be a formal criminal charge for a president issues of pardon.
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After President Nixon resigned, President Ford pardoned him, even though he had not been
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President Lincoln mass pardoned Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, and President Carter
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Thus, the fact that special counsel Mueller has not and may never file criminal charges,
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would not prevent President Trump from issuing pardons, including a pardon for himself.
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Now, McCarthy goes on to say, for what it's worth, I believe the president and his legal
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team are making a strategic mistake in talking about how expansive the pardon power is.
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I agree with Andrew McCarthy here and about how the president's control over the executive
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branch renders it constitutionally dubious that he can obstruct justice in the sense of
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impeding investigators, subordinate executive officials who answer to the president.
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He says, I think I understand what they're trying to do.
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They want credit for cooperating with Mueller's probe, especially given that the president
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prudently is declining to be interviewed by the special counsel.
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So they are saying, look, quote, look how much we've done here to support this investigation
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and let it proceed, even though the president did not be indicted and has sweeping power to
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But McCarthy, again, and I think very accurately notes that people aren't focused on Trump's
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They're focused on the claims of power, and he calls them the extravagant claims of power.
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And he goes on to say, even if those claims are well supported, they are unnecessary and
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You've stuck, you know, your nose in Mueller's face.
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Now poking the bear is going to prolong Mueller's investigation.
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And now I'm thinking not through my defense of the administration lens, but through the
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We don't need Mueller flow dripping, flow leaking, damning information on Republicans and on the
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I haven't said anybody that has been as prolific on this issue as Andy McCarthy.
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One of the others who's done a great job at analyzing the overarching situation is Byron
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But but in terms of the legal analysis of the Mueller investigation, the FBI's misdeeds,
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Really, nobody has done a better, more objective, more more critical and accurate, critical analysis
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So McCarthy ends the piece by saying similarly on the facts, as we understand the Mueller has
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an insufficient basis to demand that the president submit the questioning.
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The special counsel does not appear to have evidence implicating Trump in a serious crime,
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nor can he show that to prove some criminal case.
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He needs evidence that only Trump is in a position to provide.
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Consequently, there is no need to get into whether hypothetically a prosecutor would compel a president
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to testify if the president were implicated in a crime and possessed evidence the prosecutor needed
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What McCarthy's saying is the the argument on the left is Trump might have information that
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McCarthy's contention accurately is can't look at it like that.
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The government needs to show that they know that Trump definitively has that information.
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They haven't even shown that there's somebody particular they're looking at that Trump could
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The government cannot compel the president to testify in a fishing expedition.
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Therefore, Mueller has no grounds to compel any testimony from Trump verbal over the phone
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And I think the president of the United States is making the exact right decision by ignoring
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He's going to get in a showdown with the president of the United States, whose popularity is hanging
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It's probably high in the high 60s, but around 50 because of 95 percent news coverage.
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He's going to go after a president who sees unemployment at record lows of 3.8 percent
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and black unemployment at a record low of 5.9 percent, down from 6.6 percent, down nearly
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In only a month, in only a month, he's going to go after that president.
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He's going to go after the president that's making our economy sore.
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The president that's got North Korea begging for a meeting.
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The president that has Bashar al-Assad in Syria terrified.
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The president who's making a dent in illegal immigration.
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He's going to really want a showdown with this.
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But what Mueller can do is he can slow drip out leaks to damage other Republicans in the
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And Democrats take the House and they vote to impeach Trump in the House.
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And in history, the history books, Mueller will get the credit for leading to the impeachment,
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for being the special counsel that led to the impeachment of Donald Trump.
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He knows he's never going to get the president on anything criminal because Trump didn't do
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But Mueller wants his scalp in a different way, impeachment.
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And if he can damage Trump and damage Republicans badly enough to have to give Democrats the
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The history books say due to special counsel Robert Mueller, Donald Trump was impeached and
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Mueller goes down in history as one of these special counsels that got his man.
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And to me, that is the most perverse, perverse perversion, let me call it one of the most
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disgraceful perversions I've ever seen of the American criminal justice system.
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I often analyze criminal justice situations on the show, but one underlying problem for
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And we're now seeing a spike in the levels of homelessness in cities, residents in areas
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Residents that have been in support of homeless encampments are now doing a 180 and pushing
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I had my own experience with a homeless encampment in Fort Lauderdale, where I live.
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Ben, you and I were talking about this off air.
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It was very interesting because yesterday I was talking a little bit about mass exoduses
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from cities like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area when they polled residents up in the
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And the interesting thing was 46% of residents wanted to leave the Bay Area.
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Of those, around 75%, I forget if it was 74 or 76%, 75% wanted to leave California entirely.
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The top three reasons were housing, cost of living, and homelessness crime.
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In your home city of Philadelphia, you sent me a story from WPBI, mass eviction at Kensington
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So basically, you've got these encampments of homeless.
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And now the city, now the residents in this very blue city are starting to say no more
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and asking the police to remove these encampments.
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The homeless situation in Philadelphia has metastasized like a cancer since the opioid crisis
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Heroin has always been an issue in neighborhoods that are traditionally called the river wards,
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which is Kensington, Port Richmond, Juliana, Harrogate.
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And the problem there is, you know, as the suburban opioid epidemic rose, people who had to switch
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from Oxycontin and prescription drugs to street heroin, the mayor and the police commissioner
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and the recently elected district attorney have kind of let the crime associated with addiction
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go the way of, well, we don't believe in criminalizing addiction.
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And the problem with that is when you decriminalize addiction, you ignore the crimes of the drug dealers who are supplying them.
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And then what happens is you have a destination for homeless.
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So what you're saying is that the big push to publicly decriminalize addiction has almost become a statement of permission
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for the secondary crimes committed by addicts and dealers.
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Right. Like a lot of the other national talking points we're seeing right now, there's been this push to kind of combine homeless,
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the homeless problem with the addiction problem.
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And we need to separate the homelessness issue in America with these illicit encampments that are really infringing on everyone's right
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We have taxpayers in a city that have seen their sixth annual tax increase, which is the problem if you look at the West Coast,
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because their cost of living rises astronomically to the point where there are no million dollar, you know, under million dollar homes.
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Hold on. That's a good place to transition to Seattle.
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So we've seen these reports on the exorbitant prices of homes in the Seattle area due to companies like Microsoft and big tech firms.
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They're tiny little dilapidated houses going for eight hundred thousand, a million bucks.
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Another story you and I discussed offline from King five, K.I.N.G. five in Seattle area.
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Seattle tiny village plan gets pushed back from neighbors in South Lake Union.
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And essentially this South Lake Union neighborhood in the city of Seattle was about to build a homeless village to address the problem.
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It would be city owned property. It called for 54 new tiny homes to be built to the site.
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But residents, these very liberal residents, ones that probably would excoriate a Republican for taking action on the homeless are saying things like, quote,
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I will not safe walking. I will not feel safe walking my dog at night.
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It was getting cold at the time, said a homeless person.
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The residents, these affluent Democrats, these affluent liberals are saying, but we won't feel safe.
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But what do you do if you're not going to let the city build a village to put the homeless somewhere and you don't want them to live in tents?
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Where do they go? What do you do here? What's the what's the public safety and public health solution?
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Yeah. And what happened was we've allowed because of the lack of checks and balances in these cities that are so far blue that they have literally no one watching them.
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And they have no voter checks and balances because it's 80, 90 percent Democrat is we've created a true disservice to the addicts and the homeless by leaving them in the street.
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Right. And we're investing in these encampments versus investing in bed space, treatments, you know, hospital space.
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That's not what Seattle was doing. Seattle was going to build those tiny modular homes where they would get these people off the street, correct?
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Seattle was going to basically put container and temporary shelter housing under the I-5 and the I-405 in the West Seattle Bridge, which is exactly what Philadelphia and Los Angeles have done.
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If you look at Los Angeles, they were just creating a homeless encampment with hard walls and roofs.
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It was no different than a tent. It was just more waterproof. It wasn't an animal solution.
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They weren't regulating it the way if you look at our alma mater, New York City.
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Right. You know, the Department of Homeless Services has very clear regulations as to how to operate a shelter.
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And they have numerous, large, low income shelter buildings run by places like West Tabb throughout the city.
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All right. So the crime, let's go to the crime element of this.
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So the proponents of homeless encampments, the anarchists, the uber libertarians, the ones who say everybody should be able to put up a tent and live wherever they want.
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And there's no crime. Don't equate homelessness with crime.
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The common sense normals, people like you and I, people who work the street, know that there is a direct correlation.
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Even if we could only say anecdotally, because the left wing academics refuse to study it formally, we know there's a correlation of homelessness and crime.
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So what are some of the crimes these cities are are seeing?
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What are these right? This woman who says she won't feel safe walking her dog at night as much as I think she's probably a hypocritical liberal.
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I've got to agree with her, Ben. What kinds of crimes are we seeing?
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We have problems here under the train trestles because they use it for shelter, basically where you have if you've ever seen the show The Wire, we have Amsterdam in Philly right now.
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And instead of it being one street, we're talking about 20 streets.
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So you have open air heroin use, open air heroin dealing, people going to the bathroom in the street.
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We have a public health crisis because there's no wastewater treatment in these areas.
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We have rape. Actually, the rape has soared in these encampments since they've started.
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So you have a situation where there are part one and regular felonies and those who want to decriminalize homelessness because back in like the Giuliani era, we used to, you know, take people off the street for aggressive panhandling.
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When you let them stay on the street, they have to find a way to eat and buy their heroin and survive.
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And that often leads to ancillary crimes, which are making it completely unlivable for the taxpayer.
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And in addition to all those violent crimes, those personal crimes you just spoke of, I'm sure the burglaries, the vehicle break-ins, the vandalisms, the criminal mischief, those have to be off the charts, no?
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So a very common thing that I'll see literally when I leave the house in an hour is, you know, there are people who steal the shopping carts.
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It's a multibillion-dollar rebuild I-95 in Philadelphia, and they're picking it clean daily.
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I'm talking about brand-new rebar, construction equipment, tools.
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The construction company builds PennDOT the next morning, and it's like this ever-ending cycle that's delaying the construction and costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
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So I had to go down about seven, eight blocks off of that main La Solis drag, but a few blocks right off of Broward Boulevard and another main drag that on the east side has multimillion-dollar homes.
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Where City Hall is located, I had to go to the supervisor of elections office.
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For a segment I was doing, I needed to pull some voter files for research.
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A fine, a couple of little pizzerias there, you know, lunch spots for people that are working.
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I walked up the steps onto a park, a city-owned park near the big library.
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And when I got up on about the third step, I honestly thought there was a concert or something.
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But I usually stop about half a mile short where the restaurants and bars are.
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Shocked for a city the size of Fort Lauderdale.
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A few hundred thousand people and the city limits proper.
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I mean hundreds and hundreds of homeless tents.
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I was blown away by the level of density in this homeless encampment.
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But I could understand why that college student, that mom who just wanted to take her kid into
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that park with a stroller would never go anywhere near it.
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Now they can't use these city services because I was watching the drug dealing.
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I was watching the heroin addicts with the rubber on their arms kind of falling off the wall.
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I was watching these guys with the gang tats that were thugs.
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I mean, this is not a crowd of only, I'm sure within there are, people that are down on their luck
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A lot of people in this crowd are there for exactly what you say because of crime,
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And the city of Fort Lauderdale didn't even have so much as a rookie cop walking by.
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It's gone even worse in a lot of cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
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I talk to the former guild president, the PBA president there all the time,
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whereas the situation is they're being told not to enforce this.
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The political leaders of the city have basically combined homelessness and addiction into a let's
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help them model versus let's enforce them model, which I understand is empathetic and you want to
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help people who are in need, but you're not helping them.
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You're allowing them to continue a cycle of addiction and mental health issues that are making the matter
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Yeah, and let me say one thing for the audience as well.
00:29:29.780
I didn't walk, the things I saw, I wasn't walking through there at 1130 p.m.
00:29:35.680
This was the middle, it's like 2.30 in the afternoon on a weekday.
00:29:43.900
We're talking the middle of a weekday afternoon, bright sunlight, South Florida.
00:29:48.940
You might as well have been in Tompkins Square Park in New York City in 1980.
00:29:52.260
Oh, well, John, we have a real problem here because kids walk to school.
00:29:58.040
You know, there are like three Catholic schools and four public schools within walking distance
00:30:02.940
of any one of these given encampments in Kensington where the kids have no choice because they
00:30:08.540
have to cross under a train chuzzle to walk through this open-air drug market, which is
00:30:37.200
I mean, every city has its problems, but we've got a strong enough tax base, a lot of high
00:30:41.180
net worth, people living in Fort Lauderdale on the east side.
00:30:45.860
You can't devote all your cops to this problem.
00:30:47.680
Well, cops in places like New York, L.A. and Philadelphia would kill if they have Fort
00:30:52.420
Lauderdale's troubles because Fort Lauderdale could literally process a prisoner or refer
00:30:57.660
them to a hospital within 45 minutes and be back on the street, whereas the average processing
00:31:05.320
So we have a situation right now where obviously we need to ramp up enforcement, stop telling
00:31:10.880
the cops to get hands off because wherever homeless, addicts and mental patients are,
00:31:16.180
ancillary crime like drug dealing is occurring and they need to get in there and intervene.
00:31:21.540
So you're saying, and I agree with you wholeheartedly if you are, we need to go back to what Giuliani
00:31:26.040
did in 1994, a broken windows policing strategy.
00:31:29.780
Take care of the little things, the big things will follow.
00:31:35.720
So you go back to the enforcement, obviously, but you do it with a unique twist, which is
00:31:40.540
every single dollar being spent, whether it's nonprofit money, public money, public health
00:31:46.660
money needs to be diverted from making these encampments nicer for people to live on the
00:31:54.500
We have no attic bed space and we need to fine tune the rules of engagement that are
00:32:02.660
we're paying a lot of money to give people Narcan so that they can wake up a drug addict.
00:32:08.620
Man, I was talking about this, Ben, yesterday for two hours with somebody in media, how the
00:32:13.900
cops don't even want Narcan anymore for that exact reason.
00:32:18.360
They're showing back up an hour later for the same person.
00:32:20.820
I know paramedics here in Philadelphia that have given people Narcan twice in a shift
00:32:26.820
because what you do is it's like giving a drunk a cup of coffee.
00:32:33.120
They go out to score more dope and then they overdose because the other dope is still in
00:32:37.360
So why are we spending all this money to train people and give people Narcan versus putting
00:32:42.640
that money into the actual long term treatment plans like, you know, Phoenix House in New
00:32:47.460
York, in Harlem, which have been proven to have the 60, 70 percent success rate versus
00:32:52.820
the 10, 15 percent success rate involved with, you know, giving someone a 48 hour detox and
00:33:08.340
They get they get more comprehensive treatment.
00:33:11.000
What do you do with them after they're finished there?
00:33:12.780
Because so it's a long a long term treatment plan is you got your detox, your 48 hours.
00:33:19.620
Then you have your your traditional 12 step recovery facility, 28 days.
00:33:25.480
Then you have what's called a long term treatment house where you're basically in a group home
00:33:33.580
So it's, you know, zeroed out as far as cost public funding.
00:33:37.780
And you you know, you basically are monitors and you have groups and you have 12 step meetings
00:33:42.800
and they assure you get enough time between you and the street so that you don't end up
00:33:50.820
So when you talk about criminalizing addiction, you're really not talking about it in the
00:33:56.280
You're essentially saying this is more of a rather than saying criminalize.
00:34:00.400
This is more of a a strong civil commitment situation to try to get these people off drugs
00:34:06.640
You're not talking about just throwing them into prison.
00:34:09.120
Yeah, it's a civil and criminal combined solution.
00:34:12.540
So if you look at the platforms of Beth Grossman, who lost to Larry Krasner, Beth Grossman's
00:34:18.160
We're talking about the because the audience won't be familiar.
00:34:20.480
We're talking about Philadelphia district attorney's race, correct?
00:34:23.640
The controversial one where the attorney of Black Lives Matter and Occupy won the district
00:34:30.320
His platform basically is stop criminalizing minor things.
00:34:33.320
We're not going to arrest them or charge them in the first place, which leaves them on
00:34:36.820
the street versus someone who's pro enforcement who says, look, they need there's needs to
00:34:41.760
be some kind of scheduled intervention in the first place.
00:34:44.980
So how do we intervene with them and then divert them into something that makes them better
00:34:50.980
versus just kicking them out to Rikers or Holmesburg prison?
00:34:54.360
No, it makes sense to me because all that jail is, is crime school.
00:34:58.020
I always remember that scene in the Johnny Depp movie Blow when he says that when he went
00:35:03.720
Yeah, he spent his days teaching guys how to smuggle, right?
00:35:13.820
What's the likelihood we'll ever see anything like it around the United States?
00:35:16.680
Because these cities have a major, major problem right now.
00:35:21.180
Surprisingly, you started seeing it in places like New York first.
00:35:24.460
So there are some baby steps being taken place.
00:35:27.260
You're going to see it in Southern states first because they've already streamlined their
00:35:35.600
I think if groups like GEO and some of the larger private, you know, contract groups
00:35:40.140
start looking at treatment wings of their correctional facilities, it can be a positive ROI versus
00:35:49.880
People still, because they're getting drugs in the jail.
00:35:54.100
They're just coming out more hard and critical.
00:35:55.520
Hey, look, it'll probably be for the big private prison contractors, GEO and some others,
00:35:59.580
and it'd probably be a hell of a lot more lucrative as well than just providing bed space and cells.
00:36:05.320
Well, you're also getting into a root cause of Fort Lauderdale's problem.
00:36:08.720
So why is Fort Lauderdale such a destination for homeless addicts right now?
00:36:12.840
Because there's a lot of treatment facilities, private ones located in South Philly,
00:36:19.580
They go to South Florida, they fail out of the treatment facility.
00:36:24.800
And instead of going back home because there's no return ticket, they just get kicked out.
00:36:34.320
This is, I think, one of the most informative segments and solution-based segments I've done
00:36:44.160
Retired street cop, retired federal cop, but has been a really prolific law enforcement analyst,
00:36:54.100
If you're not part of the problem, you're part of the solution.
00:37:11.320
Once a week, I'm going to do a story that makes me really happy to do, because we talk
00:37:16.920
We always talk about these really important topics.
00:37:20.000
I'm super interested in the content I bring you, and I'm glad you're super interested in
00:37:28.300
I do it every day, but I get to bring stories to you that make me happy.
00:37:32.680
And every week, I'm going to start doing at least one.
00:37:36.260
The first one for this week, it's only Tuesday, is from our good friend Kyle Olson over at
00:37:42.560
the American Mirror, entitled, Woke Maxine Waters Plays to Empty Seats.
00:37:52.520
Maxine Waters plays to empty seats as only 10 millennials go up the campaign event.
00:37:58.700
Kyle writes, Maxine Waters likes to say millennials love her, but if her own campaign event is
00:38:05.740
any indication, that might be more rhetoric than reality.
00:38:09.440
79-year-old auntie Maxine held a meet-and-greet tweet-a-thon on Sunday for two hours, and while
00:38:15.860
it's hard to know what she hoped the outcome would be, but the turnout seemed to be underwhelming.
00:38:24.900
Please join us for the Auntie Maxine meet-and-greet tweet-a-thon.
00:38:30.560
So apparently, this event was aimed at millennials, and in Maxine Waters' world, one of her delusional
00:38:37.780
staffers really thought this would be a good idea.
00:38:41.720
Come join top social media influencers for a tweet-a-thon in support of Auntie Maxine,
00:38:48.540
our fearless champion in Congress, who taught us how to reclaim our time.
00:38:55.760
We are coming together to amplify Congressman Waters' voice and highlight her many achievements
00:39:01.520
Millennials come energized and ready to get out the vote on June 5th.
00:39:06.460
Oh, they're voting today as the primary lobby for Maxine Waters, and this was held on Sunday.
00:39:13.120
So Maxine Waters in this primary runoff today, and
00:39:21.100
So this video of the event on Maxine Waters' website, like 10 people showed up, and Maxine
00:39:27.780
Waters used the event to allow attendees to gripe about what they think is wrong with America.
00:39:33.860
He said, when you come here, you always have an open mic.
00:39:37.440
But Waters told the crowd, oh, they probably didn't need a mic.
00:39:40.520
They kind of just all kind of stood in a circle, and they could have aired their grievances.
00:39:44.400
It was like that episode of Seinfeld, when they had the Festivus poll, and we came for
00:39:48.960
It was their holiday, if you don't remember, and then one of the things you do on Festivus
00:39:54.840
It said the camera showed, the piece says the camera showed empty tables, likely intended
00:40:03.720
Pro-Trump forces think they're going to take me out.
00:40:07.640
When 10 people show up, I don't think you take them back to the House.
00:40:10.560
Now, a Republican who's running against Maxine Waters, Omar Navarro, I've spoken to Omar.
00:40:19.680
Maxine Waters has institutional support and money in that area.
00:40:37.360
And if anybody can mount the challenge, it's Omar.
00:40:41.900
And quite frankly, I think I like him on a personal level.
00:40:49.180
And I think he's an infinitely, infinitely better choice than Maxine Waters.
00:40:52.580
He'd probably do a very good job for the residents.
00:40:56.660
I just don't have high hopes for these institutionally blue California districts.
00:41:00.740
But Maxine Waters didn't miss an opportunity to use racial identity politics to attack Omar
00:41:07.800
She said, quote, he has a last name that is Latin.
00:41:11.640
And what a lot of our people don't understand is that he supports the president building a
00:41:18.360
And in addition to that, he is not worried at all, has not said a word about what is
00:41:23.940
And the so-called, what they call a jungle primary, an open primary in California, is
00:41:30.060
It's going to be very interesting to see how that shakes out.
00:41:32.380
But what's even more interesting is that Maxine Waters is concerned enough about Omar Navarro
00:41:37.640
to actually engage him and campaign against him.
00:41:46.420
Now, the district makeup has changed quite a bit.
00:41:48.060
That district has historically been primarily African-American.
00:41:53.940
But not long ago, it changed and has a much larger Hispanic population, which works very
00:42:08.960
Maxine Waters' alliance, people like Farrakhan, doesn't go over well with Hispanics and Latinos
00:42:18.720
They do not like radical Muslims like Farrakhan.
00:42:24.420
And it's a message that I'll give Navarro credit.
00:42:30.760
He understands that these people are Christian, primarily Catholic.
00:42:34.280
And the Hispanic Latino community, very religious community for the most part.
00:42:39.320
I asked him what it was like in that part of California.
00:42:42.600
And when he ties her to Farrakhan, he gets some of his best engagement.
00:42:47.240
Now, anecdotally, yes, I look at it on social media because I really, you know, I've done
00:42:55.700
But you do notice that people, especially Hispanics, Latinos from his district, do engage
00:42:59.980
him on Twitter and when he posts things about, or for Facebook, when he posts things about
00:43:05.080
Maxine Waters' friendship and alliances with and support of Farrakhan, attending Farrakhan
00:43:10.920
rallies, refusing to denounce Farrakhan, the Catholic, primarily Catholic, Hispanic, and
00:43:18.240
Latinos in that district, they do not like that.
00:43:22.540
That is a deal breaker for them with Maxine Waters, even the ones who have been Democrat
00:43:28.820
And so I think Maxine Waters has a tougher fight on her hand than she ever anticipated.
00:43:36.700
Now, Navarro is a younger guy, late 20s, early 30s, really young guy.
00:43:42.580
He's got a big millennial following, got a lot of grassroots support.
00:43:46.480
He's raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, not a tremendous amount of money for a congressional
00:43:50.280
race, but far more than anyone else has raised again.
00:43:55.620
Roger Stone, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, General Michael Flynn, they've all gone out and campaigned
00:44:03.020
And so Waters is starting to see a challenge from Trump world like she's never seen, and
00:44:13.960
In any other district than a normal place in the country, I'd say Maxine Waters is doomed
00:44:21.840
It's a deep blue district, an entrenched democratic political machine.
00:44:27.100
And so while I like that she has to campaign, I'm not going to sit here and say I have tremendously
00:44:38.040
I think if there was ever a time when Maxine Waters was vulnerable and could lose the House,
00:44:45.100
And we're going to see just how much support we're going to look at turnout today in that
00:44:50.200
If turnout is low in that district and Navarro keeps his grassroots machine going as it is,
00:44:56.360
he has a really, really outstanding shot of beating Maxine Waters in November.
00:45:02.680
But again, only 10 people, 10 millennials showed up at this Maxine Waters event.
00:45:09.140
So clearly her messaging is missing the mark and America is stronger for it.