A D.C. police commander has been suspended and accused of changing crime stats to make it look like crime is going down. President Donald Trump has federalized the police and deployed the National Guard to patrol the streets of the nation s capital.
00:03:36.920I mean, is there any reason why just a few blocks from the White House there should be shots fired in broad daylight?
00:03:43.640I mean, these are kind of things that happen there in the nation's capital.
00:03:46.620I mean, when President Trump says that our beautiful capital with the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, I mean, this should be a place for tourists not only to flock from around the world, which they already do, but where they feel safe on a day-to-day basis.
00:04:02.700It's also a brilliant opportunity, I think, for the Trump administration and for the political right more generally to disprove all sorts of fallacies that have emerged in the past 20 to 30 years from the left when it comes to criminal justice policing.
00:04:16.060The left has been going on and on ever since the Rudy Giuliani era in New York City, Rudy Giuliani, broken windows policing, largely continued to an extent, at least, by Mayor Bloomberg.
00:04:26.140Ever since then, certainly when I was in law school from 2013, 2016, starting around then and really escalating during the Obama years, the left has just done a total 180 against police, against criminal justice.
00:04:38.180They say that less police means more safety.
00:04:40.440This is just an amazing opportunity, I think, for just a real live experiment, a real-time experiment.
00:04:47.180Let's actually make sure that the feds are going to sick the D.C. police in these areas where they are typically reluctant and hesitant to patrol there.
00:04:55.400And it's a great opportunity for the right, I think, to disprove two to three decades' worth of left-wing fallacies and erroneous logic when it comes to proactive policing.
00:05:04.520The politics, I think, are also a total no-brainer.
00:06:55.480And I happened upon a conversation between two government—one guy who was a government contractor and one woman who actually worked for the D.O.D.
00:07:04.540And guess what the first thing the guy—well, the first thing they ask is like, oh, so you're from around here, right?
00:07:10.380Okay, first question after that is, do you feel safe?
00:07:13.920And I started laughing because everyone knows what's true.
00:07:18.900There were shots fired near the White House, not to mention the rioting and the chaos.
00:07:23.480But this story about this commander flubbing the numbers is crazy.
00:07:30.280It always turns out that there's some—I hate to do it, but Democrats involved in some kind of surreptitious or nefarious political play where they're manipulating the numbers, lying about the narrative, and trying to trick people.
00:07:45.640So the question I have on this is, do you believe—like, so there are allegations right now, but the police union has said that the higher-ups are flubbing these numbers.
00:07:53.820Do you believe the numbers are being flubbed?
00:07:55.880And if they are, why are they actually doing it?
00:07:58.480So, look, I have not done a personal deep dive.
00:08:02.200I have no personal sources within the D.C. police there that would give me kind of credence one way or the other.
00:08:07.180But what I can say is that it strikes me as entirely plausible.
00:08:10.640And what I can also say, Tim, is that I have heard anecdotally—I haven't spoken with this person, but through secondhand, I know of a source in Mayor Bowser's office.
00:08:21.160And Mayor Muriel Bowser, you know, not exactly a right winger, to put it mildly there.
00:08:25.380But apparently, even she has, at times, expressed more of an openness to try to ramp up police enforcement there, trying to crack down on carjackings.
00:08:35.440And what I've heard is that she gets pushback from a lot of black leaders, you know, basically the Al Sharpton types there.
00:08:42.080You know, the folks who are trying to, for X, Y, Z reasons, trying to protect gangsters and carjackers and gangbangers there.
00:08:50.740And, you know, your mileage may vary as to why you think they would want to do such a thing there.
00:08:55.780But there are some political, self-serving, cynical interests there when it comes to trying to kind of, you know, get your turf and secure your political territory there.
00:09:04.560D.C. is a very corrupt city historically there.
00:09:07.340I mean, there's very little about that there.
00:09:09.600I mean, it kind of shares a lot of resemblance with Chicago and New Orleans in certain respects there.
00:09:13.440So I would not be the least bit surprised if there was outright flubbing on the numbers there.
00:09:17.400But a lot of this, I mean, let's just kind of zoom out a little bit and contextualize within this kind of post-2020, post-George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, cultural milieu that we're currently living in.
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00:10:23.700Hi, I'm Chris Gethard, and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone.
00:10:53.440If you just recite basic statistics, you know, if you say that black people in America, I'm totally making up numbers, by the way, but if you say that they're responsible for, you know, 50% of homicides or whatever the actual number may be there, you know, you are immediately called a racist for simply citing statistics there.
00:11:08.780So I have no doubt about it that in a city like Washington, D.C., which is a very, very black city, that is going to be very powerful, you know, black politicians who are going to try to do things like this, you know, along the lines of what you're suggesting.
00:11:26.940Over the past decade, what we saw was there were several people who posted FBI crime stats and were banned on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube because it was racist to do so.
00:11:38.780When you see that event in the private sector with these pressures, what do you think the higher ups of the police department are going to be doing as well?
00:11:45.680They don't they don't want to be the one who comes out, issues a statement saying, oh, here, by the way, here's the racial breakdown of crime in my city.
00:12:00.320I mean, it really says a lot about where we're at as a society.
00:12:05.380We're like literally just saying statistics, you know, it somehow gives you a presumption that you're coming from from a racially nefarious perspective there.
00:12:27.140I mean, ever since the civil rights era, Americans have just been utterly petrified of being called racist.
00:12:30.640But when that takes the form of being afraid to to actually name statistics of actually saying, you know what?
00:12:37.020No, actually, a city like Washington, D.C. that has a larger minority population, we actually really do need proactive policing there.
00:12:43.700You know, going back to the Giuliani and Bloomberg era of New York City, you know, NYPD policing there to actually say, you know what?
00:12:49.680No, we actually need more NYPD squad patrol cars in certain areas in the Bronx and Queens and whatnot there that have a demographic makeup that is disproportionately prone to crime.
00:13:45.780And Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander is between zero and one.
00:13:48.960The argument, of course, that people make is that 38 percent of crime coming from a smaller portion of the population, around 13 percent, is disproportionate.
00:13:59.820Now, some people want to – that is the data, OK?
00:14:03.580I'm not saying that people are good, bad, or otherwise based on their race.
00:14:34.880If you're in this politically appointed position, you know that if you're going to go to the mayor and say, we're getting disproportionate crime from the black community, she's going to get pushback from the people you mentioned, like Sharpton and these other BLM activists.
00:14:45.940So she's going to say, give me better numbers.
00:15:01.900I remember when they erected those fences around the Capitol building and it was considered dystopian because it's supposed to be public.
00:15:08.500There are some that are expressing concerns that, yes, there may be violent crime, but Trump sending in the National Guard, federal law enforcement, taking over the police is pushing us towards a police state.
00:15:16.880I personally do not share those concerns.
00:15:21.060I'm sure that some more libertarian minded folks have some legitimate concerns on those grounds there.
00:15:25.960I am more of a law and order kind of guy, Tim.
00:15:28.060I mean, that's just kind of been my MO really ever since I first started in law school when I was clerking for a federal judge on Fifth Circuit.
00:15:36.220From my vantage point, if you don't actually have public safety, if you don't have people who actually feel safe walking the sidewalks, I mean, what is the point of having these beautiful memorials?
00:15:45.000What's the point of having the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, if you're going to be scared to actually go there with your family, with your young children in the first place there?
00:16:07.440I was just so, so happy to see it there.
00:16:09.860And the notion, now that I'm a new father, we had our first child last December, the notion that I could one day take our daughter to see all this there after I do my best as a father to try and instill in her a love for America and civics and government.
00:16:21.080The notion that I would be scared or reluctant to do so because, God forbid, there could be a gangbanger, a carjacker, shots fired on a random street there.
00:16:31.560So, to me, there's somewhat of an inversion here of the order of operations that we have to have law and order first in order to appreciate these monuments in the first place there.
00:16:41.020And I think that what Donald Trump is saying, probably correctly, is that we don't currently have that there.
00:16:45.360Let's establish that, and then let's kind of bring in everyone to enjoy all that Washington, D.C. has to offer.
00:16:49.840You know, the crazy thing is I do a lot of events in D.C. because we live here, and the first thing we're doing when we're doing logistics is how much security do I have to bring with me?
00:17:02.820Where I live in West Virginia, I don't have to worry about it.
00:17:12.040And I go about my business and no issues.
00:17:16.660I go to D.C., and immediately it's like, okay, we're going to have two guards waiting for you when you arrive.
00:17:23.840When you get out of your car, they'll be there.
00:17:25.260And it's crazy to think that's how we live, and it shouldn't be that way.
00:17:28.640But I do want to jump to the next subject for the big news of the day, and that is the challenge to Obergefell, which I don't know if you saw, but Kim Davis, she's the clerk, I believe, from Kentucky,
00:17:39.100who was actually jailed for refusing to issue gay marriage licenses after the ruling on Obergefell.
00:17:44.580Now, I'll give you my thoughts right away.
00:17:47.620So Kim Davis, through her lawyer, she's filed a writ of cert to the Supreme Court.
00:17:51.280There's a possibility of a ruling next year in 2026 that could overturn gay marriage.
00:17:57.540At the time, the ruling was 5-4 upholding this argument under the 40th Amendment that states must recognize gay marriage licenses.
00:18:04.380I think based on the current makeup of the Supreme Court, there is no way that they will uphold Obergefell.
00:18:12.180I believe one year's time it will be overturned, but I'm curious what you think.
00:18:16.320Well, Tim, you know, look, cards on the table.
00:18:19.860So I was in law school when Obergefell came down.
00:18:22.160I am a longtime opponent of same-sex marriage as a matter of public policy.
00:18:26.260I think that is the incorrect definition of marriage, and as far as a legal constitutional matter is concerned as well.
00:18:32.620I genuinely think that Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Obergefell is probably the single most ludicrous majority opinion in my entire lifetime.
00:19:20.54020 to 25 pages, maybe 30 at the most, give or take there.
00:19:23.280He doesn't actually even make a straightforward legal argument.
00:19:26.240He makes a vague reference to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
00:19:30.520He makes a vague reference to the Due Process Clause.
00:19:33.200And then he basically says that if you kind of do a little this, a little that there, you know, kind of, you know, it makes sense that marriage has evolved in the understanding of human beings such that this thing is no longer constitutional there.
00:19:43.040But that's just not really how constitutional law works.
00:19:46.840I mean, when the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, I mean, obviously, same-sex marriage was not even a figment of anyone's imagination.
00:19:53.320But actually, you know, private homosexual acts themselves, sodomy, was prescribed virtually everywhere.
00:19:58.080So, you know, the notion that they could have possibly envisioned this, I think, is totally preposterous.
00:20:02.920You know, so for all those reasons, I would love nothing more than to agree with you that this case actually will be overturned.
00:20:09.000Having said that, I don't think it's going to happen.
00:20:12.200In fact, I don't think it's going to get anywhere close to happening, actually, to be honest.
00:20:28.860So you need four votes, four of the nine, in order to grant a writ of certiorari and actually hear a case straight on there.
00:20:36.700So if I'm just looking at the justice and trying to count votes, I think you can easily count to four justices who agree as a first principles matter that Obergefell is wrong.
00:20:45.760But most of the justices have a somewhat convoluted process for what they call stare decisis, which is how much to rely on legal precedent and when to consider trying to overturn a precedent that even they might concede is flawed.
00:20:59.560But it's really only Clarence Thomas, to an extent, Neil Gorsuch, but Neil Gorsuch, let's recall, had that Bostock case in 2020, which is a transgender case.
00:21:10.200So it's really only Clarence Thomas who takes a truly, truly, truly principled stance on stare decisis, where he basically says, if it's wrong, it's wrong, period, full stop, end of story.
00:21:19.500And sure enough, in Thomas's concurrence, in the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe v. Wade, he actually did call for the overturning of Obergefell.
00:21:27.100But he's the only justice on record who has actually directly done that.
00:21:31.260So I think probably at most, if I'm just being honest here, you probably have two of the nine justices at most, Thomas and Sam Alito, who are the two most conservative, who I think would agree to hear this in the first place.
00:21:42.080I think Neil Gorsuch would probably just prefer to duck this issue.
00:21:44.580Look, Amy Coney Barrett, I have no doubt that she thinks that Obergefell was wrongly decided, but I don't think she wants to get anywhere near this whatsoever.
00:21:52.600John Roberts, who actually, you know, Roberts was the main dissenter in Obergefell, the chief justice.
00:22:23.520Now, if they grant cert, I think it would be limited to a very narrow First Amendment religious freedom question for Kim Davis as to whether she has some sort of dispensation or opt out.
00:22:34.740I don't think they're going to actually touch the 14th Amendment ruling whatsoever there.
00:22:38.200But if I'm being very honest with you, my somewhat pessimistic guess is they probably don't grant cert in any capacity.
00:22:44.300But if they do, I think it would be very limited to the Kim Davis dispensation question.
00:23:05.260I want to be a bit more optimistic, but I defer to you.
00:23:08.740I mean, you know more than I do on the patterns and the law and all these things.
00:23:13.160I'm hoping—I know I'm probably wrong to even hope because I think the Supreme Court, as it's made up right now, time and time again has showed us there are only two justices of real courage and reason.
00:23:28.040And that's Alito and Thomas, and the rest of them, you know, I think if it—I feel like if it comes to the argument on Obergefell, it wins.
00:23:42.240If they're actually going to go through the idea of marriage licenses, same-sex marriage, how the law should operate, I don't see how this stands.
00:23:50.180I feel like six to three makes the most sense.
00:23:52.720Maybe Amy Coney Barrett, she's squishy and scared and sides of liberals sometimes.
00:23:56.380But it really does feel like on the logic of the law—you know, my view largely is this.
00:24:03.820Liberals like to claim whenever you bring up the Supreme Court shouldn't be doing these universal changes to culture and law.
00:24:10.160Like Obergefell, they say, what about the Civil Rights Act?
00:24:12.820What about when they desegregate and do all these things?
00:24:16.980Congress passes a law, and the Supreme Court can then weigh its constitutionality.
00:24:21.160In this regard, there was no law passed.
00:24:23.020Most states today still have bans on same-sex marriage, but only due to that precedent are allowing it to occur.
00:24:32.580So I hear this, and you're making me a little pessimistic.
00:24:36.960I am worried because maybe they just dodge the issue like cowards.
00:24:40.500So, look, I think you're right that if the question were presented to the justice and they basically said, you know, ignore the fact that this case was decided 10 years ago, ignore what lawyers call reliance interests, ignore all that, just actually rule on the literal 14th Amendment question, I think you're totally right.
00:24:58.940I think that there are six votes then to just put in a simple statement, Obergefell was wrongly decided as a matter of law.
00:25:21.440Scalia, in his jurisprudence, had this well-established multi-part bouncing test for Stardust Isis, basically when you go in there and when you overturn a flawed precedent.
00:25:31.880And a lot of these lawyers who put a very, you know, a firm emphasis on precedent and Stardust Isis put a high reliance on reliance interests, which basically means if there are people in the here and now that are relying on this ruling there,
00:25:46.580we are going to be very reluctant to overturn it.
00:25:49.440And I think the number of people here who have same-sex marriage licenses in America in the year 2025, I don't know the exact number, but I think it's maybe like around a million, two million, something like that there.
00:25:59.440I mean, that is a non-negligible reliance interest.
00:26:03.600Now, in my view of Stardust Isis, that doesn't matter because if it's wrong as a matter of law, it's wrong, overturn it, period, full stop, end of story.
00:26:10.820To me, that's the only principled approach to take, frankly.
00:26:13.580But, you know, even for a lot of these right of center justices, that's just not necessarily the approach they take.
00:26:18.720Yeah, it's a problem, though, in this country that the legislative branch is supposed to be handling these issues.
00:26:25.380And it's come down to a win the presidency and take the Supreme Court and build the structure you want.
00:26:44.900The issue with Obergefell is the Democrats and the liberals in this country could not get the legal power to create same-sex marriage as an institution.
00:26:58.060If we do not have a Supreme Court body or a political apparatus on the right that is willing to say, you can't do that, and they will allow the use of brute force politics, we lose.
00:27:13.540And this country is—I mean, I'll put it this way.
00:27:18.400Many people describe it as Republicans don't fight back.
00:27:23.400If every time the left, liberals, and Democrats use brute force, Republicans just say, well, it's wrong, so we won't, the left will win in the end.
00:27:35.440I've been preaching this for, you know, for 10, 15 years now.
00:27:38.320I mean, how many times have we seen Republicans, conservatives fight with one hand tied behind their back?
00:27:43.060I mean, maybe even two hands tied behind their back.
00:27:44.920I mean, this happens time and time and time again.
00:27:47.460One of my pet projects for the past 10, 15 years have been trying to overturn this when it comes specifically to the realm of courts and jurisprudence.
00:27:55.000I have my whole own theory, actually, on constitutional interpretation, and I call it common good originalism, trying to kind of give a little more heft to conserve judges,
00:28:02.940to feel a little more emboldened, to rule in line with principles of natural law and biblical truth and things like that there.
00:28:09.500So I've really kind of thought this through and done the best that I can in my own capacity there.
00:28:13.760But unfortunately, you know, institutional realities kind of just, they kind of just are what they are, unfortunately, there.
00:29:02.160But, you know, the whole LGBT cause has just achieved such cultural relevance and salience in modern American society and modern American culture there that I think a lot of people have been kind of cowed into obeisance and submission there and just so afraid to challenge it from either a policy or a legal perspective.
00:29:55.400And I said, well, you know, OK, I guess if the left is now cheering on South Park, I'm going to refrain from saying the word just for the purpose of, you know, reach, I guess.
00:30:08.380But the slur for homosexuals was used in that show several times as they mocked Trump for being a homosexual and liberals cheered for it.
00:30:17.820So my attitude was if the play that the Democrat and liberal side is making now—because I'm not saying Matt and Trey did this with South Park—but it's that, ha-ha, Trump's gay, make fun of him for it.
00:30:29.760But that is one of the biggest cultural victories the right has gotten in decades.
00:30:34.040If now South Park is telling liberals to say slurs for gay people and that being gay is funny and to be made fun of, culturally, we may be shifting on this one.
00:30:47.360And because the left in the liberal media apparatus has only existed to say whatever the right does is wrong, make fun of it, it created the perfect opportunity now.
00:30:58.680When Matt and Trey come out and call Trump gay, the left cheers it on.
00:31:03.320OK, well, now the culture has shifted.
00:31:06.020Young kids are going to start dropping F-bombs again, and I mean the slur for gay people.
00:31:10.000And when Obergefell does get overturned, it's going to be like, what did you expect?
00:31:14.480Liberals abandon this because—so I actually, to what you were saying, I think you were right over the past 10 years, the pride stuff.
00:31:31.020No, and there's some polling that strongly supports what you're saying, actually.
00:31:34.060So I saw some polls, either Gallup or Pew or some major pollster, that showed the Republican support for same-sex marriage was 55% in 2021, around the time that Biden started.
00:31:50.500You know, if you look at Gen Z church attendants, one of the most church-attending religious generations over the past 100 years of American history.
00:31:57.200So there definitely are some serious signs here.
00:32:00.900Look, I think that Obergefell could be decided at some point.
00:32:04.760I'm just looking at the current six right of certain justices.
00:32:08.880I see Sam Alito, who has tremendous courage, tremendous conviction.
00:32:12.760I see Clarence Thomas, who has tremendous courage, tremendous conviction.
00:32:15.820I see John Roberts, who actually nailed this issue properly in 2015, but takes such a rigid view of started sizes that I see pretty much no chance.
00:32:22.820And then I see Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh, who my best guess would be they'd rather just not touch this thing with a 20-foot pole.
00:32:28.920So that's kind of just how I see the breakdown.
00:32:33.900That's why, you know, my argument is I know that Thomas and Alito probably need to retire very soon because we want to make sure that the replacements are going to be of the same caliber.
00:32:45.480I would say let's just—Christians, ignore this one time when we start cloning people, but we'll clone Clarence Thomas eight or nine times.
00:32:54.920He can stay on the bench with his eight clones or just have nine fresh clones take over the whole thing.
00:33:30.160I'm so excited that—OK, listen, I'm a liberal guy.
00:33:33.440And, you know, the one thing I want to add before we send you on your way to go hang out with Russell, I don't care all that much for gay—I don't care for or against gay marriage, right?
00:33:43.260It's like, if you're gay and you want to get gay married or civil union or whatever, OK, fine, whatever.