00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk show, we have Pedro Gonzalez talk about crime, and then we have Attorney General Ashcroft from Missouri to talk about an election issue that is very important.
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00:01:20.000The consensus is that an indictment of Trump would not change your opinion.
00:01:25.000But make no mistake, a lot of these lower-tier Republican candidates that are running for office, all of whom are welcome on the show at any time, they are betting on an indictment as some sort of political future for them.
00:01:39.000It's their only hope, and I think they're wrong.
00:01:43.000Joining us now is one of my favorite people to have on the program, very smart Pedro Gonzalez, who has an interesting new piece out for Chronicles magazine, the myth of draconianism.
00:02:13.000The word Draconianism comes after an Athenian statesman slash tyrant named Draco.
00:02:21.000But I'm going to defend tyranny here for a moment.
00:02:23.000Draco is infamous because he, on the one hand, prescribed death for pretty much every type of offense in ancient Athens.
00:02:31.000But on the other hand, he introduced the first written legal code to the city.
00:02:36.000And you have to put Draco in the proper historical context.
00:02:39.000At the time, the laws in Athens were, they were oral laws, and so they were subject to a lot of abuse and exploitation by capricious aristocrats.
00:02:48.000So Draco comes in and says, high and low, you break the law, you die.
00:02:56.000And so that actually starts the wheels of reform.
00:02:59.000And later, you get another statesman/slash quasi-tyrant named Solon, who comes along and, well, he pretty much repeals the vast majority of Rayco's Draco's legal code, but he keeps actually a homicide statute.
00:03:14.000Draco innovated in the sense that he made a distinguish between essentially manslaughter and deliberate homicide.
00:03:20.000But the point is, is that whilst Solon has become a kind of byword for political wisdom and Draco's name became the root of unduly harsh punishment, you actually needed Draconianism to get to Solon.
00:03:34.000In other words, you needed the sword to get political stability in order.
00:03:40.000And so my piece concludes with that, but it starts with the story of today and crime and punishment in the United States.
00:03:47.000And in a nutshell, despite what we've been told, we actually don't punish people harshly enough, and specifically the right kind of people.
00:03:56.000We're told that the United States has way too many people in prison.
00:04:02.000And the vast majority of people are in prison or they're there because they jaywalked, they got caught with like a doobie or something like that.
00:04:08.000Just this kind of ridiculous sentimental narrative of just mass injustice, right?
00:04:16.000I mean, if you look at state prisons, the vast majority of people who are in state prison are there for serious crimes.
00:04:22.000Around 60% are in for things like rape and murder and things like that.
00:04:26.000And most of the people that are in for drug-related crimes, it's not just because they caught with like a single joint or something like that.
00:04:33.000They're usually involved in trafficking or dealing or things like that.
00:04:37.000And I really rely a lot on a professor of criminal justice named Barry Latzer.
00:04:44.000And his book is called The Myth of Overpunishment.
00:04:46.000So you can kind of see where I got my title from.
00:04:50.000And so I using Latzer's research, the book was published last year.
00:05:24.000I said a couple of weeks ago, we do not have enough people in prison, and Media Matters came after me immediately.
00:05:30.000But when you look into the statistics, and I was challenged by a friend of mine about five years ago, because I too used to repeat this lie: like, oh, our prison population is so big.
00:05:39.000But if you look at, for example, the average rapist will spend between three to five years in prison, and that's a rapist with DNA evidence convicted by a jury of his peers.
00:05:50.000I mean, that alone should at least animate some of the more left-wing kind of social justice groups.
00:05:55.000I want to play cut 119, where the average, the murderer in D.C. has been arrested 11 times before.
00:06:05.000And so the argument Pedro is making that really people should think about: is it time for us to get harsher on crime to become more draconian?
00:06:19.000What we got to do if we really want to see homicides go down is keep bad guys with guns in jail because when they're in jail, they can't be in community shooting people.
00:06:28.000So when people talk about what we're going to do different or what we should do different, what we need to do different, that's the thing that we need to do different.
00:06:35.000We need to keep violent people in jail.
00:06:37.000Right now, the average homicide suspect, the average homicide suspect has been arrested 11 times prior to them committing a homicide.
00:06:51.000So, Pedro, first, that is from Robert J. Conti III, chief of D.C. Metropolitan Police.
00:06:57.000He was ridiculed by the BLM groups, but I really appreciate his mental clarity, moral clarity and mental clarity, but obviously moral clarity on the issue.
00:07:06.000But Pedro, I want to ask a question, though, which is, doesn't that also show that the harsher you are for some of the smaller little things, it could actually prevent some of the more gruesome and cruel and irreversible crimes from happening?
00:07:22.000For example, shouldn't we say, hey, if you're going to carjack, it should be a slap on the wrist.
00:07:34.000And Latzer shows that people that commit these other crimes that aren't as bad as murder, generally, that's the type of person who will eventually get to that point unless they're incapacitated.
00:07:45.000And that he also shows that the attempts to basically rehabilitate people by getting them out of prison before they should be out and then kind of putting them through these social programs and employment programs, things like that, that oftentimes these people tend to reoffend.
00:08:00.000Basically, the worst offenders are also repeat offenders and they'll just continue offending and offending and offending until they're incapacitated.
00:08:08.000And the U.S. Sentencing Commission published a study in the last year or so.
00:08:16.000It's a decade-long study on recetivism, which is just recetivism means the likelihood that someone relapses into criminal behavior.
00:08:24.000And so there are programs that we have that are intended to shave off a felon or an inmate's prison time through different types of things like employment, like prison industry things or educational programs.
00:08:39.000Like you behave well, you participate in making things like washing dogs, making license plates, whatever, and you can shave off prison time and get out sooner.
00:08:50.000Well, the sentencing commission found that there's statistically no difference between someone who participates in these educational and employment programs while in prison.
00:09:01.000There's no statistical difference between them and someone who doesn't participate in them when it comes to reoffending.
00:09:08.000In other words, we're shaving off prison time for people who are just as likely to reoffend when they get out as someone who doesn't go through those programs.
00:09:18.000And the sentencing commission also found that actually the biggest factor when it comes to reducing recetivism, reducing the likelihood that when someone gets out, they're going to do it again, is longer prison sentences, which is, of course, the one thing that we're not doing anymore.
00:09:33.000And Republicans and Democrats have both agreed: well, that's the, you know, long prison sentences are bad.
00:09:38.000We basically need to find ways to shorten them.
00:09:40.000Interestingly, the results were more positive when it comes to, I think, drug-related rehabilitated programs and I think religious programs as well.
00:09:50.000Why is it Republicans have really sold out their voters in this desire or goal to try to win over minority voters?
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00:12:28.000Help me understand, because I am genuinely curious, why so many Republicans flirt with this criminal justice reform movement and goal?
00:12:44.000Why is it so many Republicans go along with it or become sponsors behind it?
00:12:50.000Well, I think one aspect of this is the fact that the criminal justice reform movement, this is a euphemism for jailbreak, but the movement is really well funded.
00:13:00.000At the end of the day, we often find little difference between what George Soros wants and what the Cokes want when it comes to crime.
00:13:10.000By the way, the Cokes are actually not bad on foreign policy.
00:13:13.000Believe it or not, the Cokes actually fund a lot of restraint foreign policy projects.
00:13:19.000But on immigration and crime, there is really little difference between what they want and what George Soros wants.
00:13:26.000Because we associate George Soros with the Democrats and obviously the Cokes with the Republican Party.
00:13:32.000But again, on that issue, there's very little difference.
00:13:35.000And obviously, these are two people with a lot of money.
00:13:38.000They're not the only two people that are funding this movement and all of these various initiatives and projects that are either affiliated with one or the other political party.
00:13:47.000But this is a very well-funded, very effective movement.
00:13:53.000And it's on the Republican side, it's managed to infiltrate the GOP.
00:13:59.000And if you follow me, you know that I've been railing against its influence on the new rights, on the populist right, whatever you want to call it, where you basically have these Coke-funded organizations like the people who have different views about the Texas Public Policy Foundation, but it's just a fact that they get money from the Cokes and they have an initiative called Right on Crime, which everyone knows is backed by the Cokes.
00:14:25.000And a lot of the policies that the TPPF has cooked up have been transplanted into other populist think tanks or so-called populist think tanks like the America First Policy Institute.
00:16:33.000So you're talking about the ideological aspect, and I was going to get to that.
00:16:37.000Basically, I think it's a kind of pathological softness to use a term that Nietzsche used himself.
00:16:43.000That basically we've arrived at a point where we really seem to care more about the criminal, the victimizer, than the victim.
00:16:53.000And that's a really scary place to be because it means that, I mean, until you're perhaps confronted with being mugged yourself, you're not going to change your mind.
00:17:02.000But I actually think we've reached a point where there are people that are pushing this stuff in the United States who could be mugged more than once and still say, you know what, we need less people in prison.
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00:18:44.000Joining us now is Secretary of State from Missouri, Jay Ashcroft, who is helping lead an effort of Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia out of ERIC, which is a very important story here.
00:19:00.000Secretary of State Ashcroft, welcome to the program.
00:19:12.000Eric was supposed to be an organization run by states that would share election data and use that to clean up their voter rolls and look for people that were trying to vote in multiple states or did vote in multiple states.
00:19:28.000And about a year ago, I realized that there were some things wrong with it.
00:19:31.000They weren't requiring states to share data that would help us find people that were voting in multiple states.
00:19:38.000They were requiring us to try to get people registered to vote that had already said they didn't want to be registered to vote instead of just cleaning up our voter rolls.
00:19:46.000They were restricting how we could use the data that we got from them inside our state to make the best use of the people's money.
00:19:53.000And of course, many states that surround Missouri, we have eight states that surround us.
00:20:00.000So it really just didn't make sense for us to stay in it.
00:20:03.000And I think what really should be talked about is why wasn't Eric willing to focus on going after vote fraud, making sure that the rolls were clean.
00:20:13.000Why weren't they willing to make those necessary changes?
00:20:55.000The administration of elections should be like a good basketball referee that runs a good game and you never notice the referee because what you're focused on is the game and it's running well.
00:21:06.000This should be an organization that's wholly focused on making sure that we have good election registration rolls.
00:21:42.000The point is not to be partisan with the administration of the elections.
00:21:45.000The point is for us to run good, non-partisan elections and let the people decide as they wish.
00:21:52.000So I'm looking at the website here, the Electronic Registration Information Center, and it says that there's a lot of misinformation being spread about ERIC, ensuring the efficiency and integrity of America's voting roles.
00:22:06.000But I'm curious, you know, many of these states haven't cleaned up their voter rolls in years.
00:22:33.000Well, I think one of the big concerns is what happens with the data that's sent to Eric.
00:22:39.000I've seen the SOX level audits that make me feel good that they haven't been sending the data over to third parties that would be nefarious.
00:22:48.000But when I approached them and said they should tighten up their governing documents so it's explicit that they can't share that data outside of ERIC, that Missouri's data can't be sent outside of ERIC to be used in a nefarious way, they weren't in favor of doing that.
00:23:04.000So I couldn't feel safe and I couldn't feel confident in telling the people of the state that their data wouldn't be misused.
00:23:12.000There are 20 some-odd states that are not part of ERIC.
00:23:24.000And I think there's also a secondary consideration here that technology's improved.
00:23:29.000Whereas maybe 10 years ago, five years ago, there was a need for a big database to do this.
00:23:36.000I know Missouri, Florida, West Virginia, we're all going to look for ways to do this internally so we don't have to create another massive government database because we know that, frankly, China always ends up getting all that data.
00:23:50.000So talk about some of the other states and the conversations that you're having.
00:23:54.000It looks like Florida is also joining you.
00:23:58.000How serious do you think this will be and how widespread do you think this movement will actually become in resisting the participation in ERIC?
00:24:07.000Well, one of the reasons why Florida, West Virginia, and I, we talked about it, we tried to make the changes and then we left together was because we wanted to make a statement.
00:24:16.000And the statement is not that we don't want to have clean voter rolls, we don't want to have secure elections.
00:24:21.000Those are three states that lead in running good elections.
00:24:25.000But we wanted to make a statement that Eric wasn't doing and wasn't willing to make the necessary changes that it should.
00:24:31.000Since we came out, there was a public letter from Secretary of State Frank LaRose of Ohio, where he has now put out three or four points.
00:24:41.000And he says if they're not corrected at the next ERIC meeting, it looks like Ohio will come out.
00:24:46.000And he says there are five other states that he's talking with about that.
00:24:50.000I think we're really seeing states deciding that if Eric won't make the necessary changes, states will work together to figure out ways they can do it individually.
00:25:00.000We're seeing third parties and concerned citizens with technological know-how that are reaching out to secretaries of state.
00:25:07.000I really do think that, frankly, Eric is in trouble.
00:25:11.000And it's because Eric refused to do what it should have done.
00:25:14.000And it's why my exit from Eric was very simple, because they didn't do what they needed to do so that the people of my state could have confidence in it.
00:25:23.000And I think we're going to see great innovation and we're going to see states individually figuring this out and maybe sharing far lesser amounts of data when we're going after people that are voting in multiple states in the same election.
00:25:35.000We've been able to do that with Florida and the Federalists.
00:25:39.000Do you think there's a place for a replacement organization that is doing this across state lines?
00:25:43.000Or as Secretary of State, do you think that it is better that every state kind of does this independently and monitors their own voter rolls?
00:25:53.000You know, I think with regard to cleaning up voter rolls, taking dead people off the rolls, looking for people that have moved using national change of address information, I think it's good to focus on how states can individually do that themselves.
00:26:07.000I love the idea of states being laboratories of democracy.
00:26:11.000I think there's been way too much effort to move elections to the federal level instead of understanding that states are responsible for that.
00:26:19.000If you read the United States Constitution, states are responsible for registration of voters.
00:26:26.000They determine those other than a couple of constitutional amendments.
00:26:29.000We need to make sure that states are doing that.
00:26:31.000I think there may be means where states are working together, either in pairs or in a small group, to share minimal data, looking for people that are voting multiple times in different states.
00:26:43.000But I really want to be pushing for how can individual states do this themselves and do the best job possible at it.
00:27:37.000In Argentina, Alba Ruada is a transgender woman who was kicked out of classrooms, barred for sitting for exams, refused job opportunities, subjected to violence, and rejected by her family.
00:27:50.000But in the face of these challenges, she worked to end violence and discrimination against the LGBTQI plus community in Argentina.
00:28:04.000When you have, I mean, what's so amazing is why are biological women putting up with this?
00:28:10.000Well, the answer is because women are more agreeable than men.
00:28:13.000And the answer is also because men have become so weak and so feminized that they no longer are standing up for women.
00:28:21.000For a biological woman to say with a straight face, I'm going to have a man win the International Woman of the Year Award, it's really something.
00:28:33.000And it just kind of shows the state of circumstance that we're in.
00:28:36.000Not to mention the Toronto Raptors come out and they say, yeah, only women can have babies.
00:28:43.000And they have to issue an apology for even saying that.
00:28:47.000Alba Rueda is the International Woman of Courage Award winner, a man.
00:28:51.000Rachel Levine is the USA Today Woman of the Year, a man.
00:28:56.000Leah Thomas is the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year nominee, a man.
00:29:01.000Faye Johnstone, Hershey's International Woman's Day honoree, a man.
00:29:07.000For all the arguing against the patriarchy, all that the trans movement has done is only elevate men over women in all of these female competitions.
00:29:19.000It shows the utter fraud that modern feminism is.
00:29:24.000The one thing they used to actually fight for was that there were biological differences between men and women.
00:29:33.000We need things to be calibrated in that way.
00:29:36.000And now when it actually matters, the feminists are nowhere to be found.
00:29:44.000You see, we're receiving a lot of emails in our inbox here about Ukraine and about what's happening there.
00:29:50.000Unfortunately, the war is intensifying and is heating up.
00:29:56.000I get asked questions a lot where they say, Charlie, how are we going to get Washington, D.C. to agree on things?
00:30:00.000And as we have said repeatedly, neoliberalism is the consensus in Washington, D.C. D.C. was in full agreement that Tucker Carlson, making sure you could see the January 6th footage, was wrong.
00:30:54.000And I hope it is inspiring to every American, particularly those in positions to make decisions, because we have to continue, and I would even argue, increase the military support that we give to the Ukrainians sooner.
00:31:51.000Why are we not trying to broker a peace deal?
00:31:55.000Why are the Americans not coming in and trying to say, here's our demands to try to make sure that Ukrainians don't keep getting slaughtered and Russians don't get keep and slaughtered?
00:32:06.000What are the American conditions for peace?
00:32:13.000Since we are the underwriters, upwards of $100 to $200 billion of this effort, of the entire conflict here, which is just ridiculous to me, why are we not saying, can we stop the killing?
00:32:28.000In fact, the intelligence apparatus is saying that we need to liberate Crimea.
00:32:52.000And to the great credit of this program and to our team and the people that work so hard to make this podcast and this radio program and this television show happen, we have asked the question since day one, what does success look like?
00:34:13.000If we weren't $31 trillion in debt, if we didn't have an invasion on our southern border, if we weren't draining our military stockpiles, if we weren't losing 100,000 plus people to drug overdoses, then maybe I could entertain something.
00:34:26.000Why don't you use the Constitution and go through Congress?
00:34:29.000This is a continual outrage to all of us.
00:34:35.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:34:36.000Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:34:39.000Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
00:34:44.000For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.